I'm Lester Holt. Tonight on Dateline, the cruise ship mystery. A passenger overboard and an ocean of questions he says Mickey's missing.

I said, what do you mean she's missing? It's devastating. Her last moments alive still haunt me. I just thought, what a horrible way to dump. We found a lot of things suspicious. There's no video of it happening. There's no eyewitness testimony. There's no fingerprints. She was dead before she landed in the water. I was approached by the FBI to record my conversations with people you're interrogating somebody who's a murder suspect. Nothing I would have ever imagined could have prepared me for this.

This is just phenomenally devious, what you're describing. Yes, I realize I was being used. It's time the truth come out now. Here's Josh Mankiewicz with Open Water. The call came in the middle of the night, it was their friend in a panic, Lonnie was in Napoli and Mickey had gone missing off the boat.

And that's where it started.

And what you find, that was it. Take to the count of three, kind of repeat all of that. Let me hear it one more time type of thing.

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

You think of all of these things, everything starts rushing through your head. Except this was clearly true.

I just saw disaster happening in a foreign country. You say this this can't be this can't be knew it in my heart.

There's got to be another explanation.

There was an explanation. All right. It just wasn't the one anyone was expecting.

My instinct said this is going to go sideways fast. I just didn't know which way or how how we were going to get there. Impulses, a marvelous city is beautiful is Keltic. Marco Groo is an investigative reporter for the Italian newspaper Il Ciccolo Ducci Mononoke.

It's full of life, it's full of colors, and it's a beautiful place to visit as a tourist, one of those tourists was Lomi Keycards, an American who arrived in Naples in May 2006 on board a cruise ship, the island escape the island escape started from America in Spain, then stopped in Messina in Sicily.

Lonnie had booked the cruise as a way to rekindle the flame with his longtime love Mickey. Kind of. The couple had been married for years and then divorced. This was a new beginning, a chance to rediscover some amaury. They spent the day exploring Masina on the island of Sicily. They took a bus to see the sites. Here's Mickey by Orion's Fountain. After the excursion, they returned to the island escape and the cruise ship began its journey to the next stop, Naples, less than 24 hours later and still in open water.

The trip took an awful turn while his friend Bill Price was sound asleep back in Florida when the phone rang three 10 in the morning, I was in the bed with my dog. I picked up the phone and it was him. Lonnie, Lonnie. How's he sound? Concerned. He said, I have I have a problem. I said, Where are you? He says, I'm in Italy. And I said, OK. And he says, Mickey's missing.

I said, What do you mean she's missing? He said, We can't find her.

When did he tell you he last seen Mickey?

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 Ambien and woke up the next morning and she wasn't there.

And that's when Lolly sounded the alarm. Yes.

Apparently he reported her, couldn't find her that he asked for them to look.

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

E recalled a bottle of wine in the trash and this chair on the balcony in upright position.

According to the captain, the Mediterranean had been calm. There was good weather and it was a very quiet night. The sea was was very quiet.

The crew showed Mickey's photo to the other passengers. Then, as scheduled, the island escape docked in Naples. Bill spoke with Lonnie again.

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

Almost 12 hours later, the island escape prepared to leave port and continue on with the cruise, there was still no sign of making Lomi quickly packed up his things and Micki's and got off the island. Escape reality was setting in. The woman he loved may have gone overboard. Italian Coast Guard started searching for making. Loni checked into the Hotel Mercure from his room, he spoke again with Bill. He said everything in here is in Italian. He said, I don't speak the language.

He said, I'm scared.

Mommy also spoke with his friend Susan MacQueen, who says she could hear fear in Loni's voice.

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.

That's when Lani Calcutta's has made a decision that would come back to haunt him.

When we come back, Mickey is missing and Lonnie is desperate. He was a disheveled mess and he was acting fearful. It just seemed like he should just go to protect himself. Yes, he says, can you get me out of here? When the cruise ship Island Escape docked in Naples, Italy, during the early morning hours of May 26, 2006, American tourist Mickey Kanzaki was no longer among its passengers. Soon, her brother Toshi got a call from the State Department, the other brother of Mickey Gunnysack.

Yeah, yes. Well, she's missing off of this cruise, Myson. What do you mean missing?

Mukoko father, Mickey's ex-husband slash boyfriend, Lonnie Cucuta's, was in a Naples hotel. He was waiting to hear from the Italian Coast Guard, which was searching the Mediterranean for Mickey. According to his friend Susan McQueen, Lonnie sounded frantic.

He was a disheveled mess. And he was he was acting fearful. He was acting very fearful and very irrational.

Lalani, Susan knew, was never irrational. He was pretty spectacular. Fireball of an attorney.

Lonnie graduated from law school with honors in 1992. By the time Susan met him, he was an attorney at a top law firm in Los Angeles. Susan was a private investigator. He put in twenty five out of twenty four hours a day.

I mean, he was a very truly dedicated, fast thinking attorney. He had the respect of us.

US meant Susan and Bill Price, a retired Washington, D.C. cop turned investigator, now partners with Susan in business and life. They both came to respect Lonnie.

The guy is phenomenal, not just hardworking, but smart, extremely. And out of that, a friendship group. Yes, he was like a brother that I never had.

I could count on, especially when Bill needed major heart surgery and felt he wasn't receiving the care he needed from hospital staff. So I made a call to him. He was there. And that hospitals change their whole tune. I mean, he illegally was ready to take all of them on. That's a good friend. It was a very good friend.

Bill recovered. He and Susan spent time with Lonnie, along with a secretary at Lonny's law firm named Mickey Kanzaki. 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.

He really didn't. Yes, he did.

Mickey was smart, beautiful, had a great sense of humor. Sue White was also a secretary who worked side by side with Mickey for several years.

She worked for a high powered partner in the firm. She had to know what she was doing. She just didn't ruffle feathers.

