Leonard Thomas Lake (October 29, 1945 – June 6, 1985), also known as Leonard Hill and a variety of other aliases, was an American survivalist and serial killer. During the mid-1980s, Lake and his accomplice, Hong Kong-born Charles Ng, raped, tortured and murdered an estimated eleven to twenty-five victims at a remote cabin near Wilseyville, California, 150 miles east of San Francisco.[2] Upon being arrested on unrelated charges in 1985, Lake swallowed cyanide pills that he had sewn into his clothing and died four days later. Human remains, videotapes and journals found at his cabin later confirmed Ng's involvement, and were used to convict Ng on eleven counts of capital murder.[3][1]
Early life
Leonard Lake was born in San Francisco, California, the first of three children to Elgin Leonard Lake and Gloria May Williams. Lake's parents divorced when he was 6, and her second marriage produced two half-sisters. The siblings moved in with their maternal grandmother after the divorce.[4]: 91
Lake was reportedly a bright child, but developed an obsession with pornography after habitually photographing his sisters nude, which his grandmother apparently encouraged.[5]: 134 Lake allegedly killed mice by dissolving them in chemicals, in the same manner he would later dispose of his human victims' corpses, and became fascinated with the idea of holding women captive after reading the John Fowles novel The Collector in his teens.[4]: 91
Lake settled in San Jose and enrolled at San Jose State University, but dropped out after one semester upon becoming enamored of San Francisco's hippie community. He moved to a commune in San Francisco and married briefly in 1969. The marriage dissolved, however, 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. In 1975, 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
FBI mugshot of Ng, 1982
Prison mugshot of Ng, 2007
Lake met Charles Ng, a fellow former Marine who was originally from Hong Kong, in 1980 or 1981. Sources claim the two met through an advertisement. Lake, by that time managing a Philomotel, had placed in a survivalist magazine.[8][4]: 91 Ng had escaped from a military prison following a conviction for weapons theft and stayed at Lake's motel, eventually moving into a house along with Lake and Balazs. Several witnesses testified that Lake was a domineering figure in their relationship; Ng stated that he looked up to Lake "like a brotherly, fatherly figure."[9]
In April 1982, police arrested Lake and Ng on weapons charges. Ng was returned to Fort Leavenworth to complete his sentence. Lake jumped bail and began life as a fugitive, using various aliases and disguises in an attempt to hide his identity. In July 1984, Ng rejoined Lake and his wife after he had completed his sentence and had been dishonorably discharged. He first stayed in an apartment rented by one of Lake's sisters before moving into an apartment on Lenox Ave in San Francisco that autumn. Meanwhile, Lake moved into a remote cabin near Wilseyville owned by his in-laws. Next to the cabin he had built a structure described in his journals as a "dungeon".[4]: 92 [3]
Over the next year, Lake and Ng began a pattern of kidnapping and murder of men, women, and children. According to court records, they killed the men and infants immediately, whereas they subjected women to a period of enslavement, rape, and torture before killing them.[4]: 92 [3][10] Lake is known to have committed several murders without the assistance of Ng, and wrote in his journal that Ng was initially "very hesitant to get involved with my plan".[3]
Victims
Donald Lake, 31, was Leonard's younger brother and had been hit by a train as a child and was mentally disabled from the accident. Leonard resented him because his disability required the full attention of their mother, resulting in Leonard being raised by their grandparents. Leonard referred to him as a "leech" in conversations with his ex-wife Balazs, and said that he did not deserve to live.[11] In December 1982, Donald was living with his mother in San Francisco, California when Leonard stopped by and asked Donald to come along to a house-sitting job. Donald was never seen again, and his mother reported him missing. Leonard resurfaced on New Year's Day in 1983 to rent a room in a house under the name "Alan Drey". Leonard had stolen Donald's identity and began cashing his disability checks. Leonard also later forged a letter to their mother claiming to be Donald and that he had moved away to live with drug dealers in Reno, Nevada.[12]
