Victim’s Parents Upset by Handling of Slaying and ‘Finger-Pointing’

Greg Nakatani had it made.

After graduating with honors from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in 1985, Nakatani landed a job with General Dynamics in San Diego. A mechanical engineer, the slight, diligent young man worked full time and spent off-hours pursuing a master’s degree at UC San Diego.

Nakatani’s life was blossoming outside the workplace as well. He owned a home a mile from the beach in Carlsbad, and a new pickup truck was tucked away in the garage. A San Jose native eager to explore all that San Diego’s waterfront had to offer, Nakatani frequently went scuba diving. He and a buddy were learning to sail.

But it all ended just after 1 a.m. on Sept. 20, when Greg Toshio Nakatani got into an argument with the wrong guys.

It was the sort of thing that could happen to just about anyone. Nakatani was quarreling with two men over a ding their car door made in the side of his truck outside a Leucadia taco shop on Old Highway 101. He was gunned down and died almost instantly. He was 23.

Four days later, sheriff’s deputies arrested a suspect. Ildefonso Perez Martinez, a 25-year-old Mexican national living under a tarp in the fields near La Costa, admitted he had argued with Nakatani at Alfonso’s taco shop. But it was his companion, a man from Durango, Mexico, known only as Alfredo, who shot the young engineer, Martinez told detectives.

Investigators didn’t buy the story. After two witnesses tentatively identified Martinez through photographs, detectives presented the case to the district attorney and recommended that murder charges be filed.

But it wasn’t to be. Instead of standing trial, Martinez was set free at the border after 72 hours in the Vista County Jail.

According to Dist. Atty. Edwin Miller, detectives had provided prosecutors with “incomplete reports” and “grossly insufficient evidence,” making a murder case against the man untenable.

For Nakatani’s parents, the decision to release Martinez was an outrage, an action that has shaken their faith in the nation’s system of justice. At the very least, they argue, Martinez should have been charged as an accessory to the crime.

“To lose our son is agony enough,” Alexander Nakatani, a social worker for the Veterans Administration in San Jose, said last week. “But then to have them release the prime suspect--a man who admitted to being at the scene and has been identified, a man who is in our country illegally . . . it is a terrible injustice.”

The Nakatanis believe their son’s case was bungled. They contend the North County district attorney’s office erred in releasing Martinez and attempted to conceal the mistake by pointing the finger at sheriff’s detectives.

In the weeks after Greg Nakatani’s death, the family hired an attorney, who maintains Martinez could have been prosecuted as an accessory to the murder. The attorney sought help from Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.) and Rep. Norm Mineta (D-San Jose).

The Nakatanis’ immediate goal is to bring their son’s killer to justice. But Alexander Nakatani also hopes to expose “serious mismanagement problems that are jeopardizing the quality of law enforcement” in North County.

“We can’t bring Greg back, but hopefully we can bring some dignity to his death and be more at peace when this is all over,” Nakatani said. “And for the families of future victims, we feel we must have the district attorney explain what’s going on here.”

Apparently, the effort has paid off. Last week, Miller held an unusual meeting with the Nakatanis in San Diego, discussing their concerns for more than an hour. And, after receiving inquiries from the two legislators, prosecutors assigned their own criminal investigator to the case.

On Friday, the investigator, Augustin de la Rosa, again arrested Martinez, who will be charged with accessory to murder today.

A second man, Antonio Lopez Yescas of Oaxaca, Mexico, has been identified as Greg Nakatani’s killer by witnesses contacted by the special investigator. Yescas, a local farmworker, is believed to be in North County and is being sought by De la Rosa under an arrest warrant.

“We want to solve this case, and we will,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Philip Walden, who supervises the North County office. “But because there were problems with the (sheriff’s) investigation, we’ve had to start from ground zero.”

Alfonso’s is a locals-only kind of place, a dingy little roadside restaurant beneath a stand of scruffy eucalyptus trees, painted in bright red and yellow stripes and sandwiched between a thrift shop and an equipment rental business.

A ramp covered with soiled Astroturf leads up to the restaurant’s screen-door entrance, a patio with two tables overlooking the parking lot provides the only dining space.

Near the railroad tracks at the north end of Leucadia, Alfonso’s is just blocks from the beach and a quick trip from the sloping flower fields of Carlsbad. Surfers and field hands are its most loyal patrons.

