Criminology - Leonard Lake and Charles Ng

Episode Date: December 3, 2023

Leonard Lake and Charles Ng are among the most infamous duos in the annals of true crime. They murdered indiscriminately and abducted, raped, and tortured women in a specially built underground bunker. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss the lives and crimes of Leonard Lake and Charles Ng. These men had no regard for human life and stopped at nothing to satisfy their own desires. When the authorities finally unraveled the true nature of their crimes, they were horrified. Journal entries and even videos documented what they had done and the reasons behind it. You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hello everyone and welcome to episode 285 of the criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. Morf, man, how you doing, buddy? Doing good, working out some technical bugs, some issues here on my end. I'm not the most tech savvy person in the world, but we got it together and we're recording this episode. What's new with you?

Yeah, Skype was giving us troubles this morning for sure. No, I'm doing good. I had a great Thanksgiving. My girls came home from college. It was just really nice. Yeah, it's that time of year to get together with family and see everybody and, you know, exciting time. It is, but the one thing that that I really realized is just how quickly this year has

flown by. I mean, it really just seems like a few weeks ago that we got back from CrimeCon. And then, you know, you look at it. at it and you think, well, CrimeConn, 2024 will be here before you know it. And it just makes you realize how fast time flies. Speaking of CrimeCon 24, you definitely don't want to miss that. You should get your passes and book your trip early. Yeah, it's hard to believe. It's just six months away. CrimeCon, 24, of course, is going to be in Nashville, May 31st to June 2nd. And that's at the Gaylord Opryland, which is a great venue, lots of great stuff to see and take part in.

So hopefully everyone comes out to see their favorite people from the true crime universe. And we'll be there, of course, on podcast row. And we'll have our annual joint criminology T-Cat meet up with listeners. It's always fun. Yeah, absolutely. And if you're going, you might as well save some money in the process. So head over to crimecon.com and book your trip. Use our promo code, which is criminology.

That'll save you 10% on. your standard badges. We can't wait to see everyone there. So now that we have all that out of the way, let's jump into this week's case. You know, in the annals of true crime, there have been a lot of dastardly duos. And when I say that word dastardly, more if it kind of brings me back to the old cartoons. You know, I'm picturing the villain tying someone up on a railroad trestle. But there have been a lot of bad duos in the history of true crime who have done a lot of bad things Bonnie and Clyde Leopold and Lowe, the DC snipers, Bernardo and Hamilca, and who can forget the two guys that we mention in what seems like every other episode, Otis Tool and Henry Lee

Lucas. Those two individuals sometimes haunt my dreams. And there are many other duos like these, but not many of them rival the level of depravity and violence. The two-man murder team, Leonard Lake and Charles Eng, they murdered close to a dozen people and are suspected in several other cases. And it wasn't just the murders that made them infamous. They abducted, tortured, and raped women repeatedly, keeping them in a makeshift torture chamber where they would take turns inflicting pain and violence on their victims, as the other one filmed it. Their attacks were brutal, and their victims included women, men, and even young children.

One of the killers was even brazenly caught saying to a co-worker, no gun, no fun, no kill, no thrill, and Daddy Dies, Mommy Cries, Baby Fries. Eventually, these two cold-blooded killers were caught, but not before they left the trail of carnage and victims. On April 30th, 1999, Charles Zing was given the death penalty, a sentence recommended by the jury of 12 in Orange County, California. He had been found guilty of killing 11 people with the help of his friend Leonard Lake. At trial, he attempted to put all of the blame for these murders on Lake. But his willing participation had been well documented by journals and homemade videotapes in this episode will go through their backgrounds and the timeline of their killing spree

and try and get a sense of how these two diabolical killers were able to do what they did. It feels like you rarely hear one of their names on its own. It's always Lake and Ing. You really can't talk about one without mentioning each other. They lived completely separate lives until they were adults, but both had managed to get into plenty of trouble without the other's help. It's not clear if Charles Ng would have ended up killing people, if he hadn't had Leonard Lake to inspire him, for lack of a better word.

But it doesn't seem like it took much to get him to participate in the murders. Charles Ng was born in Hong Kong and moved to the United States in 1978 when he turned 18. He received a student visa to attend the College of Notre Dame near San Mateo, California. He was majoring in biology but earned very low grades and dropped out after just one year. From there, he joined the Marines after telling a recruiter that he was born in Bloomington, Indiana. He was stationed at a Marine Corps air station in Hawaii. While there, he and three other Marines stole more than $11,000 in grenades, machine guns, and other weapons. A Lance Corporal at the time, he was arrested and convicted for theft.

He escaped and fled from Hawaii. Back in California, he crossed paths with Leonard Lake. It was the beginning of a dark partnership. Ing would later tell the L.A. Times, part of me saw him as the father or big brother I always wanted. As for Leonard Lake, he had been discharged from the Marines in April 1971 due to psychiatric issues. In 1982, Ing was found at the home of Leonard Lake and his wife, Clarolin, and taken into custody. Not long after, Leonard Lake and his wife separated. In 1982, Lake was arrested in Mendocino County on charges of burglary, grand theft, and possession of automatic weapons and explosives.

