The sun had barely risen over the Sierra Nevada foothills when the first shovel broke the earth, but what the investigators unearthed that morning would forever alter the landscape of American criminal justice. The summer of 1984 had been a season of inexplicable terror in the San Francisco Bay Area, a time when families vanished from their homes without a whisper, when a simple classified advertisement could be a death sentence, and when the very fabric of suburban safety seemed to unravel. By the time the investigation reached its gruesome conclusion, authorities would uncover a hidden chamber designed for human captivity, a killing field scattered with the charred remains of the innocent, and a partnership of depravity that would spark the longest and most expensive criminal trial in California history.
The case that would come to define the era of the serial killer began not with a dramatic confrontation, but with a mundane report of petty theft. On June 2, 1985, a dispatcher in South San Francisco received a call about a shoplifter at the South City Lumber yard. A witness had observed an Asian male attempting to steal a 75-dollar table vise, and when confronted, the suspect had tossed the item into the trunk of a brown Honda before fleeing on foot.
Officer Daniel Wright, a rookie with just one year on the force, responded to the scene. Inside the abandoned vehicle, Wright’s training kicked in when he spotted a suspicious case. Opening it, he discovered a .
22 Ruger pistol fitted with a crude silencer, an illegal modification that immediately elevated the situation from a routine theft to a potential felony weapons charge.
As Wright examined the firearm, an agitated man burst from the store, claiming he had paid for the vise and that his friend had taken it. The man’s demeanor, combined with the illegal weapon, raised the officers’ suspicions. The car was impounded, and the man, who identified himself as Leonard Lake, was handcuffed and transported to the police station for questioning.
On the way, Lake provided the name of the shoplifter: Charles Ng. A background check on the name returned a staggering hit. Ng was a former Marine born in Hong Kong, with a military court conviction for stealing automatic weapons from a base in Hawaii.
He had also escaped from a military prison. The officers had inadvertently stumbled upon two men with extensive criminal histories, but they had no idea that they had just detained a monster whose secrets would soon horrify the nation.
At the station, Lake was placed in a secure holding room. He told officers his name was Leonard Lake, that he was a fugitive from justice, and that he wished to make a statement. He asked for a piece of paper and a pencil.
When the on-call detective returned moments later, Lake was on the floor, convulsing violently. Paramedics rushed him to the hospital, where doctors discovered that Lake had ingested capsules containing cyanide. The gel caps had taken roughly twenty minutes to dissolve, a timeline that coincided perfectly with his transport from the lumber yard to the station.
Rather than confessing his crimes, Lake had written a brief, cryptic note to a woman named Lynn. It read: “Dear Lynn, I love you, I forgive you. Freedom is better than all else.
I’m sorry Mom, Patty and all. I’m sorry for all the trouble. Love, Leonard.”
The note was a farewell, but it offered no explanation for why a man would choose suicide over a simple shoplifting charge. Whatever secrets Leonard Lake held, he took them to the grave, leaving his partner, Charles Ng, to answer for the horrors that were about to be uncovered.
The investigation took its first deadly turn when police processed the impounded Honda. Running the serial number on the engine block, they discovered the car belonged to Paul Cosner, a Bay Area resident who had been missing for seven months. Detective Irene Braun of the San Francisco Police Department had been investigating Cosner’s disappearance.
His sister had reported him missing after he failed to show up for a dinner date with his girlfriend. Cosner had been showing the car to a potential buyer he had met through a newspaper advertisement. The connection between Lake, Ng, and a missing man was alarming, but it was only the beginning.
Braun was also investigating the disappearance of an entire family. Harvey Dubs, his wife Deborah, and their 16-month-old son Sean had vanished on July 25, 1984. They had placed an ad in the newspaper to rent out video equipment, and that equipment was now missing.
The Dubs family had left behind their cats, Deborah’s daily medication, and signs of a struggle. Both cases had gone cold, but the discovery of Cosner’s car reignited the investigation.
A search of the Honda yielded a treasure trove of clues: a driver’s license belonging to a man named Scott Stapley, a stun gun, unspent bullets, and an electric bill addressed to a woman named Claralyn Balaz. Investigators also found a single bullet hole in the roof of the car, and a spray of luminol revealed high-velocity blood spatter near the front passenger seat. It was clear that Cosner had been shot inside his own vehicle.
The trail led to Balaz, who was Lake’s ex-wife. She explained that the address on the electric bill was for a cabin her family owned in Calaveras County, a remote and rugged area in Northern California. Braun and her partner arranged to meet Balaz at the property the following morning, but when they arrived, they discovered that Balaz and Lake’s mother had driven up the night before, claiming that Lake was “untidy” and they wanted to clean the cabin.
The detectives were furious, fearing that evidence had been compromised. Despite the setback, they proceeded with a consent search of the main cabin. Inside, they found something that made their blood run cold: video equipment that matched the inventory of the missing Dubs family.
They also noticed holes drilled into the bedposts and the floor, seemingly designed to restrain a human being. The case had just expanded from a missing person’s investigation to a potential mass murder.
To search the rest of the property, investigators needed a warrant. They obtained one that afternoon, and what they found on the two-acre parcel would redefine the meaning of evil. A cinderblock bunker, which Balaz had referred to as a fallout shelter, sat near the driveway.
