Crime Beat: A Decade of Covering Cops and Killers

by Michael Connelly

  Palm Springs police moved in and detained the man after pulling him out of a condominium swimming pool. In the meantime, Rush and Le Frois headed 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

  MICHAEL 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 and she became unconscious” after hitting her head against a wall or table.

  Hardy, 46, told police his wife died hours later without regaining consciousness and he asked his son, Robert, to help bury the body, the detective said.

  Quartararo said that in a second interview with police, Hardy changed details of the story, saying that his wife fired the gun into the ceiling.

  The Hardy family later moved from Canoga Park to La Jolla. The body was not discovered until Nov. 2, 1990, when Robert Hardy, now 25 and an inmate in a California prison, told police about the burial.

  The son told investigators that his father had told him he killed Deborah Hardy by hitting her with a flashlight, Quartararo said.

  In earlier testimony, Hardy’s 22-year-old daughter, Cheryl Hardy, testified that her stepmother had fired a shot into the ceiling about a week before the Thanksgiving Day argument.

  Deputy Dist. Atty. Marsh M. Goldstein told Municipal Judge Robert L. Swasey that the evidence indicated Deborah Hardy did not threaten her husband with a gun at the time she was killed.

  At the conclusion of testimony, Hardy’s attorney, Randall Megee, failed to persuade Swasey to dismiss the murder charge or reduce it to manslaughter.

  Hardy is an unemployed actor who was described as a mob hit man during an appearance last year on the television show Geraldo and in a 1977 profile in New York magazine. Los Angeles police said they have found no evidence linking him to other killings.

  SELF-PROMOTING ‘CONTRACT KILLER’ ENTERS PLEA TO KILLING WIFE IN ’85

  August 17, 1991

  A La Jolla man who fostered what police called an unfounded media reputation as a mob “hit man” pleaded no contest Friday to a charge that he killed his wife six years ago during a Thanksgiving Day argument and buried her in the backyard of their former Canoga Park home.

  Michael J. Hardy, 46, entered the plea—equivalent to a guilty plea under California criminal law—in Van Nuys Superior Court to a charge of voluntary manslaughter in the 1985 death of his wife, Deborah L. Hardy, 31.

  The victim’s remains were uncovered behind a house on Sherman Way last year when Michael Hardy’s 25-year-old son, Robert, who is serving a prison term for burglary, told police about the killing and provided a map detailing where he had helped his father bury the body.

  Hardy was characterized in a 1977 New York magazine article and more recently on the Geraldo television show as an organized-crime hit man who had killed 14 people. Police have said, however, that although Hardy has a lengthy criminal record, they don’t believe he was ever a mob hit man.

  Hardy faces up to 11 years in prison when sentenced next month by Judge Judith M. Ashmann. Hardy, who had been charged with murder, could have been sentenced to 42 years if his case went to trial and he was convicted, so he decided to plead no contest to the lesser charge, said his attorney, James E. Blatt.

  “He didn’t want to take the chance of going to prison for the rest of his life,” Blatt said.

  Exactly how Deborah Hardy was killed on Thanksgiving Day 1985 may never be known because autopsy results were inconclusive and Hardy himself is the only witness to the death, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Marsh Goldstein, who handled the case.

  Robert Hardy, who said he helped bury the body but did not see the slaying, told police that his father admitted to him that he killed his wife with a blow from a flashlight.

  But after his
arrest, the elder Hardy claimed in statements to police that his wife was fatally injured when he pushed her as she threatened him with a gun.

  Because of those inconsistencies and the couple’s record of violent fights resulting in police reports, the prosecution agreed to a manslaughter plea, Goldstein said.

  “While there are overtones of murder, the essence of this case is that they had a long history of problems and he hit her too hard, and that is manslaughter,” Goldstein said.

  Blatt said that even if Hardy receives the maximum 11-year sentence, he could be released from prison in five years with time off for good conduct and the year he has already been in jail.

  Hardy had three prior felony convictions for assault with a deadly weapon, child stealing and assault on a police officer with a firearm.

  In a 1977 profile in New York magazine, Hardy boasted of having committed 800 car thefts and 250 robberies and having connections to organized crime. The article also indicated that he was involved in 14 contract slayings. Last year, Hardy appeared in disguise on Geraldo Rivera’s syndicated television show during a segment on purported hit men. He declined to confirm or deny his involvement in the slayings when Rivera questioned him.

