Latest / The Evolution of Evil - True Crime Stories / The-Deadliest-Cabin-in-History:-Inside-the-Serial-Killer-Killing-Fields-Serial-Killer-Documentary
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: In the summer of nineteen eighty four, San Francisco is
- 0:04Speaker 1: gripped by fear. Neighbors, family, and friends are vanishing without
- 0:12Speaker 1: a trace. Police are perplexed. The investigation takes a deadly
- 0:18Speaker 1: turn when a killing field it is uncovered high in
- 0:21Speaker 1: the California Mountains has the mighty killed clients. The evidence
- 0:27Speaker 1: points to an elusive killer. To bring this murderer to justice,
- 0:32Speaker 1: the small town prosecutor must take a long, dark journey
- 0:36Speaker 1: into the mind of a serial killer. On the morning
- 1:01Speaker 1: of October twenty sixth, nineteen ninety eight, the longest and
- 1:05Speaker 1: most expensive criminal trial in California history got under way,
- 1:11Speaker 1: with an investigation spanning thirteen years and a case file
- 1:15Speaker 1: weighing over two tons, a burden of prosecuting one of
- 1:18Speaker 1: California's most notorious killers. Peter Smith, the District Attorney of
- 1:24Speaker 1: Calaveras County.
- 1:26Speaker 2: A prosecutor's job is to seek justice. I think many
- 1:30Speaker 2: people look at prosecutors and think their job is to
- 1:33Speaker 2: convict and put people in jail or prison, and that's
- 1:37Speaker 2: part of the job too, But it really is our
- 1:39Speaker 2: responsibility to make sure the justice system, particularly a criminal
- 1:44Speaker 2: justice system, is carried out fairly to the point where
- 1:51Speaker 2: justice has always sought Office second.
- 2:00Speaker 1: Nineteen eighty five, a South San Francisco dispatch operator received
- 2:04Speaker 1: a call a theft was in progress at South City
- 2:08Speaker 1: Lumber thirty.
- 2:10Speaker 3: One Boy one ten eighty seven, Robert one at South
- 2:13Speaker 3: City Lumber Railroad and Spruce on a forty eight shoplifting.
- 2:21Speaker 1: Officer Daniel Wright at the South San Francisco Police Department
- 2:24Speaker 1: responded to the call.
- 2:26Speaker 4: I had just one year on the street at that time,
- 2:29Speaker 4: and you know my thoughts were, you know, officer safety,
- 2:32Speaker 4: be careful. Like any call you go to, things could
- 2:36Speaker 4: go awry at any time.
- 2:48Speaker 1: A witness told Right he had seen an Asian male
- 2:50Speaker 1: stealing a seventy five dollars table device. He said the thief,
- 2:56Speaker 1: when confronted, tossed device into the trunk of a brown
- 2:59Speaker 1: Honda and fled on foot. Inside the Honda, Wright spotted
- 3:05Speaker 1: a suspicious looking case.
- 3:07Speaker 4: I opened up the case and found a twenty two
- 3:10Speaker 4: ruber with a cylinder shape object that was probably six
- 3:16Speaker 4: to nine inches long, and through my training, I observed
- 3:19Speaker 4: it to be a silencer.
- 3:25Speaker 1: The gun was illegally modified. As Wright took a closer look,
- 3:30Speaker 1: an agitated man burst from the store. He told the
- 3:36Speaker 1: officer he paid for the vice his friend had taken.
- 3:42Speaker 1: Right Supervisor Sergeant Paul Ziemer arrived on the scene. The
- 3:47Speaker 1: gun in the Honda made both officers suspicious. The car
- 3:52Speaker 1: was impounded at that time.
- 3:54Speaker 4: We told him that he was going to be going
- 3:55Speaker 4: down to the station to give a statement about the weapon,
- 3:59Speaker 4: and he was handcuffed and placed into Officer Zeemer's vehicle
- 4:04Speaker 4: and brought to our station.
- 4:07Speaker 1: On the way to the station, a man told Zeemer
- 4:09Speaker 1: the shoplifter's name was Charles Ing.
- 4:15Speaker 5: I got an ID on at eight miles.
- 4:19Speaker 1: The officer used his radio to request a background check
- 4:22Speaker 1: n ing November. They got a hit. Ing was a
- 4:28Speaker 1: former marine born in Hong Kong. He'd been convicted in
- 4:33Speaker 1: military court for stealing automatic weapons from a military base
- 4:36Speaker 1: in Hawaii. He had once escaped from a military prison.
- 4:43Speaker 1: At the South San Francisco Police station, the subject was
- 4:46Speaker 1: placed in a secure holding room. He told the officer
- 4:50Speaker 1: his name was Leonard Lake. He said he was a
- 4:54Speaker 1: fugitive from justice and offered to make a statement, but
- 5:01Speaker 1: first he wanted a piece of paper, a pencil, and
- 5:04Speaker 1: a glass of water.
- 5:08Speaker 6: Write your statement. I'll be back.
- 5:15Speaker 1: Yes, seeming to room to summon Gary Hopper. The uncalled
- 5:18Speaker 1: detective that Sunday. When they returned, Lake was on the
- 5:22Speaker 1: floor convulsing wild paper. Detective Hopper called the paramedics.
- 5:28Speaker 7: He was flopping around on the floor. It was very violent,
- 5:32Speaker 7: like a fish flapping out of water. Uncontrollable. But we
- 5:37Speaker 7: had no idea what was happening at the time, whether
- 5:40Speaker 7: it was like an epileptic seizure or just what was
- 5:42Speaker 7: going on.
- 5:44Speaker 1: Detective Hopper called the paramedics.