Wanda Carter also worked with Mickey at the law firm when there was a deadline.

And sometimes I was pressed for time. She would appear she just come up and say, what can I do to help you? She would step up. She would step up.

Then Mickey started working with Lonnie kookiness. 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. And that's when something blossomed.

Yes, they kept that definitely quiet, but they definitely did. He was charming, she definitely thought that Mickey's niece, Julie Serenata, was in college then. What do you like about him?

I think she liked that he had similar interests, that that he was a hard worker and she appreciated that. Mickey and Lonnie bought this home in Orange County, California. They married in 1995, that bliss did not last.

That law that initially had that initial attraction disappeared with time. It didn't take long for it to crumble like a Jenga game where the pieces started to fall, come out and it all toppled over. What was she telling you about it? It had to do with control, control of money. Guys like to be in control. I've noticed that. It's kind of a shame. Yeah. So the wall came tumbling down.

Like many relationships, this one was complicated. After six years of marriage, the couple divorced and Lonnie got an apartment in downtown L.A. near his office. He still spent time at the home he and Mickey owned together in Orange County.

And somehow that seemed to work better.

They were still close and maybe they'd work things out. After all, in early 2006, Lonnie booked them both on a romantic cruise.

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

Maybe they've turned a corner. Sounds like a really big step for him.

In fact, Lonnie had booked two cabins on board the island escape. He says we're going to take a cruise McEniry and we want you and Susan to join us.

Then Susan's mother needed an operation and she and Bill had to cancel at the last minute. And now just two days into that cruise, Mickey was missing.

If she had in fact, fallen overboard, what were the odds of finding her? According to Italian journalist Marco Grasso, not good.

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

Lonnie spoke with both Bill and Susan several times while he was in Naples. They worried what might happen to Lonnie in a foreign country with an unfamiliar legal system.

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.

And it just said seem like you need to just come back before this spirals out of control in some legal way that you can't get your hands around.

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 to protect himself.

Yes.

He says, can you get me out of here? I said, Yeah, I can do that. There's an Italian saying that goes see Naples and die. 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. Well, Mickey Kanzaki didn't make it to Naples, and now Lomi Kocot is definitely wanted to leave.

Mommy took a cab to the Naples Airport bill and booked him a flight to Tampa, Florida, where Bill lived, all this while Mickey was still missing. That would not last. Coming up, it's like, how does this happen, a sudden discovery at sea? I was in shock and disbelief. Nothing I would have ever imagined could have prepared me for this.

When Dateline continues. Along the Italian peninsula lie the vast waters of the Mediterranean. It's here the Astron calls home. The Istria travels the Italian coast doing scientific research, and about four p.m. on May 27, 2006, Captain Massimo, Colorado made a different kind of discovery. At least I saw something, the distance that was directly right straight by the bow. Straight ahead, I got closer to it. I realize it was a body in the water.

He immediately got on his radio earlier that morning. He'd seen an alert. The Coast Guard was searching for an American passenger missing from a cruise ship the day before. I get down by three.

They sent out was about a person lost to 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.

There seemed no doubt this was Mickey kind of Soki. You know, we were not a part of a search party, finding her was truly random.

As they approached Mickey's body, the captain said his crew was careful not to touch her hand. We use the strap and pass it around their chest. Then we lifted the body with the crane in the best way to not touch the body.

They brought Mickey's body onto the Australia and covered her with a sheet. Then they met up with the Coast Guard and Mickey's body was moved to their boat, finding a body in the sea isn't something that happened every day.

And then on top of that, to bring it on board, journalist Marco Grasso heard about the grim discovery.

I was very surprised.

And that was the moment in which we started following and covering this case with the body and the body was taken to Valencia.

Vibro Valencia is a small town near the coast in southern Italy, that's where Italian authorities opened their investigation and the State Department called. Micki's niece, Julie Serenata 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 long the heck she would end up overboard.

The news hit Micki's friends hard. I was very sad. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe it at all. It's like, how does this happen? I couldn't believe my ears.

Devastating.

Lonnie broke the news to his friend, Bill Price.

He said he was glad they found the body and that he can't imagine what happened. Loni was calling long distance, although Bill had booked the flight from Italy to Tampa. Loni didn't go there. He changed his ticket and flew to California. He said, I just wanted to go home. I said, OK.

I said, if you're OK, you know, that's fine with me.

At the same time, in Zebo Valencia, an Italian prosecutor named Alfredo Latonia was assigned a Micki's case.

He knew what his investigation needed to address an issue of cost, the circumstances of the dad, the cause of the dead, the date and the location.

He soon discovered there were no obvious answers to those questions. A search of the island escape hadn't turned up any clues, although he said she could have fallen in the water but missing from the ship.

So anything could have happened.

Mickey's death could have been an accident or suicide or murder. Everyone had questions for Lomi, especially Julie.

Nothing I would have ever imagined could have prepared me for this. Coming up, another woman enters the picture, 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. Absolutely. When an American citizen dies mysteriously overseas, the case falls under the jurisdiction of the FBI. An agent arrived at Lonny's home in Orange County, California, within hours of the discovery of Micki's body, what he called his friend Bill Price, to tell him the bureau was on the case.

He said, well, what do I do now? I said, what do you mean, what do you do? I says, The FBI is there. I said, talk to him. I said, they're on it. And it is good. I'm all happy about this.

Here's something Bill wasn't happy about learning right then, that when Lonnie flew from Italy to Southern California, it wasn't the sleep in his own bed. It was to visit a woman Lonnie had been dating until he decided to patch things up with Mickey. His wife 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 like me, it's like putting a target on you and saying, please investigate me.

Absolutely. The first thing out of my mouth was, do you know how this looks? He said, I need a console.

And I said, it's like I'm talking to a moron. As sharp an attorney as he was, Lonnie seemed tone deaf to how his actions would play.

