Woman Hunting 'Fargo' Movie Loot Dies December 7, 2001 11:17 am EST

DETROIT LAKES, Minn. (Reuters) - A Japanese woman whose body was found by a hunter near the North Woods town of Detroit Lakes was apparently obsessed by the fictional buried treasure of the movie "Fargo," police say.

Before her body was discovered on Nov. 15, Takako Konishi, 28, had shown 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 -- a location he marks poorly with a short stick.

The character ends up dead, and his body is fed into a wood chipper.

Konishi had been brought to the police in Bismarck, North Dakota, after she was found rooting around in a dump. 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, Police Lt. Nick Sevart said Thursday.

"She indicated she wanted to go to Fargo. There was nothing we could hold her on," Sevart said.

Konishi took a bus to Fargo, then a 45-mile taxi ride to Detroit Lakes, where she hitched a ride outside town.

"We've narrowed it down to a couple of possibilities -- 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."

-- Anonymous, December 08, 2001