Last Podcast On The Left - Episode 203: Leonard Lake and Charles Ng Part I - Operation Brownie Pockets

Episode Date: December 4, 2015

It's two of America's lesser known serial killers this week as we cover Leonard Lake and Charles Ng, partners in crime who tortured and murdered up to 25 men, women, and children over just one year in the early eighties. There's also a unicorn.

There's no place to escape to this is the last time on the left That's when the cannibalism started Everyone I am Ben Kessel as always looking at the beautiful Marcus Park We have Henry Zabrowski with us Henry you were recognized as for being the star of heroes reborn. Yeah buying what? Revers I Was buying condoms at the store and a man turned to me. It was there. Oh shit. You quit. He was reborn I was like, yeah, man. Yeah, you want to show and he's like man. You fucking and I was like, yeah Yes, yes, I am

Must be yes, yes, sir Absolutely. Yep ultra thin You fucking You know it puts a skip on my step, but a ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding and we danced in a circle arm and arm And then he robbed me isn't that nice the celebrity lifestyle you're living you can't even buy condoms without being harassed in the line Speaking of fucking yeah, all right, so it's a subject matter. I don't know if this is really either way sex is involved I guess it's disgusting Leonard Lake and Charles NG there's that's it NG but pronounced in this is where the white parts of us really show

Yeah, we're not really sure how to pronounce some of these ancient names, but I know it's Charles I know that they don't have they don't have like a serial killer name Do they know neither one of them do which is very interesting because they're very particular I think at one point they were called the video confession killers because as you're gonna see Leonard Lake and Charles NG are that well, they're not in the Nessor it's sort of a serial killer. You're really used to these guys documented everything and they did it the old-fashioned way on VHS tape Okay, they didn't have their iPhone they could just I uploaded to iMovie to make a good smut film But we figured for the Christmas season what better to bring in the holiday that makes all of us particularly me

Feel the darkest emotions that I'll feel all year. I hate the holiday December is a shitty month. It's full of tension. Everybody just wants you to fucking bye-bye. Bye We've had three shooters this week And you know what? I'm not feeling that particularly jolly, so I don't want any of you to feel that way either All right, well, let's not mention the shooters anymore. It's an evergreen show The shooters are here to stay Actually as a matter of fact someone can listen to this five years from now and be like there was three shooters this week That's a good point Henry

Let's start it off these guys Leonard Lake and Charles NG There were partners in crime and at least 11 and at the most 25 murders over the span of just over a year from 1982 to 1983 in the San Francisco area now Lake and Aang killed men women children even to entire Families, but they were focused mainly on imprisoning torturing and killing young women in the pursuit of Creating what Leonard Lake named his m-lady? Yeah, the operation Miranda He'd like to call it after his favorite book the collector by John foals I thought it was called I thought it was after my favorite sex in the city character Butchered that name. That's the thing is that some of those Miranda's were actually closer to a Charlotte

Yeah, that's right. They became Miranda's This horrible story This this whole this is like Marcus and I are both talking about a dog meat and I both had to take Several showers. Yeah while researching this. This is highly despicable. They fucking they killed babies Charles Aang drew cartoons Depicting the things they did to babies whether they were satire or not. I mean they were Satire they were funny looking cartoons. They were funny. They were funny Satire is you know sort of defined by it not actually happening in real life

There was one where literally he drew himself with a chef hat on it And he had a chef hat on in it and he was stereotypically Asian and then he was shopping for a baby And lose you he was literally going ding dong killed a baby. Oh Cooked a baby cooked a baby and again, we will not say that's stereotypically Asian. No, no stereotypically serial killer No, I mean he drew himself in a fashion. I see he was racist against himself. I'm not racist As we'll find with Charles Aang one of the most stereotypically Asian people that has ever existed. He is he's a difficult man But these guys were real Bo Jackson's of the of the killer world jack of all trades these guys who I could really compare them to the Most is the toy box killer. This is the worst most disturbing

Episode as far as things that we have journals videos from these guys This is the most disturbing thing that we're gonna cover since the toy box killer and guess what? We're gonna cover it a lot and we're gonna start right up top. Yeah with Leonard Lake a bit of a video blogger Yes, loved to record his own conversations love the sound of his own voice love the sound of his own voice sort of a nixon Meets the wedding tape killer. Yes But this guy he had he started everything off with what was eventually called the philosophy tape and in this He set out exactly how he was going to pull off

Operation Miranda. Let's listen to Fucking piece of shit I believe that I can if I can construct a hold himself I can create a facility that Is so stark and so empty that Fairly quickly by a combination of Painful punishments when I'm displeased I can quickly condition a young woman

To cooperate with me fully It may not work However, I want to try and what what you're gonna find out is that that what these two men go on to construct is a gigantic Byzantine underground Bunker not unlike HH Holmes that becomes their playground for sadistic sexual play for up to 25 Possibly women men and children. Yeah, and this and these guys When I've you know as I'm researching of course when we research these things It's the only thing that we can talk about to people

And when just makes us great. I mean Chris's time Researching it while doing Thanksgiving We're like sitting holding Marcus and I are literally at Thanksgiving together like I just see Marcus vigorously carving the turkey Yeah, getting too into it. Yeah, I go over there man. Like oh, I'm like a real m-lady And we have we have a hearty laugh and then about 30 seconds of chilled silence Don't have children anytime soon guys, but these guys try Leonard Lakin Charles, ain't when I tell people Yeah, we're working on these like most brutal most of one of the most Amazing true crime stories that I've ever researched people don't know about them

Just like people didn't know about the toy box killer. It's because I think it's too much It's it's quite a bit. It's it's quite a bit. It's just that the brutality of these guys It's too much to handle. It's like kid a Great album great album, you know, this is just but these guys are a special brand of pieces of shit They are control freaks hyper nerds military nerds, which I think in the end which we're gonna see are the worst kind Well, I'm we're gonna see that it's a military nerds I think I think eventually you turn into a terrorist like Timothy McVeigh. It's kind of that same mentality And these guys just love to put it in the bush in a way that was criminal

That's a good point. I do want to point out I do want to point out dog meat actually waft, which was kind of exciting. Well, you gave a wolf I Can't get the image out of my head of him pushing play on the VHS recorder and then having to run in front of the camera There is some of that in the tapes. I see yeah Well, while these guys are both very fascinating Let's start with Leonard Lake now Leonard was born to Gloria in Elgin Lake on October 29th 1945 in San Francisco, California He'd be followed by his sister Sylvia and a brother Donald a little after Donald came though Leonard's father a notorious alcoholic