The initial impression was in guys not quite right. The FBI's Rick Simpson said Lonnie seemed almost too eager to show agents he had no marks on his body.

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

He's answering questions that he hasn't been asked. Exactly, yes.

Lonnie repeated the story. He told his pal Bill they were in the room. They had wine. Mickey said, left to get some herbal tea. Lonnie took Ambien and fell asleep.

He woke up at four thirty in the morning and her light was on, but she wasn't there and and he was alarmed. So he went looking for.

What's his demeanor during this interview? I mean, is this a guy frantic at losing the love of his life? No, no. They they didn't have that impression.

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

Yes, we found a lot of things suspicious. He was in a hurry to get out of there.

Obviously, Mickey's niece, Julie Serenata, spoke with the FBI, too. She talked about her aunt's relationship with Lomi in the months before the cruise.

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, happy and excited about her luxury Italian cruise.

She had said that that he's planning everything. And this was such a surprise. And they're reconciling. She couldn't wait to go.

Now, just days after that conversation, her Aunt Mickey was dead and Julie believed Lonnie knew more than he was saying. She soon found out the feds believe the same thing. I was approached by the FBI, what I'm willing to record my conversations with him and to get details.

They gave her a crash course in recording protocol and told her to let Lomi do the talking.

Maybe she was slightly intoxicated. You know, I mean, I think she had that night on the ship, on the ship. Well, we drink the wine and she had, you know, probably a couple of good sized glasses, Lamis theory of what had happened was what 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.

I mean, there's only three possibilities. She was murdered. She she she jumps 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.

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.

Julie would continue to learn more from the FBI and she continued speaking with Lani. I called him frequently and he didn't seem suspicious about that. No, I don't.

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 reprieve. So I was talking to him from the family. Julie did think Loni 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. However. That was about to change. Coming up, I just thought, what a horrible way to die.

Stunning new details from the autopsy. Someone on board was a killer. There's got to be an explanation here. This isn't L.A., right? This wouldn't be his nature if not Loni, then who? When Dateline continues. Mickey Kanzaki never lived to see her 50 third birthday, she was found floating in the waters of the Mediterranean. Wanda Carter was haunted, thinking about her friend's final moments.

I thought, oh, my God, I hope she wasn't alive when she was in that water trying to save herself. And I just thought, what a horrible way to die. Mickey's body was brought to this hospital in Valencia, Italy.

Dr. Pietro Antonio Richi performed the autopsy.

I, I have received the case and I conducted the autopsy on June 16th.

What he found told a sinister story. Dr. Reiji saw Mickey's body was badly bruised, especially at the base of her neck, a sign of strangulation. He also noted bruising on her inner thighs, possibly evidence of sexual assault. Perhaps most significant was what the autopsy did not show.

We do not find water in their lungs, nor did we find water in the stomach.

Meaning, Mickey, kind of psyche was already dead when she hit the water that told Italian prosecutor Alfredo Latonia this was a deliberate act of murder.

We stressed that this was fundamental to the damage it caused. Such come not from accidental circumstances, but was provoked.

Monica Kicanas, the tenacious attorney, seemed to understand that if Mickey's death was a homicide, he would be a suspect. And so he turned to two trusted friends, investigator Susan McQueen and Bill Price Bill. The former cop gave Loni some blunt advice about dealing with the FBI.

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

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

There's got to be an explanation here. This isn't alarming, right? This wouldn't be his nature. We've got to find out what happened. We need to do this research. And the first goal was to get back on that boat and try and interview people and ascertain what happened and to the moments leading up to her death.

So a couple of months after Mickey's death, they traveled to Italy and booked a cabin aboard the island escape.

We want to take measurements of different places on the ship where they had low railings, where they had higher railings. We wanted to meet with the captain so we could get permission to go into the exact room that he went into the room mcilhaney were staying.

Yes, they met with the captain and didn't learn much from him. Except this. There were almost fifteen hundred passengers and crew on board the island escape at the time Mickey went overboard, meaning potentially hundreds of possible suspects from a wide range of countries.

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

We wanted a manifest cruise line, was fighting to give it to us, and then you're going to run it against lists of sex offenders and anybody with a criminal record, correct?

Yes, except they couldn't get the manifest. So that was a dead end. They had more luck with the autopsy report. Lonnie hadn't been able to get a copy, but Susan's talents as an investigator and her Italian language skills paid off. You're good at this, aren't you?

Well, I was able to get the copy. Susan thought the autopsy report wasn't definitive.

And what was their pointed away from Lonnie?

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

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

Susan and Bill found out there were no security cameras anywhere on the ship, and according to the crew, no one on board at the time reported hearing anything suspicious.

Nobody saw or heard Lanny and Mickey fighting. No, nobody saw Mickey in any kind of struggle with anybody. Not that I could find. And no one saw anybody menacing either one of them. Not that I could find. And where was she on the ship when she went into the water? No real way to know.

No way to know. Lots of open questions. Susan and Bill felt the Italians had stopped investigating once Lonnie left and never really looked at other suspects.

The FBI, on the other hand, was just getting started. Coming up, he had built a good story to bolster his defense from the beginning. The FBI digs deep, but what would they find? He just said, See, I told you. I told you I didn't do anything. Toshie kind of Saki's early childhood was spent in Japan, the only boy with three sisters, Mickey, was the youngest.

Their father left his job at a Japanese coal mine to work on a farm in California's Central Valley. Eventually, he brought you all over here.

1960, brought the wife and the four kids.

They traveled by ship to their new home. Mickey was maybe five or six and I was eight, I think when you're that young. We're here in a strange country, but it was kind of slightly exciting because we're so young, we don't comprehend what really happened.

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

We were devastated.