- 5:48Speaker 7: What's the para gotics added to the evergency hospital. He
- 5:51Speaker 7: found out a little later that there was they were fighting,
- 5:55Speaker 7: no activity at all, that is prayed that he was
- 5:57Speaker 7: apparently prayed to.
- 6:01Speaker 1: An autopsy later revealed that Lake had ingested capsules containing cyanide.
- 6:07Speaker 7: The doctor told me and the laptop Wisians told me
- 6:10Speaker 7: that it took about twenty to twenty five minutes for
- 6:13Speaker 7: the gel cap to dissolve before the sayadide actually hit
- 6:17Speaker 7: a system, and that that would probably codeside fairly well
- 6:21Speaker 7: with the about a type between he was at the
- 6:23Speaker 7: lubber yard. It brought to the police station.
- 6:27Speaker 1: Rather than writing a statement, Lake had written a note
- 6:30Speaker 1: to a woman named Lynn The note read dear Lynn,
- 6:36Speaker 1: I love you, I forgive you. Freedom is better than
- 6:40Speaker 1: all else. I'm sorry, Mom, Patty and all. I'm sorry
- 6:47Speaker 1: for all the trouble, Love Leonard. Police were perplexed. Why
- 6:54Speaker 1: had the suspect taken his own life. Whatever secrets Leonard
- 6:58Speaker 1: Lake held took to the grave. The answer might lie
- 7:03Speaker 1: with Lake's companion, Charles ng. Police issued a warrant for
- 7:08Speaker 1: Ing's arrest for shoplifting. Then they processed the car Lake
- 7:13Speaker 1: had been driving. When they ran the serial number on
- 7:16Speaker 1: the Honda's engine block, investigators discovered that the car belonged
- 7:20Speaker 1: to Paul Coosner. Cosner, a Bay Area resident, had been
- 7:26Speaker 1: missing for seven months. Hello Detective Irene Brun of the
- 7:33Speaker 1: San Francisco Police Department investigated Cosner's disappearance. Cosner's sister had
- 7:39Speaker 1: reported him missing months earlier ope and a.
- 7:42Speaker 3: Half hour, and she was quite distraught her brother had disappeared.
- 7:47Speaker 3: He had had a date that evening with his girlfriend
- 7:50Speaker 3: for dinner, who also lived in the same apartment building
- 7:53Speaker 3: where he lived. He failed to show up for that
- 7:55Speaker 3: dinner date, and in speaking to the girlfriend, Paul was
- 8:01Speaker 3: going to show a car that he was selling through
- 8:03Speaker 3: an advertisement in the paper.
- 8:06Speaker 1: Cosner was only one of many strange cases involving missing
- 8:09Speaker 1: persons in the Bay Area. Detective Brown was also investigating
- 8:14Speaker 1: the disappearance of an entire family. On July twenty fifth,
- 8:21Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four, San Francisco Police responded to a frantic
- 8:25Speaker 1: call for help.
- 8:29Speaker 8: RV.
- 8:30Speaker 1: Dubbs, his wife, and their sixteen month old son, Sean
- 8:33Speaker 1: hadn't been seen for several days. Police had to climb
- 8:40Speaker 1: through a window to gain access to the doubs apartment.
- 8:44Speaker 9: Rsisco Police for any by our promises.
- 8:48Speaker 1: The Dubbs family had indeed disappeared, and the signs of
- 8:51Speaker 1: a struggle were apparent. Days earlier, RV. Dubbs had placed
- 8:57Speaker 1: an ad in the newspaper to rent out his video equipment.
- 9:02Speaker 1: That equipment was now missing. Missing person cases usually fit
- 9:09Speaker 1: a certain profile. They often involved teenage runaways or people
- 9:15Speaker 1: who disappeared without telling anyone, only to return a few
- 9:18Speaker 1: days later. In the case of the Doves, it was
- 9:23Speaker 1: clear the family hadn't left voluntarily. Detective Brun feared they
- 9:29Speaker 1: would never return.
- 9:31Speaker 3: In the house, there were things that were unusual and
- 9:34Speaker 3: out of order. The baby's room was out of order,
- 9:38Speaker 3: Debra's medication was left at home and it was something
- 9:40Speaker 3: she had to take every day, So there were a
- 9:44Speaker 3: lot of things that were just didn't look right. They
- 9:46Speaker 3: left their cats locked in the house unattended, and they
- 9:49Speaker 3: wouldn't have done that.
- 9:51Speaker 1: It is unusual for people like Paul Kosner or the
- 9:54Speaker 1: Dubbs family to simply vanish without a trace, without leads.
- 10:00Speaker 1: Both cases had gone cold.
- 10:03Speaker 3: To be realistic, we get five hundred a month. We
- 10:06Speaker 3: had one family disappeared July twenty fifth, now that now
- 10:09Speaker 3: we're up to November second, So because of the caseload,
- 10:12Speaker 3: you know, you're not trying to pin cases together. The
- 10:15Speaker 3: only similarity was a newspaper ad.