High-tailed it up to Seattle to escape his presumably miserable life And you know, there is a special bus line for drunk dads You can take from San Francisco to Seattle called the dribble Take that dribble bus all the way down and it's just a bunch of drunk dads Just hanging out just swigging out of flasks having the best time in their lives is listen to another but death leper Like and they drive that bus at twice the speed limit just in case they crash and it'll kill all of them instantly Right, right, right. It's like a greyhound, but the toilet's always full. Yes, and they just they want they want it to go They want it to flip take the dribble when you're a sad dad

Well, Gloria did follow Elgin up to Seattle a couple of months later to try to save the marriage But little Leonard would be left at home with the grandparents never to live with either of his parents ever again Despite his mother and siblings returning to San Francisco within the year Leonard stayed with his grandparents until he came of age now This is what happens while he's staying with his grandparents is is a fairly rough We're gonna see early on that Leonard like you know Like mostly when couples of like split up and they do the thing where they're like they tell their children This is not your fault. This is mommy and daddy. It's still love you. We just need to leave

I am pretty certain that all of this was Leonard Lake's fault Lake started off as a child highly sexually active They said that he was a child like and that's actually not Unnormal a lot of kids wake up like kind of have a weird preternatural sexual fascination But then it either mellows out or they become like Larry Flint You know you become constructive with it makes some money or a Jeffrey Dahmer or a Leonard Lake And so he became he was sexually fascinated with his own sister But the thing is his grandmother was some raised them in a very particular way where she wanted them to

Understanding the beauty of the human body and a part of what she did I don't know how much of it's true or not But this is from what I read from various sources like murder PD and a couple other places that she basically Made him take nude pictures of his sisters in order to help him get an artistic appreciation of the naked human form and he eventually began to Develop a sexual obsession with his younger sister Sylvia and eventually their older brother Donald became This very aggressive member in the household and used to beat on all of them and what Leonard used to do was say to his sister

I'll protect you from Donald if you start to do this thing to me. I like to call a blowjob No, all right, so he did that with his sister a lot, so That's entertaining, huh interesting tail Henry interesting tail indeed Leonard also had a problem with animals his cousin Chester Richardson Used to visit Lake when they were about eight or nine years old Chester said that Lester had a thing for mice He had pet mice start off with just a few but as Chester told it they reproduced in the thousands but Chester's testimony might be a little suspect. He seemed to be a bit of an exaggerator

This is what he said had to say about Leonard's mice He had a little city for him as a regular little mouse world There were tunnels and castles and mazes and even a little train That is kind of cute a mouse conductor that is kind of adorable But that doesn't seem to be too malicious at this point This is kind of a creative thing for a kid to do It seems like someone who enjoys early games of being God Group of tiny things you can own and command but yes, it's very constructive

So you just described the job of a of a city planner Which is all that he really was but I would be very concerned If I heard from the mouth of a city planner y'all just my mice Going through my maces and my tunnels till I'm done with you. I guarantee you they talk exactly like that. I actually promise that Well, I mean as far as him having a little mouse world. That's not so bad But when it came time to get rid of them Chester said that Leonard sold some Gave away a few others Charity work for the most part killed them and dissolved their bodies and acid using his beginner chemistry set

Much like Jeffrey. He said that when this is also true This is a quote from his cousin. He said that what he would do is he would put them in a little jar of Acid and they would slowly turn into a green little goo and ugly green goo. Yeah, ugly green goo Not a beautiful forest green Yeah, I kind of remind it's like ratatouille, but fucking when he turns into slime Right, right. Yeah. I think that'll be in the sequel Well as Henry said earlier Leonard always had a problem with his brother Donald See Donald had been hit in the head by a train when he was nine

Yeah, I read that now. Are we talking a human train a train that carries humans or a small train? I got to say I mean technically his heads way stronger than most right Because if you got hit by an actual train this good on him. Yeah, you know old-timey injury That of course caused brain damage Which caused Donald to be in the words of his sister quote a little slow And also made him quite violent And that's that's a kicker. That's a kicker right there And it also made him dependent on his mother and this informed Leonard's opinion that he held from a very early age

That People who are dependent on the government were lazy or incompetent He said that he would poison the water supply of everyone on welfare if he could now what we're seeing here is a very intense Conservative like military like streak that literally started from when he was a boy he did that we're gonna hit what you're gonna say right here Is that he basically became a really piece of shit early in a part of an insufferable teenager Oh, yeah, one of the worst sort of I hate it when kids are conservative nothing is worse than seeing like a child Republican because that means like there's no place to go right from there like you have to start warm-hearted and slowly the world should

Make you cold and and broken. That's the goal of course. Yeah, but not when you're young You shouldn't start like that. No, you shouldn't start railing against welfare Queens when you're 10 No, no, I'm the only thing you can do when you're 20 is to make a murder basement. That's the only place you can go That's eventually if you start cold at 10 by I think he was about 35 when the murder basement came So yeah start high and then slowly go back down But yeah Leonard did grow up to be an insufferable teenager not just because of the conservative views But he was also one of those kids that said like oh, I worship ancient Norse gods Mmm, and then he said like well actually I'm a Buddhist and then finally he settled on atheism

Saying that he didn't place any faith in quote. Holy Joe. Yeah, I mean, but that's sort of normal I went through a little you know I went through the wicca phase and then I went through my Where in the Texas chains of masks a shirt for two years fades and then I mean I'm back at both of them So it's weird, but now I choose it and in a fun way Yeah, but it is what you really get with Leonard Lake is that when I read about Leonard Lake I really can't help but think about the internet because his entire persona is Kind of that you know what has now become the cliche neck beard persona. Yes. He's a neck beard

