Open Water

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Speaker 4 I'm Lester Holt. Tonight on Dateline: The Cruise cruise ship mystery, a passenger overboard, and an ocean of questions.

Speaker 7 He says, Mickey's missing.

Speaker 7 I said, what do you mean she's missing?

Speaker 8 It's devastating. Her last moments in life still haunt me.

Speaker 9 I just thought,

Speaker 9 what a horrible way to die.

Speaker 10 We found a lot of things suspicious.

Speaker 5 There's no video of it happening. There's no eyewitness testimony.
There's no fingerprints.

Speaker 10 She was dead before she landed in the water.

Speaker 8 I was approached by the FBI to record my conversations with

Speaker 5 you're interrogating somebody who's a murder suspect.

Speaker 8 Nothing I would have ever imagined could have prepared me for this.

Speaker 5 This is just phenomenally devious, what you're describing. Yes.

Speaker 7 I realized I was being used.

Speaker 7 It's time the truth came out now.

Speaker 4 Here's Josh Mankiewicz with open water.

Speaker 14 The call came in the middle of the night.

Speaker 16 It was their friend in a panic.

Speaker 17 Lonnie was in Napoli and Mickey had gone missing off the boat. And that's where it started.

Speaker 12 And what'd you think?

Speaker 17 That was a take to the count of three, kind of, you know, repeat all of that and let me hear it one more time type of thing.

Speaker 18 No matter how many times she heard it, it just didn't make sense.

Speaker 17 You think of all of these things, everything starts rushing through your head.

Speaker 22 Except this was clearly true.

Speaker 7 I just saw a disaster happening in a foreign country.

Speaker 17 You say, this can't be. This can't be.

Speaker 7 Knew it in my heart. There's got to be another explanation.

Speaker 25 There was an explanation, all right.

Speaker 28 It just wasn't the one anyone was expecting.

Speaker 17 My instinct said this is going to go sideways fast. I just didn't know which way or how and how we were going to get there.

Speaker 30 Naples is a marvelous city. It's beautiful, it's chaotic.

Speaker 31 Marco Grasso is an investigative reporter for the Italian newspaper Il Secolo Decimonimo.

Speaker 30 It's full of life, it's full of colors, and it's a beautiful place to visit as a tourist.

Speaker 35 One of those tourists was Lani Kakadas, an American who arrived in Naples in May 2006 on board a cruise ship, the Island Escape.

Speaker 30 The island escape started from Palma de Mallorca in Spain,

Speaker 30 then stopped in Messina in Sicily.

Speaker 39 Lonnie had booked the cruise as a way to rekindle the flame with his longtime love, Mickey Kanasaki.

Speaker 33 The couple had been married for years and then divorced.

Speaker 31 This was a new beginning, a chance to rediscover some amore.

Speaker 41 They spent the day exploring Messina on the island of Sicily.

Speaker 31 They took a bus to see the sights.

Speaker 39 Here's Mickey by Orion's Fountain.

Speaker 20 After the excursion, they returned to the island escape and the cruise ship began its journey to the next stop, Naples.

Speaker 44 Less than 24 hours later and still in open water,

Speaker 37 the trip took an awful turn.

Speaker 33 Lonnie's friend Bill Price was sound asleep back in Florida when the phone rang.

Speaker 7 3.10 in the morning, I was in the bed with my dog. I picked up the phone, and it was him.

Speaker 5 Lonnie. Lonnie.

Speaker 37 How's he sound?

Speaker 7 Concerned. He said,

Speaker 5 I have a problem.

Speaker 23 I said, where are you?

Speaker 7 He says, I'm in Italy. And I said, okay.
And he says, Mickey's missing.

Speaker 7 I said, what do you mean she's missing? He said, we can't find her.

Speaker 5 When did he tell you he had last seen Mickey?

Speaker 7 He said that he had gone to bed that night. They had some drinks in a club.
He couldn't sleep, so he took some ambient.

Speaker 7 And he woke up the next morning and she wasn't there.

Speaker 5 And that's when Lonnie sounded the alarm.

Speaker 7 Yes, apparently

Speaker 7 he reported her,

Speaker 7 couldn't find her.

Speaker 7 He asked for them to look.

Speaker 45 The crew of the Island Escape started searching the ship, and the captain made an announcement to passengers to be on the lookout for Mickey.

Speaker 15 Then he checked Lonnie and Mickey's cabin and found nothing amiss.

Speaker 30 He recalled a bottle of wine in the trash and this chair on the balcony in an upright position.

Speaker 19 According to the captain, the Mediterranean had been calm.

Speaker 30 There was good weather and it was a very quiet night. The sea was very quiet.

Speaker 16 The crew showed Mickey's photo to the other passengers.

Speaker 30 Then, as scheduled, the island escape docked in Naples.

Speaker 25 Bill spoke with Lonnie again.

Speaker 7 I kept saying, she's got to be around there somewhere. Something's happened.
Bathroom somewhere. You can't just disappear.
He said they've sent people over and over and they can't find her.

Speaker 52 Almost 12 hours later, the Island Escape prepared to leave port and continue on with the cruise.

Speaker 33 There was still no sign of Mickey.

Speaker 50 Lonnie quickly packed up his things and Mickey's and got off the island escape.

Speaker 31 Reality was setting in.

Speaker 37 The woman he loved may have gone overboard.

Speaker 30 Italian Coast Guard started searching for Mickey.

Speaker 19 Lonnie checked into the Hotel Mercure.

Speaker 27 From his room, he spoke again with Bill.

Speaker 7 He said, everything in here is in Italian. He said, I don't speak the language.
He said, I'm scared.

Speaker 31 Lonnie also spoke with his friend Susan McQueen, who says she could hear fear in Lonnie's voice.

Speaker 17 He was claiming that he was being treated unjustly, that no one spoke English, and that everyone was just being mean to him, treating him as if he had done something wrong, and that he was out of his element and he didn't know what to do.

Speaker 31 That's when Lonnie Kakantas made a decision that would come back to haunt him.

Speaker 4 When we come back, Mickey is missing and Lonnie is desperate.

Speaker 17 He was a disheveled mess and he was acting fearful. It just seemed like he should just go.

Speaker 5 To protect himself. Yes.

Speaker 7 He says, can you get me out of here?

Speaker 51 When the cruise ship Island Escape docked in Naples, Italy during the early morning hours of May 26, 2006,

Speaker 51 American tourist Mickey Kanasaki was no longer among its passengers.

Speaker 58 Soon, her brother Toshi got a call from the State Department.

Speaker 23 You're the brother of Mickey Kanasaki.

Speaker 5 Yeah, yes.

Speaker 59 Well, she's missing off of this cruise.

Speaker 5 Missing?

Speaker 23 What do you mean, missing?

Speaker 5 Well, go find her.

Speaker 18 Mickey's ex-husband/slash-boyfriend, Lonnie Kakatis, was in a Naples hotel.

Speaker 49 He was waiting to hear from the Italian Coast Guard, which was searching the Mediterranean.

Speaker 29 for Mickey.

Speaker 54 According to his friend Susan McQueen, Lonnie sounded frantic.

Speaker 17 He was a disheveled mess, and he was acting fearful. He was acting very fearful and very irrational.

Speaker 11 The Lonnie Susan knew was never irrational.

Speaker 17 He was a pretty spectacular fireball of an attorney.

Speaker 63 Lonnie graduated from law school with honors in 1992.

Speaker 18 By the time Susan met him, he was an attorney at a top law firm in Los Angeles.

Speaker 16 Susan was a private investigator.

Speaker 17 He put in 25 out of 24 hours a day. I mean, he was a very truly dedicated, fast-thinking attorney.
He had the respect of us.

Speaker 40 Us meant Susan and Bill Price, a retired Washington, D.C.

Speaker 32 cop turned investigator, now partners with Susan in business and life.

Speaker 36 They both came to respect Lonnie.

Speaker 7 The guy is phenomenal.

Speaker 5 Not just hardworking, but smart.

Speaker 7 Extremely.

Speaker 5 And out of that, a friendship grew. Yes.

Speaker 7 He was like a a brother that I never had.

Speaker 7 I could count on him.

Speaker 25 Especially when Bill needed major heart surgery and felt he wasn't receiving the care he needed from hospital staff.

Speaker 7 So I made a call to him.

Speaker 7 He was there.

Speaker 7 And that hospital changed their whole tune.

Speaker 7 I mean, he legally was ready to take all of them on.

Speaker 5 That's a good friend.

Speaker 7 It was a very good friend.

Speaker 11 Bill recovered.

Speaker 37 He and Susan spent time with Lonnie, along with a secretary at Lonnie's law firm named Mickey Kanasaki.

Speaker 17 He saw Mickey getting off the elevator one day and said she was beautiful and she had this beautiful black shiny hair and he knew right away when he saw her he was going to ask her out and so forth.

Speaker 5 He really pursued her, didn't he?

Speaker 17 Yes, he did.

Speaker 69 Mickey was

Speaker 69 smart. Beautiful, had a great sense of humor.

Speaker 43 Sue White was also a secretary who worked side by side with Mickey for several years.

Speaker 69 She worked for a high-powered partner in the firm. She had to know what she was doing.

Speaker 8 She just didn't ruffle feathers.