Once out on bail, he fled and began using assumed names and stolen identities. He moved to a two-and-a-half-acre ranch in Willsieville, owned by his ex-wife's parents, and he began to construct a concrete bunker, supposedly in case of a nuclear war. Whatever its origins, it would eventually be used. used to isolate his victims, and what happened inside of that bunker is really indescribable. Inside the bunker, there was a six-by-four-foot section made of cinder blocks. It was a secure and almost soundproof room on an isolated ranch. It could be described as a serial killer's dream.

It's believed by many that Leonard Lake was killing on his own before he enlisted the help of Charles Ng in December 1982. Leonard's younger brother Donald Lake disappeared while accompanying him on a trip up north. Those close to Leonard knew that he resented Donald because of his special needs. He had been hit by a train when he was a child and required a lot of care and attention. So much care that Leonard had to be raised by their grandparents so that their mother could look after Donald. Their mother who reported Donald missing received a letter claiming that he had willingly moved to Las Vegas with drug dealers. The letter is believed to have been written by Leonard who was cashing Donald's disability checks and using his identity.

So if this is true that Leonard Lake killed his own brother, it's very clear that no one around him was safe. In May 1983, Lake moved in with his friend Charles Gunner, who had been the best man at Lake's wedding in 1981. On May 22nd, Lake invited Gunner to go on a trip to either Lake Tahoe or Vegas. Lake had just gotten his divorce and wanted to blow off some steam. Gunner left his daughters with a babysitter and the two men headed out. After a few days, Lake returned in Gunner's van without him. He told the babysitter that Gunner had decided to run off with a woman he met. After this, Lake began to cash Gunner's checks and introduced himself to people as Charles Gunner. In 1992, Gunner's remains would be found buried near Willesville, California.

So I think already you get the sense, the idea that, you know, Leonard Lake is not someone with whom you want to be associated. At the very least, you don't want to go off on a trip with Leonard Lake. And what really jumps out at me is that, you know, he's not murdering strangers. You know, he's killing essentially his best friend. He's killing his brother. And then in some cases, assuming their identities, but definitely cashing their checks as if he was them.

I think it's pretty damning that two different people connected to him vanished while they were out with him and then you have the aftermath of him cashing those checks. It makes me wonder, why didn't this raise red flags at the time? You know, was the investigation handled properly into the disappearance of these two men? Why weren't the dots connected that they were both with Lake who wound up cashing their checks afterwards? It just seems like it could have been a chance to maybe catch him before a lot of other bad things happened.

Yeah, and that's a question that we ask all the time. right what could the authorities have done what should they have done early on because as we go through this episode you're going to see the awful acts and the atrocities that occur after this point so I think it's very natural to ask that question could Leonard lake have been stopped earlier on and therefore his later victims possibly, you know, could have been saved. In April of 1984, a man named Jeffrey Ascran disappeared from Sunnyvale, California. His car was found abandoned near Lake's home a couple of days later. By the summer of 1984, it's believed that Lake had roped Ing in on his activities.

Ing had just been released from his court marshal in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and moved in with Lake in California. On July 11, 1984, Donald Gioledi opened the door of his San Francisco apartment, expecting the person outside to be someone who had responded to his personal ad. Gio Lettie, who was gay, had placed an ad offering to perform oral sex on otherwise straight men. When he opened the door, he was immediately shot in the head by a pistol. His roommate Richard Carraza ran out to see what the commotion was, and he too was shot in the chest. He survived and was able to give a description of their attacker as a Chinese man wearing glasses. In July 1984, Harvey and Deborah Dubs, along with their 16-month-old son, Sean, vanished from their apartment in San Francisco. On July 25th, Harvey left work around 5 p.m., which was early for him.

Harvey was on his way home to meet someone who had responded to an ad he had placed in the newspaper, trying to sell some camera equipment. At around 5.45 p.m., Harvey's wife, Deborah, was on the phone with her friend Karen Tuck and mentioned that she was waiting for someone to come over and talk to Harvey about the equipment. While they were on the phone, someone arrived at her door, so Deborah and Karen hung up. Shortly after this, Dorese Murphy, who lived across the street, noticed an Asian male walking down the steps of the Dubbs home. He stood out because he was clearly having difficulty carrying a large suitcase.

The man walked to a parked car on the street, and Murphy saw a second man get out of the car and opened the trunk. They placed the suitcase in the trunk and drove away. On July 26th, Harvey didn't show up to work, which his boss at Petrov Graphic Type's world said was totally out of character for him, especially with no notice, the company received a call from a man calling himself James Bright, informing them that Harvey had to go to Washington due to a family emergency. Harvey's co-worker Lauren Bradbury felt that the call was extremely odd.