How could this be? One minute she's excited going on this cruise and. The next, she's not alive anymore. How can this be? We're just completely shocked.

The FBI was investigating Mickey's death and learning more about her relationship with Loni, including the crisis their marriage faced in 1989. A client of the firm said Lonnie had done something terrible. Mickey's niece, Julie Serenata, heard about it.

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 and he denied it and swore up and down that that nothing happened.

Lonnie was arrested. He insisted he was innocent, and Mickey stood by him.

She wanted to believe him. Of course she loved him.

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

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

And so the idea was they'd be legally divorced, but not actually divorced. And maybe they get together again.

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

To fight the sex charges, Lonnie turned to his friend Susan McQueen and Bill Price for help.

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.

Lonnie was never prosecuted and the charges were later dropped.

Is your work related to why he was never prosecuted for that? I like to think so. Even so, things were tense between Lonnie and Mickey. Bill says Lonnie would sometimes call him in mid argument.

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 and you would hear crash. You'd hear things breaking in the background. And when he told me that she's drinking and she went to a bottle of wine and she's nasty, I'm thinking, why are you putting up with this?

Mickey's friend Sue never heard about any of that. In fact, Sue had no idea Mickey was even divorced.

So she was really sort of hiding a lot of things that were on her life from hiding big things.

One more thing FBI Special Agent Rick Simpson learned at the time of Mickey's death. The couple's assets were worth almost two million dollars, including that beautiful home in Orange County. When Mickey Dot, all of it went to Lonnie. That sounds like a motive. It does, except no one had seen or heard Lonnie fighting with Mickey on the cruise ship. There was no evidence he'd been the one to harm her in any way, let alone killer, and throw her overboard.

And Lonnie's account never changed. He took two Ambien, went to sleep, and she left to go get herbal tea.

He had built a good story, if you will, to bolster his defense.

From the beginning, of course, it was possible Lonnie was simply telling the truth. While the FBI suspected he was responsible for Mickey's death, the bureau didn't have much evidence to back up that suspicion. In December 2006, the U.S. attorney brought the case to a federal grand jury. Except the grand jury's role was only to investigate, not to issue an indictment.

If you had proof that Lomi had killed his ex-wife, you would have taken that to a grand jury and gotten an indictment and. I have to believe that you didn't do that because you thought there wasn't anything really that proved that beyond your suspicions, we and the FBI, our investigators and our role is to find facts whether a case is presented to a grand jury.

That's a prosecutorial decision.

And the Justice Department apparently decided there wasn't enough to go forward at that point. At some point, they made that determination.

So the grand jury met and no charges were filed against Lonnie. He just said, see, I told you. He said, I told you I didn't do anything. To Lonnie, it must have felt like vindication; to his friend Bill Price, it was starting to feel like something else. Coming up, a plan to help prove Lonnie's innocence. I said, let's show the FBI that you have nothing to hide and a secret about the other woman in Loni's life.

Explain to me how Lonnie kept this hidden from everybody.

Crafty. I mean, he's a smart man. When Dateline continues. Hey, guys.

Willie Geist here reminding you to check out the Sun Sit Down podcast. On this week's episode, I get together with Emmy Award winner Rachel Brosnahan to talk about the return of her hit series, The Marvelous Miss Meixell, taking on her first starring role in a major movie and what life has been like during quarantine, including a lot of Survivor reruns. You can listen to our full conversation right now on the Sunday Sit Down podcast, get it for free wherever you download yours.

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 dogs bring your love.

You can leave for five minutes, come back in, their tails are wagging like hadn't seen in years.

Bill organizes and runs dog shows for the American Kennel Club. Susan is a professional handler, training a champion requires some significant instinct, doesn't it?

Yes, it does. And from the beginning, Susan's investigative instincts had told her her friend, Monica Cardus, was no killer. Bill thought the same.

But I'm thinking I know this guy for these years, I know how he responds to dogs and animals, but he's no murderer.

And to prove it, Bill came up with a plan. I said, I'll get him, take a polygraph. I said, let's show the FBI that you have nothing to hide and you're going to take this test. Loni agreed. He was now living in Florida. So Bill set up the test with a friend named Mike Brent now who was also an expert polygraph examiner. Lomi answered 11 questions, including did you kill Mickey? Did you cause the death of Mickey Kanzaki?

Were you present when Mickey was killed? The examiner asked those questions three times. The results were not what Bill Price had hoped for.

They came out, Juani said, I have to use the bathroom. And as he walked away, Mike said, You in on this? I said, You want to repeat that again? What am I in on in on what he says, you know, he's guilty. And I said, Is this a joke? He said, no, I said he's guilty. I said, Mike, this isn't funny. He said, I'm not try and be funny.

So I took a deep breath and that's when it flashes before you.

The little things that you want to overlook, little things like the height of the railing on the island escape and the realization of how difficult it would be for the five foot three Mickey to go off that balcony by accident. Now, Bill's investigators brain was telling him, along with the polygraph, that Lonnie knew more than he was saying. As much as he wanted to believe Lonnie was innocent, the evidence was pointing elsewhere.

Now you're thinking, am I being played for a fool here?

Yes. I wasn't willing to accept it, but I'm thinking about it.

Yes. What to do about that nagging feeling? Well, during the time he'd been helping Lonnie, Bill had also been talking with FBI Special Agent Rick Simpson.

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.

It sounds like you had some sympathy for what Bill was going through. Yes, I. I do. You were convinced Bill was a straight shooter.

He wasn't slamming things towards Lamis interest when you would talk with you.

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

He couldn't say the same about Lonnie. Kocabas Special Agent Simpson had been keeping a close eye on Lani's finances. When Mickey died, Lonnie inherited all her money and moved it to an overseas bank.

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.