- 10:21Speaker 1: Based on the discovery of Paul Cosner's brown Honda Runn
- 10:24Speaker 1: and her partner reopened his case and searched the vehicle
- 10:28Speaker 1: for clues. They found a driver's license belonging to a
- 10:34Speaker 1: man named Scott Stately. They found a stun gun and
- 10:40Speaker 1: several unspent bullets on the floor of the car. A
- 10:47Speaker 1: recent electric bill addressed to an unknown woman named Clara
- 10:50Speaker 1: Lynn Ballas was found under the passenger seat, and in
- 10:56Speaker 1: the roof of the car. Investigators found a single bullet
- 11:01Speaker 1: can the trajectory of the bullet indicated the shot was
- 11:06Speaker 1: fired from the back seat. The investigator sprayed luminol around
- 11:13Speaker 1: the interior of the vehicle. Luminol reacts with proteins in blood,
- 11:18Speaker 1: making even traces of blood fluoresce high velocity. Blood spatter
- 11:23Speaker 1: associated with a gunshot wound appeared on the roof next
- 11:27Speaker 1: to the front passenger seat. Brunn and her partner now
- 11:31Speaker 1: suspected they would never find Cosner alive. With Leonard Lake
- 11:38Speaker 1: dead and his partner Charles ing at large, investigators could
- 11:42Speaker 1: only wonder how many more victims they might find at
- 11:45Speaker 1: the end of this trail of blood. Leonard Lake's mysterious
- 11:50Speaker 1: suicide had now launched a full scale police investigation. Brown
- 11:57Speaker 1: and her partner drove to the home of Leonard Lake's mother,
- 12:00Speaker 1: lived about an hour outside of San Francisco. At the house,
- 12:06Speaker 1: they were surprised to find Clara Lynnbalaz, the woman whose
- 12:10Speaker 1: name appeared on the electric bill found in Cosner's car.
- 12:17Speaker 1: Clara Lynn Bealaz was Lake's ex wife. They had been
- 12:21Speaker 1: married for three years, but divorced a year earlier.
- 12:24Speaker 10: It's a long drive up.
- 12:26Speaker 1: Detectives suspected she might be the woman Lake addressed in
- 12:29Speaker 1: his suicide note. They asked BelAZ how an electric bill
- 12:33Speaker 1: in her name wound up in Paul Cosner's car. Balaz
- 12:38Speaker 1: explained the address on the bill was for a cabin
- 12:41Speaker 1: her family owned in Calaveras County in northern California. Although
- 12:46Speaker 1: bron and her partner were eager to search the cabin,
- 12:49Speaker 1: Blaz claimed she was too busy to take them there
- 12:51Speaker 1: until the next day. The detectives postponed their search until
- 12:58Speaker 1: the following morning and instructed Belaws not to visit the property.
- 13:02Speaker 1: In the meantime.
- 13:04Speaker 9: Ten Oclon, thank you very much, thanked you.
- 13:09Speaker 3: So we called the Calvera's Sheriff's department and told them
- 13:14Speaker 3: that we were going to be coming up the following morning,
- 13:17Speaker 3: and why we were going, and if it was possible
- 13:19Speaker 3: for them to have somebody keep an eye on the property.
- 13:26Speaker 1: Calaveras County covers over eleven hundred square miles of wild terrain.
- 13:32Speaker 1: The course of thirty four officers protected the entire county
- 13:36Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty five, there hadn't been need for more.
- 13:44Speaker 1: The sheriff sent two deputies to watch the cabin, which
- 13:47Speaker 1: was located outside the town of Wilseyville. A metal gate
- 13:52Speaker 1: prevented them from driving onto the property.
- 13:55Speaker 3: Because of their manpower shortage, they couldn't have somebody sit
- 13:58Speaker 3: there for the next twenty four hours, but they would
- 14:00Speaker 3: make passing calls, which was reasonable.
- 14:04Speaker 1: The following morning, Brunn and her partner arranged to meet
- 14:07Speaker 1: Claralyn BelAZ outside the Wilseyville Post Office. They were surprised
- 14:15Speaker 1: when she arrived with Lake's mother.
- 14:18Speaker 3: And at that point Carolyn admitted that they had driven
- 14:21Speaker 3: up the night before and the pretext was that Leonard
- 14:27Speaker 3: was very untidy and they wanted to tidy up the cabin.
- 14:34Speaker 1: Concerned that Belas and Lake's mother might have compromised evidence
- 14:38Speaker 1: at the cabin, Brun, her partner, and the Calaberis County
- 14:42Speaker 1: sheriffs followed them to the property. The detectives asked BelAZ
- 14:50Speaker 1: about a cinderblock bunker near the cabin. She said she
- 14:54Speaker 1: didn't have the key and would not give them permission
- 14:56Speaker 1: to search it. Lacking sufficient probable cause for a warrant,
- 15:03Speaker 1: the detectives would have to limit their search to the
- 15:05Speaker 1: cabin alone.
- 15:08Speaker 3: But at this point we were still more interested in
- 15:10Speaker 3: getting into the house, so we didn't want to antagonize
- 15:12Speaker 3: her because this was a consent search. Other than that,
- 15:16Speaker 3: we would have had to stop and go get a
- 15:17Speaker 3: search warrant. At that point, while.
- 15:27Speaker 1: Her partner questioned the lase, detective bron searched the house.
- 15:32Speaker 11: I came up last night, just for a fewtus.
- 15:33Speaker 1: She noticed something odd about the bed. There were holes
- 15:38Speaker 1: drilled into the bedposts and the floor. It seemed designed
- 15:43Speaker 1: to tie someone up.
- 15:45Speaker 3: And I was standing in front of this bookcase, and
- 15:46Speaker 3: I happened to turn around, and all of a sudden,
- 15:49Speaker 3: I recognize a piece of equipment, and then it dawns
- 15:54Speaker 3: on me where I had seen it.
- 15:55Speaker 1: It was the doves, the video equipment Brounrac had been
- 16:00Speaker 1: stolen from the home of Harvey Dubbs, the San Francisco
- 16:03Speaker 1: man who vanished with his family eleven months earlier.
- 16:08Speaker 3: So I went over and called my office. I said,
- 16:11Speaker 3: would you mind checking our inventory and read me the
- 16:15Speaker 3: serial number. He proceeded to start reading the serial number,
- 16:20Speaker 3: and then I gave him the last three numbers from
- 16:22Speaker 3: the piece of paper that I had my hand. And
- 16:25Speaker 3: so at that point we realized that now this is
- 16:27Speaker 3: even getting bigger. It's not just mister Cosmer. Now we
- 16:30Speaker 3: have the dubs, and at that point Clara Lynn got
- 16:35Speaker 3: very nervous and said, you've been here long enough. I
- 16:37Speaker 3: want you to.