She knew Harvey was from New York and Deborah was from the Bay Area and that they didn't have any family in Washington. Bradbury asked this, Mr. Mr. Bright for his phone number, but he got upset and hung up. The same day, Karen Tuck tried to call Deborah, but she didn't answer. Deborah's father filed a missing persons report that evening. The next morning, Barbara Speaker, who lived in an apartment beneath the Dubbs family, heard people walking above her, poking her head out of the apartment. She saw an Asian male walking down the steps to the Dubbs door. He was carrying multiple bags, which seemed seemed to be quite heavy. Curiously, he left the keys inside the door.

In August, Maurice Rock disappeared from the Pink Palace boarding house on Carl Street in San Francisco. Leonard Lake, using the name Alan Dre, was known to stay there. A few days after Maurice disappeared, a woman who was running the room next to him, saw a man leaving his room. The man, who was moving a refrigerator, introduced himself as Steve and asked if he could take photographs of the woman. initially she agreed, but once Steve was in a room with his equipment, she felt uncomfortable and backed out. That same month, a woman named Cheryl Okoro disappeared from the Pink Palace. On October 15th, Randy Jacobson also disappeared from there. And after he vanished, Leonard Lake began to use his identity. And more if we talked earlier about, okay, you know,

could police have connected the dots? Well, here you have three different people, vanishing from the same boarding house at three different times. Again, we don't know how much the police knew or, you know, what type of investigation they did. But what I will say is that three people, you know, disappearing from the same boarding house is a red flag at the very least. Yeah, once you have a second one, you're seeing a pattern there. But a third one, that just seems way too much to be a coincidence.

So I wonder how closely the police looked into this and if there was any kind of connection they found. And I assume they would have naturally looked at anyone else that was staying there. So again, it's just another opportunity maybe to stop Lake before he went on to do some of these other things. On November 2nd, 1984, Paul Kozner went to meet a potential buyer for his car, a gold 1980 Honda prelude in San Francisco. Afterward, he was going to watch a movie on TV with his girlfriend, Marilyn Namba. He never returned home. He also didn't show up for plans he had made with his sister on the 3rd.

He was reported missing on November 4th. In January 1985, Clifford Parranto vanished on his way to work in San Francisco. In February, Jeffrey Gerald told his room, he was going to help someone move to earn a few bucks, he was never seen again. At 101 p.m. on April 14, 1985, Kathleen Allen received the call at Safeway, the grocery store where she worked. It was her boyfriend, Michael Carroll. At that point, he had been missing for two days.

After the call, for whatever reason, Kathleen told her a coworker that she thought Mike had been shot and may have been killed. But she also told a friend of hers named James Bayo that it was Mike. who called her, telling her he had gotten into some trouble, and he was going to send someone to pick her up, and take her to meet him in Lake Tahoe. Between 7 and 7.30 p.m., Kathleen left the safeway in Milpetus. Co-workers saw her get into a gold Honda prelude. Later that night, she spoke to Beio again, this time from a hotel in Milpitas. She seemed hurried and told him that she couldn't talk because she wasn't alone. She described the person she was with as kind of a weird guy, who wanted to take

pictures of her. Bayo, rightly skeptical, asked Kathy to call him when she got to Lake Tahoe, but this would be the last time they ever spoke. And I'll be honest, this is such a kind of a strange interaction. Kathleen's boyfriend, Michael, you know, was missing for a couple of days. And then all of a sudden, he calls her. But it must have been a very strange phone call, you know, with Kathleen telling a coworker that she thought Mike had been shot. may have been killed. But then she told another person that, you know, he was in trouble. He was going to have someone pick her up.

And you have this sighting of a gold Honda prelude, which we've mentioned a couple of times now. And then there's this interaction with someone wanting to take pictures of her. That has come up multiple times. So just very strange. We don't have all the details. to fill in everything, but at the very least, you can surmise that it wasn't good for either one of these individuals.

It seems that Michael Carroll was maybe being held captive and was forced to call Kathy and made arrangements to have someone come pick her up, which seems like a whole strange scenario. We don't know what the entire conversation was she had on the phone, but, you know, it seems like a lot of people would have been suspicious. Here's my boyfriend missing and then I get this call and everything's okay. I'm just going to send some stranger to pick me up and bring up to me. But for whatever reason, she trusted that call and went and was never seen again.

And a lot of people might think, well, why would Michael help set up his girlfriend to be kidnapped if he had already been kidnapped? You know, you would think a lot of people would want to say in that position, I'm not going to help you. I don't care what you do to me, but then again, we don't know, were they torturing him? What was going to happen if she didn't show up? Yeah, I think it's easy for many people to say, well, you know, I would never do this. I would never do that. But if you're being tortured, depending on what type of torture that is, many people get to the point where they're willing to do just about anything to make that stop.

