Crime Beat

by Michael Connelly

  The 39-year-old Minnesota man pleaded not guilty last week to a charge he strangled a Cal State Northridge staff member nine years ago. Charges of robbery and rape in the case were dismissed because the statute of limitations for those crimes had expired.

  Lundh appears bright and educated and can seemingly quote case law like an attorney. In fact, he has chosen to defend himself against the charges, although he said he quit Harvard Law School before getting a degree. He is soft-spoken and reserved. He has a young wife and friends who share his astonishment and outrage at the murder charge against him.

  But authorities say it is the picture of Lundh as an innocent victim of the justice system that is fiction. They contend that he is a skilled con artist and killer who fabricates much of what he says about his life and hides the rest.

  “There is no doubt that he is very bright,” Los Angeles Police Detective Larry Bird said. “But I don’t know whether I would believe anything he said. . . . He is a con man.”

  Police and prosecutors said that beneath Lundh’s calm, articulate demeanor is a dangerous man who stalked women. It is a characterization that Lundh, who is being held without bail, said he finds as aggravating as his loss of freedom.

  “I am not some mad dog cruising the streets, looking to prey on women,” he said during a recent interview. “Anybody who would do that to a woman should be put away.

  “But it’s not me. I am innocent!”

  Lundh is accused of murdering Patty Lynne Cohen on April 27, 1982, in a case that received wide attention in Los Angeles.

  Cohen, 40, an assistant to the dean of CSUN’s School of Arts, was abducted from the garage of a Holiday Inn in Burbank, where she had attended a self-improvement seminar. Her nude body was found in the trunk of her car in a North Hollywood alley five days later.

  Lundh, who according to court records has nine aliases and records of arrests for nonviolent crimes in at least five states, became a suspect less than two weeks after the slaying. He was later convicted of assaulting another woman outside the hotel just minutes before Cohen disappeared.

  But he was never charged with the Cohen murder until last year—after police reopened the dormant investigation and said they found new evidence linking him to the case.

  By then, Lundh had moved back to his native St. Paul. He was extradited to Los Angeles last month from a Minnesota prison where he was serving a sentence for grand theft in a case in which he used several thousand dollars of an unsuspecting woman’s money to buy a car, authorities said.

  In interviews and court records, Lundh has given different accounts of his background.

  In 1983, according to records, he told a probation officer that he had attended Harvard Law School for a year before dropping out for financial reasons. He said he also attended six other universities, including Princeton.

  Lundh told the probation officer that he made his living providing cars for film sets but also was an agent for several top entertainers. The officer concluded: “This defendant is viewed as a very sophisticated manipulator and con artist who uses his intelligence to defraud the public.”

  In a recent interview, Lundh added a year to his law school experience but said he left Harvard after two years because he was recruited to play defensive end with the Los Angeles Express, a now defunct professional football team.

  “I wanted to attend law school but once I got there, my interests changed,” he said.

  Lundh said he was recruited by Express coaches because he had played defensive end for UCLA, from which he said he graduated in 1974. In addition to UCLA, Lundh said, “I did some time at the University of Hawaii.”

  But efforts to verify Lundh’s claims were unsuccessful.

  “We have no record of that person ever registering or attending the law school,” Harvard spokeswoman Mary Ann Spartichino said.

  Officials at UCLA and Hawaii also said they could not find any records indicating that Lundh attended those schools.

  A media guide listing former UCLA football players did not include Lundh’s name. And the Express lasted only a few seasons after beginning in 1982, a period during which Lundh spent most of his time in jails and prison.

  When told that any discrepancies in the biography he furnished might be published, Lundh said his background was not important. “If you want to look for inconsistencies, look at the evidence in my case,” he said.

  Lundh said he is the victim of a police vendetta, that he was wrongly convicted of the 1982 assault at the Burbank hotel and is now a scapegoat for an unsuccessful investigation into Cohen’s slaying.