Speaker 51 Wanda Carter also worked with Mickey at the law firm.

Speaker 9 When there was a deadline and sometimes I was pressed for time, she would offer. She'd just come up and say, what can I do to help you? She would step up.

Speaker 71 Right, she would step up.

Speaker 25 Then Mickey started working with Lonnie Kakantis.

Speaker 69 She started working overtime. And apparently, that's when she started doing work for Lonnie.
In the evenings, nobody's around or a few people are around.

Speaker 18 And that's when something blossomed.

Speaker 10 Yes.

Speaker 6 They kept that definitely quiet over there.

Speaker 5 They definitely did.

Speaker 8 He was charming. She definitely thought that.

Speaker 16 Mickey's niece, Julie Sarinita, was in college then.

Speaker 5 What did you like about him?

Speaker 8 I think she liked that he had similar interests, that he was a hard worker, and she appreciated that.

Speaker 14 Mickey and Lonnie bought this home in Orange County, California. They married in 1995.

Speaker 56 That bliss did not last.

Speaker 8 That allure that he initially had, that initial attraction, disappeared with time.

Speaker 9 It didn't take long for it to crumble.

Speaker 72 Like a Django game, where the pieces started to

Speaker 9 come out and it all toppled over.

Speaker 5 What was she telling you?

Speaker 13 A lot of it had to do with control.

Speaker 9 Control of money. Guys like to be in control.

Speaker 13 I've noticed that.

Speaker 8 It's kind of a shame. Yeah.

Speaker 9 So the wall came tumbling down.

Speaker 49 Like many relationships, this one was complicated.

Speaker 19 After six years of marriage, the couple divorced.

Speaker 18 And Lonnie got an apartment in downtown L.A.

Speaker 65 near his office.

Speaker 58 He still spent time at the home he and Mickey owned together in Orange County.

Speaker 66 And somehow that seemed to work better.

Speaker 36 They were still close.

Speaker 63 And maybe they'd work things out after all.

Speaker 37 In early 2006, Lonnie booked them both on a romantic cruise.

Speaker 17 It was my understanding he was trying to repair their marriage, repair their relationship, and go on a cruise together.

Speaker 5 Maybe they've turned a corner.

Speaker 17 Sounded like a really big step for him.

Speaker 6 In fact, Lonnie had booked two cabins on board the island escape.

Speaker 5 He says, we're going to take a cruise, Mickey and I, and we want you and Susan to join us.

Speaker 18 Then Susan's mother needed an operation, and she and Bill had to cancel at the last minute.

Speaker 38 And now, just two days into that cruise, Mickey was missing.

Speaker 39 If she had, in fact, fallen overboard, what were the odds of finding her?

Speaker 33 According to Italian journalist Marco Grasso,

Speaker 6 not good.

Speaker 30 Usually, bodies are never found when they they disappear in open waters.

Speaker 60 Lonnie spoke with both Bill and Susan several times while he was in Naples.

Speaker 24 They worried what might happen to Lonnie in a foreign country with an unfamiliar legal system.

Speaker 17 We've seen or heard of people in other countries being arrested and unjustly or maybe unfairly accused of something at a time and being restrained.

Speaker 17 And it just said, seemed like you need to just come back.

Speaker 5 Before this spirals out of control in some some legal way that you can't get your hands around.

Speaker 17 I don't even think I was thinking that far ahead. You're just saying, get yourself out where you can communicate and get questions answered.
It just seemed like he should just go.

Speaker 5 To protect himself. Yes.

Speaker 7 He says,

Speaker 7 can you get me out of here? I said, yeah, I can do that.

Speaker 33 There's an Italian saying that goes, see Naples and die.

Speaker 19 The idea is that everyone should visit this memorable place while they're alive, and that once you see it, you may not want to leave.

Speaker 46 Well, Mickey Kanasaki didn't make it to Naples.

Speaker 41 And now Lonnie Kakatis definitely wanted to leave.

Speaker 19 Lonnie took a cab to the Naples airport.

Speaker 38 Bill had booked him a flight to Tampa, Florida, where Bill lived.

Speaker 47 All this while Mickey was still missing.

Speaker 40 That would not last.

Speaker 78 Coming up.

Speaker 69 It's like, how does does this happen?

Speaker 6 A sudden discovery at sea.

Speaker 8 I was in shock and disbelief. Nothing I would have ever imagined could have prepared me for this.

Speaker 2 When dateline continues.

Speaker 65 Along the Italian peninsula lie the vast waters of the Mediterranean.

Speaker 20 It's here the Astrea calls home.

Speaker 33 The Astrea travels the Italian coast doing scientific research.

Speaker 77 At about 4 p.m.

Speaker 31 on May 27, 2006, Captain Massimo Colorito made a different kind of discovery.

Speaker 80 I saw something in the distance that was directly right straight by the bow, straight ahead. I got closer to it.
I realized it was a body in the water.

Speaker 58 He immediately got on his radio.

Speaker 50 Earlier that morning, he'd seen an alert.

Speaker 20 The Coast Guard was searching for an American passenger missing from a cruise ship the day before.

Speaker 81 The advisory they sent out was about a person lost at the sea who was wearing a black shirt and green pants. So I let them know right away that we have found the person they were looking for.

Speaker 21 There seemed no doubt this was Mickey Kanasaki.

Speaker 81 We were not a part of a search party.

Speaker 1 Finding her was truly random.

Speaker 19 As they approached Mickey's body, the captain said his crew was careful not to touch her.

Speaker 81 We used the strap and passed it around her chest.

Speaker 81 Then we lifted the body with the crane in the best way to not touch the body.

Speaker 29 They brought Mickey's body onto the Estrella and covered her with a sheet.

Speaker 18 Then they met up with the Coast Guard, and Mickey's body was moved to their boat.

Speaker 81 Finding a body in the sea isn't something that happens every day.

Speaker 81 And then, on top of that, to bring it on board.

Speaker 50 Journalist Marco Grasso heard about the grim discovery.

Speaker 30 I was very surprised, surprised and that was the moment in which we started

Speaker 30 following uncovering this case with a body and the body was taken to Vibo Valencia.

Speaker 49 Vibo Valencia is a small town near the coast in southern Italy.

Speaker 19 That's where Italian authorities opened their investigation.

Speaker 82 And the State Department called Mickey's niece, Julie Saranita.

Speaker 8 I was in shock and disbelief. I just talked to her a few days before.
I was at first asking, are you sure you have the right person? I had no clue how in the heck she would end up overboard.

Speaker 31 The news hit Mickey's friends hard.

Speaker 69 I was

Speaker 69 very sad.

Speaker 69 I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe it at all.
It's like, how does this happen?

Speaker 9 I couldn't believe my ears. Devastating.

Speaker 84 Lonnie broke the news to his friend Bill Price.

Speaker 7 He said he was glad they found the body and that he can't imagine what happened.

Speaker 24 Lonnie was calling long distance.

Speaker 38 Although Bill had booked the flight from Italy to Tampa, Lonnie didn't go there.

Speaker 22 He changed his ticket and flew to California.

Speaker 7 He said, I just wanted to go home.

Speaker 7 I said, okay.

Speaker 7 I said, if you're okay, you know, that's fine with me.

Speaker 46 At the same time in Vivo Valencia, an Italian prosecutor named Alfredo Ladognio was assigned to Mickey's case.

Speaker 19 He knew what his investigation needed to address.

Speaker 85 The circumstances of the dead, the cause of the dead,

Speaker 85 the date, and the location.

Speaker 19 He soon discovered there were no obvious answers to those questions.

Speaker 43 A search of the island escape hadn't turned up any clues.

Speaker 85 She could have fallen in the water

Speaker 85 from the ship. So anything could have happened.

Speaker 32 Mickey's death could have been an accident, or suicide, or murder.

Speaker 13 Everyone had questions for Lonnie, especially Julie.

Speaker 8 Nothing I would have ever imagined could have prepared me for this.

Speaker 78 Coming up,

Speaker 2 another woman enters the picture.

Speaker 5 His wife missing off a cruise ship, he flies to the home of the other woman. I mean, it's like putting a target on you and saying, please investigate me.

Speaker 66 Absolutely.

Speaker 19 When an American citizen dies mysteriously overseas, the case falls under the jurisdiction of the FBI.

Speaker 18 An agent arrived at Lonnie's home in Orange County, California, within hours of the discovery of Mickey's body.

Speaker 84 Lonnie called his friend Bill Price to tell him the Bureau was on the case.

Speaker 7 He said, well, what do I do now? I said, what do you mean, what do you do? I said, the FBI is there.

Speaker 5 I said, talk to him.

Speaker 7 I said, they're on it.

Speaker 6 I said, this is good.

Speaker 5 I'm all happy about this.

Speaker 25 Here's something Bill wasn't happy about.

Speaker 22 Learning right then that when Lonnie flew from Italy to Southern California, it wasn't to sleep sleep in his own bed.

Speaker 31 It was to visit a woman Lonnie had been dating until he decided to patch things up with Mickey.

Speaker 5 His wife's missing off a cruise ship. He flies home not to visit his friend, but to the home of the other woman.
I mean, if you're Lonnie, it's like putting a target on you.

Speaker 5 and saying, please investigate me.