Offshore, that money was untouchable. Then when Lonnie tried to repatriate more than a million dollars to a bank in Florida, Agent Simpson pounced. The feds seized the money and began a civil case against Lomi. Who hired attorney David Michael? Why was Lomi moving his money around the world?

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

In other words, Lonnie wasn't trying to hide that money. He was merely investing it. While his 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.

So they had no right to seize it and he won. That's when the federal government went to the district attorney.

The government had lost, but it wasn't over. The U.S. attorney handling that civil case sent several boxes of evidence here to the Orange County, California, district attorney's office.

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

Susan Brice, no relation to Bill is an assistant D.A. She and deputy D.A. Seton Hunt learned that in Florida, Lonnie had married again. Then something else in the case file really caught their attention. It was another woman, another ex-wife who's aiming to win.

Amy Wynne is a teacher. She's originally from Vietnam. Amy is the woman Loni went to see in California after he came back from Italy. Here she is in a photo from the school where she's a fifth grade teacher.

Amy and Loni had met online.

Amy loved L.A. I don't think she expected as much from him as I think he probably thought Mickey expected of him.

Investigators discovered Amy wasn't just Lonnie's girlfriend. She'd been his wife. They married in July 2005, but it only lasted a few months before Loni divorced Amy and returned to Mickey. Just a few months after that, Lonnie booked the cruise and then after Mickey went overboard on his first stop in the U.S., was at Amy's house to continue a relationship Loni had largely kept secret. Explain to me how Loni kept this entire relationship, this marriage with Amy Newin sort of hidden from everybody, including you.

I guess I don't have an answer for you. Crafty. I mean, he's the smart man.

Bill said he, too, was completely in the dark. Loni had bought a huge house and a very nice Lexus for Amy when unbeknownst to Mickey, unbeknownst to me too. This is my friend.

Well, if Loni planned a future with Amy, it didn't pan out in early 2007 when he sold his home and left California for Florida. He left Amy to. However, the FBI knew all about Amy. In fact, she had testified before that federal grand jury.

What essentially was her story? That she knew nothing, that to her knowledge, he had no intent 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. And as far as I know, there's nothing to any of it.

Correct. After his assets were seized by the FBI in late 2008, Monning wanted to know if Amy was still sticking with that story. Apparently, he thought Amy might be upset with him after things between them hadn't worked out. So in January 2009, Lonnie asked Susan and Bill to visit Amy. Despite Bill's misgivings about Lomi, they agreed, and that conversation changed everything.

Coming up, this just went into a completely different direction than I had any expectation of hearing a bombshell of a story captured on tape.

You're going to hear her fear, told me she was telling the truth with us. You can't create that kind of fear. It had been years since Mickey kind of Soki plunged from the deck of a cruise ship dead before she hit the waters of the Mediterranean. Private investigator Susan McQuain and Bill Price sailed those same waters, retrace those steps on the island, escape all to prove their friend Lonnie Katanas did not kill Mickey.

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

Bill agreed at first. And then over time he came to believe it did seem possible. My gut was telling me he was guilty as hell. By this time, 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.

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

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

I believe she did. You think Lonnie loved her?

I believe he did.

What he asked his friends and the investigators to confirm what Amy had already told the FBI that she knew nothing about Mickey's death. The meeting happened in January 2009, three years after that fatal cruise. Bill stayed in the car. Susan's instincts told her she might do better with Amy one on one.

Why meet with her? And I talk to her about what kind of contact she had, who has been calling her from the federal government, what are their questions? How is she feeling? How does she feel about Lori? 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.

Amy Newin began to tell a story that was the complete opposite of what she'd said under oath to a federal grand jury. 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 Lonnie didn't do it alone. He told Amy his well-connected friend helped him arrange Mickey's murder. That friend's name, Bill Price. In that conversation, Amy describes Bill as being sort of at the center of this.

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

Exactly. Which, as you can imagine, was news to Bill's partner, Susan. Not that she believed it, just the opposite. But she also realized if Amy believed it, that had to be because of Lonnie.

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

Does Amy know the bill's outside and that she had no idea he was with me? Bill walked over and they turned on a recorder, you know, to hear the.

Can you please say the things that what you talking about, Bill? You want to how about whether or not we're going to be able to talk to what? So does. Bill had questions, do you think? I don't know why he fell in the water after the incident. 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, the grand jury, and she's lying to you because she's angry at Loni because after all was said and done, he didn't come back to her.

Her fear told me she was telling the truth with us. You can't create that kind of fear. She was afraid of lying. She was afraid, Loni. She was afraid of Bill.

It was a double whammy. Amy said that Loni had planned the murder. That was bad enough. Then she said Loni implicated Bill before the cruise. Remember, Lonnie had invited Bill and Susan to come along. They had to cancel at the last minute.

Now it began to look as if Lonnie's invitation was part of the plan to maybe he'd ask Bill to go with him so Bill could take the fall for Mickey's murder.

That's your friend doing that, my friend. Yes, 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 defended, the guy you were trying to exonerate? Yes. I think you're lucky Lonnie wasn't in front of you at that moment.

I think that's an accurate statement. Yes. The anger and fury that I felt at that moment was incomprehensible, Lonnie was counting on the two of them to prove he wasn't involved in Mickey's murder.

Now, they had evidence on tape that he was having an affair, that 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. He stood in my dining room area and I said, Did you tell her that I had anything to do with Mickey's death? And ah, that I had connections to do this, did you make her believe that I had anything to do with her death?

Yeah, I did. I said, why, he said, I wanted to think I had power and I was a big guy, I said, and you should know that I have a tape recorder and it's going to the FBI.

What did Lomi say when you said that? Please don't. I was just trying to impress her. I said, OK. And I said, get out of my house and don't ever come near me, don't come around me. I said, I want to hear from you again. And then when he left, I called Agent Simpson and said, I have a recording for you.

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

That recording of Amy's new story eventually made its way to Orange County Assistant D.A. Susan Price.