- 16:38Speaker 1: Leave to learn what other secrets the isolated cabin held.
- 16:44Speaker 1: Detective Brunn would need to obtain a search warrant. The
- 16:49Speaker 1: investigators left the property, but this time they made certain
- 16:52Speaker 1: the cabin would be secure until they returned. As investigators
- 17:02Speaker 1: conducted a search of Leonard Lake's cabin in Calaveras County,
- 17:05Speaker 1: they had discovered video equipment that belonged to a family
- 17:08Speaker 1: who had been missing for maybe a year. This gave
- 17:13Speaker 1: them sufficient probable cause to petition the judge for a warrant.
- 17:19Speaker 1: Ron McFall led the investigation for the Calaveras County Sheriff's Office.
- 17:24Speaker 12: We did get one that day, and later that afternoon
- 17:27Speaker 12: we went back to the residents to conduct a search
- 17:29Speaker 12: of the residents and the property and what looked like
- 17:34Speaker 12: a tool shed at first.
- 17:37Speaker 1: The tool shed was a cinderblock structure that bordered the driveway.
- 17:42Speaker 1: Clerylyn Belaze referred to it as a fallout shelter.
- 17:47Speaker 9: Got it.
- 17:49Speaker 1: Leonard Lake had been a survivalist and this was his
- 17:52Speaker 1: fortress against nuclear holocaust. As the heavy door swung open.
- 18:03Speaker 1: Investigators could only wonder what they might find inside.
- 18:07Speaker 12: And we went into the tool shed and we saw
- 18:10Speaker 12: twenty one photos of a young ladies eighteen to twenty
- 18:15Speaker 12: three years old. And so we were at that point
- 18:19Speaker 12: really concerned about who are these females? Who are these ladies.
- 18:24Speaker 1: Many of the photos were of young girls in various
- 18:26Speaker 1: stages of undress, some were nude. It was unclear who
- 18:32Speaker 1: the subjects were or where they had been photographed. Everyone
- 18:37Speaker 1: feared the pictures might be trophies, such as those serial
- 18:41Speaker 1: killers often keep of their victims. They also found a
- 18:47Speaker 1: journal written by Leonard Lake. In it, he wrote of
- 18:52Speaker 1: The Collector, a novel about a butterfly collector who captures
- 18:56Speaker 1: his ultimate prize, a young girl named Mirnda. In his journal,
- 19:03Speaker 1: Lake writes the Collector, as it really been near twenty
- 19:08Speaker 1: years I've carried this fantasy and Mirenda, how fitting, my
- 19:15Speaker 1: lovely little prisoner of the future. In other entries, Lake
- 19:21Speaker 1: referred to a series of operations under the hitting of
- 19:23Speaker 1: the Miranda Project. The investigators could only speculate as to
- 19:30Speaker 1: what this meant, but it seemed ominous irony, and you'll
- 19:36Speaker 1: see where there's what appears to be one hundred yards
- 19:39Speaker 1: from the bunker. Ron McFall and the other investigators noticed
- 19:43Speaker 1: the ground had been scarred by a series of several fires.
- 19:47Speaker 12: We'd noticed at that point approximately seven different burn sites
- 19:50Speaker 12: on the property. We decided to look at the burn
- 19:54Speaker 12: sites a little further, and we found what we thought
- 19:57Speaker 12: maybe bone fragments, but we really weren't.
- 19:59Speaker 1: Sure if the piles of ash did contain human bone fragments.
- 20:05Speaker 1: Someone had attempted to conceal an unspeakable horror. Now desperate
- 20:11Speaker 1: for answers, investigators ran the license plates of a truck
- 20:15Speaker 1: parked near the cabin. It belonged to Lonney Bond. Lake's neighbor.
- 20:23Speaker 1: Lonnie Bond lived with his wife an eighteen month old
- 20:26Speaker 1: son in a house about fifty yards from Lake's cabin.
- 20:30Speaker 1: Officers walked next door to speak with Bond.
- 20:35Speaker 13: Hello, anybody here?
- 20:40Speaker 14: Anybody home?
- 20:42Speaker 1: The smell of decayed food thickened the air. The house
- 20:47Speaker 1: appeared to have been empty for some time, perhaps months,
- 20:52Speaker 1: Although it seemed the occupants departed abruptly, there was no
- 20:56Speaker 1: sign of foul play. Another vehicle found on Lake's property
- 21:03Speaker 1: belonged to Robin Scott Stapeley Stapley had been missing for
- 21:08Speaker 1: some time, and his driver's license was found in Paul
- 21:11Speaker 1: Coosner's car.
- 21:13Speaker 3: Leonard Lake had used Scott Stapley's driver's license because they
- 21:17Speaker 3: were both big fellows, and he had been trying to
- 21:19Speaker 3: pass himself off of Scott Stapley. So we're contacting southern
- 21:23Speaker 3: California to see, you know, where is Scott Stapley. And
- 21:26Speaker 3: it turns out that he had been living at the
- 21:29Speaker 3: cabin next door, and no one has seen them either.
- 21:34Speaker 1: Investigators intensified their search. Well, cadaver dogs, known for their
- 21:41Speaker 1: acute sense of smell, were brought in to help. Authorities
- 21:46Speaker 1: now suspected that eight missing people from northern California were
- 21:49Speaker 1: linked to the cabin if they had been murdered, as
- 21:53Speaker 1: police feared, perhaps their bodies were buried on the property.
