Leonard Lake
Leonard Thomas Lake (October 29, 1945 – June 6, 1985), also known as Leonard Hill and a variety of other aliases, was an American serial killer. During the mid-1980s, he and his accomplice, British Hong Kong-born Charles Ng, raped, tortured and murdered an estimated eleven to twenty-five victims at a remote cabin near Wilseyville, California, in the Sierra Nevada foothills, located 150 miles east of San Francisco.[2] After his 1985 arrest on unrelated charges, Lake swallowed cyanide pills that he had sewn into his clothing and died four days later. Human remains, videotapes, and journals found at Lake's cabin later confirmed Ng's involvement, and were used to convict Ng on eleven counts of capital murder.[3][1]
Leonard Lake | |
|---|---|
 Undated photograph | |
| Born | Leonard Thomas Lake October 29, 1945 San Francisco, California, U.S. |
| Died | June 6, 1985 (aged 39) |
| Cause of death | Suicide by cyanide poisoning |
| Other names | Leonard J. Hill Alan Drey Randy Jacobsen Robin Stapley Leonard Hill Charles Gunnar Paul Cosner |
| Spouse(s) | 2nd wife: Claralyn Balazs (divorced) |
| Conviction(s) | Previously convicted of vehicle theft to one year of probation; never convicted for the murders |
| Details | |
| Victims | 11 confirmed, 25 suspected [1] |
Span of crimes | 1983–1985 |
| Country | United States |
| State(s) | California |
Date apprehended | June 2, 1985 |
Early life
Leonard Lake was born in San Francisco, California. When he was six years old, his parents separated, whereupon he and his siblings moved in with their maternal grandmother.[4]: 91 Lake was reportedly a bright child, but after habitually photographing his sisters nude, which his grandmother apparently encouraged, he became obsessed with pornography.[5]: 134 He then reportedly extorted his sisters to perform sexual acts.[5]: 159 Lake also collected mice and killed them by dissolving them in chemicals, in the same manner he would later dispose of his human victims' corpses.[4]: 91
After attending Balboa High School, Lake enlisted in the United States Marine Corps in 1964.[6] He served two tours of duty in the Vietnam War as a radar electronics technician. During this period, Lake was first diagnosed with schizoid personality disorder.[7] After what was termed a "delusional breakdown" in Da Nang, he received psychotherapy and, in 1971, a medical discharge.[4]: 91
Lake settled in San Jose and enrolled at San Jose State University, but dropped out after one semester upon becoming enamored of the hippie lifestyle in San Francisco. He moved to a commune there, and married briefly in 1975. The marriage dissolved after his wife discovered that he was making and appearing in amateur pornographic movies, usually involving bondage or sadomasochism.[4]: 92
For the next eight years, Lake lived at the Greenfield Ranch, a 5,600 acre back-to-the-land settlement near Calpella, north of Ukiah, California. There, he met and eventually married Claralyn Balazs — nicknamed "Cricket" — who became involved in Lake's fantasies and appeared in many of his pornographic films.[4]: 93 Lake's growing fear of impending nuclear holocaust prompted him to begin construction of a "bunker" on the settlement grounds, until the owner of the property became aware of the project and ordered it halted.[4]: 94
Murders
Lake met fellow former Marine Charles Ng, originally from Hong Kong, through a survivalist magazine advertisement he placed in 1981.[8] In 1984, Ng was dishonorably discharged after serving time for theft and desertion, and Lake invited him to share a cabin near Wilseyville that had belonged to Balazs's family.[4]: 92 Next to the cabin, Lake had built a structure described in his journals as a "dungeon". He probably had already murdered his brother Donald and his friend and best man Charles Gunnar, stealing their money and Gunnar's identity.[4]: 92 [3]
Over the next year, Lake and Ng began a pattern of rape, torture, and murder. Their victims included their neighbor Lonnie Bond, his girlfriend Brenda O'Connor, their infant son Lonnie Jr., and Harvey and Deborah Dubs and their young son Sean. According to court records, they killed the men and infants immediately but kept the women alive, raping and torturing them, before killing them or allowing them to die from their injuries.[4]: 92 [3] Other known victims included relatives and friends who came looking for Bond and O'Connor, two gay men (one of whom survived), and some workmates of Ng.[3]
Victims
Leonard Lake and Charles Ng are confirmed to have murdered at least 11 people and are thought to have killed as many as 14 others, including Lake's brother, Donald Lake, in July 1983.