Yeah, he's exactly a way to put it. He's a he's a he gives us one star on iTunes This is this guy. It's this guy's and like people like my mom who're like it's the party humor that I don't like one star That's right. Do you think the internet would have saved him? I have actually been thinking about that quite a bit Is if the if he would have had something on the internet's other guys to say like yeah, yeah, of course women are all bitches You they're there for you. They're there to be your slave. Maybe he wouldn't have done this. Yeah, but a Real men's rights guy. Well, my question is with him is that I to be honest when I think a Leonard Lake I think of the cannibal cop guy what I think is that what he would have used the internet for where we're gonna get into with Leonard Lake is this is a man that was all about

sexual fantasy for forever Dean dark sexual Obsession with every time the one thing of the internet can do is I think porn is really good in a lot of ways Yeah, I think it's good to masturbate. I think it's one of the things you got to do It helps a lot of people. I think it saves a lot of people from rape I think it quells a lot of rape fantasies if you could jerk it out and get it out of your system the this is the type of guy that I think that that sort of Sexual obsession and the way you can go down a deep dark sex hole on the internet would have made him even worse That's a great documentary. I think it's called thought crimes on valet officer valet all about the cannibal cop

Really good other side of the internet argument is that it normalizes such fantasies as well So he could also get sort of caught up five ten years later. He has it so ingrained in his mind That this is just common thought that he goes and acts it out without knowing the ramifications of his actions It could be but it also could be that you know He has this fantasy about a Miranda woman You know this sort of like trapped slave and then he goes on kink.com and sees that exact same thing Yeah jerks it out and he's fine Subscribes to a webcam service doing that kind of thing and get a private message to do all that shit goes to the UK and

Pays 500 bucks and has the experience actually acted out for him, which is something that they do at the kink.com facilities There's a great documentary on it. I forget the name. It's just called kink. It's great. Oh, he's the manager of Best Buy Yes, exactly Lake as a teenager speaking of fantasy He was also Obsessed and this was a lifelong obsession with a novel called the collector Now the story of the collector goes that a lonely butterfly collector becomes fixated on a young woman named Miranda he kidnaps her and forces her to stay in a prison of his own making

Here's an excerpt from the collector It was like not having a net and catching a specimen you wanted in your first and second fingers I was always very clever with that Coming up slowly behind and you had it, but you had a nip for thorax and it would be quivering there It wasn't easy like it was with the killing And it was twice as difficult with her because I didn't want to kill her that was the last thing I wanted This is a very common almost a fairy tale type trope Rapunzel You know stuck away in the in the castle or even Shrek is about something similar

Well, that's about rest you that's The detectives are Shrek Leonard Lake is whatever the name of the terrible princess Yeah, exactly Leonard like it. Yeah is the guy that keeps them. You know, yeah, that keeps him in captivity But it's also there's the opposite to this is where Leonard Lake is a lot like BTK where he Romanticizes the whole thing and his position in it It's a part of that is viewing yourself as a sympathetic evil king where you're like you want to keep somebody and only And use them exactly how you want them to and to him when you'll see later on we go through the rules when he wants Operation Miranda's in full force. He begins to believe like but eventually that they'll love being right active

Yeah, exactly and Stockholm Syndrome thing Yeah, and Leonard Lake is one of the reasons why I consider like so fascinating is because you can read since we have so many Documents written by him since we have so many so much video evidence of him actually Talking about these crimes very candidly We can really see the evolution of this guy Yeah, we can see how these things actually like how he comes from fantasy to reality Yeah, and why he went from fantasy to reality like how what that actually came and what I kind of thing is that we'll definitely Get in this more probably in part two or part three that it's kind of a midlife crisis

Yes, that's what you're what you're gonna see it later on we'll go into this, but once once he hits 35. He's like I'm Dumpy I'm bald. He says all this stuff. He's like my body's bad. There's a type of woman I want to have sex with that will not look at me And so I need to find a way to make sure I I can get that from them because I deserve it because I've come this far Oh, yeah, he's a piece of shit. Yeah, right, right, right. Yeah, he's like the extreme version of the internet nice guy It's like why won't they I'm a nice guy. Why do they always go with the assholes? It Leonard Lake is the absolute extreme version of that right, right? I mean if he didn't invest so much damn money in this murder basement. He could have bought a Corvette and trolled the town

I'm sure some young gal would have loved it. Just do that shit You don't need to keep a prisoner. I'll say anyway now if you have prisoners, let him go Let him go. Let him go. Get him out of there. Come on. You don't want it. It's too much of a hassle. Yes You know it comes down to it. You know how hard it is to keep the prisoners Just let him go. You know what you should do is go ahead buy a Corvette get a Corvette or whatever the coolest car is now It is so the so Leonard Lake of course, you know, he's it does take until his mid 30s for to actually enact the Operation Miranda the man that he annexed it with is man 15 years his junior a one Mr. Charles Aang and his middle name's cheetah

Yeah, which is so cool. His name is actually Charles cheetah Aang, which is very funny because he's very chubby He doesn't seem like he'd move all that fast Well, he became chubby later as he got into prison because they all get chubby in prison But he was kind of spry when he was a younger fellow when he was a rapist you mean Yep, absolutely Charles cheetah Aang Charles cheetah Aang Leonard Lake's Partner in crime. He was born on Christmas Eve 1960 in Hong Kong

To Kenneth and oi ping Aang He was the youngest of three and although middle class The family of five lived in a two bedroom apartment with two grandmothers and two aunts Which is you know, they had a very big family system family support system in China That's kind of how they that's how they live it's cultural Um, but his father was like a driving demanding man again kind of cultural He's a real tiger dad, which means that he beat the fuck out of him like a bunch Yeah, but he really just wanted if you listen to the stories afterwards like of the experts of his father

Like because the truth is that he had a lot of hope for Charlie and he put a lot of work into Charlie and was like I'm gonna do the best for you and pay for all these private schools But then when it didn't work out he was like he started flipping out sort of beating him But later on his father was like hey, maybe I should not be beating so much Yeah, maybe not well this whole thing could have been avoided if the Chinese would have put in their one child policy way earlier Hmm. This is Hong Kong. This is Hong Kong. So it's a British territory. Ah different Very good. So in is different from Lake in that as a child He actually loved animals and went to great lengths to care for them case and point was his pet chicken

Now Charles had raised his pet chicken very dangerous to raise a chicken in Hong Kong and consider it a pet Yeah, you know yes, it did not work out And so the chicken met its end in a cooking pot And we don't know by the way if Charles was informed of him eating his pet chicken before or after dinner You know, this is straight out of South Park. It's what Cartman did when he fed the man's parents in the mix tenermans Yeah, the parents do yes. Yeah, it's an ability. I want to say this. I was very good with chickens as a child The Swenson farm at a missing chicken and what detective did they call some stupid one? And then I went in there and I got the chicken out. What are you talking about?

