A Bouncer Tells Jurors Assassins Framed Him
By MICHAEL BRICK
Published: December 4, 2007
On trial for three killings connected to a strip parlor in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, a bouncer told jurors yesterday that he was being framed by a squad of police assassins acting on orders from a corrupt detective who was out to shake down the bouncer’s private security business while his martial arts students conducted countersurveillance black ops against the Police Department.
Stephen Sakai, on trial for three murders in Brooklyn.
He vowed to prove this just as soon as his mother arrived at the courthouse with a secret notebook of evidence.
Then it turned out his mother was already sitting in the courtroom. She was wearing a floppy brown hat. She did not seem to have a notebook, secret or otherwise.
“He didn’t recognize the hat,” called out the bouncer’s mother, Carmen Troutman, explaining her son’s oversight and not much else.
The bouncer, Stephen Sakai, 32, fixed his gaze on the middle distance. If vexed by this turn, he was undeterred.
The trial will not be Mr. Sakai’s last. He was arrested last year on charges of firing into a crowd of Chelsea nightclub patrons, killing one and injuring three. That case awaits trial.
In Brooklyn, prosecutors have charged Mr. Sakai with murdering three men associated with the Sweet Cherry, a nightclub where he worked. The victims were a disc jockey, a sometime patron and a security coordinator.
On the strength of forensic evidence, signed confessions and documents taken from Mr. Sakai’s apartment, prosecutors rested their case yesterday. A defense lawyer, Kleon C. Andreadis, stood and told the judge he had told Mr. Sakai the consequences of opening himself to cross-examination.
Dressed in a dark suit, his head shaved bald, Mr. Sakai was led to the witness stand.
In his opening statement last month, Mr. Andreadis admonished the jurors to keep their minds open.
Mr. Sakai, who was born and raised in Queens as Stephen Sanders before legally changing his name in 1998, spoke in an accent that recalled Mr. Sulu of “Star Trek” and that seemed to come and go as his pace accelerated. He told of studying martial arts overseas and of training one of the victims, Wayne Tyson, 56.
At Mr. Tyson’s apartment in Brooklyn, he said, they had taken turns pounding buckets of gravel for hours on end to develop calloused knuckles. Those sessions, he said, explained why his blood was later found in the apartment.
Then his lawyer asked about signed confessions. Mr. Sakai said the detectives had taken his glasses, had obscured the text of the written statements and had threatened his family.
One of the detectives, Mr. Sakai said, had been following him for weeks before his arrest, seeking work in his private security practice.
In response to the harassment, Mr. Sakai said, he had sent another victim in the case, Irving Matos, 42, to spy on the police. A third victim, Edwin Mojica, 41, had been a target of extortion by the same officers, Mr. Sakai claimed.
Anything to add? Mr. Andreadis asked him.
“These two people died because they supported me in collecting evidence against a dirty cop,” Mr. Sakai said. He told the jury he had taken notes of his meetings with the police, leaving a copy in the open for investigators to find and hiding a second.
“When they think they have everything,” Mr. Sakai said, “they get ****y.”
A prosecutor, Timothy G. Gough, regarded Mr. Sakai quizzically. By way of opening, he asked a few questions “just so that we’re all reasonably on the same page here.”
Asked about his adopted name, Mr. Sakai said he had taken it “as an honor toward my family members.”
Moving right along, Mr. Gough asked: “You don’t have a passport. How did you go overseas?”
By private jet, Mr. Sakai said, courtesy of a businessman who trains young fighters. He told of competing in Cambodia and Vietnam, most recently in the five months before his arrest.
Then Mr. Gough asked about the secret journal.
“The journal that I have was given to a friend,” Mr. Sakai said, “and it’s on its way here.”
“Really?” Mr. Gough asked.
Actually, Mr. Sakai said, his mother was bringing the journal to court.
“Isn’t she in the courtroom?” Mr. Gough asked.
Mr. Sakai said she was not. Mr. Gough pointed out Ms. Troutman in the gallery.
From her position by the center aisle, Ms. Troutman spoke up in a clear, unaccented voice.
“It’s a new hat,” she said.
From the witness stand, Mr. Sakai accused his lawyer of taking part in a conspiracy against him. Justice John P. Walsh, who is presiding over the trial in State Supreme Court, called the lawyers out for a private conference. Mr. Sakai gazed off. The jurors stared down at their feet. Several minutes passed.
Later, Mr. Sakai was asked to explain the martial arts skills listed on his résumé, including ninjitsu.
Mr. Gough asked whether he meant ninjitsu as in ninja training to become an assassin.
“Yes and no,” Mr. Sakai said. “Upon the training of the ninja, you have to be more, how can I say, more in tune with yourself. More in tune with yourself.”
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