Speaker 7 Absolutely. The first thing out of my mouth was, do you know how this looks? He said, I needed console him.
I said,

Speaker 7 it's like I'm talking to a moron.

Speaker 52 As sharp an attorney as he was, Lonnie seemed tone deaf to how his actions would play.

Speaker 10 The initial impression was, you know, the guy's not quite right.

Speaker 31 The FBI's Rick Simpson said Lonnie seemed almost too eager to show agents.

Speaker 18 He had no marks on his body.

Speaker 10 He volunteered to disrobe for them to try and convince the agents that, you know, he wasn't involved in any physical struggle.

Speaker 5 He's answering questions that he hasn't been asked.

Speaker 10 Exactly.

Speaker 5 Yes.

Speaker 31 Lonnie repeated the story he told his pal Bill.

Speaker 86 They were in the room.

Speaker 51 They had wine.

Speaker 19 Mickey, he said, left to get some herbal tea.

Speaker 24 Lonnie took Ambien and fell asleep.

Speaker 10 He woke up at 4.30 in the morning. And her light was on, but she wasn't there.
And he was alarmed, so he went looking for her.

Speaker 5 What's Lonnie's demeanor during this interview? I mean, is this a guy frantic at losing the love of his life? No.

Speaker 5 No.

Speaker 10 They didn't have that impression.

Speaker 5 Did the FBI find it suspicious that Lonnie left Italy before Mickey's body was found? Yes.

Speaker 10 We found a lot of things suspicious. He was in a hurry to get out of there, obviously.

Speaker 58 Mickey's niece, Julie Saranita, spoke with the FBI, too.

Speaker 39 She talked about her aunt's relationship with Lonnie in the months before the cruise.

Speaker 8 He said he was going to change, he was going to work less, and things were going to be better. She was just so happy.

Speaker 45 Happy and excited about her luxury Italian cruise.

Speaker 8 She had said that

Speaker 8 he's planning everything, and this was such a surprise, and they're reconciling. She couldn't wait to go.

Speaker 19 Now, just days after that conversation, her Aunt Mickey was dead.

Speaker 51 And Julie believed Lonnie knew more than he was saying.

Speaker 52 She soon found out the feds believed the same thing.

Speaker 8 I was approached by the FBI. Would I be willing to record my conversations with him and to get details?

Speaker 35 They gave her a crash course in recording protocol.

Speaker 11 My name is Julie Sarina. The date is here.

Speaker 51 And told her to let Lonnie do the talking.

Speaker 51 Maybe she was dossier?

Speaker 51 You know, slightly intoxicated?

Speaker 51 You know?

Speaker 71 How many drinks do you think she had had that night on the ship?

Speaker 71 Well, we just drank the wine, and she had, you know, probably a couple of good-sized glasses.

Speaker 5 Lonnie's theory of what had happened was what?

Speaker 8 He thought that either she committed suicide and jumped, or there was foul play, and perhaps maybe one of the crew cabins or all the different people from all the different countries, someone had murdered her.

Speaker 8 I mean, there's only three possibilities. She was murdered,

Speaker 8 she jumped, or it's an accident. Right now I have no information to tell me what.
All I know is that they found the body and there's going to be an autopsy.

Speaker 8 He was fixated on the condition of the body. He said multiple times, I need to see the body, I need the condition of the body, I don't know what's going on with the body.

Speaker 54 Julie would continue to learn more from the FBI and she continued speaking with Lonnie.

Speaker 8 I called him frequently.

Speaker 5 And he didn't seem suspicious about that.

Speaker 8 No, not at all. I mean, I checked on his well-being.
He was more interested also talking to me. I think he just found it a welcome reprive.
Someone's talking to him from the family.

Speaker 89 Julie did think Lonnie was acting strangely, even though there was no evidence he'd done anything to Mickey, or for that matter, any evidence that Mickey's death was anything but accidental.

Speaker 13 However,

Speaker 13 that was about to change.

Speaker 9 Coming up, I just thought,

Speaker 9 what a horrible way to die.

Speaker 2 Stunning new details from the autopsy.

Speaker 11 Someone on board was a killer.

Speaker 17 There's got to be an explanation here.

Speaker 5 This isn't Lonnie. Right.

Speaker 17 This wouldn't be his nature.

Speaker 2 If not Lonnie, then who?

Speaker 2 When dateline continues.

Speaker 5 Mickey Kanasaki never lived to see her 53rd birthday.

Speaker 18 She was found floating in the waters of the Mediterranean.

Speaker 11 Wanda Carter was haunted, thinking about her friend's final moments.

Speaker 9 I thought, oh my God, I hope she wasn't alive when she was in that water,

Speaker 9 trying to save herself. And I just thought,

Speaker 9 what a horrible way to die.

Speaker 41 Mickey's body was brought to this hospital in Vibo Valencia, Italy.

Speaker 38 Dr.

Speaker 42 Pietro Antonio Ricci performed the autopsy.

Speaker 79 I've received the case and I conducted the autopsy on June 16th.

Speaker 84 What he found told a sinister story.

Speaker 19 Dr.

Speaker 82 Ricci saw Mickey's body was badly bruised, especially at the base of her neck, a sign of strangulation.

Speaker 31 He also noted bruising on her inner thighs, possibly evidence of sexual assault.

Speaker 22 Perhaps most significant was what the autopsy did not show.

Speaker 24 We did not find water in her lungs,

Speaker 79 nor did we find water in her stomach.

Speaker 28 Meaning, Mickey Kanasaki was already dead when she hit the water.

Speaker 34 That told Italian prosecutor Alfredo Laudonia this was a deliberate act of murder.

Speaker 85 This was fundamental.

Speaker 23 The dead

Speaker 85 come not from accidental circumstances, but was provoked.

Speaker 19 Lonnie Kakadis, the tenacious attorney, seemed to understand that if Mickey's death was a homicide, he would be a suspect.

Speaker 19 And so he turned to two trusted friends, investigators Susan McQueen and Bill Price.

Speaker 74 Bill, the former cop, gave Lonnie some blunt advice about dealing with the FBI.

Speaker 7 They said, you need to find out what happened.

Speaker 7 If you didn't do anything, you need to find out what happened and give it to them.

Speaker 49 Susan was confident she and Bill could help Lonnie do just that.

Speaker 17 There's got to be an explanation here.

Speaker 24 This isn't Lonnie. Right.

Speaker 17 This wouldn't be his nature. We've got to find out what happened.
We need to do this research.

Speaker 17 And the first goal was to get back on that boat and try and interview people and ascertain what happened into the moments leading up to her death.

Speaker 33 So a couple of months after Mickey's death, they traveled to Italy and booked a cabin aboard the Island Escape.

Speaker 7 We wanted to take measurements of different places on the ship where they had low railings, where they had higher railings.

Speaker 7 We wanted to meet with the captain so we'd get permission to go into the exact room that he went into.

Speaker 5 The room Mickey and Lonnie were staying in.

Speaker 7 Yes.

Speaker 64 They met with the captain and didn't learn much from him, except this.

Speaker 5 There were almost 1,500 passengers and crew on board the island escape at the time Mickey went overboard.

Speaker 60 Meaning, potentially, hundreds of possible suspects from a wide range of countries.

Speaker 5 Those people, those potential suspects or persons of interest, they're going to be hard to track down.

Speaker 7 We wanted a manifest. Cruise Line was fighting to give it to us.

Speaker 5 And then you're going to run it against lists of sex offenders and anybody with a criminal record. Correct.
Yes.

Speaker 63 Except they couldn't get the manifest, so that was a dead end.

Speaker 6 They had more luck with the autopsy report.

Speaker 18 Lonnie hadn't been able to get a copy, but Susan's talents as an investigator and her Italian language skills paid off.

Speaker 5 You're good at this, aren't you?

Speaker 17 I was able to get the copy.

Speaker 21 Susan thought the autopsy report wasn't definitive, and what was there pointed away from Lonnie.

Speaker 17 It indicated that she had been raped, strangled, and obviously thrown overboard.

Speaker 5 That sounds to me more like an assailant that didn't know her than some fight with Lonnie.

Speaker 17 Possibly.

Speaker 20 Susan and Bill found out there were no security cameras anywhere on the ship.

Speaker 62 And according to the crew, no one on board at the time reported hearing anything suspicious.

Speaker 35 Nobody saw or heard Lonnie and Mickey fighting.

Speaker 5 No. Nobody saw Mickey in any kind of struggle with anybody.

Speaker 17 Not that I could find.

Speaker 5 And no one saw anybody menacing either one of them.

Speaker 17 Not that I could find.

Speaker 18 And where was she on the ship when she went into the water?

Speaker 5 No real way to know.

Speaker 8 No way to know.

Speaker 44 Lots of open questions.

Speaker 82 Susan and Bill felt the Italians had stopped investigating once Lonnie left and never really looked at other suspects.

Speaker 20 The FBI, on the other hand, was just getting started.

Speaker 10 Coming up, he had built a good story to bolster his defense from the beginning.

Speaker 4 The FBI digs deep, but what would they find?

Speaker 7 He just said, see, I told you. I told you I didn't do anything.

Speaker 42 Toshi Kanasaki's early childhood was spent in Japan, the only boy with three sisters.