If Bill and Susan hadn't recorded her saying that she might to this day be defending Lollie.

That's absolutely true.

Now, it was up to prosecutors and that would take a few years because Amy Newin was the key and it turned out that was a problem. Coming up, she just said, I don't want to talk to you, I have no interest in talking to you. A problem indeed. How were they going to solve that?

I'm tired of it and I'm tired and I need your help. I said it's time for you to step up to the plate when Dateline continues. As Toshi and Carolyn Kanzaki patiently waited for answers, they would sometimes visit Mickey's gravesite and see the name Lani catadores on the headstone next to hers.

That was difficult the first seven years. We thought that we knew they were investigating him, but didn't seem to be going anywhere.

No, not really, no. We just lived their life. But me is always in the back of my mind. It's not going away. Desmukh is gone.

It turned out Assistant D.A. Susan Price was investigating Lomi, especially after she listened to that recording where Lani's ex-wife, Amy Nawin, told Lani's own investigators that she knew about his plan to murder Mickey on the cruise ship.

I think to what the prosecutor knew she needed to meet Amy.

We actually did go to Northern California and arrived at her doorstep unannounced, unannounced.

And when you said there is I'm pretty sure you did in that interview, somebody has been murdered here and we think you have important information. She said, I don't or I'm not talking.

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. They weren't giving up the D.A. as Sergeant Don Vogt from the Orange County Sheriff's Department to assist with the case a top priority, try to talk with Amy Mann.

I went up to talk to her and she did not want to cooperate with enforcement.

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.

And in the end, I don't know if she goes there. So go ahead and have a seat.

My objective under their direction was to get her to talk.

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

What do you mean?

Bill told her law enforcement already knew all about their previous conversation they had to.

The queen of you talked. Understand? They have to take it, I talk to them because I'm myself and my family, you understand? You can't say you don't know if he's telling you to do this and this is not good. She was still scared maybe of Bill.

Remember, Lonnie had made him sound like a gangster. And as he pressed, Amy, Bell seemed to lean into that role. I am not here to kill you.

I am here. I am here to protect my name and to protect you and bring you underneath my coat. I'm here to tell them that they messed with you. They messed with me. 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 he hurt me and everybody else around us. I'm tired of any. I'm tired of him. I need your help. I need you to be with me.

I said it's time the truth come out now. I said, and he's made fools out of all of us. I said, Now it's time for you to step up to the plate.

The D.A. gave Amy immunity for her testimony and she agreed to cooperate. She told sheriff's investigators her own version of what happened on that crude's how long she had booked it, planning to kill Mickey. And then Amy said Lonnie threatened her, forcing her to lie to the federal grand jury. Bill started this, trying to help out Lonnie and ended it helping you guys.

Absolutely he did. Four days after that interview, Sergeant Vogt traveled to Safety Harbor, Florida, where Lonnie lived. 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. We told him he was under arrest for the murder of Mickey Hanasaki, of course, Mirandized him. And at that point, he declined to to give us a statement. He didn't say anything.

It was Loni's right to remain silent as he was under arrest for murder. He was booked into the Pasco County jail. How'd that feel? Actually, it felt pretty good.

They felt pretty good for Mickey's family. It was welcome news.

Would you finally I go, what a relief after seven years. Because I know he has something to do with his murder, one thing had not changed. There was still no physical evidence tying Lonnie to Mickey's death. Would this case be enough for a jury? Coming up, there's no blood in the room, there's no evidence of a struggle, there's nothing where's the evidence? Where is it?

Could Mickey herself help prove this case? He never anticipated that her body would ever be recovered. Hey, it's Chris Hayes this week on my podcast, why is this happening? I'll be talking with writer Wright Thompson about nostalgia, memory, the South and Bourbon.

One of the things that really blew my mind during this book is finding out that Kentucky, for instance, was in the union. You know, of course, bourbon, which is the most nostalgic and mythologized of all drinks. Of course, bourbon is made in a place that now pretends it lost a war. It actually won. So when you're looking at the South, you do need to understand the power and seductiveness of mythology and always be aware of the fact that if you aren't looking out for it, it will get you.

That's this week on why is this happening? Search for why is this happening wherever you're listening right now and subscribe.

Attorney David Michael had already defended Lani Kicanas in civil court, protecting his assets from seizure by the feds. Now, there was much more than money at stake. I was stunned that he had been arrested.

Actually, I was absolutely stunned.

This time. The charge was murder. Lonnie faced life in prison. I've been doing criminal defense for forty five years. I've done some heavy stuff, and I will tell you that my belief 100 percent is like a contest is innocent of killing Nicky Hanasaki.

Lonnie pleaded not guilty. Attorney Michael knew the case relied on Amy Newin, whose story he says was one big lie influenced by none other than Bill Price.

He scared the hell out of Amy. And when 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. I've never heard of it before. And that's when Amy knew and I guess you could say turned.

Why is it so hard to believe that? She was frightened of Lonnie, that she lied for him and that she eventually stopped lying for him and told the truth.

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. There's no evidence of a struggle. There's nothing. Where is the evidence? Where is it? You know, yeah, she got killed. But that doesn't mean that Larnaka contested it.

As Sergeant Tom Vote worked with the Orange County D.A. is to gather evidence against Lonnie. One thing became clear. The island escape was not the luxury cruise ship Mickey had looked forward to. I kind of get the feeling that if you grew up watching the Love Boat, you probably would not recognize the island escape.

You definitely would not. The island escape was a former ferry boat once used to transport cars, then later tourists who were looking to save a buck.

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.

It has one peculiar feature, though, that was appealing to a lot of contests.

It's a straight drop into the sea from the balconies that were welded on to the side of this converted ferry on most modern cruise ships.

