Murder Case: Tough Choices in Deal for Crucial Testimony

Police were able to break open the Takashi Sakai murder case because one of the men who took part in the killing made a mistake: He left a fingerprint on a parking lot ticket when he left the dead man’s car at Los Angeles International Airport.

But the man who left the fingerprint, 21-year-old Greg Meier, will not face a day in jail for his role in the murder, although he admitted that he helped ambush the wealthy Japanese businessman, club him with a steel pipe and bury the body after Sakai had been stabbed to death.

Using the fingerprint as the key piece of evidence gathered in a 10-month investigation of Sakai’s disappearance, authorities in February persuaded Meier to tell what happened to the missing Tarzana man and lead them to his body.

In exchange for that help and for agreeing to testify about the murder, Meier was granted immunity from prosecution. He is now expected to be the key witness in the prosecution of his best friend, Toru Sakai, 21, who is charged with murder and conspiracy in the fatal stabbing of his father.

Meier is also expected to play an important role as a witness in the prosecution of the dead man’s widow, Sanae Sakai, who is charged with being an accessory to murder.

The granting of immunity to Meier points out the frustrations authorities faced in solving what they called an almost-perfect crime.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Lonnie A. Felker, who will prosecute the Sakais, is not happy that Meier will avoid prosecution but said there was little choice. Evidence gathered against Meier might not have been sufficient to convict him of participating in the murder, Felker said, but the information he provided after receiving immunity was critical in bringing charges against the man believed to be the actual killer, Toru Sakai.

“Unfortunately, we had to let someone go without any jail time,” Felker said. “There was nothing else we could do.

“It was a choice between everybody going free and seeing just one go free. We didn’t want the person who actually inflicted the fatal blows to Takashi Sakai to walk away. Toru was the one we wanted.”

But the prosecution of Toru Sakai will have to wait until he is found by police. His whereabouts have been unknown since he fled from the family home in Tarzana while Meier was cooperating with authorities. Meanwhile, his mother has pleaded innocent in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Takashi (Glenn) Sakai, 54, a founder of Pacific Partners, an affiliate of World Trade Bank in Beverly Hills, disappeared April 20, 1987. Police from the outset believed he was the victim of foul play. They said it was hard to believe Sakai would leave behind a successful career as an adviser to Japanese businesses seeking to invest in the United States.

Investigators soon learned that Sakai was in the midst of a divorce and that there were bitter feelings with his son and 51-year-old wife, a one-time Japanese beauty contest winner and a descendant of one of the top five families of Japan’s pre-1945 nobility.

Two days after the disappearance, Sakai’s Mercedes-Benz was found parked at Los Angeles International Airport. Police found no signs that he had taken a flight from the airport and only one clue to what happened to him: the fingerprint on the airport parking ticket stub that had been left in the car.

During the next several months, the investigation moved slowly. Sakai’s body had not been found, and police found no match for the fingerprint.

Then, in November, the operator of a private mailbox company in Hollywood where Takashi Sakai had kept a box told Los Angeles police that a young man had come in, presented the key and requested access to it. The man left when he was turned down because he was not Sakai, but the business operator wrote down the license plate number of the car he was driving.

Detectives Jerry LeFrois and Jay Rush traced the car to Greg Meier of San Marino.

Close Friends

According to authorities, Meier and Toru Sakai were close friends who had met at San Marino High School when they played tennis together. Both were known as quiet youths who did not participate in many school activities. Tennis and a shared interest in becoming musicians made the basis of their friendship.

Beneath his senior photo in the 1983 Titanian yearbook, Toru Sakai skipped the inspirational messages most students chose and placed a bleakly pessimistic quote attributed to Mick Jagger:

“There’ve been good times; there’ve been bad times; I’ve had my share of hard times too, but I lost my faith in the world. . . .”

Beneath Meier’s photo, the caption he chose read, “If you don’t get life, life will get you.”

The friendship lasted well after high school and the Sakai family’s move from San Marino to Tarzana. The two briefly attended UCLA together and later worked occasionally doing renovation and maintenance work on homes that Sanae Sakai managed for Japanese investors.

After tracing the license number to Meier, investigators asked him to come to police headquarters to answer questions and be fingerprinted. Meier complied and was released. There was not enough evidence to charge him with a crime.

Print Matches

By early February, however, police had matched one of Meier’s fingerprints to the print on the parking stub.

Investigators took Meier into custody on Feb. 9, this time telling him that the fingerprint and other evidence added up to probable cause to charge him, Felker said.

“We confronted him,” the prosecutor recalled. “He indicated he might be able to help us.”

Meier consulted an attorney and then offered to tell what happened in exchange for immunity. Felker said that with no body, no crime scene, no motive for Meier to kill Sakai and little other evidence beyond the fingerprint, authorities had no choice.