And that's the situation that might have occurred here. In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder what's emergency. We just walked in the door, and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, Blood and Water. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. On the 14th, Leonard Lake called one of his friends, George Blank, who lived in San Jose,

and told him that the car of one of his friends had gotten stock in Milpitas, and he needed help. The two arranged for Blank's daughter, Deborah, to meet Charles Ng in a bus station, where he would give her the keys to the car, a mercury capri. Ng also gave her a piece of paper, with directions. to the car in the Safeway parking lot, written down. On April 15th, Kathleen Allen called her boss at Safeway and requested a full four weeks off of work. She claimed that Michael had found a good job lead in Lake Tahoe, and she was going with

him. That same month, April 1985, Lonnie Bond, his fiancee Brenda O'Connor and their young son, Lonnie Jr., vanished from their home in Wilsieville. Their friend, Scott Stapley, also disappeared. No one knew it at the time, but all of the people that we just talked about had been victims of Lake and Ing. On June 2nd, 1985, two men were caught shoplifting at a lumber store after trying to steal a vice. It turned out to be Leonard Lake and Charles Ing. Lake tried to pay for the item and get out of the situation, but the theft had already been reported to police.

It was a reserve police officer for the South San Francisco Police Department who had spotted the shoplifting. Lake attempted to smooth things over with South San Francisco police officer Daniel Wright, who responded to the call. Lake's accomplice, Charles Ng, who had actually stolen the vice, simply walked away from the whole encounter. The license played on the car Lake was driving, a gold Honda prelude, was registered to Lonnie Bond. Searching the car for the stolen property, Officer Wright, found a semi-automatic weapon and a silencer. The gun was registered to yet another person, R. Scott Stapley. Lake identified himself to Officer Wright as Robin Scott Stapley and handed him an ID

with that name on it. He claimed that his friend Lonnie Bond, who owned the car, was up north. Officer Wright clearly felt something was off, and there was more than meets the eye to this situation, Lake was arrested for possessing a firearm equipped with a silencer and taken into an interrogation room. He was left alone for a few minutes. The next time he was checked on by police, he was convulsing. On the table was a letter addressed to Lake's ex-wife, Clara Lynn. The letter read, I love you, I forgive you. Freedom is better than all else. Tell Fern, I'm sorry. I'm sorry for all the trouble. Lake was rushed to the hospital, but he died after four days.

It was determined that he had ingested cyanide pills sewn into the lining of his clothes for situations just like the one he found himself in. Rather than face justice and be held accountable for what police would soon find, he took his own life. And I think we have to talk more of about kind of the pre-planning on the part of Leonard Lake. I mean, this man had cyanide pills sewn into his clothing. And that tells me that he was never going to allow himself to be, you know, taken into custody, tried, put in prison. That was just never going to happen.

He wrote letters to family. And then he used those cyanide pills. He had thought this out. Yeah, it definitely seems like an elaborate plan to sew these pills into the clothing so that you can take them. And, you know, we've heard of cases where someone that doesn't want to be taken alive or isn't going to face justice, they'll just do a suicide by cop or, you know, go out in a blaze of glory shooting. And for whatever reason, that didn't happen here. He chose this method.

But I think it also, you know, gives a little bit of insight. into what Leonard Lake knew that authorities would ultimately uncover and the extent of his crimes and what he had done. Yeah, and one fascinating thing is, and I think we've seen this in other cases, it was something minor that got police to finally get him on their radar. You know, here he was connected to these other cases of missing people, but it was never put together, but here he shoplifts a vice, and that's what ultimately brings him down. The VIN number on the Honda Prelude came back as being involved in another missing person's case,

that of Paul Kozner. Inside the car, Inspector Irene Brunner, the San Francisco Police Department, found a Pacific Gas and Electric Company bill addressed to Leonard Lake's ex-wife, Clarolin, with an address in Woolseyville. Investigators headed there to try and figure out what was going on. They obviously felt that there was something big that Lake was involved in. They had no idea how big it was. At the Willsyville property, authorities recovered evidence of multiple crimes, and they quickly connected them to both Leonard Lake and Charles Ng. But there was just one problem.

Ing was nowhere to be found. He had fled to Canada. On June 7th, authority searched Ing's apartment and found plenty of incriminating evidence, photos of the bunker on Lake's property while still under construction showed he was not just aware of its existence, but possibly involved in its planning. In also had two boxes of 22 caliber ammunition and pamphlets about how to make a silencer. A map of San Francisco had a circle around the street that Harvey, Deborah, and their son Sean Dubs lived on before they disappeared. Personal items belonging to Lonnie Bond and Clifford Pironto were found inside the apartment. It soon became evident to police that Lake and In were connected to several unsolved cases in California. Back in Willsyville, authorities continued to uncover evidence.

Deputy State Attorney General Charlene Hanaka described what they uncovered as a killing field, a mass graveyard. About a quarter mile away from the main property, officers spotted clumps of cloth on the ground. Investigating further, it was clear that animals had disturbed and partially dug up a shallow grave. The bodies of Scott Stapley and Lonnie Bond were on earth during an excavation of the area. Bond's hands were restrained by a pair of handcuffs, his arms raised over his head. A ball gag was wrapped around his neck and a plastic bag had been placed over his head. He had also been shot in the head a single time. Stapley had suffered three gunshot wounds, one in the collarbone, one in the mouth, and another above his eyebrow.

