Crime Beat

said. “But in this system, it’s not really innocent until proven guilty. It’s guilty until proven innocent. The sad part is that the person who really did this is still out there.”
    NOTE: Lundh was tried twice for the murder of Patty Lynne Cohen. He represented himself in both trials. After the first trial ended with a deadlocked jury, he was tried again and found guilty of first-degree murder. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

AMERICA’S MOST WANTED
TARZANA MAN HELD IN MURDER OF HIS MISSING FATHER
    LOS ANGELES TIMES
    December 4, 1987
    A 21-YEAR-OLD Tarzana man was arrested Thursday on suspicion of murdering his father, a wealthy Japanese businessman who has been missing for seven months, Los Angeles police said.
    Toru Sakai was being held without bail in the North Hollywood Division jail, Lt. Dan Cooke said.
    Sakai’s father, Takashi (Glenn) Sakai, 54, has not been seen since the day before he was reported missing April 21.
    “Based on evidence we have obtained, we believe he was killed,” Cooke said.
    Police declined to disclose what evidence either indicates that the man is dead or links his son to the killing.
    Toru Sakai was arrested when police officers conducted a search of family financial records at the Braewood Drive home he shares with his mother, Sanae Sakai.
    Police said the suspect’s parents had been estranged for about three years. The couple were in a legal battle over their finances and impending divorce at the time Takashi Sakai disappeared.
    Sanae Sakai, 50, who operates a real-estate business out of the hillside home, was also arrested during the 7:15 a.m. search, but “during the all-day investigation, the investigators felt she should be released,” Cooke said. He refused to elaborate.
    Police said Takashi Sakai, founder of the Pacific Partners investment firm in Beverly Hills and a consultant to many other investment firms, was last seen leaving his office April 20.
    Police declined to say where he was living at the time. He was reported missing the next day by a girlfriend.
    Three days later, his car was found at Los Angeles International Airport, but authorities found no record of his having taken a flight.
    Cooke said detectives then began gathering evidence of foul play.
    Robert Brasch, president of World Trade Bank, of which Pacific Partners is a subsidiary, said Thursday that Takashi Sakai was a well-respected businessman and entrepreneur who had been involved in helping Japanese companies invest in businesses in the United States.
    NOTE: After three days in jail Toru Sakai was released from jail when police and prosecutors determined they did not have enough evidence at that point to hold him on a murder charge. He then disappeared.
SAKAI FOUGHT KILLERS
    May 24, 1988
    Toru Sakai planned the murder of his father for three months, but from the moment the victim was lured inside a Beverly Hills mansion, things started going wrong, a man who said he helped Sakai with the killing testified Monday in Los Angeles Superior Court.
    Takashi (Glenn) Sakai, 54, a wealthy international businessman who lived in Tarzana, was killed inside the home but not before a bloody and unexpected fight in which he almost was able to escape, Gregory Meier testified.
    “I was behind the door,” Meier said. “He took a couple of steps in, and I came up behind him. 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. He ran for the door.
    “I helped Toru bring him back inside,” Meier said. “We kept trying to knock him out.”
    It was only after the elder Sakai had been struck repeatedly with a steel bar and handcuffed that his son stabbed him to death in the house’s basement, Meier testified.
    Meier, 21, a friend of Toru Sakai’s since they were members of the same high school tennis team, has been granted immunity in the case.
    Sakai, also 21, has been charged with murder but is still being sought by authorities. His mother, Sanae Sakai, 51, has been charged with being an accessory to murder after the fact.
    Meier revealed the details of the April 20, 1987, slaying during a preliminary hearing on the charge against Sanae Sakai. After Meier and other witnesses testified, she was ordered by Judge David M. Horwitz to stand trial in the case.
    The body of Takashi Sakai, founder of Pacific Partners, an affiliate of the World Trade