Swenson's lost a chicken. No Swenson's is the name of a family is the name of a family. Oh the family. Oh, okay They sent in somebody to get the chicken the chicken did not go to that person. Where did the chicken go? It was up in the coop and I went in Yes, no, but they wanted it to probably kill it. So you Okay, well, no, I think about it actually yeah, you were the grim reaper of this chicken Well, yeah, you went out earned this chickens trust somehow as a giant Yeah, boy. Yeah, you went out and did you flap your arm buckle down like you were a giant chicken very theatrical

I did what I had to do. Now was this at the time when you were also told by the principal you were hugging people too much No, that was years later So anyway a little look into the life of Ben Kissel. I got the chicken damn chicken the chicken I were another day in long fat man history Concerning other pets Oyping said well, it's a problem. It's a cheeky. He kept getting these delicious pets Yeah, so he got a turtle and so the mother said when he's walking around with his turtle on a leash And then Rita

He had a turtle and he would not recognize rocket up. So the turtle was all over the place in the house So every day he's buying fish to feed his turtles And then what are you gonna do the turtles getting bigger and I'm like mm-hmm Tutor soup and so I just get to craving for so what you add to chip to chop with my chaff and have and no Tutor no more chari come in and he's like, oh, where my church ago. I say you eat soup for three day Super three day you that's where church ago. I got a boo-hoo. Yeah, he was very sad I didn't know the turtles ate fish. Yeah, you know, of course. Yeah, and then of course there was the dog to which I ping said it's a very smelly. It's very smelly

So we wanted to bring it to the pad with the turtle the far way to chari And I have the chari reach the turtle out to the pond and then there was a duck I'm afraid of dirt. So he were reset when there are some other dog to the dog I have some companion in the whole time. I'm like chari Why you boo-hoo and chari boo-hoo say he gonna rock up woman and make up make her do the rape rape for many months And I'm a Johnny burger Seems to me like Charlie's mother is the future serial killer. She's just killing all the poor boys And you know each pet that was lost just devastated little Charlie

He was such a little bitch You're gonna see this later on too when he did the trial go south and he sentenced to death Yeah, you see this pout come on his face where he's just like fucking court fucking court always always wrong He's like literally like he that's what he literally I'm not being racist. No barely being racist. Yeah No, that is a actually exactly what he sounded like. Yeah, and so this little kid like he these were tantrum temper tantrum Yeah, when she took these pets away It's because you're living in a goddamn house with the two ants and your grandmother said the last thing you want to Turtle let a dog shit no longer the place. I understand why she turned them into soup

No, I'm gonna I'm on Charlie's side on this one I know you ever heard of a parent killing your favorite animal and then feeding it to you. This is China This is China. There's very little food going around. He's bringing food in the house that he's given names Even though inside you guys are on it anymore. I am so pro not feeding your child their pet. Okay, okay? Thank you for clarifying. I mean, I'm just saying there's a difference between a pet and an amateur farm You know, I mean, that's what he's turning the house. I don't know Oh, of course these temper tantrums turned into behavioral problems Charles started getting into trouble again and again particularly like hurlin Molotov cocktails off of roofs

Loved bullying little British children Hong Kong being a British territory but what he was into most of all was theft he would steal Anything and his thieving ways would land him in jail again and again throughout the years and eventually this Would result in both his and Leonard Lake's downfall way down the line and I'm trying he was real sneaky Yeah, yeah, yeah, he was super sneak He seemed to get caught all the time. No, he was a bad thief, right?

You know, it's very interesting with people that are like that become career thieves So the reason why they become known as career thieves is because they keep getting caught Yeah career thieves never get caught the best ones you never hear about yeah, which is interesting How many career thieves are out there if you're a career thief? Listen, all right. I'm gonna do in total impunity. All right. We won't ask your name. Yeah Use a burner email. Please email us if you steal for a living. I want to hear how you do it Henry just do me a favor check your pockets. Is your wallet it is your wall? Another day in long fat man

So in as a kid bounce from private school to private school because of you know the thievery in the arson and the like That eventually landed him in San Francisco in 1979 and by October of that year Charles had faked his birth certificate and joined the US Marines And that is the thing that would bring him and Leonard Lake together was semper fi that a whole idea of Marines bonding together Because Leonard Lake also joined the Marines because yeah from a young age Charles Ang was Convinced that the the army was gonna be like the perfect fit for him because he had violent tendencies He loved guns. He was obsessed with everything about like the uniform He thought it was gonna give him some legitimacy and littered and littered little did he know he had a brother in Leonard Lake?

Technically a father figure in Leonard Lake. Yeah, he really did and Leonard Lake he joined He joined the Marines at a pretty bad time January 1964 oh, yeah, yeah It was just a few months before golf a tonkin and just a few months before the United States would go full-on into the Vietnam War, right? So military life Immediately appealed to Leonard Lake. Of course. He loved the guns. He loved the quote-unquote survival skills That he learned in the Marines But what he really enjoyed was the affectations of military well

That's what all these guys do the like the feeling that being in the military give him these these types of join the Marines These yeah, yeah, no, no there You know we have a ton of listeners in the armed forces out there, but these guys people in the armed forces You know the guy we're talking about yeah It's the piece of shit that's there just because he gets a helmet and a gun yeah Yeah, and loves camouflage that Leonard Lake was one of those camo guys the only shops at army surplus Where's camouflage all the time lots of berets? He also he loved the language of the military

He always referred to all of his actions no matter how mundane or sinister he always called them Operations or ops. Yeah, sure. God operation. Go get me some toilet paper But I just shat and I ran out of paper towels. Yeah, you just pooped yourself in the middle of mess hall That's not an operation operation brownie pockets is in effect. Yeah, that's what you're gonna call that you just shut yourself You're drunk bastard And of course there was the promise of violence Leonard later on he would tell people that he loved his time in Vietnam He didn't even want to leave they made him leave that he quote-unquote killed a lot of people and that the hardest thing he had

To do was quote-unquote zip up a body bag But he was totally full of shit He was lying because he worked was he was a radar technician He was a radar. Yeah, he was a radar technician And that's another thing that that vets say a lot is that the guys that talk about combat never saw any right? So they're trying to just sort of I guess trump up their own egos, huh? They're trying to trump up their own egos. They're trying to seem impressive to people or they're trying to intimidate people It's like yeah killed some motherfuckers the people who actually kill people don't fucking talk. They're haunted by it