His wrist and ankles had been bound with duct tape. And like Bond, he had a ball gag around his neck and a plastic bag over his head. They each had been placed in separate sleeping bags and stacked, one on top of the other, in the grave. This was like no other crime scene most of the officers had ever worked, and they realized that they were dealing with a pair of ruthless and vicious serial killers. authorities found Leonard Lake's handwritten journal, which was 250 pages. The entries showed the way that Lake chose his victims. The October 31st, 1984 entry talks about a new beta, which is what he called his target.

This seems to be about Paul Koznor, Honda Prelude with owner that could pass for me, he wrote. Paul fought back and was likely killed on November. second. The entry for that day reads, Met resistance for first time. Unsuccessful in obtaining credit card or bank codes. Drove to country for completion. According to Calaveras County Sheriff Claude Bauer, many of the entries expressed the theme that God meant women for cooking, cleaning house, and sex, and when they were not in use, they should be locked up. He also had video confession. which were all along the same lines.

In one, Lake says to the camera, what I want is an off-the-shelf sex partner. I want to be able to use a woman whenever and however I want, and when I'm tired or bored or not interested. I simply want to put her away, lock her up in a little room, get her out of my sight, out of my life. So we have a handwritten journal, 250 pages. And, you know, just the few entries that I read there, they're chilling.

You know, this is like a guy just writing down a checklist or, you know, things to do for the day or what he had done that day. But these are entries about killing people. And then you have the entries about what Leonard Lake thought about women. And these are, you know, they're chilling. They're disgusting. there's no doubt that what he desired was a woman that to him was a sexual object and would also cook and clean. But when she wasn't doing all of those things, would be locked up a way not to bother him.

I think it shows a lot in that Leonard Lake viewed these women as objects and not as people. I think that's, you know, what we see in serial killers, they lack an empathy. They don't view their victims as people as humans. They don't see them that way. And I think Leonard Lake was clearly laying out all of that in these journal entries. Yeah, I think the journal entries along with the videos just provide a massive amount of insight into what, These guys were all about, especially Leonard Lake, who you'd have to say was kind of the mastermind, right, of this whole thing. Police also recovered videotapes that had been buried on the property.

One of the tapes was labeled M. Ladies, Kathy slash Brenda, the M. probably standing for Miranda. In one of his diaries, Lake wrote, 1983 was the year of Miranda, which he chillingly explains was started and abandoned in humble County and restarted here in Willsyville. Describing Miranda, he writes, M is a serious underground construction, meant to, one, provide a physical setting for my sexual fantasies, two, provide physical security for myself and my possessions,

and three, provide limited protection from nuclear fallout. So it seems clear that 1983 was not the first time that Lake had thought about all of this. And it makes you wonder, is there anyone missing from Humboldt County prior to this? that he's responsible for harming. The name for his bunker, Miranda, may have come from the 1963 book, The Collector. In this book, a man holds a woman named Miranda hostage in his cellar until she gets sick and dies. The February 19th, 1983 entry in Lakes Journal read, The Collector. Ah, the Collector.

Has it really been 20 years? I've carried this fantasy. And I've never read it, Morph, but this book, The Collector, I think, does come up in a number of cases. Also, Catcher in the Rye comes up in many cases involving serial killers. There seems to be a number of books like this that some of these types of individuals gravitate towards or take inspiration from. Disturbingly, there are a few clips from this M Lady's tape floating around the internet,

They all start with Kathy Allen, sitting in an armchair, her hands tied behind her back. Lake threatened her as she sat helplessly in the chair. He told her, if you don't go along with us, we'll probably take you into the bed, tie you down, rape you, shoot you, and bury you. Both Lake and Ng told Kathy that if she cooperated, they would only hold her for 30 days before releasing her somewhere, drugged and blindfolded, so she couldn't lead anyone back to them. That's your choice in a nutshell. It's not much of a choice unless you've got a death wish.

Lake explained to her, but he tried to assure her that things would be okay, promising to treat her, quote, as nice as we can to you within the limits of keeping you prisoner. With a sigh, Leonard Lake says, sorry, lady, times up. Make your choice. Faced with no other real option, Kathy says, well, I have to be available. Lake responds, that's all we wanted to hear. And then he says, while you're here, we'll keep you busy. You'll wash for us.

You'll clean for us. Cook for us. You'll fuck for us. The clip continues on and in it, Kathy reluctantly stands up. In the next short clip, she's clearly embarrassed and unhappy, wearing only underwear. There's no sound, but it's clear that one of the two is giving her instructions. In the next clip, she's tied to a bed face down, still wearing no bra, but now she's wearing a pair of very short jean shorts. Late kneels by the bed and reprimands her, speaking just inches from her face.

He says, if it ever arises again, if there's any circumstance whatsoever that leads me to think you're even attempting to make noise, he warned her, you'll be whipped very severely. He also added, it's immaterial whether I hear you or anyone else hears you. This was apparently a mind game to make her afraid of even thinking about trying to escape. Kathy responded weakly, I understand. The look Kathy shoots the camera. If looks could kill, we wouldn't be here telling this story. The hatred and unhappiness on her face is so clear. Her face isn't easy to forget once you have seen her, as lakes saw her, and as the camera captured her.

and more if you and I have both watched this video, it's extremely tough to watch. I mean, if you saw it in a horror movie, it would be one thing. But to know that this was real, that this was actually happening, did actually happen. For me, it just gives me this huge knot in my stomach. And you feel for this woman so completely that she's in this situation. that she knows she can't get out of and is not going to go well for her at all. It's going to be horrible. Yeah, that's got to be an impossible situation because what are her choices?

