The California Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the conviction and death sentence of one of two men involved in at least 11 notorious gruesome torture murders in the mid-1980s, where the duo kept their victims hidden in a secret hideout in the woods of Northern California. Thirty-seven years later, authorities are still trying to identify the remains of some of their victims. Charles Ng, now 61, was convicted in 1999 of killing six men, three women and two boys in 1984 and 1985. He was originally charged with 13 murders — 12 in Calaveras County and one in San Francisco. He and his criminal partner, Leonard Lake, committed a series of kidnappings in which they indulged in slavery and sadism that culminated in murder. They were initially suspected of killing up to 25 people. “This is one of those stories that has been passed down over time in this community,” said Calaveras County Lt. Greg Stark, whose father worked for the department at the time of the murders. “There have been wild estimates and there have been conservative estimates, and I honestly don’t think anyone will ever know because of the way they disposed of the bodies.” In this 2018 file photo, people walk past the Earl Warren Building that houses the California Supreme Court in San Francisco. The court decided this week to uphold the conviction and death sentence for Charles Ng. (The Associated Press) Ng and Lake kept their victims in a remote fenced off area in the Sierra Nevada, about 150 miles east of San Francisco. It included a bunker with three rooms, two of them behind a hidden door. A hidden, locked room was furnished like a cell with a bed covered with a foam pillow, a plastic bucket and a roll of toilet paper. Lake killed himself with a cyanide capsule after police arrested him for a robbery in San Francisco in 1985 and questioned him before bodies were found. The justices said in a detailed 181-page analysis of the case that Ng received a fair trial, including a change of venue from Calaveras County to Orange County because of pre-trial publicity.
Fled to Canada, caught in Calgary
It was one of California’s largest and most expensive trials at the time, costing millions of dollars, in part because the court said Ng repeatedly tried to delay and stop his own trial. This included extensive discussions about whether he could represent himself and who his lawyers would be. The judges also unanimously concluded that Ng was extradited after fleeing to Canada, where he was arrested in Calgary in 1985 for shoplifting and wounding a shopkeeper. He fought extradition for six years before the Supreme Court of Canada ordered his return. The men incriminated themselves with videotapes of torturing bound, terrified women they used as sex slaves before murdering them. Jurors were shown a tape of a woman pleading in vain for men to spare her husband and baby as Ng slashed her shirt and bra with a knife in front of the camera. Investigators also discovered piles of charred bones, blood-stained tools, shallow graves and a 250-page diary kept by Lake. California Governor Gavin Newsom has imposed a moratorium on the death penalty while he is governor. (Andrew Kuhn/The Merced Sun-Star via Associated Press) Four law enforcement agencies spent five weeks clearing the property, according to the detailed court description. They found thousands of buried teeth and bone fragments throughout the property, with at least four of the dental specimens belonging to a child under the age of 3. “Several hundreds” of the bone fragments had been burned. Two forensic anthropologists concluded that the remains belonged to at least four adults, a child and an infant. Two men were found in a shallow grave not far from the property. They had been bound, gagged and fatally shot. Officials in Calaveras County last year exhumed additional bones and other human remains from a crypt in a cemetery where they had been kept since Ng’s conviction, in hopes that modern DNA testing could reveal their identities. A sheriff’s chaplain read a brief invocation, and soon California Department of Justice criminal investigators and two forensic anthropologists began sorting and analyzing the remains.
Investigators are still working
They are initially optimistic that there is enough viable DNA left to compare, Stark said, but the Justice Department has not yet been able to run the comparisons in part because of the more urgent active cases. Investigators plan to compare the DNA with that of cooperating relatives of known victims and run it through DNA databases in hopes of making a comparison. “Whether there are 11 (massacres) or more than 11, we hope to categorize the remains and, if possible, return them to the families to show them due respect and confinement,” Stark said. “If we find additional identifying information, we will certainly look into it and its connection to the case.” Ng joined the Marine Corps after coming to the United States from Hong Kong. He had previously been imprisoned in Leavenworth, Kansas for stealing weapons while serving in the Marine Corps. He and his defense attorneys argued that he was under the influence of Lake, an elderly survivalist who they said masterminded the serial killings. Ng denied involvement in many of the crimes. His lawyers argued at the time that Ng had developed as a child when he was beaten by his father. Gov. Gavin Newsom has imposed a moratorium on the death penalty while he is governor, and Ng still has the option of other federal appeals.