My uncle killed people he does he can't even talk about Vietnam. He can't even go to Chinatown, right? So we that that's true, right? I mean that is true, but not talking about I've never seen him in Chinatown But I imagine if you went to Chinatown, he wouldn't be good there. Yeah, might trigger some PTSD, huh? Yeah, you could say that for an inherent racism So this guy was like I love to smell a napalm in the morning, and then he would just like look down Oh, that's an omelet never mind. Oh, so he never saw any battle at all Didn't see a single minute of combat spent all of his time on a base in Denang Maybe he heard some he might have heard some gunfire might have heard some bombs here and there

But he never he never once went out into the he was never in country He did love the whorehouses of Vietnam, and that's actually very true. He did He did of course that's but that's what he did. That's I mean what you're gonna see again He got training for it. Yeah, he went into Denang and got some whores and came on back worked on some radar but Really the Marines to their credit This was the only time in Leonard Lake's life that anybody would see that maybe there's something a little fucked up about this That's the Marines, right Marines say in 1965 literally. They were like we can't put a gun in your hands

I mean you know they just faked a terrorist act to start a war In Vietnam, I mean yeah, Vietnam. They were like you are far too sane for this gun go back have a go I have a pint of whiskey come back. We will arm you. Yeah, I was crazy Yeah, Vietnam was crazy and Leonard Lake was too crazy for Vietnam Yeah, so they didn't give him any sort of they didn't deal him go nowhere near the field He didn't get a gun and he was diagnosed as a schizophrenic basically impending schizophrenia Yeah, they were like basically he was like well, it's like he is one egg short of a dozen He's like that's like what his fucking terminology was and they kicked him off the fucking Marines

They gave him honorable discharge Mm-hmm, and he was put in a hospital psych ward for a couple of months and his first wife Karen Lee Miners men who he married between his first and second tours of duty Later told of a strange incident involving him soon after his diagnosis one night Lake Broke into a storage facility to steal quote-unquote government equipment Karen doesn't remember exactly what it was But either way he didn't find what he's looking for and blamed his failure on quote an attack of diarrhea

Operation brownie pockets is in full effect retreat retreat His solution to this was to lay in bed for days at a time eating nothing but chocolate I know how that feels right Kathy His reasoning was that chocolate caused constipation so as soon as he was suitably plugged up He could resume his op and complete his mission, but as far as we know he never did I would consider I would resume operation brownie pockets, but I gotta tell you what I love shit Yeah, sounds like he likes chocolate more. It's no operation fondue tube is in full effect Let's go. Oh my goodness

But the rest of Karen's marriage to Leonard wouldn't be so whimsical. Oh, that was the good part of it That was the one Gordy's in bed slamming chocolate. We would stop shit himself so we could steal things from the government Oh, we had some good times, honey, but man mostly it's been pretty rough So she actually she described their first few months of marriage as quote-unquote sort of average And their time how I always like to describe all my romances. Yeah, especially the honey moving the honeymoon phase sort of average And they she described their time after he was officially discharged as quote-unquote fairly normal but things went downhill fairly quickly after that as We know from Leonard's philosophy tape that we heard from at the very beginning of the show and what we know about

Psychopaths in general lakes relationships always started off with him playing the sweetheart because he wants to appear to you as a person That you want him to be you want He wants to be the perfect man because a part of it is the sadistic pleasure He gets out of making the switch or the does not understand why you won't jump with him to the switch Because he was a very as we're gonna see kinky man and it not in a way that was remotely normal It's because it was just as soon as you gave him and she would take a mile his sexual pre-elections were Unquenchable did he have that much forethought though or was he just you know in order to get people's attention or if he gets someone to love you You have to do what you have to do. Did he want to be a good person? No

He was like every time that he would do something kind he was just like just wait This is all bullshit. Well, it's cuz he just felt he was above everybody So he feels like he has to condescend and talk down to the people that are below him in order to Mesmerize them and then it's like what you're gonna see what what he says before about the term off the shelf lover Yeah, which is like how slaves were off the shelf employees where it's like that's like what she was that's what he wanted So in the end he would take these women and mold them into a way that he wanted He thought that they would go along with him because he was so superior and he had this spell over them And they're like most of the time they're like no yeah, and when it didn't work

He always it always came back to like fucking bitches, man. It's like these like when women wouldn't acquiesce to his will It was never his fault. It was never what he was doing. It was always everything was always done to him Right, right, right, and then but he did have some hold with his first wife He pressured her into doing becoming a prostitute for him where that was his idea was to push it being like you started taking nude Pictures of her and started going out and basically selling her body a little bit for her to make some cash And that's how he he did it and he got sexual pleasure out of her being shared by many men and people always talked About Leonard Lake as being an extremely charming man or at least the women who fell into his trap taught He was either described as extremely charming or an absolute piece of shit

Like a bit like a lot of people did kind of see him It's like there's something really wrong with this but this is where we'll see the stripe of H.H. Holmes Yeah, where he is that the word he believed he was larger than life Yeah, and Leonard Lake's biggest kink by far the thing that got him off the absolute most something that started in childhood taking nude Photographs over the years Leonard Lake would accumulate dozens upon dozens of albums of nude pictures he'd take of both women and Young girls and it wasn't just pictures that he was married to or dating either he somehow he convinced

Countless women to pose for him over the years and all how he'd love to show him to pick the show those pictures to anyone who would Look anybody who entered into Leonard Lake's home would be forced to look at his collection of nude photographs Once you got to know him a little bit and you were like a dude or something you'd start looking at the pictures And if you were dating him he'd show you the pictures because there was something about him that he thought that it would sexually Excite these women and it didn't no believe it or not They don't like to feel extremely jealous. No exactly not and he you know showed him to his wife Karen all the time that he was Taking pictures of other women while he was married to Karen and his douchiness in that marriage extended far beyond the sexual realm He claimed to hate telephones and only got her a telephone after concocting a completely fake identity

To give to the phone Just this thing where it's that it's the guys are like I don't shop online because the government's gonna take the credit card Me like man. I got all our shit already. Yeah, shut up Fucking to get over it. He pastored her Constantly about taking part in three ways which he only did once and did not enjoy She supported him completely by dancing at a local strip club while he gardened all day long and Just would not shut the fuck up about the collector I don't know