She knows that these guys mean business. She sees what they're capable of. So her choices are to cooperate and hopefully live through this or not and assume that they're going to kill her like they said they would. So just not a not a good situation at all. I don't see how she was able to even function and interact with these guys. Yeah, I just don't think she had any, any choice in the matter. And you mentioned there's a, there's a one part in the video where, you can see Kathy

looking into the camera. And the look on her face is, is one of those things that, you know, if you see it, it kind of gets burned into your memory, that hatred, unhappiness, sheer desperation. It's hard to forget. It really is. The second woman on the tape is Brenda O'Connor. In the clip, she asks, are you going to let us go soon? At this point, she has no idea that Lonnie Bond and their son Lonnie Jr.

have already been killed. Lake, who already knew Lonnie and Lonnie Jr. were dead, responds, probably not. Brenda is clearly confused. She says, Charles, what are you going to do to us? Why are you doing this? His reply is a very nonchalant because we hate you. In the video, Brenda is actually pretty calm for someone who has been abducted and tied up until Lake starts to talk about her son, who he has already killed. Your baby is going to be taken away, he tells her. Brenda leans forward in her seat and is clearly upset. She says, you're not taking my baby in a very determined tone. He claims that he gave the child to a couple from Fresno who couldn't conceive their own child. Brenda cries, that's my baby.

This M-Lady's video evidence not only provides a record of what Lake and Eng did, but also prove that Ng was just as cruel as Lake. When Brenda's upset over her baby, Ng asked her, It's better than the baby's dead, right? Again, Brenda asked them, Why are you doing this? Lake says flatly,

We don't like you. Would you like me to put it in writing? It's done. Just take it. Whatever we tell you, Eng warned. Eng is clearly a very willing participant, breathing excitedly and heavily as he cuts off the clothes of his victim.

Brenda cried out, Don't cut my bra off, protesting. There her hands were bound behind her back, and there was nothing she could do. Ing laughed and told her, Nothing is yours. You are totally ours. Brenda complained about feeling sick multiple times. She seemed sitting near a lamp that she says is too hot in the stuffy room.

Neither of the men care and are only focused on getting her to finish on dressing. One of the two men mutters, Brenda, I have a lot of animosity toward you, and I would just as soon start you out with a nice firm whipping right now to make you believe how serious we are. In the next clip, she's fully undressed and walking out of frame. And again, this part of the video is extremely hard to watch. Just like with Kathy, you get the overwhelming sense that Brenda is completely helpless. There's nothing she can do.

she is at the mercy and the whims of these two maniacs. And just trying to put myself in her shoes, I just had to be such a hopeless situation. I don't know what she'd be able to say or do or if she was hopeful that she'd somehow get out of the situation. It just seems like just an impossible and unbearable situation to be in. Well, we mentioned that at that point, she didn't realize.

She had no knowledge that Lonnie and Lonnie Jr. had already been killed. And it seems as though in parts of the video, she is somewhat calm, most likely thinking that maybe she'll be able to get out of this or something like that. But once they start talking about her child, her demeanor changes dramatically.

as you would expect from a parent. Yeah, it's clear that as much pain as she was in, as much as she was suffering, the whereabouts of her child and what was happening to him was still something that was very important to her. Fresh air, longer days, a chance to reset. This season, let therapy be part of your spring cleaning.

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Growtherapy.com slash book now. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan. This video which wound up online was apparently released by police to document the brutality and the coldness of the two killers. It's very likely that there's even more. worse footage that has never been released to the public, and for good reason, investigators were horrified by the brutality of these crimes. Even Lake himself wrote in a journal entry,

The depth of my sins are not recorded. As investigators sifted through the property, uncovering the level of depravity connected to these crimes, they still didn't have Charles Zane. He was on the run. Calaveras County Coroner Terry Parker told to L.A. times unless we find the elusive Mr. Ink, this case will never be solved. The identities of these victims may never be known. To that point, authorities recovered at least nine bodies and over

40 pounds of charred remains, bones, and teeth. With all of this evidence, late deceased, and Inns still out there to potentially harm more people, it was now imperative to track him down. San Francisco Police Chief Cornelius Murphy said publicly, we absolutely must find him. Luckily, on July 6th, after a few weeks on the run, Eng was arrested for shoplifting from the Hudson's Bay Company Department Store in Calgary. While shoplifting was the same thing that had gotten them caught in the United States, in this incident, Ing hurt the store's security guard. He served four and a half years in prison for this armed robbery,

while the United States awaited his extradition. San Francisco Police Inspector, John Hennessy, told the Chicago Tribune, we're optimistic that a lot of questions will be answered with his arrest. Due to his eligibility for the death penalty, extraditing Ing was a difficult process. Canada doesn't sentence people to death, so extradition to a country that does is not always a guarantee. Finally, in September of 1991, Ing was extradited from Canada to the U.S. He was found competent to stay in trial. but due to the media coverage of his case, the trial was moved from Calaveras County to Orange County.