As far as Greg Nakatani was concerned, Alfonso’s was the culinary treasure of North County. He raved about it to friends. He took his parents there when they were in town. He swore the carne asada burritos were the best to be found north of the border.

Alfonso’s is open 24 hours a day, so it was a natural stopping place for the engineer and his friend, Gene Burrus, in the early morning hours of Sept. 20. The two General Dynamics colleagues had spent the evening drinking a few beers and dancing under the disco ball at Club Diego’s in Solana Beach. Nakatani figured a hearty Mexican meal would make the perfect nightcap, Burrus recalled.

As usual, Alfonso’s was busy. The engineers found a spot on the patio, just under the “A” rating sign, and had nearly finished eating when two Latino men pulled up in a yellow Mustang, parked beside Nakatani’s burgundy-colored Toyota pickup and entered the restaurant.

When the men returned to their car, the driver opened his door and struck Nakatani’s truck, making a small scratch, witnesses said. Nakatani got to his feet and yelled “Watch it!” to the man, Burrus recalled. An argument ensued.

As the altercation progressed, Nakatani jumped over the low, wrought-iron fence surrounding the patio and stood in front of his truck. The car’s passenger reached into the Mustang, pulled out a .22-caliber handgun and fired half-a-dozen times at Nakatani.

Only one bullet hit the mark, striking the young man’s chest and ripping through his white polo shirt. It was enough. The assailant and his companion fled. Burrus dialed 911.

Seven people witnessed Nakatani’s death, or various stages of the confrontation. One man spotted the license plate of the Mustang. Detectives found the car parked near a flower stand on El Camino Real in Encinitas. Deputies staked it out and on Sept. 24 arrested Martinez, whom detectives said closely matched the description of the killer.

Initially, Martinez said he knew nothing of the deadly encounter at Alfonso’s. He told detectives he had lent the car that day to a man called Alfredo. Later, Martinez changed his story, admitting he had driven the car to the restaurant but insisting his companion had done the shooting and then left for Mexico.

Viewing a photo lineup, Burrus fingered Martinez as resembling the shooter. Another witness made a similar identification. Detectives believed they had their man. Martinez was booked, and the case was turned over to the district attorney.

Unimpressed with the tentative photo identification of Martinez and concerned about other elements of the investigation, prosecutors conducted a “live lineup” for the seven witnesses. This time, not a one could positively state that Martinez was the man who had shot Nakatani.

“It was so frustrating,” said Burrus, 22, who had recently taken a sailing class with Nakatani on Mission Bay. “I recognized the guy, but I didn’t know whether his face was familiar from the picture they’d shown me or from that night. I just couldn’t be sure.”

Consequently, Walden and George Beall, the deputy district attorney handling the case, decided they did not have the evidence they needed to prosecute Martinez. The suspect was held for 72 hours, the maximum allowable under state law, and then released at the border.

Soon after, Martinez returned to the United States in an effort to claim his car, the yellow Mustang. Sheriff’s deputies declined to release the vehicle. It is being held as evidence.

“To me that is the greatest irony,” Alexander Nakatani said. “They free the murder suspect but hold on to the car. It’s ridiculous.”

Prosecutors declined to discuss details of the case because it remains under investigation. But in a letter to the Nakatanis’ attorney, Steven Manchester, Miller rejects accusations that his office mishandled the case and blames sheriff’s detectives for bungling the initial investigation.

“Mr. Nakatani is apparently of the view that a sheriff’s investigation produced evidence sufficient for the filing of a criminal charge and that my office for some reason dropped the ball,” Miller wrote. “This is simply false on both counts. I can only surmise that Mr. Nakatani was given information by an investigating homicide detective which is incomplete, inaccurate and misleading.”

Specifically, Miller criticized detectives for failing to take “even the basic investigative step of conducting a live lineup” before submitting the case for prosecution. The officers provided “only grossly insufficient evidence” and failed, to fully investigate this matter,” Miller wrote, “preferring instead to blame my deputies for not issuing a murder case” merely because they so requested.

Walden, the chief prosecutor in North County, agreed in an interview last week.

“This is a tragic case, an unprovoked shooting that took an innocent man’s life,” Walden said. “But the detectives didn’t bring us anything. They had a person in jail that they felt did the shooting. We disagree. The bottom line is the detective simply failed to give us the information necessary to file a murder charge.”