I mean up to this point to be honest though taking nude pictures everyone on their cell phones right now have tons of nude pictures You know and then the killing of the mice. That's not that extreme I mean, I want to see when he really jumps the shark because at this point He's not quite as bad as you know someone like a Ramirez already at this point Or I mean, there's a lot of crazier people who we've covered up to this point. I think What what guy I mean, I don't particularly have a three-way fantasy, but many guys have a three-way fantasy It's the way that it's as far as the mind like yeah, some people like Okay, let's say like when I was a kid. I used to kill frogs, you know, so but that's not quite as bad as

Killing dozens of mice and dissolving their bodies while giggling. Yeah, I've gotten so much fireworks up their buttholes and left your Ass off, but they technically that was sexist games And also the only thing they do is kids and also they were reptiles. They're further away from us then mice Oh, you're just you're right. I will say it makes no sense. That is a weird Validation that totally makes sense because mice are mammals. They're closer to us Leonard Lake's Leonard's Lake's entire life was devoted to sex Yeah, and it was that's the problem is that it's once she gets to a point It was past like working at a job if it was past

Like the collector became everything on his mind That's where it became the unhealthy and became bigger than just some guy who's into three ways, right? Is that it was the only thing he was concerned. Yeah, I'm just saying I'm interested to hear really how he goes to the next level of true horror, right? And as far as the the nude photographs go imagine if you got a bunch of like say nude selfies from a bunch of different ladies and You insisted on showing the nude selfies that you have on your phone to every Equatance that you talked to every time you saw them be awkward and uncomfortable, right? I'm not saying that then they I would immediately jump to murder base, but also he had physically forced his girlfriend

wife it physically forced his wife to Work at a strip club and become a prostitute like this is what he's doing He became like he became like an amateur pimp You became his own version of the collector in a small way in the house as like a sort of lead-up And he was also super abusive he would administer what he called controlled beatings that he would start hitting her Now we're getting there. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He started hitting her with an open hand. I just spoke to you soon I'm sorry Then he started with an open hand and then slowly worked his way up to a fist

She endured the marriage for two years before finally leaving him in 1972 his last petty act would be to break into her new apartment and burn holes in all of her clothes with Acid and Leonard's sister Janet said that the divorce was the last time she ever saw Leonard Cry and along with the kind of sort of not that bad abandonment of his mother as a child Was the the source of Lake's hatred of women, which is also a very common Psychopathic trait where he just pins it all on this one woman that betrayed him Even though he was beating the fuck out of her and then his mom who left because she couldn't handle his drunk father And the fact that she literally was staring into the eyes of a young psychopath. Yeah

Yeah, I mean again the burning of the holes in the clothes with acid is very specific, but People cut up. They're they're ex significant others close all the time leaving them on the front lawn things like that I mean the controlled beatings now we're getting I understand. He's not a good person. Yeah, but I'm controlled. It's very bizarre Yeah, it's just a yeah, it's it is very bizarre and I do agree that this is a Pretty normal. I guess I would say at this point. He's average psychopath, but also we are Forgetting during this time his obsession with the oncoming nuclear holocaust that was gonna end all life on earth And that's what we're getting to right now That is a thing that he had carried since the Marines when he was going through the Marines a part of it

He started this diatribe early on about how like this is just the fucking beginning these communists are gonna take this up to the fucking Midnight of the nuclear clock. It's like this is it We got to prepare for the end times and everyone's gonna be like Lenny you're being crazy and he's like I'm not crazy. Yeah, which means you're crazy Right. Yeah, he got he became obsessed with using and learning quote-unquote survival skills Which he was one of those assholes that used to bury food in the woods And thought that that was gonna save him and so while legitimately he would bring people over the house talk about his food Deposits in the end of the world while flipping through nude pictures of the many prostitutes

He paid to take nude pictures of rough neighbor Yeah, it's a rough new boyfriend to bring around the parents. Yeah. Yeah, you don't show him to mom and dad for quite some time Oh, it's not a cool guy. No, no, absolutely not Yeah, he caught he said like if you don't have cyber survival skills And if you don't have a bunker, then you're not gonna survive the impending nuclear Holocaust, but you know what else you can use a bunker for dog meat. Uh, pre sexy sex like prison. Oh, yeah Yeah, you could definitely take a bunker and turn into a prison for a sex slave, which is also exactly what he wanted He felt that women should only be used for cleaning sex and when you're done with them, you can put them away

You know, it's funny My parents used to always tell me that it doesn't matter what grades you got in school because you never know when Jesus is coming back Oh, and then they found out Jesus wasn't coming back. They moved to Florida That's what they did instead, but you get the feeling after the nuclear Holocaust never occurred, which everyone was saying was going to occur I mean, this was still locked down drills in middle schools. They would hide under their desks because that would somehow not not get you murdered But I think once that didn't happen. Maybe that was the reason he's like step two in life No, he always thought up to the very end. He was waiting for the end to come and what he would do to also Prepare for that is that he would as Marcus put here. He's very fatalistic

Yeah, he kept with him cyanide caplets that he would try he would use on dogs in order to work the dosage out He would sew cyanide caplets into his clothes does in case that whenever the shit went down He could fucking off himself. Yeah, and also he would not shut up about to anybody that he met Yeah, he would always say I'll carry death in my pocket And he also talked about how he had hollowed out one of his teeth And kept a little bit of cyanide one of his teeth so in case he was he had his clothes taken away from him he could quickly just open up his tooth with his tongue and Swallow the cyanide and die and stone like an asshole. Yeah, like he's working

What a pain in the ass. This is just a oh God, I could just see this guy at an office The guy who fills the copiers and shit just like oh we've come by our desk and hounded you and then every single time like Any girl comes to talk to you and leaves. He's just like that Wendy's a real piece You know like shut up Get away from me No, well it would be years before a lake would find a suitable spot to carry out Operation Miranda he would try for the first time on a 5,000 acre homestead called the ranch Split in a 200 separate plots of land a small community had sprung up composed of former

San Franciscans looking to escape the failure of the Hadesbury hippie line Which is the very end of the hangover from the like the of the end of the hippie movement These were people that were trying to truly live off the grid and again We're going to see how these sort of altruistic communities are immediately taken advantage of by a psychopath Yeah, they're trying to live off the grid in the most innocent way possible They're trying to live without power lines without telephones Everyone innocent about it There really isn't this is how Warren Jeffs controlled everybody in Utah. This is how Colt start

