police had 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 Le Frois 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 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