Four months later, Lake moved in with his friend, Charles Gunnar, 34. Gunnar was best man at Lake's wedding to Balazs in 1981. On May 22, 1983, Lake invited Gunnar to go on a road trip to Las Vegas after his divorce. Several days later, Lake returned alone in Gunnar's van and said to acquaintances that Gunnar ran off with a woman.[12] Gunnar was never seen again.[11] After the murder, Lake stole Gunnar's identity and began to cash his government checks. Lake introduced himself as Gunnar to most of the people he met while living in Wilseyville. Gunnar's body was not found by police during the initial 1985 investigation, but was unearthed in 1992 when a subsequent owner of the Wilseyville property was digging down to install a footing for a new garage.[4]: 92 [3][13]
On May 1, 1984, Jeffrey Askren, 30, was reported missing after not showing up for work in Santa Clara, California. His late model Honda automobile was found three days later in the West Point area of Calaveras County, six miles from Lake's home.[11] His disappearance occurred within the time range of Lake's killings although his remains have not yet been identified from those that were recovered at the Wilseyville site.[14]
On July 11, 1984, Donald Albert Giulietti, 36, a radio personality from San Francisco, California was spending time in his apartment expecting a visitor. Giulietti was openly gay and lived with another man named Richard Carrazza.[12] Giulietti placed a personal advertisement in a local newspaper offering to give oral sex to straight men. That night a stranger knocked on the door and as soon as Giulietti opened the door, a man whipped out a pistol and shot him in the head at close range. Carrazza was also immediately shot in the chest.[15] The individual fled and Carrazza called the police. Carrazza, the only known survivor victim of Lake or Ng, would go on to identify Ng as the shooter.[11]
Harvey Dubs, 30, Deborah Ann Dubs, 33, and Sean Christopher Dubs, 1, went missing on July 25, 1984, from their San Francisco home.[16][17] On the night they disappeared, Deborah was speaking on the telephone to a friend when the doorbell rang at their apartment. Deborah told her friend that she had to end the conversation, as two men had arrived. The Dubs family have never been heard from again. A receipt in Harvey's name, and video equipment from the Dubs' home were found at Lake's cabin.[11]
In July 1984, Maurice Rock, 37, disappeared from a San Franciscorooming house. Lake had rented a room at the same establishment under the pseudonym "Alan Drey". Sometime after Rock disappeared, the woman renting the room next to Rock saw a man removing a refrigerator from his room. The man introduced himself as "Steve" and offered to photograph her. She agreed but felt unsettled and changed her mind once he came to her room with his camera equipment. She later identified the man as Lake. Rock's remains were recovered from the Wilseyville property.[18]
On October 15, 1984, Randy Jacobson, 35, also disappeared from a San Francisco rooming house after becoming involved in a business deal with Lake. His identity was subsequently stolen by Lake who tried to steal Jacobson's van after the murder, but was unsuccessful as the van was towed away before he was able to move it. Jacobson's remains were buried on the Wilseyville property.[19]
On November 2, 1984, Paul Steven Cosner, 39, was last seen in San Francisco, California. His brown 1980 Honda Prelude disappeared with him. Cosner had advertised the vehicle for sale in a local newspaper and went missing when he went to show his car to a potential buyer he described as “weird".[11] Lake was arrested with Cosner's car on June 2, 1985. Cosner's remains have never been found.[20]
On November 16, 1984, Sheryl Okoro, 25, disappeared from the same San Francisco rooming house where Rock had disappeared. Photographs, an 11-page letter written by Okoro, and her remains were recovered from the Wilseyville property.[21]
On January 20, 1985, Clifford Raymond Peranteau, 23, went missing from San Francisco.[22] He was a coworker of Ng at Dennis Moving Company and in April 1985, Lake sold Peranteau's motorcycle to a man in West Point, California. Several of Peranteau's personal belongings were discovered in an apartment owned by Ng.[23][12]
On February 24, 1985, Jeffrey Dean Gerald, 25, went missing from San Francisco after saying he was going to help Ng move for a side job.[24][11]