This is how molestation goes on check These people were all a bunch of deviants, but the problem is that that's where it goes always But at the very beginning at least the first 15 minutes 15 it starts sort of being like we can go con and use the con both this food and as Pretty bits of corn you can hang up on strings for corn decorations Yeah, the first generation is always people with names like and these people all did live at the ranch People with names like Zephyr beaver Otter and morning glory and morning glory can make some of the best tree branch sandals you've ever seen

Yes, they are highly uncomfortable and yes They only last for three wears, but they are definitely at one point tree branch sandals And actually Otter and morning glory They were said to be the high priest and priestess in the ranch's quote-unquote black magic cult and owned quite the large snake But you know it's just two people in black robes just waving to people driving by me like welcome to the neighborhood You guys want a goblet of blood? It's not blood. It's grape juice. We're just having fun over here come over and join the cult All right guys enjoy yourself. We got all the corn you could possibly stomach Yeah, that's the thing you go out you plant corn and then you're like

What do you have to do you just have to wait for it to grow you got to fill the time with something? Yeah fucking ballin ballin out in a dust cloud playing with a large snake, but there was one Unsuspecting far too trusting hippie with way too much faith and the goodness of people that Leonard Lake scammed Her name was Venus now If you name your kid Venus well no Venus was the name she gave to herself if you give yourself the name much much worse You're basically I'm not saying you're asking for it, but you're definitely gonna be taking advantage of you're definitely gonna be taking advantage So I have a new nickname idea just think but I can't give it to myself

You have to give it to me men or from Mars women are from Just go to be go to grad school Cheryl I'm calling you Cheryl. No, that's but Woman where am I from? That's my name He called me Venus Go to grad school Cheryl I know I'm your father, and you don't respect me, and I don't I truly I'm trying not to control you. I

Would have heard you, but you didn't call me Just desperate for you to not be murdered in a sex dungeon Well, Venus wouldn't be murdered in a sex dungeon. That's good I mean but Leonard Lake and she would get into a relationship with him, which was no picnic either For months. He's just constantly pressure her to take nude photographs would go on and on about his survival skills started Just casually talking about killing his younger brother But even creepier where his frequent mentions of operation Miranda and the bunker He needed to build to pull it all off and Venus for some reason thought that Leonard was building a

Shelter for people to escape the cities like that's what she thought Operation Miranda was because the way he talked about it the vague way he'd be like it's a place to escape to it's a place We're only pleasure is known It's gonna be the new Valhalla That sounds amazing. He's just like it's gonna be ropes there and a lot of pussy damage And he's just like well, I'll just hear the first bit What she thought it was like a reverse Harriet Tubman making a bizarre Underground railroad, but like out of the cities into some rural ass place

Yeah problem with that railroad is just went straight to ball city. Yeah It wasn't tunneling or anything though, was he he was Yeah, he absolutely was no what he would do much to the chagrin of all the hippies around is he rented a backhoe and Brought it out to the ranch this sort of diggin big old hole You just gouging out the sides of that these beautiful these beautiful slopes But the hippies of course didn't do anything about it. It was free living out there Yeah, it's free living you can't tell him he can't get a backhoe and ruin the nature because technically that's his freedom Yeah, technically, but yeah, but actually the rest of the community they admitted that the more he talked about

Operation Miranda and the more he started actually digging out a hole To build it the more he quote-unquote Freaked us out Yeah, yes, and Venus's breaking point came when Leonard pushed her off a ladder And so she sold Leonard the property and lit out because it wasn't his house No, he basically he came into the community was kind of bumming around had seduced Venus and Venus invited him into her house And then she sold it to him and in a weird sort of hippie way like just being like alright Well, you're just gonna do your own thing and so she sent it sold sold at the house to him

Meanwhile, he's also romancing a 16 year old. Yeah, that became obsessed with him Like this 16 year old that he's showing pictures all these nude pictures of women He used to be with and this is the common example of like if you're if you're underage and a 30 year old is flirting with you And you think he's cool. It's be I mean any 30 year old is flirting with the 16 year old is a monster That's right So at this point he's in the psychopathy of Macaulay Culkin from the movie the good son That's where he's at. He's pushing people off of ladders. Oh, yeah A little bit crazy. Everyone's concerned about his presence

He's Ed Gein killing his brother crazy right now because at this time He's also Bracking about the fact that he had killed his own brother when he hadn't killed his brother at this fantasize He's talking about it. Yeah, he's talking about it. He's talking about killing his own brother very flippantly Like it's one of the it's like and he talks about everything very casually Except when he starts talking about the cyanide cat well He thought it he talks about everything very casually until it gets to the underground bunker and then it's very serious But everything else like you know, I got cyanide capsules on me at all times always ready just to be super impressive

Yeah, it's like super cool And also he would invite his super fat friend Charles Gunnar over that he would then Mercially make mercilessly make fun of in front of the people that he was introducing him. Yeah, yeah, Charles Gunnar five eight four hundred Pounds. Oh my god. Yeah, Leonard just called him fat Charles. That makes sense It does make a lot of sense, but every time fat Charles visited Leonard would make him go on these really long hikes up the steepest slopes that he could find Deliberately going a lot faster than Gunnar could handle. It's no different than the trainers on Biggest Loser Yeah, that's what I'm thinking kind of a Jillian Michaels type over here

Yeah, and although it seemed like Lake got kept Gunnar on just to torture him We'll find out in the next episode the practical purpose that Leonard Lake found for fat Charles But you'll just have to wait to hear about operation fish. Oh my god. I can't wait for operation fish This is exciting. I brought what was it operation dookie pants? My goodness so many operations now the ranch's overall reaction to Leonard's personality was mixed to say the least But he did manage to make one friend with the black magic priest next door order So they have to hang out a couple times auto told Leonard that through his occult studies of rare magical creatures He think he had rediscovered a lost process for creating a unicorn. It's like an extra stupid animal house