- May 22, 1983 - Charles Gunnar, age 36
- July 25, 1984 - Harvey Dubs, age 29
- July 25, 1984 - Deborah Dubs, age 33
- July 25, 1984 - Sean Dubs, age 1
- October 1984 - Randy Johnson, age 34
- April 12, 1985 - Michael Carroll, age 23
- April 12–19, 1985 - Kathleen Allen, age 18
- April 19, 1985 - Lonnie Bond, age 27
- April 19, 1985 - Brenda O'Connor, age 19
- April 19, 1985 - Lonnie Bond Jr., age 2
- April 19, 1985 - Robin Scott Stapley, age 26
Arrest and suicide
On June 2, 1985, Ng was caught shoplifting a vise from a hardware store in South San Francisco and fled the scene. Lake later drove to the store and attempted to pay for the vise, but by then police had arrived.[4]: 93 Officers noticed that Lake bore no resemblance to the photo on his driver's license, which carried the name of Robin Scott Stapley, a San Diego man reported missing by his family several weeks earlier. Lake was arrested after a gun equipped with a prohibited silencer was found in the trunk of his vehicle, a 1980 Honda Prelude, and was later positively identified via a fingerprint search. While in custody, he swallowed cyanide pills that he had sewn into his clothes, and died four days later.[4]: 93
The license plate on Lake's vehicle was registered to him, but the Honda itself was registered to Paul Cosner, who had disappeared from San Francisco in November 1984. Lake's auto registration led detectives under the command of San Francisco Police Homicide Lieutenant Gerald McCarthy to the property in Wilseyville, where they found Stapley's truck and Bond's car, and the dungeon. In a makeshift burial site nearby, police unearthed roughly forty pounds of burned and crushed human bone fragments corresponding to a minimum of eleven bodies.[4]: 94
Two bodies, later identified as Bond and Stapley, had been gagged and executed by gunshots to the head. Police also found a hand-drawn "treasure map", leading them to two buried five-gallon buckets. One contained an assortment of ID papers and personal possessions, suggesting that the total victim count could be as high as twenty-five. In the other were Lake's handwritten journals for the years 1983 and 1984, and two videotapes documenting their torture of Brenda O'Connor and Deborah Dubs. In one of the tapes, Ng is seen telling O'Connor, "You can cry and stuff, like the rest of them, but it won't do any good. We are pretty ... cold-hearted, so to speak." In the other, Dubs is shown being assaulted so severely that she "could not have survived".[4]: 94
Lake's wife, Claralyn Balazs, cooperated with investigators and received legal immunity from prosecution.[9] Court records stated that Balazs turned over weapons and other material to authorities during the investigation. She was called as a key witness in Ng's trial in 1999. Yet in a surprise move, Ng's lawyer, William Kelley, dismissed Balazs without asking any questions. Kelley later declined to explain his actions. Balazs was on the witness stand for a few minutes as Kelley read sections of her immunity agreement. Balazs had been expected to shed light on what happened inside the mountain cabin that her parents owned.[9]
Ng, who had never legally obtained U.S. citizenship, was captured in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and eventually extradited to California, where he was indicted on twelve counts of first-degree murder. Despite the video evidence, and the detailed information in Lake's diaries, Ng maintained that he was merely an observer and that Lake planned and committed all of the kidnaps, rapes, and murders unassisted.[3][10]
In February 1999, Ng was convicted of eleven of the twelve homicides — six men, three women, and two male infants. Jurors deadlocked on the twelfth charge, but Ng was sentenced to death. The presiding judge noted, "Mr. Ng was not under any duress, nor does the evidence support that he was under the domination of Leonard Lake."[3] As of February 2021, official California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) records show Ng is still at[11] at San Quentin State Prison. The last execution in California was in 2006. In 2019, Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order placing a moratorium on the death penalty in California.[12]
See also
General:
References
- Welborn, Larry (2011-02-25). "O.C. death row: 11 murders, maybe more". The Register. Retrieved 2011-02-28.
- "Biography of Charles Ng". A&E Television Networks. Retrieved November 29, 2016.
- World: "America's serial killer sentenced to die", BBC News, 30 June 1999, access date 15 August 2013
- Greig, Charlotte (2005). Evil Serial Killers: In the Minds of Monsters. New York: Barnes & Noble. ISBN 0760775664.
- Newton, Michael (1999). The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers. New York, New York: Checkmark Books. ISBN 0-8160-3978-X.
- Howard, John (16 June 1985). "Suspected mass killer leaves trail of mystery". Lawrence Journal-Record. Associated Press. Retrieved 4 July 2016.
- Lasseter, Don (2000). Die For Me: The Terrifying True Story of the Charles Ng & Leonard Lake Torture Murders. Pinnacle Books. ISBN 978-0-7860-1926-7.
- The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers; ISBN 978-0-816-03978-4, pg. 153
- Yi, Daniel (January 8, 1999). "Defense Seeks to Put Ng on Witness Stand". Los Angeles Times.
- "As Jury Meets to Decide His Fate, Ng Expects Death – latimes". articles.latimes.com. 1999-04-12. Retrieved 2015-05-20.
- CDCR Division of Adult Operations (2018-08-06). "Death Row Tracking System – Condemned Inmate List". California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Retrieved 2018-08-12.
- CDCR (2018-08-12). "CDCR Inmate Locator". California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Retrieved 2018-08-12.
External links
- Leonard Lake at IMDb