  “Why they singled me out, I don’t know,” Lundh said. “I was not in Burbank that evening and they know that. If there was a shred of evidence against me, they would have charged me in 1982, but they had the wrong man. It’s not that they had insufficient evidence; they had no evidence.

  “This has continued to disrupt my life for nine years,” he added. “I’ve had my fill of justice.”

  But Bird, an investigator on the case since its start, said the evidence against Lundh has always been substantial. He said it was only with the reopening of the case and the gathering of additional evidence that prosecutors decided to file charges.

  “It was a strong case,” he said. “It’s much stronger now.”

  Bird and the Los Angeles County prosecutor assigned to the case, Deputy Dist. Atty. Phillip H. Rabichow, have refused to disclose what additional evidence against Lundh was found.

  But Lundh, who has access to legal documents on his case because he has acted as his own attorney, said an extradition warrant he studied stated that investigators had a witness who positively identified Lundh as a man seen driving Cohen’s Mustang the night of her death.

  Lundh scoffs at such evidence, saying it will be unbelievable to a jury hearing the witness nine years after the slaying.

  “There is no possibility that someone is going to believe that somebody can remember something like that nine years later,” he said.

  According to police and court records, this is what happened April 27, 1982:

  Cohen had gone to the Holiday Inn to attend a self-help seminar with about 100 others. When the meeting ended about 10:30 p.m., Ruth Kilday, another woman who had attended, saw a man standing in the hallway outside the seminar room. She said the man followed her to the parking lot, where he approached her with a knife as she was opening her car door.

  Kilday was able to jump in the car and begin honking its horn to signal that she needed help. The man ran and she started her car and attempted to follow. But the man ran into the hotel’s underground parking garage and Kilday gave up the pursuit.

  Authorities said Cohen had parked in the garage and they believe that when she returned to her car, she encountered the man who ran from Kilday.

  “I think he stalked her like he stalked the other victim,” Rabichow said.

  Cohen was reported missing the next day. Her car, with her body in the trunk, was not found until a North Hollywood resident saw it in an alley and recognized it from media reports about the woman’s disappearance. Meanwhile, police had issued a drawing of the suspect made with the help of Kilday.

  A week later, Lundh was arrested in North Hollywood when a police officer saw him in a stolen Corvette. Lundh gave the name John Robert Baker, and he immediately became a suspect in the Cohen and Kilday cases because of his likeness to the drawing of the suspect.

  Although Police Chief Daryl F. Gates labeled Baker/ Lundh “a very likely suspect” at the time, prosecutors charged Lundh only with the auto theft and the assault on Kilday because there was insufficient evidence linking him to Cohen.

  After his arrest, Lundh claimed that he was at a West Los Angeles gas station at 11 p.m. the night of the attack on Kilday, making it impossible for him to have been in Burbank. But during a 1983 trial, he was identified by Kilday as her attacker and convicted of assault with a deadly weapon and auto theft. He was sentenced to four years in prison and released in 1986.

>   The Cohen murder case languished until a chance occurrence in 1990. A detective working on another murder case ran a routine check on the department’s HITMAN—for Homicide Information Tracking Management Automation Network—computer looking for similar slayings.

  Bird said the computer, which contains information on all Los Angeles homicides in the last decade, printed out the Cohen case in reply. Prosecutors then discussed the Cohen case with Bird but decided that it was not related to the case the other detective was investigating.

  However, after reviewing the Cohen case, the prosecutors told Bird that there was nearly enough evidence to file charges against Lundh and urged that the case be reopened and the investigative ground covered again.

  Bird said he located Lundh in St. Paul, where he had recently been paroled from prison for grand theft. Bird said he interviewed Lundh there, then returned to Los Angeles and began gathering new evidence.

  In early 1990, Lundh was arrested in Colorado for violating his parole by leaving Minnesota and was returned to prison. Lundh said he left the state to get married and go on a honeymoon. Police believe that he left because he knew that the Cohen case had been reopened.