When Martinez was first turned over to prosecutors, Walden said, the possibility of filing a lesser charge--like accessory to murder--seemed legally impossible.

“It wasn’t presented as an accessory case, it was presented as a murder,” Walden said. “You can’t take someone who might be the murderer and charge him with accessory. It wouldn’t fly.”

Moreover, if Martinez was convicted of being an accessory and new evidence later revealed him to be the killer, the District Attorney would be barred from charging him for the homicide under the “double jeopardy” rule, prosecutors said.

But evidence unearthed over the last several days by De la Rosa, the district attorney’s special investigator, cleared the way for charges to be filed against Martinez, Walden said Sunday.

The suspect, who is also from Oaxaca, was arrested again where he works as a gardener in Encinitas and booked into the County Jail in Vista. He was being held in lieu of $2,000 bail.

De la Rosa “located and talked to four witnesses that Martinez made statements to implicating himself in the crime,” Walden said. “These are people, illegal aliens, that the sheriffs did not find, did not even know about. They provide support for the suspect’s statement that he was present at the shooting.”

By “pounding the pavement up and down Highway 101, talking to illegals,” De la Rosa also was able to determine that it allegedly was Yescas who opened fire on Nakatani outside Alfonso’s taco shop.

“He bragged about it to some friends,” Walden said. “Word spread and (De la Rosa) heard about it. Now, all we’ve got to do is bag the guy.”

Sheriff’s detectives, meanwhile, would say little about the matter and were reluctant to respond to the district attorney’s criticisms. But they do believe their initial case against Martinez was a solid one.

“We had probable cause to believe, and we did believe that Mr. Martinez was involved in this (killing),” said sheriff’s Sgt. Dennis Hartman, who supervised the homicide investigation by detectives Craig Henderson and Roger Bohren. “We also have strong suspicions that he was the shooter. But the D.A. (initially) chose not to issue a criminal complaint, and they’re the attorneys.”

Normally, if prosecutors do not file charges in a case, investigators are informed and asked to develop new information or identify additional suspects. But in this instance, Hartman said he has yet to receive “any sort of case evaluation from the D.A.”

Despite Miller’s critical letter to the Nakatanis’ attorney, Hartman says prosecutors have yet to communicate any dissatisfaction with the investigation to him personally.

“I haven’t received anything from the D.A.,” Hartman said.

Walden said he had no need for further assistance from homicide detectives once he assigned De la Rosa to the case.

“They probably believe their investigation is still open,” Walden said. “Notwithstanding that, we took over the case, assigned our guy to it, and we’re going to follow through with it. As far as I know, they still haven’t even identified the killer.”

All of this “finger-pointing” disturbs Alexander Nakatani. The soft-spoken man, who spends his days counseling military veterans in nursing homes, believes “the politics and personality conflicts that seem to divide these two agencies” have jeopardized efforts to find and convict his son’s killer. Neither sheriff’s detectives nor prosecutors would comment on that issue.

Angry and exasperated, Nakatani sought help about a month ago from Congressman Mineta and Sen. Wilson. The inquiries turned up the heat, but aides for the legislators said they have little official influence on local law enforcement matters.

“Senator Wilson is very concerned, but technically this does not lie within our jurisdiction,” said Michele Patterson, Wilson’s director of constituent services. “However, we did place a call to the D.A.’s office and . . . were convinced they would do everything possible to see that Greg’s murderer was brought to justice.”

On Thursday, Nakatani, his wife, Jane, and one of their two remaining sons, Guy, met with Miller and shared their concerns. The meeting convinced the family that “The district attorney is now taking this case very seriously and is doing whatever he can to resolve it,” Alexander Nakatani said, adding that Miller asked him to keep much of the discussion confidential.

News of the latest developments in the case has left Alexander Nakatani with mixed emotions. There is joy because Martinez is in jail and the suspected killer has been identified. But there are lingering concerns as well.

“We’re obviously very pleased that Mr. Martinez is in jail,” Nakatani said Sunday. “But he should not have been released in the first place. And the man who killed my son is not behind bars yet.”

Moreover, Nakatani is convinced that his son’s murder would be all but forgotten had he not “made noise” after the initial release of Martinez.

“I have no doubt that if we had not taken the initiative to look into this matter, there would have been no progress on this case,” Nakatani said. “That is very troubling. And it makes me sad for other families of past victims who did not fight like we have for justice.”