However, two months later, after police had matched Meier’s fingerprint to the LAX ticket stub, Meier agreed to cooperate in exchange for immunity. He said Glenn Sakai was stabbed to death by his son after being lured to an unoccupied Beverly Hills mansion, which was managed for its absentee owner by Sanae Sakai. Meier, who said he took part in the attack but did not inflict the fatal wounds, led police to the executive’s grave in Malibu Canyon.

On Feb. 10, 1988, police once again went to the Sakai house to arrest Toru, but he was gone. They arrested Sanae Sakai, and she was charged as an accessory to murder after the fact. Authorities said she helped her son cover up the crime.

The charge against Sanae Sakai was dropped, and she has repeatedly denied any knowledge of the crime or of her son’s whereabouts.

The only trace of Toru Sakai police believe may be credible was an anonymous call in early 1988 from a woman who knew unpublished details about the Sakai family and the case and told investigators that Toru had left the country by crossing the Canadian border to Vancouver.

But authorities say that if the suspect did leave the country, it was without his passport, which had been confiscated when he was arrested in 1987. Still, authorities believe Sakai might have been able to get to Japan from Vancouver. Clues phoned to detectives from the Japanese community in Los Angeles as recently as a month ago place the fugitive in Japan, Le Frois said. “We assume he could have gotten a passport and gotten to Japan,” the detective said.

Toru Sakai was born in Japan, but he left with his family for California when he was 1 year old. Investigators said he spoke Japanese poorly and as a teen-ager had had plastic surgery to westernize his eyes – factors that might make him noticeable in Japan.

However, there has never been a confirmed sighting of Sakai in Japan or anywhere else, authorities said. The lack of viable clues to his whereabouts is unusual. Investigators say fugitives often are tracked by their mistakes; using credit cards or passports, telephone records, giving a real Social Security number or leaving fingerprints while using false names.

“Usually there is some kind of a trail,” said Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Atty. Lonnie A. Felker, who filed the murder charge against Toru Sakai. “But on this one there is no trail. Japan is a possibility. But so is Canada. He could still be here. We don’t know.”

Detectives went to Tokyo and provided law enforcement officials with details of the case, which was highly publicized there because of the stature of the Sakai family and rarity of patricide in Japan.

Investigators also went to Washington to take telephone calls from tipsters after details of the case, photos of Toru Sakai and mention of his love for tennis and his use of the name Chris were aired twice on the television show America’s Most Wanted. The exposure from the program, which was also translated and televised in Japan, brought hundreds of tips. They led to at least nine different states and Japan, but none led to the real Toru Sakai.

A tip that came from Palm Springs seemed the most promising. The caller said an Asian man was living in a secluded condominium in the desert community. The man went by the name Chris, didn’t seem to work and often played tennis at the complex.

“Everything fit,” Le Frois said. Photos were sent to Palm Springs police, who checked out the tip. The report back was that there was a very close resemblance. It could be Toru Sakai.

Palm Springs police moved in and detained the man after pulling him out of a condominium swimming pool. In the meantime, Rush and Le Frois headed to Palm Springs with a copy of their suspect’s fingerprints. They knew as soon as they got there they had the wrong man. The man pulled from the pool was too tall. Then the fingerprint check confirmed he wasn’t Toru Sakai.

“It’s just cold,” Le Frois said of their suspect’s trail.

Authorities say the search for Toru Sakai remains active and that the detectives meet regularly with Felker, the deputy district attorney, to update the status of the case. But for the most part, they acknowledge that they are still waiting for the call that leads them to the suspected killer, or for him to make a mistake.

“He could make a mistake,” Rush said. “He could get arrested for something else and a fingerprint could be taken.…

“He is out there somewhere,” the detective added wistfully. “And he is probably looking over his shoulder… He better be looking over his shoulder for me.”

note: Toru Sakai has never been captured. His whereabouts remain unknown.

DAUGHTER SAYS FATHER, WIFE HE’S ACCUSED OF KILLING HAD ARGUED

LOS ANGELES TIMES

January 15, 1991

Michael J. Hardy, accused of murdering his wife and burying her body in his backyard five years ago, argued with the victim for hours the day she disappeared, the defendant’s daughter testified in Van Nuys Municipal Court on Monday.

Cheryl Hardy also said she saw that her stepmother, Deborah Hardy, had been temporarily knocked unconscious during the argument at the couple’s Canoga Park home on Thanksgiving Day 1985.

Her testimony came during a preliminary hearing on the murder charge against Michael Hardy, 46, who has pleaded not guilty.

Hardy, now of La Jolla, was arrested Nov. 2after Los Angeles police unearthed a body, later identified as Deborah Hardy, in the backyard of the former Hardy home in the 20600block of Sherman Way.

Police were acting on a tip from the suspect’s 25-yearold son, Robert, who told investigators that his father enlisted him to help bury his stepmother after the elder Hardy had killed her by striking her with a flashlight.

Police said the son, a California prison inmate, told them that he had been bothered by the crime for years. He does not face charges.

Michael Hardy, an unemployed actor, was described as a mob hit man in an appearance on the TV show Geraldo and in a 1977profile in New York magazine. Los Angeles police said they have no evidence linking him to other killings.

In court Monday, Judith Samuel, executive director of the Haven Hills shelter for battered women, said that on the day before Thanksgiving 1985, Deborah Hardy came to the shelter, saying she and her daughter, Cheryl, had been beaten by her husband. Samuel said they left after being told that authorities would be contacted.

Cheryl Hardy, now of San Diego, testified that on Thanksgiving Day, she emerged from her room to find her stepmother unconscious on the floor.

Cheryl Hardy said her stepmother later regained consciousness but the next day was gone. When she asked her father what happened, “he said that she had left,” Cheryl Hardy testified.

Michael Hardy, held without bail in Van Nuys Jail, has three prior felony convictions for assault with a deadly weapon, child stealing and assault on a police officer with a firearm.

According to court records, Deborah Hardy sought a restraining order in 1985to keep her husband away from her, claiming he had broken seven of her ribs, damaged her spleen and beaten her daughter.

January 16, 1991

A La Jolla man was ordered Tuesday to stand trial on charges he murdered his wife five years ago and buried her in the backyard of their former home in Canoga Park.

Michael J. Hardy will stand trial in the death of his wife, Deborah L. Hardy, after a Los Angeles police detective testified at a preliminary hearing in Van Nuys Municipal Court that Hardy had admitted to police that his wife suffered a fatal head injury when he pushed her during an argument.