Leonard continued to have a sexual relationship with his ex-wife. Chillingly, she shared in some of his confidences about acquiring sex slaves. In a video they took of themselves in March 1983, they discussed luring female victims to Lake’s house. (Karla Homolka did the same thing with her lover Paul Barnardo before and after killing their sexual slaves.)
By now Cricket was working as a teaching assistant at juvenile hall and pictures of young girls who had been photographed there would later be found on Leonard Lake’s walls.
Lake also kept a diary which showed his deteriorating mental health, writing that he planned to build a network of bunkers stocked with food, weapons and unconsenting women. He added ‘After the nuclear bombs have rained from the sky, these women will become breeders. The future of the race is in my loins.’ It’s telling that those who see themselves as the great white hope for the future are always under-achievers like Leonard Lake rather than modern Einsteins…
Yet Lake wasn’t all bad, writing in his diary that he was disgusted when his former friend, Charles Gunnar, whipped one of his children. Lake later looked after these children for a while and appears to have treated them well.
1983 is also the year that Leonard Lake is believed to have murdered Charles Gunnar. He’d grown tired of his former friend who was now grossly overweight and cruel to his family. Lake shot him dead in May, recording the murder
in his diary as ‘Operation Fish’. Later, in an unusual act of generosity, he returned Charles Gunnar’s car to his wife – he’d keep or sell his subsequent victims’ belongings. He would take on Charles’s identity for a time, telling strangers that his name was Charles Gunnar and proffering the bearded man’s ID.
Leonard Lake also filled up some of his time in 1983 and 1984 by writing letters to Charles Ng. The young marine was now serving an eighteen- month sentence at Fort Leavensworth’s high security prison for his earlier weapons theft. Leonard sent Charles numerous photographs of nude women and the artistically-gifted Ng responded by sending sketches of animals.
Then Leonard Lake upped the ante by sending details of a bunker with an inbuilt torture chamber that he wanted to build for imprisoning unwilling females. This inflamed Ng’s already sadistic fantasy life and he told another prisoner of what he and Lake would like to do.
Still a fugitive, Lake now moved to Humboldt County, rented a rural retreat and began to actually build his fantasy bunker. Then he decided that the area wasn’t secure enough and moved house again, this time to Blue Mountain Road, Wilseyville in the Sierra Nevada foothills. He was still sleeping with Cricket and with various other women – but consensual sex would never be enough for him.
Bored and increasingly dissatisfied with making a modest living from drug selling and theft, Leonard was delighted when Charles Ng reached the end of his military sentence.
In July 1984 the younger man joined him and they prepared to turn their vicious fantasies into reality.
Perhaps because he’d successfully shared his cruel thoughts with Leonard Lake, Charles tried them out on his new co-workers when he found employment. He often made comments like ‘no kill, no thrill’ and ‘daddy dies, mommy cries, baby fries.’ As a result his co-workers wanted nothing to do with him and he was left out of social events.
But he and Leonard continued to socialise and to seek out control-based sex. Lake even hired an escort girl – but when she entered his hotel room, she found a naked Charles Ng there. Ng raped her whilst stabbing his knife into the pillow beside her head. Meanwhile Leonard Lake took photographs of the sexual assault, telling her afterwards that he and his friend usually killed their victims, but that he liked her so would let her live.
Strangely, it may be that Ng’s first known homicide victim was male, as a man matching Ng’s description answered a contact ad from a gay man. The slim Oriental promptly shot the man dead. He also shot the man’s flatmate whom he encountered as he fled the apartment, but the wounded man lived. Perhaps this was a rehearsal for the family they were about to abduct, for Ng must have known that the local police were less interested in gay murders than in heterosexual homicides…
Later that same month, on 24th July 1984, Lake or Ng phoned to answer an ad from a camera man called Harvey Dubs who was selling duplicating and recording equipment. They arranged a time when one of the men
would call and Harvey’s wife, Deborah Dubs, answered the door. It’s most likely that Charles Ng pointed a gun at their one-year-old baby Sean and abducted the child in a travel bag, warning the couple to do as he said. Leastways, witnesses saw Ng struggling with two heavy bags as he left the house, got into a car driven by Leonard Lake and was hurriedly driven away. Presumably he left the adults tied up and gagged, returning for them when the coast was clear. The following day the deadly duo returned for the Dubs’ valuables, ignoring neighbours who tried to talk to them as they left the house laden with bags.