- 22:04Speaker 1: One of the dogs recovered a piece of bone. The
- 22:10Speaker 1: deputies working the scene knew immediately that this was not
- 22:14Speaker 1: an animal bone. Well, the discovery of human remains, what
- 22:23Speaker 1: had been a missing person's case now became homicide investigation.
- 22:29Speaker 1: Investigators declared Leonard Lake's property a crime scene and assembled
- 22:33Speaker 1: a task force to process the cabin and surrounding property.
- 22:42Speaker 1: Due to the expanding scope of the case, the Calaveras
- 22:45Speaker 1: County Sheriff's Office called in additional help. Specialists from the
- 22:50Speaker 1: San Francisco Police Department and the California Department of Justice
- 22:54Speaker 1: arrived to help with the investigation. Three days after Leonard
- 23:04Speaker 1: Lake's suicide, a convoy of law enforcement vehicles descended on
- 23:09Speaker 1: the property. Now that this was a murder investigation, police
- 23:16Speaker 1: knew that all material recovered from the site could become
- 23:19Speaker 1: vital to the eventual prosecution of the case. Each section
- 23:24Speaker 1: of the property was assigned to a specific team. The
- 23:29Speaker 1: teams began a thorough search of the two acres surrounding
- 23:32Speaker 1: the cabin. In a clearing about one hundred yards from
- 23:39Speaker 1: the cabin, officers found a trench with loose dirt. They
- 23:47Speaker 1: found the trench had been filled with personal belongings and
- 23:50Speaker 1: debris out of the ballot god something. Sergeant Copeland, an
- 24:00Speaker 1: investigator for the Counaveris County Sheriff's Office, joined in the
- 24:04Speaker 1: search for clues.
- 24:06Speaker 15: Every button, zipper, jewelry, even everything that was taken out
- 24:11Speaker 15: of there was turnover the evidence officer, who took each
- 24:14Speaker 15: one and individually photographed each and every piece of it.
- 24:19Speaker 15: And we're talking hundreds.
- 24:22Speaker 1: Everything excavated from the property was potential evidence. All of
- 24:27Speaker 1: the items were collected and sent to the Counabras County
- 24:29Speaker 1: Sheriff's office. They were meticulously cataloged. Investigators hoped that somewhere
- 24:36Speaker 1: in this vast collection of evidence they would find the
- 24:39Speaker 1: clue that would untangle the mysteries hidden on Lake's property.
- 24:45Speaker 15: If we felt there was any chance of it being used,
- 24:49Speaker 15: or something that either ourselves or the defense could use,
- 24:52Speaker 15: we took it and booked it.
- 24:55Speaker 1: Investigators sorted through the survival gear and supplies Lake had
- 24:59Speaker 1: stocked wild in his so called fallout shelter. Lieutenant Ron
- 25:06Speaker 1: McFall remembers that during this phase of the search they
- 25:10Speaker 1: made a surprising discovery. There was a secret door inside
- 25:15Speaker 1: the bunker.
- 25:16Speaker 12: It was a false story. You really couldn't tell just
- 25:19Speaker 12: by looking at it, but there was shelving units, and
- 25:22Speaker 12: after you wiggled the shelves, you saw that the door
- 25:25Speaker 12: actually popped open.
- 25:28Speaker 1: Beyond the shelves was a double door leading to a
- 25:31Speaker 1: hidden room. After the side was another three foot by
- 25:37Speaker 1: six foot compartment. The cramp space contained a homemade wood cot,
- 25:45Speaker 1: a crude shelf holding some toilet trees and a roll
- 25:48Speaker 1: of toilet paper. A small hole had been cut into
- 25:52Speaker 1: the wall near the ceiling, possibly for ventilation. A typed
- 25:57Speaker 1: list of rules was affixed to one wall. They included,
- 26:02Speaker 1: I must always be ready to service my master and
- 26:05Speaker 1: must never speak unless spoken to. I must always be
- 26:10Speaker 1: obedient and never look my master in the eye. From outside,
- 26:17Speaker 1: investigators could see into the small room through a two
- 26:20Speaker 1: way mirror. They also noticed that the hinges of the
- 26:25Speaker 1: door had been damaged.
- 26:26Speaker 16: At the bottom.
- 26:29Speaker 17: You'll further notice the hinges are bent from obviously pressure
- 26:36Speaker 17: from inside the door pushing out trying to get the
- 26:38Speaker 17: door open, both the top and bottom.
- 26:40Speaker 1: Remembering Lake's journal, investigators feared that Lake had acted upon
- 26:44Speaker 1: his fantasy of kidnapping and holding captives a human slave.
- 26:52Speaker 1: Forensic specialists dusted for fingerprints and Lake indevidence. They hoped
- 26:56Speaker 1: that if Lake had indeed kept a prisoner here, he
- 26:59Speaker 1: or she had left behind some clue of their presence.
- 27:04Speaker 1: They found nothing. As the search of the property outside
- 27:12Speaker 1: the bunker continued, an investigator noticed some loose soil next
- 27:16Speaker 1: to the driveway. There they found a five gallon plastic
- 27:23Speaker 1: paint container. As darkness fell, the task force suspended its search.
- 27:37Speaker 1: Inside the cabin, the investigators viewed one of the videotapes
- 27:41Speaker 1: they had found buried in the plastic container. They could
- 27:46Speaker 1: hardly believe what they were seeing. This case was becoming
- 27:51Speaker 1: more frightening with each piece of evidence they uncovered, but
- 27:56Speaker 1: nothing could prepare them for what lay ahead. After two
- 28:03Speaker 1: days of searching Leonard Lake's cabin, investigators feared more than
- 28:07Speaker 1: eight people had been killed and possibly buried on the property.
- 28:12Speaker 1: On the second night, a task force moved inside the
- 28:15Speaker 1: cabin to view the videotape found buried in a plastic container.