  “I’m not going to sit here on national TV and confess to murders because, you know, you really aren’t paying me enough for that,” said Hardy, who used the name Michael Hardin on the program.

  Authorities said they found no indications that Hardy was actually a contract killer.

  “I think he’s a blowhard,” Goldstein said. “He has lived a long and violent life, but no hit man worth his salt goes around talking about it.”

  THE GANG THAT COULDN’T SHOOT STRAIGHT

  THE MAIL-ORDER MURDERS

  SOUTH FLORIDA SUN-SENTINEL

  October 4, 1987

  IT WOULD HAVE BEEN comical if it hadn’t been so deadly, if lives hadn’t been mercilessly ended or, at the very least, haunted by terror. They were called the gang that couldn’t shoot straight, yet they were a gang that had so many shots, they were bound to hit their targets sometimes, and people were bound to die.

  For months they tried to kill Doug Norwood, but whether they came at him with machine guns or bombs or stun guns, they always managed to screw up. The same thing with Dana Free. Three times they missed. And when it came time to kill Victoria Barshear, well, the gang just decided she was too pretty to die.

  Those were some of the gaffes that made them laughable. But there was nothing laughable about what happened to Richard Braun and Anita Spearman. They killed Braun, though it took two tries, in the front yard of his home. It took only one visit from the gang and Anita Spearman was left dead in her bed.

  They were want-ad killers, a gang of losers, social outcasts and law enforcement washouts headed by a man with the seemingly appropriate name of Richard Savage. They picked their targets from West Palm Beach to St. Paul, their clients from the Atlantic to the Rockies.

  It was nothing personal. In a sleazy Tennessee bar where strippers danced, the gang plotted the deaths of people they had never even seen: Anita Spearman, the well-known and well-liked assistant city manager in West Palm Beach; Doug Norwood, a law student in Arkansas; Dana Free, a contractor in Georgia. And others, many others.

  THEY PICTURED THEMSELVES as guns for hire. One day barroom bouncers, the next day cross-country contract killers. No job too big or too small. One member helped a man put a bomb on a plane loaded with 154 people. One shot down a man in his driveway while his son watched in horror. Another threw grenades into a home where a 14-year-old and his mother were sleeping.

  Their crimes were spread across the country, to avoid a pattern of terror that might aid the police in their investigations. What did the bombing of a businessman’s van in Atlanta have to do with a suitcase explosion in the cargo hold of a jet in Dallas? What could the arson of a poultry plant in Iowa have in common with the murder of a city official in Palm Beach County?

  Seemingly, the answer would be nothing, the questions not even considered. Even so, in less than a year, a far-flung network of investigative agencies working on the many separate cases found the common denominator in the back pages of a magazine published for gun and battle buffs. From there the investigators picked up the pieces of the puzzle and put it together. Even today, they feel lucky about it.

  “This is a case of truth being stranger than fiction—it’s mind-boggling,” says Tom Stokes, special agent in charge of the Atlanta office of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF). “At times you needed a flow chart to keep it straight. These guys were bouncing all over the country doing these jobs. Thank goodness, we got coordinated on it.”

  In the end, two people were dead, several others were injured, and many were scared for their lives. Doug Norwood, who escaped death three times after being shot and bombed, still carries a gun. Who can blame him? Across the country Savage’s gang had left a trail of terror and deadly ineptitude.

  THE TRAIL STARTED in spring 1985 in Knoxville, Tenn. Richard Savage was into his fourth business venture in almost as many years and there was no telling whether his Continental Club was going to do any better than the restaurant or the motel or the nursing home that had failed before it.

  Savage’s new profession—operator of a rundown strip bar—was his strangest yet. It seemed so far from the way he had started out. Born in Knoxville 37 years before, he had joined the Army out of high school, serving for six years, including a tour in Vietnam as a courier. When he left the military he decided to put on a new uniform, that of a cop.

  However, Savage found no lasting promise in the new uniform. After earning a criminal justice degree in Kentucky, he worked only briefly as a cop in Oklahoma, then as a federal prison guard in Lexington, Ky. He bounced around the Midwest and by 1980 had drifted into his series of failed business ventures.