Speaker 56 Mickey was the youngest.

Speaker 31 Their father left his job at a Japanese coal mine to work on a farm in California's Central Valley.

Speaker 5 Eventually, he brought you all over here.

Speaker 59 1960, brought the wife and the four kids.

Speaker 31 They traveled by ship to their new home.

Speaker 59 Mickey was maybe five or six and I was eight.

Speaker 5 I think when you're that young, we're here in this strange country, but it's kind of slightly exciting because we're so young, we don't comprehend what really happened.

Speaker 63 Decades later, Toshi and his wife Carolyn were trying to understand how Mickey had lost her life in another country, so far from home.

Speaker 73 We were devastated. How could this be? One minute she's excited going on this cruise and

Speaker 73 The next she's not alive anymore. How can this be? We're just completely shocked.

Speaker 46 The FBI was investigating Mickey's death and learning more about her relationship with Lonnie, including the crisis their marriage faced in 1999.

Speaker 54 A client of the firm said Lonnie had done something terrible.

Speaker 19 Mickey's niece, Julie Saranita, heard about it.

Speaker 8 An accusation came up that he had sex with the client's daughter, and the client obviously was upset. And what made it worse was she was a minor.

Speaker 8 And he denied it and swore up and down that nothing happened.

Speaker 13 Lonnie was arrested.

Speaker 19 He insisted he was innocent.

Speaker 63 And Mickey stood by him.

Speaker 8 She wanted to believe him. Of course, she loved him.

Speaker 11 The law firm fired Lonnie, and he was concerned about possible legal problems.

Speaker 8 His idea was to divorce to protect his assets in the event that he got sued. So everything went in her name temporarily.

Speaker 5 And so the idea was they'd be legally divorced but not actually divorced and maybe they'd get together again?

Speaker 8 They stayed as man and wife but on paper they were legally divorced.

Speaker 31 To fight the sex charges Lonnie turned to his friends Susan McQueen and Bill Price for help.

Speaker 17 We were tracking where he'd been at what time by key cards and license plates and so forth. And apparently we had him at work when he was supposed to be where they claimed he was.

Speaker 49 Lonnie was never prosecuted and the charges charges were later dropped.

Speaker 5 Is your work related to why he was never prosecuted for that?

Speaker 7 I like to think so.

Speaker 15 Even so, things were tense between Lonnie and Mickey.

Speaker 18 Bill says Lonnie would sometimes call him in mid-argument.

Speaker 7 He'd say, listen, she's out of control. And then he'd say, don't you dare hit me and stuff like that.
And you would hear a crash. You'd hear things breaking in the background.

Speaker 7 And when he told me that she's drinking and she went through a bottle of wine and she's nasty, I'm thinking, why are you putting up with this?

Speaker 60 Mickey's friend Sue never heard about any of that.

Speaker 28 In fact, Sue had no idea Mickey was even divorced.

Speaker 31 So she was really sort of hiding a lot of things that went on in her life from

Speaker 69 hiding big things.

Speaker 19 One more thing FBI special agent Rick Simpson learned.

Speaker 76 At the time of Mickey's death, the couple's assets were worth almost $2 million,

Speaker 39 including that beautiful home in Orange County.

Speaker 44 When Mickey died, all of it went to Lonnie.

Speaker 5 That sounds like a motive. It does.

Speaker 88 Except, no one had seen or heard Lonnie fighting with Mickey on the cruise ship.

Speaker 76 There was no evidence he'd been the one to harm her in any way, let alone kill her and throw her overboard.

Speaker 20 And Lonnie's account never changed.

Speaker 58 He took to Ambien, went to sleep, and she left to go get herbal tea.

Speaker 10 He had built a good story, if you will, to bolster his defense from the beginning.

Speaker 33 Of course, it was possible Lonnie was simply telling the truth.

Speaker 50 While the FBI suspected he was responsible for Mickey's death, the Bureau didn't have much evidence to back up that suspicion.

Speaker 28 In December 2006, the U.S.

Speaker 19 attorney brought the case to a federal grand jury.

Speaker 11 Except, the grand jury's role was only to investigate, not to issue an indictment.

Speaker 5 If you had proof that Lonnie had killed his ex-wife, you would have taken that to a grand jury and gotten an indictment. And

Speaker 5 I have to believe that you didn't do that because you thought there wasn't anything really that proved that beyond your suspicions.

Speaker 10 We in the FBI are investigators, and our role is to find facts. Whether a case is presented to a grand jury, that's a prosecutorial decision.

Speaker 5 And the Justice Department apparently decided there wasn't enough to go forward at that point.

Speaker 10 At some point, they made that determination.

Speaker 39 So the grand jury met, and no charges were filed against Lonnie.

Speaker 7 He just said, see, I told you.

Speaker 7 He said, I told you I didn't do anything.

Speaker 45 To Lonnie, it must have felt like vindication.

Speaker 82 To his friend Bill Price, it was starting to feel like something else.

Speaker 15 Coming up.

Speaker 4 A plan to help prove Lonnie's innocence.

Speaker 7 I said, let's show the FBI that you have nothing to hide.

Speaker 2 And a secret about the other woman in Lonnie's life.

Speaker 12 Explain to me how Lonnie kept this hidden from everybody.

Speaker 17 Crafty. I mean, he's a smart man.

Speaker 2 When dateline continues.

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Speaker 25 Susan McQueen and Bill Price are proof you can spend years as a dogged and determined investigator, only to have that tough exterior melt away as easily as your prized mastiffs can drool.

Speaker 7 Dogs bring you love.

Speaker 7 You can leave for five minutes, come back, and their tails are wagging, they act like they hadn't seen you in years.

Speaker 49 Bill organizes and runs dog shows for the American Kennel Club.

Speaker 31 Susan is a professional handler.

Speaker 5 Training a champion requires some significant instinct, doesn't it? Yes, it does.

Speaker 6 And from the beginning, Susan's investigative instincts had told her her friend Lonnie Kakatis was no killer.

Speaker 37 Bill thought the same.

Speaker 7 But I'm thinking, I know this guy for these years. I know how he responds to dogs and animals.

Speaker 5 He's no murderer.

Speaker 34 And to prove it, Bill came up with a plan.

Speaker 7 I said, I'll get him to take a polygraph. I said, let's show the FBI that you have nothing to hide and you're going to take this test.

Speaker 24 Lonnie agreed.

Speaker 51 He was now living in Florida.

Speaker 6 So Bill set up the test with a friend named Mike Brentnell, who was also an expert polygraph examiner.

Speaker 37 Lonnie answered 11 questions, including, Did you kill Mickey?

Speaker 19 Did you cause the death of Mickey Kanasaki?

Speaker 52 Were you present when Mickey was killed?

Speaker 39 The examiner asked those questions three times.

Speaker 35 The results were not what Bill Price had hoped for.

Speaker 7 They came out. Lonnie said, I have to use the bathroom.
And as he walked away, Mike said, you in on this?

Speaker 7 I said, You want to repeat that again? Am I in on it?

Speaker 5 In on what?

Speaker 7 He says, you know he's guilty. And I said, is a joke?

Speaker 7 He said, no. And I said, he's guilty.
I said, Mike, this isn't funny. He said, I'm not trying to be funny.
So I took a deep breath. And that's when it flashes before you, the little things that

Speaker 7 you want to overlook.

Speaker 52 Little things like the height of the railing on the island escape and the realization of how difficult it would be for the 5'3 Mickey.

Speaker 86 to go off that balcony by accident.

Speaker 39 Now, Bill's investigator's brain was telling him, along with the polygraph, that Lonnie knew more than he was saying.

Speaker 48 As much as he wanted to believe Lonnie was innocent, the evidence was pointing elsewhere.

Speaker 5 Now you're thinking,

Speaker 5 am I being played for a fool here? Yes.

Speaker 7 I wasn't willing to accept it, but I'm thinking about it, yes.

Speaker 33 What to do about that nagging feeling?

Speaker 35 Well, during the time he'd been helping Lonnie, Bill had also been talking with FBI special agent Rick Simpson.

Speaker 10 Well, I think he was working hard to kind of navigate his own internal contradictions, right? He was trying to navigate his own moral compass in that situation. It's a difficult situation.

Speaker 5 It sounds like you had some sympathy for what Bill was going through. Yes,

Speaker 10 I do.

Speaker 5 You were convinced Bill was a straight shooter. He wasn't slanting things towards Lonnie's interest when he would talk with you.

Speaker 10 I didn't have any doubt that Bill was being honest with us.

Speaker 39 He couldn't say the same about Lonnie Kakadas.

Speaker 33 Special Agent Simpson had been keeping a close eye on Lonnie's finances.

Speaker 37 When Mickey died, Lonnie inherited all her money and moved it to an overseas bank.

Speaker 10 I think he moved it offshore because he knew he had murdered Mickey, and that's where the money came from, and he knew what that meant. That's my conclusion.

Speaker 51 Offshore, that money was untouchable.

Speaker 18 Then, when Lonnie tried to repatriate more than a million dollars to a bank in Florida, Agent Simpson pounced.

Speaker 52 The Fed seized the money and began a civil case against Lonnie, who hired attorney David Michael.

Speaker 5 Why was Lonnie moving his money around the world?

