#Former lawyer convicted of murdering ex-wife on cruise, tossing her overboard

A former California attorney has been found guilty of murdering his ex-wife during a 2006 Mediterranean cruise and throwing her body overboard — now he’s awaiting trial for trying to order a hit on another ex-wife.

Lonnie Loren Kocontes, 62, was convicted Monday for killing then-52-year-old Micki Kanesaki in an effort to inherit up to $1 million, the Orange County District Attorney’s office said.

Kocontes strangled Kanesaki to death and tossed the body out to sea late on the night of May 25, 2006 or early the next morning, prosecutors said. He later reported her missing.

On the morning of May 27, he returned to California — and his ex-wife’s body was discovered floating off the coast of Paola, Italy, later that day.

Kocontes “almost got away with the perfect crime,” Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said in a statement.

“But he made a mistake,” he said. “Despite all of his painstaking planning to pick the perfect ship, the perfect room and the perfect time to commit a murder, the fact that he strangled her before throwing her overboard gave us the very evidence to convict him of murder.”

“She couldn’t breathe in water because she was dead long before her body ever hit the ocean and when authorities found her, her cause of death was determined to be asphyxiation – not drowning,” he added. “He chose the ship, he chose the balcony room and now the judge will decide his fate.”

An autopsy revealed Kanesaki’s lungs “were completely free of water” and she suffered “severe hemorrhaging around her neck,” injuries “consistent with strangulation,” KCBS-TV reported.

Kocontes and Kanesaki divorced in 2002 after seven years of marriage, Senior Deputy District Attorney Susan Price said, according to KCBS-TV.

They still lived together for some time while they worked to split up their assets, but Kocontes remarried another woman, Amy Nguyen, and moved in with new bride in 2005, according to the report.

He then filed a court motion to force Kanesaki to sell their Ladera Ranch home, but she refused, the station reported.

Kocontes then opted to move back in with Kanesaki — even though he told Nguyen he loved her and didn’t want to leave her, according to the report. Meanwhile, he had new wills drawn up for himself and Kanesaki, in which he was named as executor of his ex-wife’s estate, Price said.

Then, he booked the cruise with Kanesaki — an out-of-character-move — and “specifically asked for a balcony room. It was very important to him,” the prosecutor said.

He returned home a day after his ex-wife’s body was found and went back to stay with Nguyen — but they eventually divorced.

Two years later, authorities began investigating Kocontes when he attempted to transfer $1 million between various bank accounts he held with a new wife — his fourth spouse, prosecutors said.

Kocontes is also awaiting trial on a charge of attempting to solicit the murder of Nguyen, who Price said lied to a federal grand jury on Kocontes’ behalf.

He allegedly tried to pay fellow inmates to kill Nguyen in an effort to stop her from testifying in his trial, according to the Orange County Register.

Kocontes faces life in prison without the possibility of parole for killing Kanesaki and is set to be sentenced Sept. 18.