On April 12, 1985, Michael Carroll, 22, who had served with Ng in Fort Leavenworth, and his girlfriend Kathleen Allen, 18, were spending time in a Milpitas, California motel room. At 10 p.m., Carroll told Allen that he had to leave but he never returned. On April 14, Allen received a phone call at her workplace and was told that Michael was at Lake Tahoe and may have been shot.[12] She immediately told her boss that she had to leave and she was last seen getting into a car with Lake. Allen appeared in a videotape found at Lake's home and her last paycheck was sent to a town near his cabin. Carroll was also mentioned in the videotape and his driver's license was found at the property.[11][25][26][27]
On April 19, 1985, Lonnie Bond Sr., 27, his live-in girlfriend Brenda O'Connor, 20, their son, Lonnie Bond Jr., 1, and a family friend, Robin Scott Stapley, 26, went missing from Wilseyville. When Lake was arrested on June 2, Lonnie's license plate was affixed to the car he was driving. The bodies of Lonnie Sr. and Stapley were found buried at Wilseyville in a shallow grave about a mile from Lake's property. O'Connor and Lonnie Jr. have never been found.[28][29][30]
Arrest, suicide and aftermath
On June 2, 1985, Ng was caught shoplifting a vise from a hardware store in South San Francisco and fled the scene on foot, throwing the vise into the trunk of a brown Honda. Lake 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. At the station, Lake was placed in an interrogation room where he was given a pen, paper, and a glass of water. A short time later, a detective entered the room to conduct an interview and found Lake violently convulsing on the floor. The notepad contained a brief suicide note. At the hospital, it was determined that he swallowed cyanide pills that he had sewn into his clothes. Lake never regained consciousness and died four days later on June 6.[4]: 93
The license plate on Lake's vehicle was registered to Lonnie Bond, but the VIN on the Honda itself was registered to Paul Cosner, who had disappeared from San Francisco in November 1984. A utility bill found in the Honda led detectives under the command of San Francisco Police Homicide Lieutenant Gerald McCarthy to the property in Wilseyville, where they found Stapley's and Bond's trucks, and the dungeon. In a makeshift burial site nearby, police unearthed over forty pounds of burned and crushed human bone fragments corresponding to a minimum of eleven bodies.[4]: 94
They also found a hand-drawn "treasure map", leading them to two buried five-gallon buckets. One contained an envelope with names and identifications, suggesting that the total number of victims might have been as high as 25. In the other bucket were Lake's handwritten journals for the years 1983 and 1984, and two videotapes documenting the torture of two of their victims. On one of the tapes, labeled "M-Ladies", Ng is seen telling victim Brenda O'Connor, as he cuts her shirt off with a knife, "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 another part of the tape, Katherine Allen is seen seated in a chair, with Lake warning 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." In the other, Deborah Dubs is shown being assaulted so severely that she "could not have survived".[4]: 94
Lake's ex-wife, Claralyn Balazs, cooperated with investigators and received legal immunity from prosecution.[31] 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 and rented to her and Lake.[31]
Ng, who had never legally obtained U.S. citizenship, was captured in a department store in Calgary, Alberta, on July 6, 1985. A store security guard suspected Ng of shoplifting and in the ensuing confrontation, Ng shot the security guard. Though wounded, the security guard was able to disarm and detain Ng until the police arrived. Ng served four and a half years in a Canadian prison, and tried to fight extradition to the United States on the grounds that he would be subject to capital punishment. In 1991, he was 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][32]
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, the murder of Paul Cosner, 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 July 2024[update], Ng was incarcerated at California Medical Facility.[33] The last execution in California was in 2006. In 2019, GovernorGavin Newsom signed an executive order placing a moratorium on the death penalty in California.[34]
^Whittington-Egan, Richard; Whittington-Egan, Molly (1992). The Murder Almanac. Castle Douglas, Scotland: Neil Wilson Publishing. p. 104. ISBN978-1-897-78404-4.