Speaker 75 My understanding is that he was trying to do some overseas financial investment where some country was paying high interest rates for U.S. currency.

Speaker 54 In other words, Lonnie wasn't trying to hide that money.

Speaker 22 He was merely investing it.

Speaker 38 Lonnie's attorney argued in the civil asset case that the federal government couldn't prove Lonnie was guilty of killing Mickey to get his hands on her money.

Speaker 36 So they had no right to seize it.

Speaker 14 And

Speaker 11 he won.

Speaker 75 That's when the federal government went to the district attorney.

Speaker 37 The government had lost, but it wasn't over.

Speaker 31 The U.S.

Speaker 49 attorney handling that civil case sent several boxes of evidence here to the Orange County, California District Attorney's Office.

Speaker 71 And he said, I just think there's more to this case. Can you take a look at it for criminal liability?

Speaker 18 Susan Price, no relation to Bill, is an assistant DA.

Speaker 28 She and Deputy DA Seton Hunt learned that in Florida, Lonnie had married again.

Speaker 19 Then something else in the case file really caught their attention.

Speaker 6 It was another woman, another ex-wife.

Speaker 5 Who's Amy Nguyen?

Speaker 91 Amy Nguyen is a teacher. She's originally from Vietnam.

Speaker 22 Amy is the woman Lonnie went to see in California after he came back from Italy.

Speaker 49 Here she is in a photo from the school where she's a fifth grade teacher.

Speaker 14 Amy and Lonnie had met online.

Speaker 71 Amy loved Lonnie. I don't think she expected as much from him as I think he probably thought Mickey expected of him.

Speaker 39 Investigators discovered Amy wasn't just Lonnie's girlfriend.

Speaker 11 She'd been his wife.

Speaker 39 They married in July 2005, but it only lasted a few months before Lonnie divorced Amy and returned to Mickey.

Speaker 31 Just a few months after that, Lonnie booked the cruise.

Speaker 35 And then, after Mickey went overboard, Lonnie's first stop in the U.S.

Speaker 52 was at Amy's house.

Speaker 35 to continue a relationship Lonnie had largely kept secret.

Speaker 5 Explain to me how Lonnie kept this entire relationship, this marriage with Amy Nguyen sort of hidden from everybody, including you, I guess.

Speaker 17 I don't have an answer for you. Crafty, I mean, he's a smart man.

Speaker 88 Bill said he, too, was completely in the dark.

Speaker 7 Lonnie had bought a huge house and a very nice Lexus for Amy Wynn.

Speaker 5 Unbeknownst to Mickey.

Speaker 7 Unbeknownst to me, too. This is my friend.

Speaker 15 Well, if Lonnie planned a future with Amy, it didn't pan out.

Speaker 33 In early 2007, when he sold his home and left California for Florida, he left Amy too.

Speaker 63 However, the FBI knew all about Amy.

Speaker 38 In fact, she had testified before that federal grand jury.

Speaker 6 What essentially was her story?

Speaker 17 That she knew nothing, that to her knowledge, he had no intent.

Speaker 5 Basically, in front of the grand jury, her testimony was, I don't know anything about any plan to do away with Mickey, and he didn't say anything about it.

Speaker 5 And as far as I know, there's nothing to any of it.

Speaker 13 Correct.

Speaker 18 After his assets were seized by the FBI in late 2008, Lonnie wanted to know if Amy was still sticking with that story.

Speaker 48 Apparently, he thought Amy might be upset with him after things between them hadn't worked out.

Speaker 53 So in January 2009, Lonnie asked Susan and Bill to visit Amy.

Speaker 89 Despite Bill's misgivings about Lonnie, they agreed.

Speaker 21 And that conversation changed everything.

Speaker 11 Coming up.

Speaker 17 This just went into a completely different direction than I had any expectation of hearing.

Speaker 57 A bombshell of a story captured on tape.

Speaker 17 You know that you're being recorded.

Speaker 5 Yes.

Speaker 17 Her fear told me she was telling the truth with us. You can't create that kind of fear.

Speaker 49 It had been years since Mickey Kanasaki plunged from the deck of a cruise ship, dead before she hit the waters of the Mediterranean.

Speaker 43 Private investigators Susan McQueen and Bill Price sailed those same waters, retraced those steps on the island escape, all to prove their friend Lonnie Gakatis did not kill Mickey.

Speaker 17 It just didn't seem possible. It just didn't seem possible.

Speaker 14 Bill agreed at first.

Speaker 6 And then over time, he came to believe it did seem possible.

Speaker 7 My gut was telling me he was guilty as hell by this time.

Speaker 7 I had to fight with that part, wrestle with it. And slowly, I was moving away from the friendship because I wasn't comfortable with it.

Speaker 18 Even so, at Lonnie's request, they agreed to meet with his ex-wife, Amy Nguyen, a woman Lonnie had married and then divorced, all of it unbeknownst to both of them.

Speaker 17 I think she was genuinely hurt. She really thought that she had a relationship that she was moving forward with there.

Speaker 5 She loved Lonnie.

Speaker 17 I believe she did.

Speaker 5 You think Lonnie loved her? I believe he did.

Speaker 64 Lonnie asked his friends and investigators to confirm what Amy had already told the FBI.

Speaker 20 that she knew nothing about Mickey's death. The meeting happened in January 2009, three years after that fatal cruise.

Speaker 19 Bill stayed in the car.

Speaker 52 Susan's instincts told her she might do better with Amy one-on-one.

Speaker 17 I meet with her and I talk to her about what kind of contact has she had, who's been calling her from the federal government, what are their questions, how is she feeling, how does she feel about Lonnie?

Speaker 17 We go through all of these things and then she starts to become very emotional and this just went into a completely different direction than I had any expectation of hearing.

Speaker 33 Amy Nguyen began to tell a story that was the complete opposite of what she'd said under oath to a federal grand jury.

Speaker 56 Now she told Susan that Lonnie had planned to kill Mickey on the cruise and booked the island escape specifically to get away with it. There was more, Amy said.

Speaker 24 Lonnie didn't do it alone.

Speaker 68 He told Amy his well-connected friend helped him arrange Mickey's murder.

Speaker 40 That friend's name?

Speaker 21 Bill Price.

Speaker 5 In that conversation, Amy describes Bill as being sort of at the center of this.

Speaker 19 Yeah, this guy who sort of has these, this army of assassins that he can send out after whomever.

Speaker 6 Exactly.

Speaker 39 Which, as you can imagine, was news to Bill's partner, Susan.

Speaker 19 Not that she believed it, just the opposite.

Speaker 45 But she also realized if Amy believed it, that had to be because of Lonnie.

Speaker 17 So at some point in this interview, I waved to Bill to come out of the car.

Speaker 16 Does Amy know that Bill's outside at that exact time?

Speaker 17 She had no idea he was with me.

Speaker 37 Bill walked over and they turned on a recorder. Do you know that you're being recorded?

Speaker 37 Yes, okay. Can you please say

Speaker 37 the things that Lonnie told you about Bill?

Speaker 92 Which one do you want us to work on?

Speaker 17 How about with his connections connection regarding the cruise ship?

Speaker 37 Let me tell you that

Speaker 8 we all have a connection, a big connection,

Speaker 8 that

Speaker 54 he could have his people

Speaker 69 come and back.

Speaker 92 Do what?

Speaker 83 Throw me throw Leggy out of the boat, out of the boat.

Speaker 83 Okay.

Speaker 83 Um,

Speaker 83 that is

Speaker 18 Bill had questions too.

Speaker 83 They say how much he's taken taking the colours.

Speaker 83 Now, wasn't I don't know why he did hell this before the incident or after the incident?

Speaker 5 How do you determine whether Amy is telling the truth to you and therefore lying at the grand jury or whether she was telling the truth to the grand jury jury, and she's lying to you because she's angry at Lonnie because after all was said and done, he didn't come back to her.

Speaker 17 Her fear told me she was telling the truth with us. You can't create that kind of fear.

Speaker 5 She was afraid of Lonnie.

Speaker 17 She was afraid of Lonnie. She was afraid of Bill.

Speaker 68 It was a double whammy.

Speaker 31 Amy said that Lonnie had planned the murder.

Speaker 18 That was bad enough.

Speaker 76 Then she said Lonnie implicated Bill before the cruise.

Speaker 66 Remember, Lonnie had invited Bill and Susan to come along.

Speaker 86 They had to cancel at the last minute.

Speaker 64 Now it began to look as if Lonnie's invitation was part of the plan, too.

Speaker 52 Maybe he'd ask Bill to go with him, so Bill could take the fall for Mickey's murder.

Speaker 5 That's your friend doing that.

Speaker 7 My friend, yes.

Speaker 5 The guy that was nearly a brother to you. Yes.
The guy you had been an investigator for, the guy you'd been to dinner with, the guy you'd defended, the guy you were trying to exonerate. Yes.

Speaker 5 I think you're lucky Lonnie wasn't in front of you at that moment.

Speaker 7 I think that's an accurate statement. Yes.

Speaker 17 The anger and fury that I felt at that moment was incomprehensible.

Speaker 36 Lonnie was counting on the two of them to prove he wasn't involved in Mickey's murder.

Speaker 26 Now they had evidence on tape that he was.