If you fall off the Aloha deck, you've got a good chance of landing on the Lido deck, not so on the island. Escape those balconies guaranteed that in a fall, the only thing you'd hit was the Mediterranean.

Almost seven stories straight down. That's a long fall. And as you're standing there looking over the balcony, it's a long fall into the ocean.

Definitely a jury would decide if this unusual defendant was guilty of Mickey's murder. An attorney himself, Lomi, filed a motion after motion and delayed the trial for years.

Loni is a bright man. Loni worked very hard as an attorney throughout these proceedings. He wrote a lot of the briefs that were presented to the court. And how did he do? He's a good attorney. However, he was blinded by his own narcissism and he's not as smart as he thinks he is.

David, Michael did not represent Lonnie for the criminal trial. Instead, Lonnie had a public defender. Opening statements began in February 2003.

The defendant believed that the last chapter of Mickey's life was overseas, but it is not the last chapter. This here is their first witness, the captain of the island escape.

He testified about going to Mickey and Lani's cabin just hours after her disappearance and speaking with Loni.

He was not upset at all. It was very calm conversation moment when I when asked about his questions, he wasn't talking quickly or nervously. He was very measured. The people called Julie Zahrani.

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

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

Is there any way that you had anything to do with Mickey? What do you think? I just had to ask. I think you know the answer to that already.

He got really angry at me. And the first thing you said is like, what do you think?

The reason why the FBI told me she had died before she hit the water? I don't know. She might have been robbed, but that's true. Well, I don't know. Don't lie to me, that's all. I don't know what happened to her. I didn't have anything to do with it. OK? And I don't appreciate the implication.

Julie had done what she could to help investigators. Now, she realized Mickey herself was key to proving the case.

He never anticipated that her body would ever be recovered. I remember how Lonnie had mentioned Mickey's drinking, suggesting she'd gotten drunk, maybe fallen overboard by accident and drowned. Her body told a different story. 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.

They point to the torso. However, there were bruises, some around her neck.

That Italian pathologist, Dr. Richie, testified through an interpreter that it was clear evidence Mickey had been strangled, mechanical asphyxia, Dimitry strangled through strangulation or by means of strangulation.

Under cross-examination, Dr. Ricci testified that despite those bruises on Mickey's thighs, he did not believe Mickey had been raped. He did see trauma to the back of Mickey's head, possibly caused by a blunt object.

Could it have been a wine bottle that didn't break? It could be any object that had a convex surface academically. It could be even a bottle. Yes.

The question was why Lonnie would want her dead. According to prosecutors, the motive was money. The body of Melanie had been the beneficiary of Mickey's well, meaning all that money he'd parked with her during his legal troubles belong to Lonnie after she died.

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

He looked down, looked around. He couldn't look me in the eye, but I looked at him. I'm not ashamed of anything I said or did remember, Bill had confronted Lomi about what Amy told him, which was that Bill helped to arrange the murder. Lonnie's response. 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.

And so he told you that she wouldn't be believed anyway. Is that right? That's correct.

So here was the moment Amy Nawin was called to testify. Thank you. Out of the people call, they when in court, the judge would not allow us to take pictures of her face.

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

And did he tell you what his plan was?

He said that those people will throw Mickey in the water and Bill and his girlfriend will be his witness.

In other words, his alibi. But when Bill canceled at the last minute, Amy says Lonnie told her this he will have to take matters into his own hands.

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

We assessed the 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. So a little bit of a gut check there for me, at least.

And you believed her? Absolutely. And you thought a jury would. Absolutely. Before the jury had a chance to deliberate this courtroom and the world would have to face a new reality, a global pandemic. Coming up, we're seeing that there is a travel ban in Italy and I'm thinking what is happening? The trial suddenly had to stop, but the case is not over yet. An undercover plan is about to be revealed. I actually posed as a hitman and it was a stunner when Dateline continues.

By March of 2020, the trial of Lani Kocabas for the murder of Mickey kind of Sarki was well underway. In fact, the courtroom was probably one of the last places left with order. Outside, it was chaos.

The impact of coronavirus around the world is becoming more dire. It's a global battle against a virus spreading fast.

In Italy tonight, infections are spiking. 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. And within a day, we're seeing that there is a travel ban in Italy. And I'm thinking, what is happening next?

The Orange County court calendar was wiped clean. Were you worried?

Well, the trial had the pause because of the pandemic.

So was that delay lasted more than two months. Then on May 26, 2020, with covid-19 cases still spreading in Orange County. The judge called a hearing to determine whether Loni's case could move forward.

So she went to court with a heavy heart. It was the 14th anniversary of Mickey's death. The hearing was live streamed to the public and no surprise the defense argued for a mistrial. Among the reasons, after the long delay, jurors couldn't possibly remember everything, putting Loni at a disadvantage to which the judge said, we have to continue.

It's so important to have the rule of law even during a pandemic.

The judge denied the motion for a mistrial. And two days later, all 16 jurors returned following social distancing guidelines. Jurors would spread throughout the courtroom and everyone would wear masks except the witnesses.

And the first witness to take the stand was Loni Kicanas.

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

Loni had an explanation for everything.

Why did you book a cabin with a balcony? Well, I didn't want to keep out. I mean, I was trying to impress Mickey with the fact that I was trying to change, you know, the one more vacation to spend more money.

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

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

That time the cops were called. Loni said he talked them down from arresting Mickey.

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

And then for her to accuse me. Something I do after I thought we were we were trying to help each other, upset me greatly, Lonnie said Julie wasn't the only one who took advantage of his kindness.

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

And of course, Amy Newin Lomi called her a gold digger, said she was lying and said Bill Price put her up to it.

I don't trust Amy. We didn't trust the money we have and don't trust anyone when it comes to an intimate relationship. I did not expect her to start making up lies about me again when he said Amy wasn't the only person telling lies about him.