Inside, investigators found 21 photographs of young women, many in various stages of undress, some 𝓷𝓾𝓭𝓮. They also found a journal written by Lake, in which he detailed a fantasy he called the “Miranda Project,” a plan to capture and hold a female prisoner. The journal read: “The collector has it really been near 20 years I’ve carried this fantasy and Miranda how fitting my lovely little prisoner of the future.”
The bunker contained a hidden room behind a false bookshelf, a three-by-six-foot compartment with a crude cot, a roll of toilet paper, and a typed list of rules for a captive. The rules included: “I must always be ready to service my master and must never speak unless spoken to. I must always be obedient and never look my master in the eye.”
A two-way mirror allowed observation from outside, and the door hinges were bent, indicating that someone had tried desperately to force their way out. The investigators realized they were dealing with a predator who had planned to keep a human slave.
Outside the bunker, the ground was scarred by seven distinct burn sites. Sifting through the ash, investigators found what they suspected were human bone fragments. Cadaver dogs were brought in, and they immediately alerted on a piece of bone that was clearly human.
The property was declared a crime scene, and a massive task force was assembled. The search expanded to include a trench filled with personal belongings—jewelry, buttons, zippers, and hundreds of other items, all meticulously catalogued. Two intact bodies were unearthed, wrapped in sleeping bags.
They were identified as Lake’s neighbors, Lonnie Bond and Scott Stapley. Both had been shot to death. The body count was climbing, and investigators feared that as many as 25 missing persons could be linked to the property.
The media descended on the remote cabin, and the world watched in horror as the scale of the atrocity became clear. The Calaveras County coroner stated that five bodies had been found so far, but the sheriff believed there could be as many as 20 victims buried on the land.
While the search continued, the manhunt for Charles Ng intensified. The FBI placed him on their Ten Most Wanted list. Investigators learned that Ng had fled to Canada, passing through Detroit and Chatham before boarding a bus to Toronto, where his sister lived.
A surveillance team staked out her apartment, but Ng never appeared. Then, on July 6, 1985, a boy riding his bicycle in a Canadian park spotted a makeshift campsite and recognized the man living there from wanted posters. Ng had fled before police arrived, but he made a fatal mistake later that day.
He was caught shoplifting in a Calgary department store, and when a security guard confronted him, Ng shot him in the hand. The guard wrestled the weapon away and held Ng until police arrived. The worldwide manhunt had ended.
Ng was booked on charges of attempted murder, robbery, and possession of a firearm. The Calaveras County District Attorney’s office indicted him on 12 counts of first-degree murder, but the extradition process was complicated by Canada’s refusal to extradite anyone facing the death penalty. Ng fought extradition for years, using his time in a Canadian prison to educate himself on the American legal system.
He fired his lawyers, filed frivolous motions, and delayed his return to California until September 26, 1991.
The trial that followed was a legal marathon. Calaveras County was a small jurisdiction with only five attorneys, and the case file weighed over two tons. The prosecution, led by District Attorney Peter Smith, faced a defendant who was determined to obstruct justice at every turn.
Ng fired his attorneys, demanded a change of venue, and filed hundreds of motions. The trial was moved to Orange County, 400 miles away, and the defense asked for two and a half years to prepare. The prosecution’s key witness, a Canadian inmate named Maurice LaBerge, who had heard Ng confess to the murders, was killed in a car accident before he could testify.
The prosecution was forced to rely on the transcript of LaBerge’s testimony from the extradition hearing, a move that the defense attacked as hearsay. The case rested on circumstantial evidence, including a videotape found buried on the property, which showed Ng and Lake torturing two women, Brenda O’Connor and Kathleen Allen. The tape, titled “M Ladies,” was the most incriminating piece of evidence.
It showed Ng cutting the clothes off a bound and terrified O’Connor, who begged for her baby back. The baby, Lonnie Jr. , had already been killed.
The trial began on October 26, 1998, after 13 years of investigation and legal wrangling. The prosecution presented over 200 pieces of evidence and called 75 witnesses. The defense argued that Lake was the sole mastermind and that Ng was merely a subservient follower.
Ng himself took the stand, denying any intent to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 and claiming that his statements to LaBerge had been fabricated. But the prosecution, led by Deputy Attorney General Charlene Honaka, used Ng’s own words against him. She played the videotapes and pointed out that Ng had acted independently, cutting O’Connor’s clothes off without instruction from Lake.
She demonstrated that only Ng could have known the details of the crimes that LaBerge had testified to, details that were not on the printed transcript of the tape. The jury deliberated for three weeks. On February 24, 1999, they returned a verdict: guilty of 11 counts of first-degree murder.
They were deadlocked on the 12th count, the murder of baby Lonnie Jr. , but it was enough. Charles Ng was sentenced to death.
The cost of the trial exceeded $20 million, making it the longest and most expensive criminal case in California history. For the families of the victims, the verdict brought a measure of closure, but the horror of what happened at the cabin in Calaveras County would never fully fade. Charles Ng remains on California’s death row, a living monument to the darkest depths of human depravity, while the ghosts of the Boneyard Killers continue to haunt the American psyche.