Speaker 80 Let me make sure that I true now.

Speaker 7 When I flew back into Tampa, I immediately called him at his house and said, I want to see you and I want to see you in person.

Speaker 7 He stood in my dining room area and I said, did you tell her that I had anything to do with Mickey's death

Speaker 7 and or that I had connections to do this?

Speaker 7 Did you make her believe that I had anything to do with her death?

Speaker 7 Yeah, I did.

Speaker 7 I said, why?

Speaker 7 He said, I wanted her to think I had power and I was a big guy. And I said, you should know that I have a tape recording and it's going to the FBI.

Speaker 77 What did Lonnie say when you said that?

Speaker 7 Please don't. I was just trying to impress her.

Speaker 5 I said, okay.

Speaker 7 And I said, get out of my house and don't ever come near me. Don't come around me.
I said, I don't want to hear from you again.

Speaker 7 And then when he left, I called Agent Simpson. and said, I have a recording for you.

Speaker 10 He called and said that he and Susan had gone to see Amy. And that was, I think, a real turning point for Bill.

Speaker 5 He wanted Lonnie to be innocent.

Speaker 10 Sure, but I think over time he came to the conclusion that he wasn't. But I think it took some time for him to come to that conclusion.

Speaker 19 That recording of Amy's new story eventually made its way to Orange County Assistant DA Susan Price.

Speaker 5 If Bill and Susan hadn't recorded her saying that, she might to this day be defending Lonnie.

Speaker 71 That's absolutely true.

Speaker 82 Now it was up to prosecutors, and that would take a few years because Amy Nguyen was the key.

Speaker 44 And it turned out that was a problem.

Speaker 78 Coming up.

Speaker 71 She just said, I don't want to talk to you. I have no interest in talking to you.

Speaker 2 A problem indeed. How were they going to solve that?

Speaker 93 I'm tired of it, Amy. I'm tired of him.

Speaker 93 I need your help.

Speaker 7 I said it's time for you to step up to the plate.

Speaker 2 When Dateline continues.

Speaker 20 As Toshi and Carolyn Kanasaki patiently waited for answers, They would sometimes visit Mickey's gravesite

Speaker 27 and see the name Lonnie Kakantis on the headstone next to hers.

Speaker 35 That was difficult.

Speaker 73 The first seven years, we thought that.

Speaker 73 We knew they were investigating him,

Speaker 5 but...

Speaker 5 Didn't seem to be going anywhere.

Speaker 5 Not really.

Speaker 23 No.

Speaker 59 We just lived our life, but me is always in the back of my mind.

Speaker 59 It's not going away.

Speaker 73 Because Mickey's gone.

Speaker 19 It turned out Assistant DA Susan Price was investigating Lonnie, especially after she listened to that recording where Lonnie's ex-wife Amy Nguyen told Lonnie's own investigators that she knew about his plan to murder Mickey on the cruise ship.

Speaker 50 The prosecutor knew she needed to meet Amy.

Speaker 71 We actually did go to Northern California and arrived at her doorstep. Unannounced.

Speaker 5 Unannounced. And when you said to her, as I'm pretty sure you did in that interview, somebody's been murdered here and we think you have important information, she said, I don't or I'm not talking.

Speaker 71 Well, we didn't even get that far. She just said, I don't want to talk to you.
I have no interest in talking to you. So we came back home.

Speaker 37 They weren't giving up.

Speaker 18 The DA asked Sergeant Don Vogt from the Orange County Sheriff's Department to assist with the case.

Speaker 49 A top priority, try to talk with Amy.

Speaker 92 Then I went up to talk to her, and and she did not want to cooperate with law enforcement.

Speaker 63 They compelled her with a subpoena and when Amy finally came down to Orange County, prosecutors invited someone else to the meeting, Bill Price. Bill Price, Amy Nguyen.

Speaker 93 I don't know if you guys know each other.

Speaker 93 So go ahead and have a seat.

Speaker 7 My objective under their direction

Speaker 7 was to get her to talk.

Speaker 33 In that meeting, Amy was emotional and at times said she didn't know who Bill was, even though that was clearly not true.

Speaker 33 I don't know you. You have to.
What do you mean?

Speaker 55 Bill told her law enforcement already knew all about their previous conversation.

Speaker 93 They had the tape recording of you and I talking.

Speaker 93 Do you understand that they had that tape recording? That I turned it in because I'm protecting myself and my family. Do you understand that? I don't know you.
You can't say you don't know me.

Speaker 93 You'd be lying. If he's telling you to do this, Amy, this is not good.
Amy, why are you protecting him? I did not protect me. I don't know you.

Speaker 46 She was still scared, maybe of Bill.

Speaker 41 Remember, Lonnie had made him sound like a gangster.

Speaker 57 And as he pressed Amy, Bill seemed to lean into that role.

Speaker 93 I am not here to kill you. I am here to...
I am here to protect my name. and to protect you and bring you underneath my codes.
I'm here to tell them that if they mess with you, they mess with me.

Speaker 93 I'm here to bring in the best attorneys if I have to. What I'm not here to do is protect his lies and him from hurting me and everybody else around us.
I'm tired of it, Amy. I'm tired of him.

Speaker 93 I need your help. I need you to be with me.

Speaker 7 I said, it's time the truth come out now.

Speaker 7 I said, and he's made fools out of all of us.

Speaker 7 I said, now it's time for you to step up to the plate.

Speaker 48 The DA gave Amy immunity for her testimony, and she agreed to cooperate.

Speaker 49 She told sheriff's investigators her own version of what happened on that cruise, how Lonnie had booked it, planning to kill Mickey.

Speaker 55 And then Amy said, Lonnie threatened her, forcing her to lie to the federal grand jury.

Speaker 5 Bill started this trying to help out Lonnie and ended it helping you guys.

Speaker 23 Absolutely.

Speaker 92 He did.

Speaker 38 Four days after that interview, Sergeant Vogue traveled to Safety Harbor, Florida, where Lonnie lived.

Speaker 92 Lonnie wasn't in the house. We found him about one hour away at a strip mall operating his new business, which was these bouncy houses for children.

Speaker 92 We told him he was under arrest for the murder of Mickey Konasaki. Of course, mirandized him, and at that point, he declined to give us a statement.
He didn't say anything. He didn't say anything.

Speaker 33 It was Lonnie's right to remain silent as he was under arrest for murder. He was booked into the Pasco County Jail.

Speaker 5 How'd that feel?

Speaker 7 Actually, it felt pretty good. It felt pretty good.

Speaker 37 For Mickey's family, it was welcome news.

Speaker 5 Would you think? Finally. I go, what a relief after seven years,

Speaker 59 because I knew he had something to do with Mickey's murder.

Speaker 39 One thing had not changed.

Speaker 19 There was still no physical evidence tying Lonnie to Mickey's death.

Speaker 20 Would this case be enough for a jury?

Speaker 78 Coming up.

Speaker 75 There's no blood in the room. There's no evidence of a struggle.
There's nothing. Where's the evidence? Where is it?

Speaker 4 Could Mickey herself help prove this case?

Speaker 8 He never anticipated that her body would ever be recovered.

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Speaker 38 Attorney David Michael had already defended Lonnie Kagatis in civil court, protecting his assets from seizure by the feds.

Speaker 24 Now there was much more than money at stake.

Speaker 75 I was stunned that he had been arrested, actually. I was absolutely stunned.

Speaker 66 This time the charge was murder.

Speaker 63 Lonnie faced life in prison.

Speaker 75 I've been doing criminal defense for 45 years. I've done some heavy stuff.
And I will tell you that my belief 100% is that Lonnie Kakantas is innocent of killing Mikki Kanasaki.

Speaker 36 Lonnie pleaded not guilty.

Speaker 18 Attorney Michael knew the case relied on Amy Nguyen, whose story he says was one big lie, influenced by none other than Bill Price.

Speaker 75 He scared the hell out of Amy Nguyen. I have money.
I can protect you. I can save you.
Come on, he's a rat. He's a scumbag.
He said horrible things about you. Horrible stuff.

Speaker 75 I've never heard of it before. And that's when Amy Nguyen, I guess you could say, turned.

Speaker 5 Why is it so hard to believe that

Speaker 5 she was frightened of Lonnie, that she lied for him, and that she eventually stopped lying for him and told the truth?

Speaker 75 There's no basis at all for what she's saying to be true. It's just fantasy stuff.
And the fact that when they investigated the island escape, there's no blood in the room. There's no blood anywhere.

Speaker 75 There's no evidence of a struggle. There's nothing.
Where's the evidence? Where is it? You know, yeah, she got killed, but that doesn't mean that Lonnie Kakantis did it.

Speaker 19 As Sergeant Don Vogt worked with the Orange County DAs to gather evidence against Lonnie, one thing became clear.

Speaker 20 The Island Escape was not the luxury cruise ship Mickey had looked forward to.

Speaker 5 I kind of get the feeling that if you grew up watching The Love Boat, you probably would not recognize the Island Escape.

Speaker 92 You definitely would not.

Speaker 6 The Island Escape was a former ferry boat.

Speaker 62 once used to transport cars, then later tourists, who were looking to save a buck.

Speaker 71 This was not the type of ship that an American attorney would view as a vacation type of a vessel. It's designed to be cheap and cheerful.

