A Hippie-Turned-Killer

2020-07-14 16:25:01 Written by Nimra Noor

On June 2, 1985, a man was caught stealing a vise from a hardware store. His name was Charles Ng. It seemed to be a common thing. The worker at the shop grabbed him and called the police.

 Then another man entered the store. He introduced himself as a friend of NG and offered the store owner that he was ready to pay the price for the vise. The man who entered later was Leonard Lake.

 But by then the police had arrived and they soon found out that shoplifting was their smallest crime.

 

 Leonard Thomas Lake, also known as Leonard Hill and many others. Originally an American serial killer.

 In the mid-1980s, he, along with his friend Charles NG, tortured, raped, and later murdered between 11 and 25 people.

 The two worked in Leonard's cabin in Calaveras County, California.

 

 Early life

 

 Leonard Lake was born on October 29, 1945, in San Francisco, California. Leonard was called a bright-faced child, but that was to say the least. In fact, no one knew how dark the bright-faced child's brain was.

 When his parents divorced, he was six years old, he and his siblings moved in with his grandmother. Although his grandmother was the breadwinner after his parents' separation, his grandmother also played a key role in bringing Leonard to the path of crime.

 

 As a child, Leonard forced his sisters to pose nude and draw pictures of them. After being a victim of pornography, Leonard continued to have sex with his sisters, but his grandmother never stopped him. Leonard would later kill rats and other small animals and put their bodies in acid, but his grandmother would remain silent about his brutal actions. Her grandmother reportedly encouraged her to engage in pornography.

 The silence or encouragement from the elders on these tasks helped Leonard to become a bad man.

 His phsychological problem increased day by day.

 After graduating from Balboa High School, Leonard joined the American Marine Corps in 1964. He served in the radar section as an electronics technician during the Vietnam War.

 At the same time, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. The Army medical team sent him back home after a check-up.

 On his return, Leonard shifted to San Jose. He enrolled at a university here but left the university after a semester. He became infected with hippie lifestyle. He joined one of their communities to live an independent life. Leonard married in 1975, but his wife soon found out that Leonard was working in pornography and ended the marriage.

 Leonard also spent time in prison in 1980 for a car theft case. After his release from prison, he moved to Seattle, Greenfield Ranch, Northern California. The area was also famous for hippies. Here Leonard met a woman named Claralyn Balazs, whose nickname was "Cricket". A few days later, Leonard married her.

 Claralyn had many "qualities" that Leonard's first wife did not have. In particular, she had no objection to Leonard's "personal hobby." Claralyn also expressed a desire to work in Leonard's pornographic films.

 For the next eight years, Leonard continued to make amateur pornographic films and satisfy his cravings, but the bad guy inside him was not satisfied. Then he began to think of more bad things.

 In those days, owner of Leonard's house ordered him to vacate the house because of his strange activities.

 Then Leonard found out that he had his own cabin in the forest. Leonard happily shifted there.

 

 Charles Ng

 

 Shortly after shifting to the cabin, Leonard invited his friend Charles (Not Charles ng) and brother Donald. No one had any idea how they got there but everyone knew that they were killed there. But no one could guess about the killer.

 

 After killing them, Leonard not only confiscated his money but also got Charles identity card and license.

 

 Leonard then advertised in a "war gamer" magazine. His intention was to find a new prey, but as a result of this advertisement he came in contact with "Charles NG". NG was fifteen years younger than Leonard but equal in crime.

 

 Leonard, along with Charles, committed atrocities, rape and murder.

 

 The Cabin Becomes A Chop Shop

 

 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 murdering them or allowing them to die from their injuries. Other known victims included relatives and friends who came looking for Bond and O'Connor, two gay men and some workmates of Ng.

 

 Arrest and Suicide

 

 The worst time for Leonard and NG came when NG was caught stealing from a shop on a trip to San Francisco.

 Leonard went in and tried to free her, but by then the police had arrived.

 Police soon recognized Leonard's suspicious behavior. Instead of leaving Charles, they began questioning Leonard.

They asked Leonard to show him his driver's license.

 The police officer immediately noticed that the picture on the driver's license did not match Leonard's. The driver's license belonged to a man named Robin Stapley, whose disappearance was reported a week ago.

 In addition, police found an illegally licensed gun in the trunk of vehicle, registered in the name of a man named Paul Cosner. Paul was a San Francisco resident and had been missing for days.

 These things were enough to arrest him.

 After his arrest, police searched his cabin and found several stolen vehicles and more than 40kg of burnt human bones.

 Police found a number of identification documents and credit cards in the cabin by which experts estimated to have killed at least 25 people.

 Police also found some videotapes that showed evidence of violence and abuse against two women.

 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".

 

 Leonard's wife became a forgiving witness who promised to cooperate with the law.

 While in prison, Leonard ate four cyanide tablets, which he kept inside his clothes. His condition quickly deteriorated and he died after a few days in hospital.

 His colleague Charles NG was not so smart. He faced eleven murder cases. Charles was sentenced to death by injection in 1999, based on video evidence, Leonard's diary and Claralyn's testimony.

 However, Charles denied all the allegations and stated that

 He did it all because of Leonard. But the judge wrote that Charles NG did what he wanted to do and that he was not under Leonard's influence at all.

 

 As of July 2020, Charles NG is still awaiting execution in prison. No executions have taken place in California since 2006.