Everybody's doing dumb shit on this ranch. Oh, I see and then Gunnar's the Belushi. It's all working out. Yeah so yeah, Otter told him that he had rediscovered and and Otter was a hundred percent serious when he told them like yes Through my black magic studies. I have rediscovered a long forgotten process for creating a unicorn The only one the only thing one has to do to create a unicorn the magical beast of law and figment area Was to perform a simple just simple Surgical procedure on the first hours of a goat's birth which would then cause just one solitary horn to grow from the animals forehead And then it's a unicorn can't you see so it's the theory of like cut off one of the dog's legs and the other dog The other like kind of slowly moves to the middle

You can snap an animal's bones into any shape you can you can Sometimes they die, but that's just the magic over taking them over to neverland But you would just say it's a one-horned goat not a unicorn unicorn Otter had only been able to pull this off successfully once and So he named his unicorn goat Sir Lancelot And as soon as Leonard caught a glimpse of the animal he in the words of die for me author Don Lasseter quote could see unlimited potential for the seductive use of Sir Lancelot

What a nice bunch of hippies they were and by the way die for me by Don Lasseter. Yeah, I've been used I'm using this book for information raw facts, but god damn is it bad It's just a lot of side stories a lot of side stories I don't need to know the backstory of a guy that once told little Leonard Lake about a place that was hiring That is in the book this author spends two pages on the backstory of a guy that just told the point of that Pointed at a building and told Leonard Lake. They're hiring over there No watch the documentary journey into evil that is very informative and also what a one that I'm reading right now I believe is called into the blood. I'll put it up on the Facebook page

It's good. It's an hour or 40 minutes long Wonderful you have developed a history of reading authors books and then taking all the information out of it and then just throwing them under the bus No, I don't what are you talking about? It's a good book this guy. You haven't read anything. I've read the cover of it. I've got pictures on it I love the picture. I want to say this guy crushed the pictures up But I will say the one thing that he crushed it on is this little story that I really like because Sir Lancelot The unicorn goat would be used to make Leonard's Lakes ultimate seduction come true at the renaissance The renaissance fair is a very important part of the Leonard Lake story Of course his proposition to order very simple. Hey, hey, buddy. Hey listen this goat loving it

All right, well all of you made a unicorn That's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna take this goat. I'm gonna go to the renaissance fair I'm gonna charge money for photos with goat. I don't want to own with profits, right from the pictures I'm gonna split it with you black priest otter Meanwhile black priest otter is just being like that's against the tenants of black magic to accept money for just it's It's a sacred animal But guess what it fucking worked it were any time so many times It worked enough where he kept this scam going on and off for an entire year

Year until the magical summer of 1980. I'm gonna put it this way guys remember all right I've heard people out there lamenting being single but listen We just had a thread about it, but sometimes you just got to do what you love and then Love will find you that's because you're keeping your mind on what's important So sometimes you got to take a goat that is Mutilated to look like a unicorn out to a fair for up to a year because you know what that can find you the perfect mate Because someone who is in love with you and you're Because someone who's in love with the goat a unicorn that is obviously a goat

Yeah, and it's been tortured to look like a unicorn is gonna love you and all of your dog shit about underground bunkers and cyanide pills And it's gonna mean the form of a woman named Clarillin cricket black It's sort of the The personification of if you don't love me at my worst you won't love me at my best Yeah, she loved this goat. Yeah, not only she loved the goat unicorn, but like that cut a Leonard legs jib immediately They started like there's an engine. There's an exchange where she's just like nice goat. He's like it's a unicorn She's like well something here. It's got a long horn And boom they were in love. Yeah, they just immediately this like weird sensual banter back and forth

She immediately moved in with them and soon after cricket who she'll be known from here on out as Soon after she came into his life. So too did Charles Ying which we'll get into in disgusting detail on part two All right, so you could you would say this is the most lighthearted of the episodes Cuz the rest of it's Pretty bleak all right very bleak gets extremely bleak. We're gonna get into some of the journals But don't worry. We'll make it fun We'll make it fun for you. Don't even think about it. Don't think about it Henry. You see you thinking about it You know you see how you think about it. Yeah, don't think about it. Don't think about it. All right

That's episode one. Yeah, mr. Mr. Lake and Charlie. I can't wait to get in and learn a lot more about mr. Charlie here Yeah, cuz it's you know, you can maybe help you find a girlfriend, you know Yeah, I don't need a lot of help with that. I'll tell you All right Oh my god, I'm getting proposed to gossip Wow But no, I'm still celibate that is by my choice though, and that's not one of those cheesy comedian jokes We have some shout outs here. Yes, we absolutely have some shout outs I want to get a shout out to Gary Schmidt. Happy 40th birthday buddy. Oh, yeah, I got the same shout out buddy

I hail Satan. It's your birthday. Um, don't make a bunker where you keep women as slaves No, he seems to be very happily married. That's great. I'm just saying both of you Sometimes husbands and wives do it together. You don't just don't do it I also want to say happy birthday to Carly from your boyfriend Simon Miller. I hope you guys are still together Are we just doing like a good morning America thing now? I'm happy hundreds of birth hundreds birthday to Gloria in South Dakota. Sometimes. It's nice Yeah, sometimes it's sometimes it's nice to be nice to the people Ben. No, I mean, I'm very happy. I'm happy happy birthday That's great Ben Sarah. No, it's I think it's wonderful. You had a birthday

Yeah, if you guys want a last podcast on the left t-shirt for Christmas time go to cave comedy radio G or go to cave comedy radio comm slash March the last day we're gonna be sending out t-shirts for Christmas. The very last day is December 21st So get in your orders before December 20th If you want to get a t-shirt for your special somebody and even then it might not be guaranteed So be sure to order your t-shirt as soon as humanly possible. Do it now Yeah, because we're all we're gonna be getting a lot of orders in in the next couple of months

You want to be sure to get your t-shirt for your sweetheart wonderful I'm all right find Marcus Parks on Twitter at Marcus Parks. You can find Henry on Twitter at Henry loves you I'm at Ben Kissel and let's see. Thanks for supporting all the shows here on CCR top at roundtable page seven section of the human activities and all the other programs hail Satan I'm just Fine joy in this holiday even if it's going around reckon people's fucking Christmas decorations on the street If you find joy in ruining Christmas, don't do that Don't do that and if you would like a more positive view on Christmas Please listen to this week's episode of section of the human activity chaos, right?

Very nice and when you see a goat, it's just a two-horned unicorn Oh hail yourselves. Help me For more shows like the one you just listened to go to cave comedy radio comm