What followed has been pieced together from bones and torture apparatus found at the scene and from comments previously made by Charles Ng. It’s likely that Lake shot Harvey Dubs then imprisoned his wife in Lake’s house for his and Charles Ng’s sexual pleasure. She was almost certainly bound and repeatedly raped, just as the men’s future female victims would be. Eventually, when the couple tired of her, she was probably shot or strangled. Ng later told a prisoner that he’d strangled one-year-old Sean himself, but he’d subsequently tell the court that the babies were murdered by Leonard Lake.
Four months later, on 14th November 1984, the men located their next known victim, thirty-nine-year-old Paul Cosner. Paul was selling his car and told his girlfriend that he’d found a ‘funny looking’ potential buyer. He left the house to meet this buyer and was most likely shot dead in the car – the front seat was later found to be splattered with blood and there were bullet-holes at head height in the upholstery.
Soon Leonard Lake was seen driving the vehicle and it was later found on his property, as was Paul’s identification. Both men were bearded so looked vaguely similar, and Lake was always looking for new identities in order to stay one step ahead of the law. Paul’s glasses were eventually found buried on Lake’s land.
Leonard celebrated Christmas 1984 with several members of his family, videoing himself telling them about survivalism as he served the sprouts. But by 5th January he was hunting for humans whose possessions he could steal. That day he went to a hotel he’d previously stayed at and hired several workers to help out on his property, namely twenty-six-year-old Cheryl Okoro, thirty-eight-year-old Maurice Rock and thirty-five-year-old Randy Jacobson. None of them would ever be seen alive again. It’s unclear exactly how Cheryl and Maurice met their deaths, but the police later found a photo of Cheryl in handcuffs taken at Lake’s house. Only parts of her neck bone and a partial leg bone were found at the property.
Maurice Rock’s skull was found in the vicinity, as was Randy Jacobson’s corpse, which had been encased in lime. Some reports state that he was killed by ingesting cyanide, whilst others suggest that the Vietnam veteran died of a gunshot to the head.
Two weeks elapsed, then on 19th January 1985, Ng asked his co-worker Cliff Peranteau if he wanted to earn some extra money during a trip to Tahoe. Cliff agreed to go with him. The two had argued earlier about work and Cliff had
called Ng a ‘godamn Chinaman.’ Ng would later allegedly tell a prison friend that he held a gun to the weeping man’s head, making him chant Chinaman again and again before he shot him dead.
Cliff’s belongings were later found at Ng’s apartment and at Leonard Lake’s remote house. Whilst Ng was at work, Lake removed Cliff’s motorbike from his property and subsequently sold it, and Ng or Lake wrote to a friend asking them to send on his paycheck to a PO box address, a box which belonged to Leonard Lake. As Leonard didn’t work, he used his victims’ cash and belongings to fund his lifestyle. In contrast, Charles Ng had a reasonably paid job with a removal firm and saw killing as recreation, as fun.
Five weeks later Charles Ng was ready to kill again. This time his victim was co-worker Jeffrey Gerald. On 24th February, Charles phoned twenty-five-year-old Jeff several times, asking him to help a friend in Stockton move house. The pay was good and Jeff took a bus to meet Charles. He was never seen alive again.
Three days later someone took most of Jeff’s belongings from his apartment. One of his books was later found at Ng’s apartment whilst his guitar was found at Lake’s house.
For the next few weeks, Leonard Lake was busy building his concrete bunker to contain future female victims. When it was finished in mid-April 1985, he casually asked his nearest neighbour, nineteen-year-old Brenda O’Connor, and her boyfriend Lonnie Bond to come over for a meal. She hesitated so Leonard sent Charles Ng over to ask them more formally. They then said yes.
Lake and Ng probably killed Lonnie Bond senior early on in the proceedings, despatching him with a single shot to the head. His corpse would later be found buried on the property, gagged and bound. Lonnie and Brenda’s baby, also called Lonnie, probably perished at Charles Ng’s hands.