Speaker 91 It has one peculiar feature, though, that was appealing to Lonnie Kikantas. It's a straight drop into the sea from the balconies that were welded onto the side of this converted ferry.

Speaker 51 On most modern cruise ships, if you fall off the Aloha deck, you've got a good chance of landing on the Lido deck.

Speaker 27 Not so on the Island Escape.

Speaker 19 Those balconies guaranteed that in a fall, the only thing you'd hit was the Mediterranean, almost seven stories straight down.

Speaker 92 That's a long fall. And as you're standing there looking over the balcony, it's a long fall into the ocean, definitely.

Speaker 19 A jury would decide if this unusual defendant was guilty of Mickey's murder.

Speaker 47 An attorney himself, Lonnie filed motion after motion and delayed the trial for years.

Speaker 91 Lonnie is a bright man. Lonnie worked very hard as an attorney.
Throughout these proceedings, he wrote a lot of the briefs that were presented to the court.

Speaker 5 And how did he do?

Speaker 91 He's a good attorney, however, he was blinded by his own narcissism, and he's not as smart as he thinks he is.

Speaker 24 David Michael did not represent Lonnie for the criminal trial.

Speaker 13 Instead, Lonnie had a public defender.

Speaker 13 Opening statements began in February 2020.

Speaker 71 The defendant believed that the last chapter of Mickey's life was overseas.

Speaker 71 But it is not.

Speaker 71 The last chapter is here.

Speaker 27 Their first witness, the captain of the island escaped.

Speaker 19 He testified about going to Mickey and Lonnie's cabin just hours after her disappearance and speaking with Lonnie.

Speaker 97 He was not upset at all. It was very cold.
His conversation

Speaker 97 when I asked him various questions, he wasn't talking quickly or nervously. It was very measured.

Speaker 71 The people called Julie Saranita.

Speaker 36 The jury also heard the recorded calls between Mickey's niece, Julie, and Lonnie.

Speaker 19 He'd been eager to talk until Julie asked him this question.

Speaker 71 Is there any way that you had anything to do with Mickey's death?

Speaker 7 What do you think?

Speaker 71 I just had to ask.

Speaker 58 I think you know the answer to that already.

Speaker 8 He got really angry at me, and the first thing he said, he's like, what do you think?

Speaker 83 The only reason why I asked him was because the FBI told me she had died before she hit the water. I don't know.
She might have been robbed, if that's true. Well, that's all they told me.

Speaker 83 That's all I know.

Speaker 45 I don't know what happened to her. I didn't have anything to do with it.

Speaker 82 Okay, and I don't appreciate the implications.

Speaker 36 Julie had done what she could to help investigators.

Speaker 90 Now she realized Mickey herself was key to proving the case.

Speaker 8 He never anticipated that her body would ever be recovered.

Speaker 19 Remember how Lonnie had mentioned Mickey's drinking, suggesting she'd gotten drunk, maybe fallen overboard by accident, and drowned.

Speaker 33 Her body told a different story.

Speaker 65 According to the toxicology report, Mickey was not under the influence of alcohol when she died, and the autopsy found no water in her lungs.

Speaker 96 To point to the torso.

Speaker 22 However, there were bruises, some around her neck.

Speaker 19 Italian pathologist Dr.

Speaker 13 Ricci testified through an interpreter that it was clear evidence Mickey had been strangled.

Speaker 72 Mechanical asphyxia

Speaker 72 through strangulation or by means of strangulation.

Speaker 25 Under cross-examination, Dr.

Speaker 19 Ricci testified that despite those bruises on Mickey's thighs, he did not believe Mickey had been raped.

Speaker 13 He did see trauma to the back of Mickey's head, possibly caused by a blood object.

Speaker 96 Could it have been a wine bottle that didn't break?

Speaker 72 It could be any object that had a convex surface.

Speaker 72 It could be even a bottle, yes.

Speaker 39 The question was why Lonnie would want her dead.

Speaker 38 According to prosecutors, the motive was money.

Speaker 18 Lonnie had been the beneficiary of Mickey's will, meaning all that money he'd parked with her during his legal troubles belonged to Lonnie after she died.

Speaker 36 When Bill Price took the witness stand, it was to testify against his former close friend.

Speaker 7 He looked down, looked around.

Speaker 7 He couldn't look me in the eye, but I looked at him. I'm not ashamed of anything I said or did.

Speaker 88 Remember, Bill had confronted Lonnie about what Amy told him, which was that Bill Bill helped to arrange the murder.

Speaker 36 Lonnie's response?

Speaker 7 He told me, don't worry about it, that she'd already testified in a grand jury and therefore the FBI wouldn't believe her.

Speaker 96 And so he told you that she wouldn't be believed anyway, is that right?

Speaker 10 That's correct.

Speaker 36 So here was the moment Amy Nguyen was called to testify.

Speaker 71 Think, Your Honor, the people call Amy Nguyen.

Speaker 52 In court, the judge would not allow us to take pictures of her face.

Speaker 43 Amy testified that Lonnie told her he booked the cruise for himself and Mickey and his supposedly well-connected friend, Bill Price.

Speaker 96 And did he tell you what his plan was?

Speaker 98 He said that Bill's people will throw Mickey in the water and Bill and his girlfriend will be his witness.

Speaker 37 In other words, his alibi.

Speaker 37 But when Bill canceled at the last minute, Amy says Lonnie told her this.

Speaker 98 He will have to take matters onto his own hands.

Speaker 52 Remember, if Amy was telling the truth on the stand, it meant she had previously lied to a federal grand jury.

Speaker 71 We had assessed the reality that she had given a prior statement under oath, but we also took everything we know to be true about our jobs and human beings and evaluated her in person to see whether we believed her.

Speaker 71 So a little bit of a gut check there for me at least.

Speaker 5 And you believed her. Absolutely.
And you thought a jury would.

Speaker 71 Absolutely.

Speaker 20 Before the jury had a chance to deliberate, this courtroom and the world would have to face a new reality.

Speaker 11 A global pandemic.

Speaker 78 Coming up.

Speaker 71 We're seeing that there's a travel ban in Italy. And I'm thinking, what is happening?

Speaker 2 The trial suddenly at a stop.

Speaker 86 But the case, not over yet.

Speaker 2 An undercover plan is about to be revealed.

Speaker 99 I actually posed as a hitman.

Speaker 2 And it was a stunner. When Dateline continues.

Speaker 33 By March of 2020, the trial of Lonnie Kakatis for the murder of Miki Kanasaki was well underway.

Speaker 13 In fact, the courtroom was probably one of the last places left with order.

Speaker 6 Outside, it was chaos.

Speaker 10 The impact of coronavirus around the world is becoming more dire.

Speaker 72 It's a global battle against a virus spreading fast.

Speaker 7 In Italy tonight, infections are spiking.

Speaker 71 All of these witnesses had come from Italy. And literally, within 48 hours of the last one going back to Italy, there's news about coronavirus hitting Italy.

Speaker 71 And within a day, we're seeing that there's a travel ban in Italy. And I'm thinking, what is happening?

Speaker 24 Next, the Orange County court calendar was wiped clean.

Speaker 5 Were you worried when the trial had to pause because of the pandemic? Yes, I was.

Speaker 49 That delay lasted more than two months.

Speaker 84 Then, on May 26, 2020, with COVID-19 cases still spreading in Orange County, the judge called a hearing to determine whether Lonnie's case could move forward.

Speaker 25 Toshi went to court with a heavy heart. It was the 14th anniversary of Mickey's death.

Speaker 13 The hearing was live-streamed to the public, and no surprise, the defense argued for a mistrial.

Speaker 62 Among the reasons, after the long delay, jurors couldn't possibly remember everything, putting Lonnie at a disadvantage.

Speaker 90 To which the judge said, We have to continue.

Speaker 100 It's so important.

Speaker 3 to have the rule of law, even during a pandemic.

Speaker 84 The judge denied the motion for a mistrial, and two days later,

Speaker 50 all 16 jurors returned.

Speaker 37 Following social distancing guidelines, jurors would spread throughout the courtroom and everyone would wear masks except the witnesses.

Speaker 101 Good morning.

Speaker 39 And the first witness to take the stand was Lonnie Kakadas.

Speaker 101 I don't know if my ex-wife was killed. I don't know what happened to my ex-wife, Mickey.

Speaker 49 Lonnie had an explanation for everything.

Speaker 71 Why did you book a cabin with a balcony?

Speaker 101 Well, I didn't want to cheap out. I mean, I was trying to impress Mickey with the fact that I was trying to change.
You know, one more vacation to spend more money.

Speaker 11 All of it was to salvage a relationship that, according to Lonnie, Mickey's hot temper had destroyed.

Speaker 101 Oh, she broke telephones. She threw things.
One particular incident in 2001, she broke a fax machine, threw it from the second level down to the living room floor.

Speaker 24 That time, the cops were called.

Speaker 52 Lonnie said he talked them down from arresting Mickey.

Speaker 68 So when Lonnie learned that Mickey's niece Julie was trying to get him arrested for Mickey's murder by secretly taping their conversations, Lonnie said he was really hurt.

Speaker 101 And

Speaker 101 then for her to accuse me

Speaker 101 of something I didn't do

Speaker 101 after I thought we were trying to help each other, upset me greatly.