- 28:21Speaker 1: The tape depicted two women suffering extreme verbal and psychological
- 28:25Speaker 1: abuse at the hands of Leonard Lake and his accomplice,
- 28:28Speaker 1: who demanded sexual submission under the threat of violence.
- 28:33Speaker 12: We also observed an Asian male on the tape and
- 28:37Speaker 12: he had a knife in his hand and he was
- 28:39Speaker 12: cutting the clothing. This would be the blouse, the top
- 28:44Speaker 12: as well as the bra strap, removing clothes from the female.
- 28:50Speaker 1: The Asian male was identified as Charles Ing, the shoplifter
- 28:54Speaker 1: Leonard Lake had identified just prior to his suicide. Side
- 29:00Speaker 1: Division of the San Francisco Police Department launched a full
- 29:03Speaker 1: scale manhunt for Charles NG. Investigators started with a search
- 29:07Speaker 1: of in San Francisco apartment. They collected some video equipment
- 29:12Speaker 1: and a number of videotapes. Everything was tagged as evidence
- 29:17Speaker 1: and sent for analysis. San Francisco homicide detective ed Erdelatz
- 29:24Speaker 1: led a task force that investigated the euro disappearance of
- 29:27Speaker 1: the Dubbs family. The equipment Lake and Ing had used
- 29:32Speaker 1: to videotape their captives had once belonged to Harvey Dubbs.
- 29:37Speaker 16: Investigators had obtained his California driver's license photo and had
- 29:42Speaker 16: made up a photo collage, showed it to neighbors, and
- 29:45Speaker 16: identified him as one of the people coming out of
- 29:49Speaker 16: the Dubs home.
- 29:51Speaker 1: One of the Dubs neighbors told investigators that the night
- 29:53Speaker 1: before the family was reported missing, she saw two men
- 29:57Speaker 1: leaving their residence. One of the men was carrying a
- 30:01Speaker 1: large stuffel bag. It was dark, but she said she
- 30:06Speaker 1: could identify him. The eyewitness's critical identification of Charles NG
- 30:13Speaker 1: gave investigators probable cause to issue an arrest warrant. Caroline BelAZ,
- 30:23Speaker 1: Leonard Lake's ex wife, was questioned about her ex husband's
- 30:26Speaker 1: association with Charles NG. She agreed to talk, but only
- 30:32Speaker 1: after her attorney convinced the District Attorney's office to grant
- 30:36Speaker 1: her immunity from prosecution. Belas claimed she didn't know anything
- 30:41Speaker 1: about the murders. She did tell them that after the
- 30:46Speaker 1: shoplifting incident, King walked to her house. The two drove
- 30:54Speaker 1: back to the lumber yard to see if Lake was
- 30:56Speaker 1: all right.
- 31:00Speaker 9: Well.
- 31:00Speaker 1: When they saw him talking to the police, they returned
- 31:03Speaker 1: to her house. There they waited expecting a call from Lake,
- 31:09Speaker 1: who was now in police custody. When he didn't call,
- 31:14Speaker 1: Clalyn drove in to his apartment. King told Clarlyn he
- 31:19Speaker 1: had to get out of town.
- 31:22Speaker 16: She said that she thought he would probably go to Chicago,
- 31:25Speaker 16: that he had mentioned that he would go to Chicago
- 31:28Speaker 16: if he had to get out of town, and she
- 31:32Speaker 16: claims that that was last that she saw.
- 31:37Speaker 1: Because Ing was wanted for murder and there was reason
- 31:39Speaker 1: to believe he had fled the state, the California investigators
- 31:43Speaker 1: asked for assistance from the FBI. In response, the Bureau
- 31:48Speaker 1: launched a massive manhunt for Charles Ing. At San Francisco
- 31:53Speaker 1: International Airport, agents learned that a passenger fitting Ing's description
- 31:57Speaker 1: had boarded a plane to Chicago, travel under the name
- 32:01Speaker 1: Mike Kimoto. In Chicago, agents worked at Tracking's movements. They
- 32:08Speaker 1: started with an extensive background check. Investigators learned that Charles
- 32:17Speaker 1: Ing was born in Hong Kong and entered the United
- 32:19Speaker 1: States on a student visa in nineteen seventy nine. He
- 32:24Speaker 1: enlisted in the Marine Corps, but was eventually arrested for
- 32:27Speaker 1: stealing weapons. He escaped from prison and, on the advice
- 32:33Speaker 1: of a friend, hid out with Leonard Lake and his wife.
- 32:35Speaker 1: Clarolyn Ying stayed with Lake and his wife for six
- 32:40Speaker 1: months in Filo, California. At the same time, at F
- 32:48Speaker 1: agents were building a case against Lake for possession of
- 32:51Speaker 1: illegal firearms. In the spring of nineteen eighty one, they
- 32:57Speaker 1: arrested both Lake and In Lake skipped bail and began
- 33:04Speaker 1: his life as a fugitive. Ng was sent back to
- 33:08Speaker 1: prison to serve the remainder of his original sentence.
- 33:12Speaker 16: Yng was released from prison in nineteen eighty four and
- 33:16Speaker 16: immediately came back to the San Francisco Bay area.
- 33:20Speaker 12: Was picked up at the airport.
- 33:21Speaker 16: By Clara Lyn Belase and rejoined his buddy Leonard Lake.
- 33:28Speaker 1: Charles Ing was an experienced fugitive with a wide network
- 33:32Speaker 1: of friends who could help him to develop more leads.
- 33:37Speaker 1: The FBI placed Ng on their ten most Wanted list
- 33:42Speaker 1: for the time being. Agents focused on Ng's friends and
- 33:45Speaker 1: acquaintances in the Chicago area. As the investigation into Charles
- 33:54Speaker 1: Zing expanded, a body count in Calaveras County continued to climb.