Leonard Lake videoed Brenda not long after her abduction, her hands cuffed behind her back. He tells her that he’s given her baby away to a family, then hints that the infant may be dead and also suggests that she’ll never see her boyfriend again. He tells her ‘You will work for us, you will wash for us, you will fuck for us.’
There’s a great deal of emotional cruelty when he says that the baby will have to live without her, that she wasn’t a fit mother, that he’s gone to a better home.
Seconds later the sexual threats begin as he says ‘Jeans off. Panties off and everything else. Shove them down.’ When he was doing this consensually with Cricket it was erotic, a consensual powerplay fantasy – but now it’s an ugly criminal act.
Ng rips open her blouse then produces a knife and cuts her bra off. He tells her that he and Leonard Lake now own her. She explains that she feels nauseous but Lake’s only response is to show her a whip. Later he softens slightly and tells Ng to bring her a glass of water. He explains that he’s about to rape her but that his friend Charles is going to shower with her first. Ng adds ‘Make sure you’re clean before we fuck you. That’s the house rule.’
The men persuade her to remove the rest of her clothes then she’s seen walking dejectedly to the shower. As usual, they benefited financially out of the abduction, stealing Brenda’s boyfriend’s car, wallet and worldly goods.
With Brenda imprisoned (or already murdered) and Lonnie dead, it was easy for Lake and Ng to lure Brenda’s lodger, Robin Scott Stapley – always known as Scott – to the property. We may never know the exact sequence of events, but it’s likely that they gave him a headstart then hunted him down like a deer. Leastways, the pathologist speculated that he’d been shot in the shoulder and the leg whilst running, and then shot again through the head and the mouth at much closer range. The pistol had been shoved down his throat so viciously that it had broken all of his teeth. He was gagged, his hands cuffed behind his back and his ankles tied with rope before being buried inside a sleeping bag. Ng would later claim that this bondage was added after death to make it look like a biker kill.
Both Lake and Ng dug his grave, and his still-bound body would later be found buried at the property in Blue Mountain Road. Lake and Ng then went to Scott’s house and took all of his clothes and various other possessions. Lake would offer up Scott’s driving licence when he was finally arrested by the police, and Scott’s camera was in Charles Ng’s bag when he was eventually overpowered by security guards in Canada.
In early May, a blood-covered Leonard Lake answered the door to an insistent gas meter reader. He told the startled man that he was butchering an animal, but it’s more likely that he was sawing up a body, for many of the bones later found on his land were sawn through.
Twenty-three-year-old Mike Carroll was one of the next victims to disappear. He’d spent time in prison with
Charles Ng so was happy to receive a telephone call from his former acquaintance. But afterwards he vanished from work and home. Then his girlfriend Kathy Allen, whom he’d been living with, received a phone-call at the supermarket where she worked. She left hurriedly and would never again be seen alive in the outside world.
But she was kept alive at Leonard Lake’s retreat for several days as he videoed himself and Charles Ng abusing her. On the first film they shot, they tell her that her boyfriend is dead. This is doubtless true as Mike’s
bullet-ridden
body would later be found buried on Lake’s property.
Lake and Ng soon went to Mike’s house and removed his belongings. By now they had pots of coins hidden all over the property, but they were endlessly greedy for more. Both men were possessed of a criminal mindset where they’d rather steal even when they could afford to buy.
Meanwhile Kathy was videoed in bondage, stripping at the men’s command. Charles Ng helps to remove her clothes then pushes her into the shower.
In another scene she’s seen rubbing lotion into Charles Ng whilst he tells her ‘don’t forget to…get my ass, too.’ Two other videos show her putting on lingerie which Lake has chosen. He tells her ‘I’m having a little war within myself between what I want to do and what I think I should do.’ He admits that he wants to whip her. Later, according to cartoons drawn by Charles Ng, he would.
The men had benefited financially from their numerous kills, but greedy as always, they now went out on another stealing mission. They drove to a large hardware outlet in
southern San Francisco on Sunday 2nd June 1985. Despite the heat, Charles Ng wore a parka. He used its bulk to hide a vice while stealing it from the store.