Perhaps fuelled by these numerous failed relationships, the thirty-five-year-old made a videotape of his feelings in October 1980, stating ‘what I want is an off-the-shelf sex partner… And when I’m tired or satiated or bored or not interested I simply want to put her away.’ He was, in short, describing prostitution and many men in his position would simply have paid for the occasional callgirl. But Lake wanted to enjoy ‘girls as young as twelve’ and women who would literally be enslaved to him, doing all of his household chores as well as attending to his sexual desires. He’d decided to satisfy these requirements by kidnapping a young woman and training her ‘by a combination of painful punishments…and minor rewards’ to do exactly as he asked.
During these fantasy-based years, Leonard remained obsessed with guns and it’s likely that he was responsible for many local break-ins where weapons and dynamite were stolen. In his fantasies he was the survivor of a holocaust – but in actuality he only held down menial jobs.
Blocking out reality, he turned more and more to sexual fantasies in which he was king, and when he met Claralyn Balaz, invariably known by her nickname of Cricket, he was able to make this fantasy a reality for a while. Cricket, a teacher’s assistant, shared his love of domination and submission and the two enjoyed an orgasmic sadomasochistic relationship. Cricket was also bisexual so Lake got to photograph her and him with other women in bed. She enjoyed being whipped and he enjoyed doing the whipping so it was the perfect sexual relationship.
In other areas, though, the two weren’t an exact match as Lake was much brighter and better travelled. Cricket was also very much her own person so couldn’t be psychologically dominated – yet psychological domination was crucial to Leonard Lake.
Nevertheless, she soon joined him at The Ranch and they continued to live together, albeit arguing frequently, until he was caught stealing from his employer. The pair of them sold up and fled the area, relocating to a tiny hamlet in California, where Lake became a volunteer fireman.
A second marriage
In September 1981 Leonard married Cricket, the marriage witnessed by a female friend whom they’d both had sex with. Shortly afterwards the friend, who had been living with them, moved out, unable to endure the couple’s constant immature bickering. In the same time period, November 1981, Leonard was contacted by one of his survivalist acquaintances. The acquaintance told him about a young man who was on the run from the marines. If they caught the twenty-year-old youth he’d be facing a court martial so he needed someplace reclusive to stay.
Lake agreed that the marine could live with himself and Cricket and do all of their chores in return for bed and board. He welcomed the slender, five foot seven Oriental. Their new lodger was surprisingly strong, keen to help out, and interested in survivalism. His name was Charles Ng.
Charles Chitat Ng
Charles was born on 24th December 1960 to Oi Ping and Kenneth Ng in Hong Kong. (The surname is pronounced Ing.) The couple already had two daughters, Alice and Betty. Kenneth’s two-bedroomed house accommodated his immediate family plus both grandmothers and two aunts.
Kenneth Ng was a camera salesman who worked long hours to provide for his children. He fed them well and took them on social outings. Unfortunately he also demanded that they excel academically. He punished all three when they failed to meet his lofty expectations but Charles was the least interested in his schoolwork so his father beat him frequently with a stick and a cane. The child tried to run away to escape the torment, but his father merely tied him up and continued the abuse. Even his wife tried to intervene, but Kenneth Ng was determined to beat intelligence and conformity into his only son. He was a Christian who had managed to persuade a Catholic school to take his children so he felt especially vulnerable when Charles got low grades, fearing he might be expelled.
Failed by the humans in his life, Charles turned to animals for comfort. But his relatives eventually killed his pet chicken and ate it for dinner. They also gave away his pet turtle, complaining that it smelled. He had doted on both creatures and was desolate to lose their love.
The sensitive little boy was desperate for some kind of release. He found this briefly at age ten by stealing explosive chemicals from the school chemistry lab and setting it on fire. As a result, he was sent to a behavioural psychologist. The psychologist noted that the boy was an arsonist and school bully. He was also an embryonic sex offender, having written obscene letters to one of his female teachers. The hurt that he had internalised throughout his junior years was beginning to turn outwards, seeking revenge. In real life Charles had absolutely no power – he wasn’t even allowed to choose his preferred style of haircut. But in his fantasies he could rule supreme.
Charles Ng began to draw pictures of women being ill-treated and he hit and mocked other children, copying the abuses inflicted on him at home.
At age fifteen, he was expelled for stealing from another pupil and his parents briefly sent him to school in England. There he resided with an uncle. But (according to Charles’s mother) the man didn’t feed the boy well, his room was cold and he was visibly afraid. Noticing all of this on a visit, his mother took him back to Hong Kong. From there, the family sent him to San Francisco to live with another relative and complete his schooling. Bored and unable to make friends with the other students, he quit college at eighteen.
The increasingly immoral teenager was driving erratically one day when he hit a telephone pole. Rather than report the incident, he fled from the scene and was subsequently arrested. But the charges were dropped when he joined the Marines on 12th October 1979.
Charles remained a solitary figure who was sometimes picked on by the marine corps racists, but he made some acquaintances who shared his love of martial arts and weaponry. Unfortunately after two years service, he stole a cache of weapons worth eleven thousand dollars, was caught and faced a court martial. He was determined to escape but was kept under heavy guard.
Ng now deliberately injured his leg in order to get moved to the hospital. When his guard fell asleep, Ng left the building. Early the following morning he made his way to Leonard Lake’s remote home.
He now assumed the name of Charlie Lee, probably after Bruce Lee, his childhood hero. (One of the most prolific teenage killers profiled in Children Who Kill changed his name to Bruce Lee as he was equally in awe of the martial-arts-trained actor and his films.)
For the next few weeks Lake and Ng talked about survivalist methods and about their shared love of weapons. Charles did most of the cooking and they shot rabbits for the pot. He saw Lake as a father figure and was impressed by his invented tales about active service in Vietnam, but Charles continued to steal for kicks, getting caught whilst taking a bed sheet from a department store. Cricket, whom he genuinely seemed to care about, bailed him out.
Arrest and divorce
After six months of living with Leonard and Cricket, Charles Ng was re-arrested for his military crime. The police also arrested Leonard Lake because of his illegal store of weapons. Out on bail, Lake fled the area before his case could go to court. He now moved from one cheap motel room to another, funding himself through petty theft and by selling recreational drugs, primarily marijuana. But Cricket was unwilling to live as a fugitive so moved back to her parents’ house. She would continue to sleep with her husband – but, as usual, he also slept with other women. The marriage quickly disintegrated and Cricket asked for a divorce, which was finalised in November 1982.
Donald is murdered
Distraught at the loss of his friend and his wife, Leonard Lake may have looked for an easy target to take his anger out on. He invited his brother Donald, whom he’d always hated and frequently talked of killing, to stay. He shot the brain-damaged man – who he believed was his mother’s favourite – through the head whilst he was asleep, then used his driving licence and other personal papers as fake ID.
Leonard continued to have a sexual relationship with his ex-wife. Chillingly, she shared in some of his confidences about a
cquiring 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.
Murdering a friend
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.
Plans for a chamber
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.
Reunited
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…
A family of victims
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.
A male victim
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.
Another three victims
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.
Another two male victims
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.
Another family of victims
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.’
Couples Who Kill Page 11