  By 1985, Savage was determined to put the skills he had learned in his previous careers to good use. He decided to put himself out for hire.

  The back pages of Soldier of Fortune magazine are devoted to classified ads offering a whole raft of goods and services to what the magazine calls the “professional adventurer.” On any given month this marketplace might offer anything from countersurveillance information to mercenary manuals to handbooks on revenge.

  But in the early 1980s, the Soldier of Fortune classified ads offered more sinister services. Investigators have said it was through ads placed here that a variety of hired killers advertised their lethal skills. And it was into this market that Richard Savage placed his own skills the summer of 1985:

  Gun For Hire: 37-year-old professional mercenary desires jobs. Vietnam Veteran. Discrete [sic] and very private. Body Guard, Courier and other Skills. All jobs considered.

  Sylvester Stallone, portraying Rambo, was on the cover of the magazine’s June issue in which Savage’s “Gun For Hire” ad promised that all jobs would be considered. The ad carried the telephone number of the Continental Club, and within days the phone was ringing with inquiries.

  The calls were from people both looking to hire and looking for work. By midsummer Savage had surrounded himself with a cadre of men seeking dial-a-gun work. There was 21-year-old Sean Doutre, a knockabout who signed on as a bouncer at the Continental Club. There was Michael Wayne Jackson, 42, the one-time police chief of a tiny Texas town but now a maintenance man. There was William Buckley, 35, a local security guard. And there were others—all men who apparently found the macho image of themselves reflected in the action stories and ads of Soldier of Fortune.

  Other callers were clients looking for a variety of questionable jobs done. Savage was asked to guard gold in Alaska, to find men still missing in Vietnam. But for the most part, people called because they wanted someone killed.

  “I couldn’t believe it,” Savage would tell a News/Sun-Sentinel reporter a year after his ad ran. “Nearly everybody wanted someone killed. They wanted me to kill their wives, mothers, fathers and girlfriends.”

  Acco
rding to investigators, indictments and court records, Savage and his gang entered into deadly agreements with a number of the callers. The going rate was $20,000 a kill.

  Investigators believe that within a few weeks of his ad in Soldier of Fortune, Savage had accepted the first assignment and dispatched a crew of hit men to suburban Atlanta to kill a 43-year-old businessman named Richard Braun. On June 9, an explosive device was placed in Braun’s van, but it exploded before Braun got in the vehicle. The bombers would make up for missing him two months later.

  The second job was in Fertile, Iowa. A St. Paul, Minn., bar owner named Richard Lee Foster had called Savage, claiming that the Keough Poultry Company in Fertile had ripped him off. Savage assigned Michael Wayne Jackson and William Buckley to the Foster case, and on the night of June 23 an explosion ripped through the Keough plant. No one was hurt, but Foster got his revenge—for the time being.

  BY EARLY AUGUST, the dial-a-hit-man crew was back in Georgia, this time in Marietta to kill a building contractor named Dana Free. Savage had been paid $20,000 by a Denver woman angry at Free over a failed business investment. But killing Free wasn’t easy.

  On Aug. 1, Buckley and Jackson planted two grenades under Free’s car. Free drove around with the devices under his car for a day but nothing happened, partly because the pin on one of the grenades had not been removed. So the next night, Buckley slid under the car and reattached the grenades with their pins tied to the drive shaft. If the car moved, the pins would be yanked out and . . . kaboom!

  In the morning, Free got in and as he started to pull out of his driveway, he saw a grenade, pin still attached, roll out from under the car. He managed to jump from the vehicle before the other grenade blew up. He was uninjured—and lucky. He went into hiding.

  Next, it was back to the Midwest. Bar owner Richard Lee Foster had been impressed enough with Savage’s handling of his complaint with the Keough company to sign on for another job. But this time the results weren’t as good. Over three nights beginning Aug. 10, members of the gang planted an assortment of bombs in Harry’s 63 Club, a St. Paul bar competing with Foster’s. None of the devices functioned properly, and for the first two nights the bombers crept back into the bar to remove them. On the third night, with the bomb smoking and setting off alarms, the police bomb squad beat them to it.