- 34:02Speaker 1: Not far from Lake's cabin, investigators unearthed two intact bodies
- 34:07Speaker 1: wrapped in sleeping bags. Calaveras County Coroner Terry Parker was
- 34:12Speaker 1: on the scene.
- 34:14Speaker 6: They were mostly skeletal remains that were wrapped. He couldn't
- 34:19Speaker 6: really make out if there were men or women of
- 34:23Speaker 6: the time that the bodies had been there.
- 34:28Speaker 1: Due to the deterioration of the bodies, Parker could make
- 34:31Speaker 1: only a cursory examination. At the site, it appeared both
- 34:35Speaker 1: victims had been gagged and handcuffed. He asked for help
- 34:39Speaker 1: from the San Francisco Medical Examiner.
- 34:42Speaker 6: San Francisco has a very good forensic department and he
- 34:46Speaker 6: was more than happy to come up and assist us.
- 34:50Speaker 6: We removed the bodies and transported them to his office
- 34:54Speaker 6: for the forensic work, where that was done at autopsy.
- 35:00Speaker 1: Francisco Medical Examiner determined both victims were Mayos and that
- 35:03Speaker 1: they had been shot to death. Using dental records, he
- 35:08Speaker 1: identified the men as Lake's neighbors, Bonnie Bond and Scott
- 35:12Speaker 1: Stapley in Chicago, the FBI got their first leave. They
- 35:22Speaker 1: learned that after serving time on the weapons charge, Ing
- 35:25Speaker 1: had kept in touch with his former cellmate. A man
- 35:30Speaker 1: described how he had driven Ing first to Detroit, then
- 35:33Speaker 1: to the border town of China. There, he said they
- 35:39Speaker 1: split up. A witness came forward and told agents that
- 35:45Speaker 1: he had seen Ing board a bus in Chatham bound
- 35:48Speaker 1: for Toronto. Agents were aware that Ing's sister lived there.
- 35:56Speaker 1: The FBI deployed a surveillance team at her apartment house.
- 35:59Speaker 1: The future never showed. After days of following in the trail,
- 36:05Speaker 1: Groed Gold, the suspected serial killer, was now roaming free
- 36:12Speaker 1: in Canada. As word of the multiple murders spread, the
- 36:19Speaker 1: news media descended on a property in Calaveras County. Don
- 36:24Speaker 1: Lassiter is a true crime author who wrote a book
- 36:26Speaker 1: on the Charles.
- 36:27Speaker 13: In case, and of course, the media, when they first
- 36:31Speaker 13: heard of this, rushed to the site and daily. The
- 36:37Speaker 13: media coverage grew, and it got coverage all over California
- 36:43Speaker 13: and soon all over the United States and certainly even
- 36:45Speaker 13: in Canada, Okay.
- 36:48Speaker 1: The investigators agreed to let the media on the property.
- 36:52Speaker 1: They showed them the site and allowed them to videotape
- 36:55Speaker 1: some of the evidence they had collected.
- 36:58Speaker 18: Up until this point, we've really relied on our imaginations
- 37:01Speaker 18: to visualize this story. But today we have pictures, pictures
- 37:05Speaker 18: that will probably leave many people with an everlasting image
- 37:08Speaker 18: of the horror that occurred at the end of this road.
- 37:11Speaker 18: These are some of the bone fragments that have been found,
- 37:14Speaker 18: and investigators say there are countless fragments just like those
- 37:17Speaker 18: scattered over a third of an acre here. The California
- 37:20Speaker 18: Conservation Corps has been recruited to pick up the bones.
- 37:23Speaker 18: Most of them worked on their hands and knees, raking
- 37:25Speaker 18: the ground with their fingers. Investigators came up with ten
- 37:29Speaker 18: pounds of bones. The local corner says five bodies have
- 37:33Speaker 18: been found here so far. The Calaveras County Sheriff once
- 37:36Speaker 18: told me though he believes there are as many as
- 37:38Speaker 18: twenty victims, though buried on the property.
- 37:43Speaker 1: Investigators were counting on the media exposure to help identify
- 37:47Speaker 1: the twenty one women depicted in the photographs tacked to
- 37:50Speaker 1: the wall of Lake's bunker.
- 37:53Speaker 8: We certainly want to know the circumstances of the photos
- 37:56Speaker 8: when they were taken. We're interested in and knowing anything
- 38:02Speaker 8: we can about mister Lake and mister Ang.
- 38:06Speaker 1: A telephone hotline was set up by the Calavera Sheriff's Department,
- 38:09Speaker 1: and calls soon began pouring in. We have detectives believed
- 38:15Speaker 1: Leonard Lake and Charles Inc Crossed paths with as many
- 38:18Speaker 1: as twenty five people who were later reported.
- 38:21Speaker 10: Missing property in Calaveras County.
- 38:25Speaker 1: Working under San Francisco investigator ed Erdelatz, the task force
- 38:29Speaker 1: tried to piece together any leads that would locate in
- 38:33Speaker 1: or help identify the growing list of.
- 38:35Speaker 16: Victims, anybody that had anything to do with either lak ring.
- 38:39Speaker 16: We attempted to identify and find out if they were
- 38:42Speaker 16: still alive, and if they were, what their relationship was.
- 38:46Speaker 16: And it was through that process that we began to
- 38:49Speaker 16: identify different victims.
- 38:52Speaker 1: Members of the task force were sent around with photos
- 38:55Speaker 1: of personal belongings found on the property in an effort
- 38:58Speaker 1: to identify anyone who had been the cabin.
- 39:00Speaker 19: See if you recognize.
