Lonnie Loren Kocontes, 57, has been in custody since 2013, when Orange County sheriff’s investigators concluded his ex-wife’s death at sea in 2006 was not an accident or suicide but the culmination of a plot that netted him more than $1 million.
The body of Micki Kanesaki was found floating in Italian waters two days after she was reported missing. By then, Kocontes had already returned to the United States and was with another woman whom he later married, Orange County prosecutors said.
Authorities investigated Kanesaki’s death in 2006, and his new wife testified before an Orange County grand jury, prosecutors said. But her story apparently changed when she testified for investigators again in 2013. Soon after, Kocontes was arrested.
Kocontes allegedly drafted a letter in which his wife stated that her 2006 testimony was accurate and that she was forced to lie in 2013.