Speaker 36 Lonnie said Julie wasn't the only one who took advantage of his kindness.

Speaker 33 There was also Bill Price, the friend who turned on him.

Speaker 49 And of course, Amy Nguyen.

Speaker 46 Lonnie called her a gold digger, said she was lying, and said Bill Price put her up to it.

Speaker 101 I don't trust Amy Nguyen, didn't trust Amy Nguyen, and don't trust Amy Nguyen when it comes to an intimate relationship. I did not expect her to start making up lies about me again.

Speaker 52 Lonnie said Amy wasn't the only person telling lies about him.

Speaker 32 There was also someone he met behind bars, someone who was prepared to tell the jury quite a story.

Speaker 19 Back in April of 2014, a year after Lonnie was arrested for Mickey's murder, the Orange County DA's office got a call.

Speaker 18 An inmate named Tony, a frequent flyer in the criminal justice system, was requesting an emergency landing.

Speaker 31 Sergeant Don Vogt set up a meeting.

Speaker 92 So Tony had told us that he was approached by Lonnie Cocontas, who asked Tony and another inmate if they were willing to have Lonnie's third wife recant her statement and then have her killed.

Speaker 5 This is Amy we're talking about.

Speaker 94 Correct.

Speaker 5 What happens next?

Speaker 92 We created a hitman named Greg. who's going to be a hitman for Lonnie Cocontas to take care of Lonnie's third wife.

Speaker 89 Greg was played by an undercover investigator named Bill.

Speaker 31 We've disguised him so he can get more work in the future.

Speaker 5 How often when you're asked to pose as a hitman is the person that you're going to supposedly be working for already behind bars?

Speaker 99 In the six cases that I actually posed as a hitman, four of the six were already behind bars.

Speaker 5 How many of those six cases were men wanting you to kill their wives?

Speaker 99 Six out of six.

Speaker 5 This has to give you a dim view of men or at least of husbands.

Speaker 99 Well, at least one's in custody.

Speaker 53 Tony, the informant, then introduced Greg, the hitman, to Lonnie, the inmate.

Speaker 5 I think people maybe from watching TV shows or movies have this idea that this all happens in one phone call.

Speaker 99 No, he was definitely feeling me out during the first few conversations. But after he got some bad news at court, he opened up.
much more with me on the phone.

Speaker 5 What kind of money are we talking about here?

Speaker 99 Lonnie was offering $100,000 for me to kill Amy.

Speaker 39 Greg said the ever-so-careful Lonnie spoke in code.

Speaker 99 He told me it was time to take the property off the market.

Speaker 5 Another call.

Speaker 99 I said, well, I just want to make sure we're good foreclosing on property D16, which is his code. He goes, and he agreed, it is time.

Speaker 5 When you hear that, you know.

Speaker 5 We can go into court with that.

Speaker 81 Yes.

Speaker 99 He knows I'm not a realtor.

Speaker 37 Then a surprising thing happened: someone wanted to call the cops, and it was Lonnie

Speaker 78 coming up.

Speaker 100 How many times have you lied to this jury since yesterday morning?

Speaker 24 None.

Speaker 71 He had an answer for everything.

Speaker 2 Lonnie Kakadas, innocent man or guilty as charged.

Speaker 59 They have 14 years to come up with a story.

Speaker 59 14 years.

Speaker 2 Twelve jurors were about to decide his fate.

Speaker 52 Everyone who knew him said Lonnie Kakatis was a resourceful, hard-working attorney.

Speaker 63 According to prosecutors, in the years leading up to his trial, Lonnie had done more than file motions.

Speaker 82 They said he also tried to hire a hitman to take out the key witness against him, his ex-wife, Amy Nguyen.

Speaker 33 Lonnie thought the hitman's name was Greg.

Speaker 44 He was wrong.

Speaker 21 It was Bill.

Speaker 19 And Bill wasn't a hitman.

Speaker 38 He was an undercover cop who followed up on their conversations with a letter to Lonnie.

Speaker 99 I asked him to specify some of the terms that we were using during this investigation to get clarification from him.

Speaker 19 That sounds like it's going to make somebody suspicious.

Speaker 99 And it did.

Speaker 51 Lonnie may have realized he'd been the target of a sting operation.

Speaker 22 And true to form, he went on the offensive,

Speaker 19 asking his attorney's office to call the police.

Speaker 75 Lonnie never said that he wanted Amy to wink killed. It's only that investigator that contrived this.

Speaker 5 He cut off communication after that. He called me one more time.

Speaker 99 and he said that Tony had misled me about the entire process. He was doing damage control at that point.
But unfortunately for Lonnie, the damage was already done.

Speaker 65 Prosecutors charged Lonnie with solicitation to commit murder.

Speaker 31 He denied it and said he'd been set up by a jailhouse informant who was looking to cut a deal. Assistant DA Susan Price had waited years for the chance to cross-examine Lonnie.

Speaker 100 How many times have you lied to this jury since yesterday morning?

Speaker 101 None.

Speaker 100 You've been truthful? Yes.

Speaker 5 Tell me about cross-examining Lonnie.

Speaker 5 You're smiling.

Speaker 71 Well, I've never cross-examined a defendant quite like Lonnie Kakantis. He had an answer for everything,

Speaker 71 a very lengthy answer for everything, a very self-serving answer for everything.

Speaker 5 The world's out to get me.

Speaker 71 He was the victim of everybody.

Speaker 100 You have testified about how you've been victimized by different people.

Speaker 96 Would you agree with that?

Speaker 101 Well, I have been victimized.

Speaker 42 I'm pretty naive.

Speaker 11 That was how he played it anyway.

Speaker 24 And under cross-examination, Lonnie did not crack.

Speaker 100 But you testified yesterday that Mickey, when she drank, she became unpredictable.

Speaker 101 She was unpredictable when she drank.

Speaker 100 Was she unpredictable on the night you saw her alive last?

Speaker 101 She was okay that evening.

Speaker 100 Was she violent towards you on the night you last saw her alive?

Speaker 13 No.

Speaker 51 Lonnie insisted there was no argument and no violence.

Speaker 101 But I don't know what caused her death, so I don't know if her drinking was a factor or not.

Speaker 100 Because you believe she could have strangled herself?

Speaker 101 I don't believe she was strangled, and of course she could not have strangled herself.

Speaker 5 When you finished cross-examining Lonnie, you think we've got it?

Speaker 71 No, I never think we've got it. I did think, to me, he doesn't seem credible,

Speaker 71 but I didn't know if any of the jurors felt sorry for him.

Speaker 20 Five months after trial started, the case was handed to a jury.

Speaker 63 Would they see an innocent man taken advantage of time and again?

Speaker 55 Or a heartless murderer?

Speaker 31 Mickey's brother Toshi wondered.

Speaker 59 He had 14 years to come up with a story.

Speaker 59 14 years

Speaker 59 over and over to make everything fit.

Speaker 37 After just an hour of deliberation, it all came undone.

Speaker 38 The verdict?

Speaker 39 Guilty of first-degree murder for financial gain.

Speaker 5 How did Lonnie take it?

Speaker 5 Shook his head.

Speaker 23 He stood there and shook his head.

Speaker 91 Because I watched them.

Speaker 59 I'm watching them. He's shaking his head.

Speaker 5 He wouldn't look back at you.

Speaker 68 Mickey's niece, Julie, had been waiting too.

Speaker 8 And as soon as I heard the verdict, it was just this big sense of of relief, like my aunt finally got justice.

Speaker 13 Lonnie Kakadis was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Speaker 19 He is appealing his conviction.

Speaker 38 Because of the life sentence, the DA's office dropped the murder for hire charge.

Speaker 27 For Bill Price, who thought of Lonnie as a brother and then ended up turning him in,

Speaker 26 It had been a very long road.

Speaker 75 How's your conscience?

Speaker 7 Relieved? Whether Mickey was a good person or a bad person, nobody deserves to die

Speaker 7 that way. Nobody does.

Speaker 7 And I suppose the guilt that I would have had then

Speaker 5 would be

Speaker 7 I believed him.

Speaker 91 That hurts.

Speaker 5 You're a pro and he fooled you. Yeah.

Speaker 38 For Mickey Kanasaki, the ocean always carried hope.

Speaker 22 A coal miner's daughter from Japan, she'd once traveled across the sea for a better life.

Speaker 64 And the island escape was supposed to carry her and Lonnie to calmer shores.

Speaker 5 He didn't know how good he had it.

Speaker 73 Yeah, he does not know.

Speaker 5 He did not know.

Speaker 73 Yeah, to the end, she was always there for him.

Speaker 73 And look what happened. Look what he did to her.

Speaker 73 She didn't deserve that. She had a lot to live for.

Speaker 13 She was

Speaker 9 a beautiful person. And I'm talking about her soul.
She just had such a beautiful soul.

Speaker 54 A soul lost at sea who found her way home.

Speaker 4 That's all for this edition of Dateline.

Speaker 2 We'll see you again Thursday at 10, 9 Central.

Speaker 4 And of course, I'll see you each weeknight for NBC Nightly News.

Speaker 94 I'm Lester Holt for all of us at NBC News.

Speaker 37 Good night.

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