Charles Ing's trial began in September 1998. He maintained his innocence claiming, when Lake died, I took his place as the sacrificial lamp. William Kelly, the Orange County defense attorney, trying to save Ing from the death penalty, tried to blame everything on Lake, who he said had a deep-seated hatred for women. He pointed to the victims. At least six of them, he claimed that were killed by Lake without In. In court, phone records proved that someone at the Willesville property made the calls to Safeway and Petrov Graphic Types World. Someone, either Inger Lake, had tried to buy themselves time in the murder of Harvey Dubs by calling in and explaining the family emergency.

and had also lured Kathleen Allen, getting her to willingly climb into the car with Lake so she could see her boyfriend Michael Carroll. The jury saw multiple clips from the tapes recovered on the Willseville property. It rattled the friends and family of the victims who were in attendance, waiting for justice for their loved ones. Paul Costner's sister, Sharon Saletto, told the L.A. Times, I just didn't expect being hit between the eyes so early. their mother, Virginia Nestle, was shocked, adding, I can't imagine what the rest of it will be like. Can you believe they had the nerve to tape?

And we described, you know, a little bit of what was on these tapes. They're horrifying to watch. I can't even imagine a family member having to see this stuff in court. I know that's part of it, but it has to be extremely difficult. even more so for them because that's their family up there, you know, on the screen. And I think in some cases that's why families ultimately want to avoid a trial if they can. Sometimes they're okay if the person takes a plea deal because they don't want to relive this. And they especially don't want to in a situation like this, see what happened to their loved one.

So you can understand it when people choose to support a plea deal. on February 24th, 1999, 38-year-old Ing was found guilty of 11 counts of first-degree murder for the killings of Sean Dubs, Deborah Dubs, Harvey Dubs, Clifford Parenthold, Jeffrey, Gerald, Michael Carroll, Kathleen Allen, Lonnie Bond, Senior, Lonnie Bond, Jr., Robin Scott Stapley, and Brenda O'Connor. A jury could not come to a unanimous decision. decision on Ing's responsibility in the murder of Paul Koznor.

After he was convicted, Ng was sentenced to death and placed on California's death road where he remains to this day. Ing's trial was a very costly one. It was said to have been double what O.J. Simpson's trial cost. Just one month into the trial, almost $10 million had already been spent. Ing tried to argue that the trial wasn't fair because he didn't trust his lawyer, Orange County Deputy Public Defender William Kelly, who was assigned Ing's case, told the LA Times, we will continue to make our best efforts on Mr. Ing's behalf, whether he realizes it or not.

And I can only imagine more what an uphill battle this public defender William Kelly had in trying to defend Charles Ng. I mean, the mountain of evidence that the prosecution had against him was staggering. I mean, he's on the video. And there was, you know, all these other things that were recovered, not an easy task to defend this guy. How do you dispute someone that's on video saying and doing things and then in court trying to say, well, he didn't participate.

It just, and again, I think it was a hell Mary trying to defend this guy in the first place, but I'm surprised that maybe they didn't push for a plea deal in light of the damning evidence against him. Well, and maybe they did. And the prosecution said, hey, we don't need a plea deal. We got more than enough. My assumption is that the attorney was probably mostly focused on trying to, to get Ing out of the death penalty. He wasn't going to get this guy off. That just, that wasn't going to

happen. Decades after Lake and Ing's brutal crimes, unanswered questions remain. In 2021, cold case investigators made a renewed effort to identify the remains found in Woolseyville. Calaveras County Lieutenant Greg Stark told the Union Democrat, the primary focus of this investigation is to identify the remains in the crit and if possible, return them to the next. next of kin. Many people think that Inge was not Lake's only accomplice. Lake filmed himself using a chainsaw to cut down trees in the area where he was going to build this bunker. He also filmed his use of a backhoe to dig a large hole in the woods. Interestingly, he mentioned two young men helping him. If we assume that Charles Zing was one of these people, Lake had one other person. He

trusted enough to help him with this bunker that hasn't been named. In the footage, he does mention that he won't have backup helpers after he's done with tobacco. So maybe he only trusted people enough to let them know he was cutting down trees and digging. Then again, could this other helper have met the same fate as Lake's own brother and friend? Could he have killed to silence him? And that leads to the question, would Leonard Lake and Charles Zing eventually have turned on each other? And I could see a couple of different scenarios here.

You know, I could see him enlisting the help of some people to cut down trees and to dig a hole with them not really having any idea what was going to ultimately be there. And so maybe there was no need to kill them. maybe they weren't, you know, accomplices at all. They were just doing some work. Or I could see a scenario where Ing was one of the helpers and they decided to get rid of the other helper because they felt like maybe they knew too much. They didn't want to have that person around. I don't put anything past these two individuals. I don't know that there was anything that they weren't capable of doing.

and wouldn't have done in order to try to protect themselves or silence anyone who knew too much about them. And Leonard Lake has a history of killing people close to him. So to me, I don't think there's any question that if he became worried that Charles Ng might be his downfall, that he might not hesitate for a second to kill Charles. Oh, yeah. When you're talking about the question of whether or not they would have eventually turned on each other, I think more than likely it would have been Lake who turned on Ng if it came to that. And like you said, I don't think he would have hesitated.