  He was charged May 31, 1990, with Cohen’s murder and returned to Los Angeles in January. The trip back took a week because detectives had to drive him after he cited a fear of flying and refused to go on a plane.

  He now awaits arraignment but that may be delayed because Lundh said he has not had enough time to prepare for the hearing.

  Lundh’s wife, Gale, who has moved to Los Angeles, is convinced her husband of 1 1/2 years is not a con man or a killer.

  “They have the wrong man,” she 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 Bank in Beverly Hills, was found buried in Malibu Canyon in early February, about 10 months after his slaying.

  According to Meier and authorities, Toru Sakai carried out the killing because his parents were embroiled in a bitter divorce and he feared that he and his mother, with whom he lived in the family’s Tarzana home, would face financial difficulties.

  “He told me, basically, that he hated his father and he didn’t know what else to do,” Meier said.

  Discussed the Slaying

  Meier said that on three occasions in early 1987 he and Toru Sakai discussed the killing. But Meier said he wanted no part of the plan. Meier said he finally agreed to help his friend in early April 1987, when Toru said he had paid another friend $1,000 to do the job but the friend failed to follow through.

  “I didn’t volunteer,” Meier said. “He persuaded me. He told me he would help me out when I needed him.”

  Meier said the plan was to lure Takashi Sakai to the empty Beverly Hills home at 718 Crescent Drive that Sanae Sakai was managing for a Japanese investor. Once there, Sakai would be kidnapped and taken to Malibu Canyon and then killed and buried, he testified.

  In early April, the two friends dug a grave in a secluded spot off Malibu Canyon Road, Meier testified. Then on April 20, Meier said he went to the Beverly Hills home and waited while Toru met his father at a nearby hotel to ask the elder Sakai to come with him to the home.

  When he arrived at the house, Takashi Sakai was attacked, subdued after a struggle at the front door and then thrown down the basement stairs, Meier said.

  “He was moaning and yelling for help at the bottom of the stairs,” Meier said.

  Change in Plan

  After that, Toru Sakai decided to change the plan and carry out the killing in the basement, Meier said.

  “He brought out a knife and asked
me to go down and finish off his father,” Meier said.

  Meier said he refused and then watched Toru take the knife down to the basement. When Meier later went down, he saw the older Sakai had been stabbed to death. He said the body was then wrapped in trash bags, rolled in the blood-soaked rug from the house’s entrance hall and loaded into Toru’s Porsche. The two then took the body to Malibu Canyon for burial, Meier said.

  Meier said he and Toru spent the next two days getting rid of evidence. He said they dropped Takashi Sakai’s car at Los Angeles International Airport, took the murder weapon and the piece of carpet from the entrance hall of the Beverly Hills house to a landfill in Glendale and painted over blood-spattered walls in the house.

  “We put several coats in the basement,” he said.

  Meier testified that he later received $1,400 from Toru Sakai for his part in the killing.

  A carpet salesman and an installer also testified Monday that two days after the killing, Sanae Sakai had purchased carpet and had it installed in the entrance of the Beverly Hills house. The witnesses said the new carpet was a small piece that closely matched the color of the surrounding carpet in the house.

  Deputy Dist. Atty. Lonnie A. Felker said Sanae Sakai’s quick replacement of the rug was part of the evidence that showed she knew of the killing and was aiding her son. Sanae Sakai has denied she had anything to do with her husband’s killing.

  MURDER CASE

  Tough choices in deal for crucial testimony.

  June 1, 1988

  Police were able to break open the Takashi Sakai murder case because one of the men who took part in the killing made a mistake: He left a fingerprint on a parking lot ticket when he left the dead man’s car at Los Angeles International Airport.

  But the man who left the fingerprint, 21-year-old Greg Meier, will not face a day in jail for his role in the murder, although he admitted that he helped ambush the wealthy Japanese businessman, club him with a steel pipe and bury the body after Sakai had been stabbed to death.