“We concurred--it was the only way to go,” said Lt. Ron Lewis, who supervised the Los Angeles police investigation of the case. “I can’t imagine that any law enforcement officer would be too happy about an individual being allowed to walk away, but you have to take in the the total picture. Certainly it bothers me, but it was our only option.”

Before granting immunity, Felker said, authorities determined through investigation and discussions with Meier and his attorney that Meier had not been the one who stabbed Takashi Sakai to death.

Official Reasoning

“We assured ourselves that he was not the actual killer, and we assured ourselves that he did not initiate the thought of the killing,” Felker said. “We gave him immunity because he was not the person who inflicted the fatal injuries.”

The day after immunity was granted, Meier led a team of investigators to Malibu Canyon and pointed out the spot where Takashi Sakai had been buried 10 months earlier. He also provided details of the murder that had frustrated investigators for just as long.

Those details were revealed publicly for the first time last week when Meier testified at Sanae Sakai’s preliminary hearing. His audience included more than two dozen Japanese journalists, there because the standing of the Sakai family and the alleged patricide, a rarity in Japan, have drawn the interest of the Japanese community here and across the Pacific.

Speaking calmly, but often exhaling nervously into the microphone, Meier said that Toru Sakai talked on and off of wanting to kill his father for three months in early 1987. He said the talks often occurred while the two friends cruised in Toru’s Porsche over the Santa Monica Mountains or dined and drank in Westwood restaurants near UCLA.

Bitter Divorce

According to Meier and authorities, Toru Sakai wanted to kill his father because his parents were embroiled in a bitter divorce and he feared that he and his mother would face financial difficulties.

“He told me, basically, that he hated his father, and he didn’t know what else to do,” Meier testified.

On April 20, 1987, according to Meier, Toru lured his father to a vacant home in Beverly Hills that Sanae Sakai managed for an investor. Meier said he was standing behind the front door with a steel pipe in his hand when the older Sakai walked in.

“He took a couple steps in, and I came up behind him,” Meier said. “I was successful in hitting him in the neck, but he didn’t go down. For some reason, I thought I would be able to knock him out--like in the movies. But it doesn’t work that way.”

There was a bloody struggle and Takashi Sakai was struck several more times by his son and Meier before being subdued, handcuffed and pushed down the basement stairs, prosecutors said.

“He was moaning and yelling for help at the bottom of the stairs,” said Meier, who testified that Toru Sakai then asked him to kill his father.

“He went over to a bag and pulled out a big knife,” Meier said. “He asked me to go down and finish him off.”

Buried Body

Meier said he refused, so Toru Sakai went down and killed the elder Sakai. The two friends then wrapped the body in a rug, Meier testified, and loaded it into Toru’s Porsche. They drove to Malibu Canyon, he said, and buried the body before returning to the Beverly Hills house the next day to get rid of evidence and paint over the blood-spattered walls.

Meier told investigators that when he drove the dead man’s car to Los Angeles International the day after the murder, he wore gloves so that there would be no fingerprints left in the car. But when he had to reach out the window to take the parking stub, he took the gloves off so that he would not look suspicious. After he got the stub, he put the gloves back on and rubbed the stub to erase any fingerprints, he said.

“But the oil from one of his fingers had already been absorbed into the paper,” Felker said. “The print stayed there. It was the one thing” that connected him with Takashi Sakai’s disappearance.

Several months later, when Meier confessed his role in the murder to authorities, he added one other grim detail to an already gruesome case, Felker said.

Meier told investigators that he and Toru Sakai returned to Malibu Canyon about two months after the murder and partially dug up Takashi Sakai’s body. Toru Sakai used a pair of shears to cut a finger off the body so he could remove a gold ring. Then the body was reburied.

A year later, Felker said, the case has placed authorities in the uncomfortable situation of having to choose for whom justice would be served.

“Our only concern is that at the end of this thing that justice is done for as many people as possible,” Felker said. “On a professional level, I do not feel badly about it because I am doing what needs to be done to make sure justice is done.

“On a personal level, I feel badly that everyone that is involved cannot be prosecuted. It is a terrible thing to see some person who is involved just walk away.”

Although Meier faces no criminal charges in the Sakai case, he does face his own guilt, the prosecutor noted.

“I don’t really know how to judge how much he feels remorse,” Felker said. “I know he feels badly about it. He has told me about it several times. The murder wasn’t reality to him until it happened. He was so deeply involved then that he had to stay involved.”

Meier could not be reached for comment. But during his testimony last week, he momentarily faltered while being questioned about the murder.

“This is tough,” he said. “It’s tough, emotionally.”