It's unknown how much Lake's former wife, Clarolin Ballas, nicknamed Cricket, really knew about his crimes. But many feel that she should have faced at least an accessory or obstruction charge. At the very least, she seemed to have no problem with Lake's theft and credit card fraud. she once signed Deborah Dubbs' name in order to use her credit card to buy dinner for herself, Lake, and Ing. The bunker that Lake built to carry out these sexual assaults was built on land her family owned, even though they weren't married anymore, and it required a backhoe and concrete trucks. It was a large undertaking that she would have been able to see. She's also on those video tapes, but she's not tied up, and she doesn't look unhappy,

embarrassed, or scared. She's smiling, laughing, and even showing off the a paddle that she wanted to use later. She notes that it's padded so it won't leave marks. She also talks about a fantasy of hers. It was also revealed that it was Clarolin, who drove Eng back to his San Francisco apartment and helped him escape to Canada after Lake was arrested. So I do think Clarolin is kind of an interesting character in this story

because there is that question. How much did she know? How much did she overlook? And how much did she actually participate? And we don't know much about her, you know, couldn't find much about what happened to her in the years that followed. But like you said, more of, I don't think there's any doubt that a lot of people think she should have been charged with something, that she was a part of this in some way,

probably not to the extent of Lake and Eng, but in some way. And it's, it's terrible to think that if she had any. kind of knowledge of what was going on there and could have helped save any of these people. If she didn't do the right thing and come forward, I would just be terrible. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, even if she didn't get charged, convicted, did no prison time, she would have to live with that. Now, for some people, that might not be that hard. Because I feel like, you know, if people are able to do these types of things, do they really have remorse about it later. And I don't know that many of them do. I really don't. Because if they had the

empathy there in the first place, they wouldn't have done the things they did. So my thought is that remorse probably never kicks in because it's just not there. A lot of the times they're, they feel sorry for themselves at the end, not for their victims or people that they hurt, just their own well-being that they care about. Oh, yeah. We've seen that time and again. I think any remorse that a lot of these killers have is only about the fact that they got caught, only about, you know, the fact that they're going to spend the rest of their lives in jail or maybe one day be put to death. It has nothing to do with their crimes, their victims. It's just what happened to them. As we mentioned, Charles Zangelo.

is still alive and behind bars being held at San Quentin State Prison. During his trial, Ing was asked about the options. His future held life without parole is a slow death. And execution is death on their time, on their terms, he said. The last execution in California was in 2006. California Governor Newsom's 2019 moratorium on executions means that that Ing will likely die in prison. So as we wrap this one up, there is no doubt in my mind that Leonard Lake and Charles Ing are two of the nastiest people, nastiest criminals in the history of true crime. I mean, there are a lot of nasty people, but these guys are up there.

Yeah, and it's frightening to think of one maniac on their own that comes up with this idea to have a torture chamber, bunker, where they can lure victims to and bring them there and use them as sex slaves and torture them, frightening enough that one person can do that, but for them to find someone who shares that same vision and helps them carry it out and commit these crimes together, that's just unfathomable. That's just very frightening. Yeah, I agree with you. You know, we've talked about a lot of serial killers. most of them are solitary for good reason. They don't want anyone else to know about their crimes.

But here you have a guy in Leonard Lake who was so depraved. And yet he was able to find someone to share in his depravity. And I always wonder how those conversations come about, how that discovery of, you know, like a mutual depravity for the lack of a better word, is disgust, is flushed out. I don't know how that works. And it's clear that they didn't discriminate. They killed men, women, children.

And what's really frightening is if they hadn't chosen to go in and shoplift that vice that day and get caught, how many more victims might they have had? Yeah, that's always a question. question, right? What happens if this one specific thing doesn't take place that kind of starts their downfall? You know, would they have done this for many, many more years? Would their victim count have been so much higher? And my thought is always yes, because I just don't believe that these types of individuals are likely to stop on their own. They're going to keep doing what they're doing until they're caught, they die, or something else stops them.

But the one thing I know for sure is that Leonard Lake and Charles Zing will continue to be, you know, an infamous pair in the history of true crime. But that's it for our episode on Lake and Ng. If you love the show and haven't done so yet, go out, give us a five-star rating. You can leave a review. But also keep telling your friends, that word of mouth about the criminology podcast is amazing. If you want to find us on social media,

Ron X with the handle at Criminology Pod, you can also find us on Facebook at facebook.com slash criminology podcast. And you can join our Facebook discussion group, criminology podcast, discussion and fans. So that's it for another episode of criminology, but Morph and I will be back with all of you next Saturday night with a brand new episode.

So for Mike and Morph. We'll talk to you next week. Take care, everyone.