Warning: This story contains graphic details that some readers may find disturbing
The California Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the conviction and death penalty of one of two men involved in at least 11 notoriously gruesome torture sessions in the mid-1980s in which the pair kept their victims hidden in a secret bunker 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 babies in 1984 and 1985. He was originally charged with 13 murders — 12 in Calaveras County and one in San Francisco .
He and his partner in crime, Leonard Lake, carried out a series of kidnappings involving slavery and sadism, ending in murder. They were initially suspected of killing up to 25 people.
“It’s one of those stories that is passed down through time in this community,” said Calaveras County Lt. Greg Stark, whose father worked for the department at the time of the murders. “There were wild estimates and there were conservative estimates, and frankly, I don’t think anyone will ever know because of how they disposed of the bodies.”
In this 2018 file photo, people walk past the Earl Warren Building, which houses the California Supreme Court, in San Francisco. The court ruled this week to uphold the conviction and death sentence for Charles Ng. (Associated Press)
Ng and Lake kept their victims in a remote fenced compound in the Sierra Nevada about 150 miles (240 kilometers) east of San Francisco. It included a bunker with three rooms, two of which were behind a hidden door. A hidden, locked room was furnished like a cell with a bed covered in foam, a plastic bucket and a roll of toilet paper.
Lake committed suicide with a cyanide capsule after police arrested him for shoplifting in San Francisco in 1985 and questioned him before the bodies were found.
The justices said in a detailed analysis of the 181-page case that Ng received a fair trial, including a change of venue from Calaveras County to Orange County because of pretrial publicity.
Fled to Canada, caught in Calgary
It was one of the longest and most expensive trials in California at the time, costing millions of dollars, in part because the court said Ng repeatedly tried to delay and derail his own trial. This includes long debates about whether he can represent himself and who his lawyers will be.
The judges also unanimously concluded that Ng was properly extradited after he fled to Canada, where he was arrested in Calgary in 1985 for shoplifting and wounding a security guard. He fought extradition for six years before the Supreme Court of Canada ordered his return.
The men have been incriminated with videos of them torturing bound, terrified women they used as sex slaves before their murders.
Jurors were shown footage of a woman pleading in vain for men to spare her husband and baby as Ng cut her shirt and bra with a knife in front of the camera.
Researchers also found piles of charred bones, blood-stained tools, shallow graves and a 250-page diary kept by Lake.
California Governor Gavin Newsom imposed a moratorium on the death penalty while he was governor. (Andrew Kuhn/The Merced Sun-Star via Associated Press)
Four law enforcement agencies spent five weeks searching the property, according to the detailed court filing.
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. “Many hundreds” of the bone fragments were burned.
Two forensic anthropologists eventually concluded that the remains belonged to at least four adults, one child and one infant. Two men were found in a shallow grave not far from the property. They were 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 held since Ng’s conviction, in hopes that modern DNA tracking could reveal their identities.
The sheriff’s chaplain read a brief invocation, and soon forensic scientists from the California Department of Justice and two forensic anthropologists began sorting and analyzing the remains.
Investigators are still working
Initially, they hoped there was enough viable DNA left to compare, Stark said, but the Justice Department has not yet been able to perform the comparisons, in part because of more urgent active cases.
Investigators plan to compare the DNA with that of cooperating next of kin of the known victims and release it to DNA databases in hopes of a comparison.
“Whether there are 11 (murders) or more than 11, we hope to categorize the remains and if possible return them to the families to give them the respect and internment they deserve,” Stark said. “If we come across additional identifications, we will certainly look into them and their connection to the case.”
Ng joined the Marine Corps after coming to the United States from Hong Kong. He was previously incarcerated in Leavenworth, Kansas, for stealing a gun while serving in the Marine Corps.
He and his defense attorneys argued that he was influenced by Lake, an older man and survivalist who they say engineered the serial killings. Ng has denied involvement in many of the crimes.
His lawyers argued at the time that Ng had been framed as a child when he was beaten by his father.
Gov. Gavin Newsom imposed a moratorium on the death penalty while he was governor, and Ng still has the option of other federal appeals.
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