Crime Beat

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.

WIFE KILLER
DAUGHTER SAYS FATHER, WIFE HE’S ACCUSED OF KILLING HAD ARGUED
    LOS ANGELES TIMES
    January 15, 1991
    M ICHAEL 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. 2 after Los Angeles police unearthed a body, later identified as Deborah Hardy, in the backyard of the former Hardy home in the 20600 block of Sherman Way.
    Police were acting on a tip from the suspect’s 25-year-old 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 1977 profile 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 1985 to keep her husband away from her, claiming he had broken seven of her ribs, damaged her spleen and beaten her daughter.
TRIAL ORDERED FOR MAN ACCUSED OF KILLING WIFE, BURYING HER IN YARD
    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.
    After police unearthed her body last year behind their former Sherman Way home and arrested him, Hardy told investigators that they had been arguing on Thanksgiving Day 1985 when she grabbed a gun and fired into the floor, Detective Phil Quartararo testified.
    In a tape-recorded interview, Hardy said he then pushed her and she struck her head, the detective testified.
    “He said he slapped the gun away,” Quartararo testified. “He said he pushed her away