Crime Beat

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 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 Airport 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