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

Back in April of 2014, a year after Lonnie was arrested for Mickey's murder, the Orange County DA's office got a call. An inmate named Tony, a frequent flyer in the criminal justice system, was requesting an emergency landing. Sergeant Downvotes set up a meeting.

So Tony had told us that he was approached by local contest who asked Tony and another inmate if they were willing to have on his third wife recant her statement and then have her killed.

This is Amy we're talking about. Correct. What happens next?

We created a hit man named Greg, who's going to be a hit man for the contest to take care of his third wife.

Greg was played by an undercover investigator named Bill. We've disguised him so he can get more work in the future. 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?

In the six cases that I actually posed as a hit man, four of the six were already behind bars.

How many of those six cases were men wanting you to kill their wives? Six out of six.

This has to give you a dim view of man or at least of husbands.

Well, at least ones in custody, Tony.

The informant then introduced Greg, the hitman to Lonnie, the inmate.

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

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. What kind of money are we talking about here? Lonnie was offering one hundred thousand dollars for me to kill Amy.

Gregg said the ever so careful Lonnie spoke in code.

He told me it was time to take the property off the market. Another call. I said, Well, I just want to make sure we're good foreclosing on property sixteen, which is his code. He goes and he agreed.

It is time when you hear that, you know, we can go to court with that.

Yes.

He knows I'm not a realtor. Then a surprising thing happened, someone wanted to call the cops and it was Lonnie. Coming up, how many times have you lied to this jury since yesterday morning, none. He had an answer for everything. Loni Kocot is innocent, man, more guilty as charged. You have 14 years to come up with a story, 14 years, 12 jurors were about to decide his fate. Everyone who knew him said Lani Calcutta's was a resourceful, hard working attorney, according to prosecutors in the years leading up to his trial.

What he had done more than file motions, they said he also tried to hire a hitman to take out the key witness against him, his ex-wife, Amy Newin, what he thought the hit man's name was Greg. He was wrong. It was Bill. And Bill wasn't a hit man. He was an undercover cop who followed up on their conversations with a letter to Lani.

I asked him to specify some of the terms that we were using during this investigation to get clarification from him. That sounds like it's going to make somebody suspicious.

And it did. Lonnie may have realized he'd been the target of a sting operation. And true to form, he went on the offensive asking his attorney's office to call the police.

Lonnie never said that he wanted Amy to get killed. It's only that investigator that can try this.

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

Prosecutors charged Lonnie with solicitation to commit murder. He denied it and said he'd been set up by a jailhouse informant who was looking to cut a deal. Assistant D.A. Susan Price had waited years for the chance to cross-examine Lonnie.

How many times have you lied to this jury since yesterday morning? None. You've been truthful. Yes.

Tell me what cross-examine, Lonnie. You're smiling. Well, I've never cross-examined a defendant quite like Lonnie contests. He had an answer for everything, a very lengthy answer for everything, a very self-serving answer for everything. The world's out to get me. He was the victim of everybody.

You have testified about how you've been victimized by different people. Would you agree with that? Well, I have been victimized. I'm pretty naive.

That was how he played it anyway.

And under cross-examination, Lonnie did not crack.

You testified yesterday that Mickey, when she drank, she became unpredictable. She was unpredictable when she drank. Was she unpredictable on the night you saw her alive last? She was OK that evening. Was she violent towards you on the night you last saw her alive? No.

Lonnie insisted there was no argument and no violence.

I don't know what caused her death, so I don't know if her grandson was a factor or not. Because you believe she could have strangled herself? I don't believe she was strangled. And, of course, she could not have strangled herself.

When you finish cross-examination, do you think we've got it? No, I never think we've got it. I did think to me he doesn't seem credible. But I didn't know if any of the jurors felt sorry for him five months after trial started, the case was handed to a jury. Would they see an innocent man taken advantage of time and again or a heartless murderer?

Mickey's brother Toshie wondered.

He had 14 years to come up with a story, 14 years over and over to make everything fit.

After just an hour of deliberation, it all came undone. The verdict guilty of first degree murder for financial gain. How did Loni take it?

Shook his head. This just stood there and shook. Because I watch them. I'm watching them. Who's shaking his head? He wouldn't look back at you. Mm hmm.

Mickey's knees, Julie, had been waiting, too, and as soon as I heard the verdict, it was just this big sense of relief. Like my aunt finally got justice, Monica Cardus was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

He is appealing his conviction because of a life sentence. The DA's office dropped the murder for hire charge. For Bill Price, who thought of Lannie as a brother and then ended up turning him in, it had been a very long road.

How's your conscience? Relieved whether Mickey was a good person or a bad person. Nobody deserves to die. That way, nobody does, and I suppose the guilt that I would have had then would be. I believe, Tim. That hurts, you're a pro and he fooled you. Yeah. For kind of psyche, the ocean always carried hope, a coal miner's daughter from Japan, she'd once traveled across the sea for a better life. And the island escape was supposed to carry her and listening to calmer shores.

He didn't know how good he had it. Yeah, he does not know. He did not know. Yeah. To the end, she was always there for him. And look what happened. Look what he did to her. She didn't deserve that. She had a lot to live for. She was a beautiful person and I'm talking about her. So she just had such a beautiful soul. A soul lost at sea who found her whale? That's all for this edition of Dateline.

We'll see you again Thursday at 10:00, 9:00 Central. And of course, I'll see you each weeknight for NBC Nightly News. I'm Lester Holt. For all of us at NBC News, good night.

They started digging up the grave from executive producers Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos and were too many unanswered questions. We have to exhume her body to solve a crime that is major evidence and nobody knew about before. Sometimes you have to dig deep. The exhumation was the most important thing that led to justice in this case.

Exude a new series Sunday, January 17th, at 7:00.

All part of oxygens, nine nights of Twisted Killers.