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From the Japan Today website
http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=news&cat=1&id=185547
Japanese woman hunting "Fargo" movie loot dies in Minnesota
Friday, December 7, 2001 at 09:30 JST
DETROIT LAKES, Minnesota Ñ A Japanese woman
whose body was found by a hunter near the North
Woods town of Detroit Lakes was apparently obsessed
by the the fictional buried treasure of the movie
"Fargo," police said on Thursday.
After flying to Minneapolis, Takako Konishi, 28, of
Tokyo, boarded a bus for Bismarck. Bismarck Police
Lt Nick Sevart said she stayed at the Holiday Inn in
Bismarck on Nov 9, and left behind clothing, saying
it was trash.
The next day, a man found Konishi wandering
around near the city landfill and Oasis truckstop in
northeast Bismarck, Sevart said. Konishi didn't
speak much English, so the man drove her to the
Bismarck Police Department.
While there, she showed police a crude treasure map
she had drawn based on the darkly comic film of
1996, in which a character takes ransom money
and buries it in a snowdrift in the barren Minnesota
landscape Ñ a location he marks poorly with a short
stick. The character ends up dead, and his body is fed
into a wood chipper.
Seemingly rational, she made clear to
non-Japanese-speaking officers that she had come
from Tokyo to search for the cache of money from
"Fargo," and she could not be talked out of her
project, Sevart said. Police tried to explain to her
that "Fargo" was only a movie, but faced a language
barrier. The department has interpreters for several
languages, he said, but not Japanese. Police called
area ethnic restaurants looking for a Japanese
interpretor, but they were unable to find one.
Since Konishi hadn't done anything illegal and her
paperwork was apparently in order, Sevart said
police had no reason to hold her. "She indicated she
wanted to go to Fargo. There was nothing we could
hold her on," Sevart said. Konishi apparently took a
bus to Fargo, then a 72-kilometer taxi ride to Detroit
Lakes, where she hitched a ride outside town.
"She apparently had money, so she wasn't in need of
a place to stay or anything," Sevart said. Bismarck
police didn't write a report because they had no
reason to believe anything was amiss, Sevart said.
"We've narrowed it down to a couple of possibilities Ñ
either a (prescription) drug overdose or an exposure
death," Detroit Lakes Police Chief Cal Keena said. He
said he was awaiting the results of toxicology tests.
"I haven't seen the movie," Keena said in answer to a
question about Joel and Ethan Coen's cinematic
"Fargo," adding: "I don't need to. I live here."
(Compiled from wire reports)
http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=news&cat=1&id=185547
Japanese woman hunting "Fargo" movie loot dies in Minnesota
Friday, December 7, 2001 at 09:30 JST
DETROIT LAKES, Minnesota Ñ A Japanese woman
whose body was found by a hunter near the North
Woods town of Detroit Lakes was apparently obsessed
by the the fictional buried treasure of the movie
"Fargo," police said on Thursday.
After flying to Minneapolis, Takako Konishi, 28, of
Tokyo, boarded a bus for Bismarck. Bismarck Police
Lt Nick Sevart said she stayed at the Holiday Inn in
Bismarck on Nov 9, and left behind clothing, saying
it was trash.
The next day, a man found Konishi wandering
around near the city landfill and Oasis truckstop in
northeast Bismarck, Sevart said. Konishi didn't
speak much English, so the man drove her to the
Bismarck Police Department.
While there, she showed police a crude treasure map
she had drawn based on the darkly comic film of
1996, in which a character takes ransom money
and buries it in a snowdrift in the barren Minnesota
landscape Ñ a location he marks poorly with a short
stick. The character ends up dead, and his body is fed
into a wood chipper.
Seemingly rational, she made clear to
non-Japanese-speaking officers that she had come
from Tokyo to search for the cache of money from
"Fargo," and she could not be talked out of her
project, Sevart said. Police tried to explain to her
that "Fargo" was only a movie, but faced a language
barrier. The department has interpreters for several
languages, he said, but not Japanese. Police called
area ethnic restaurants looking for a Japanese
interpretor, but they were unable to find one.
Since Konishi hadn't done anything illegal and her
paperwork was apparently in order, Sevart said
police had no reason to hold her. "She indicated she
wanted to go to Fargo. There was nothing we could
hold her on," Sevart said. Konishi apparently took a
bus to Fargo, then a 72-kilometer taxi ride to Detroit
Lakes, where she hitched a ride outside town.
"She apparently had money, so she wasn't in need of
a place to stay or anything," Sevart said. Bismarck
police didn't write a report because they had no
reason to believe anything was amiss, Sevart said.
"We've narrowed it down to a couple of possibilities Ñ
either a (prescription) drug overdose or an exposure
death," Detroit Lakes Police Chief Cal Keena said. He
said he was awaiting the results of toxicology tests.
"I haven't seen the movie," Keena said in answer to a
question about Joel and Ethan Coen's cinematic
"Fargo," adding: "I don't need to. I live here."
(Compiled from wire reports)