- 39:02Speaker 1: The relatives and friends of the missing realized their loved
- 39:05Speaker 1: ones might be among the dead. There was the Dubbs
- 39:12Speaker 1: family from San Francisco, who placed an ad in the
- 39:15Speaker 1: newspaper to rent their video equipment and were never heard
- 39:18Speaker 1: from again. Randy Jacobson, a friend of Leonard Lake's, was
- 39:26Speaker 1: found buried near a chicken coop behind the cabin. Jeff Gerald,
- 39:34Speaker 1: who worked with Ing at a San Francisco moving company, disappeared,
- 39:37Speaker 1: along with his friend Clifford Parento, who worked at the
- 39:40Speaker 1: same company. Ing's longtime friend Mike Carroll and his girlfriend
- 39:49Speaker 1: Kathleen Allen had disappeared. Lake's neighbors were also missing, Lonnie Bonn,
- 40:00Speaker 1: Brenda O'Connor and their sixteen month old child, Lonnie Junior.
- 40:05Speaker 1: Their friend Robin Scott Stapley had vanished with them, and finally,
- 40:11Speaker 1: Paul Coosner, whose car had originally led investigators on this
- 40:16Speaker 1: trail of kidnapping and murder, The task force received one
- 40:23Speaker 1: bit of.
- 40:23Speaker 20: Good news, who finally caught a break on his one
- 40:28Speaker 20: We rebel eyed to all these women and they're.
- 40:29Speaker 10: All still alive.
- 40:31Speaker 1: Finding the girls alive was a relief, but Lake's properties
- 40:35Speaker 1: still held many mysteries. Agents feared they would never know
- 40:39Speaker 1: the complete story of the Calaveras County murders unless they
- 40:43Speaker 1: found Charles In. After weeks of search on they still
- 40:49Speaker 1: had not located the fugitive. Then, on July sixth, nineteen
- 40:58Speaker 1: eighty five, boy riding his bicycle in a Canadian park
- 41:02Speaker 1: spotted the perfect place for a play for it. He
- 41:09Speaker 1: was surprised to see a man living there. He went
- 41:12Speaker 1: to the police and told them he had found a
- 41:14Speaker 1: campsite and had seen a man who looked like Charles Ing.
- 41:19Speaker 1: The boy recognized him from water posters. He led police
- 41:28Speaker 1: to the makeshift shelter, only to find that Ing had fled.
- 41:34Speaker 12: The campag clearing.
- 41:38Speaker 1: Later that same day, Charles Ng would make the mistake
- 41:41Speaker 1: investigators had been waiting for. Ironically, it was the same
- 41:46Speaker 1: mistake that started the police investigation a month earlier, called
- 41:51Speaker 1: police check Your Looking. A security guard confronted a young
- 41:55Speaker 1: Asian male as he slipped stolen merchandise into his knapsack
- 41:58Speaker 1: in a Calgary department store. As the security guards struggled
- 42:08Speaker 1: with the gunman, he would shot in the hand. Still,
- 42:12Speaker 1: he managed to wrestle the weapon from the shooter and
- 42:14Speaker 1: heard him until police arrived. Charles Ing was captured and
- 42:20Speaker 1: booked on charges of attempted murder, robbery, and possession of
- 42:24Speaker 1: a firearm.
- 42:34Speaker 21: Good Evening Popping Night Watch. Charles Ng is in a
- 42:37Speaker 21: Canadian jail tonight, and the worldwide manhunt is edit for
- 42:40Speaker 21: the of.
- 42:43Speaker 1: N's arrest in Canada reached the Sheriff's office in Calaveras County.
- 42:47Speaker 21: Ing was captured by security guards in a Calgary department store,
- 42:51Speaker 21: but not before he engaged them in a brief gun
- 42:53Speaker 21: battle and wounded one of the guards. Ng was quickly
- 42:56Speaker 21: subdued by sore patrons and was taken into police custody.
- 43:02Speaker 1: San Francisco Police Inspector ed Ertelatz was eager to question
- 43:06Speaker 1: the suspect. He flew to Calgary, where Ding was being
- 43:10Speaker 1: held in a maximum security prison.
- 43:13Speaker 16: And we spent quite a few hours with Charles and
- 43:17Speaker 16: the detention center in Calgary.
- 43:19Speaker 22: And although he.
- 43:20Speaker 16: Did talk with us, most of his responses were one
- 43:25Speaker 16: in two word answers, a very little dialogue, and primarily denial.
- 43:32Speaker 16: We could have gone into a lot of things had
- 43:36Speaker 16: he been willing to talk to us about those things,
- 43:38Speaker 16: but that didn't occur.
- 43:42Speaker 1: The murders Ing claimed were all the work of Leonard Lake.
- 43:47Speaker 1: When pressed, Ing did admit to Erdelatz that he had
- 43:50Speaker 1: helped Lake dispose the bodies of Lonnie Bond and Scott
- 43:53Speaker 1: Stapley the day after they were murdered in Caris County.
- 44:01Speaker 1: The District Attorney's office indicted Ng on twelve counts of
- 44:04Speaker 1: first degree murder, making it possible for the prosecution to
- 44:08Speaker 1: seek the death penalty, but Ing's flight to Canada had
- 44:12Speaker 1: created a significant obstacle. District Attorney Pete Smith explains.
- 44:19Speaker 2: There is an extradition treaty between the United States and
- 44:21Speaker 2: Canada at the time, and in that extradition treaty there
- 44:27Speaker 2: was a condition that nobody would be extradided from Canada
- 44:31Speaker 2: back to the United States who faced the death penalty.
- 44:36Speaker 1: There were some exceptions to the treaty, However, do you
- 44:39Speaker 1: think we can work around that? If the District Attorney's
- 44:41Speaker 1: office could prove to a Canadian court that Ing was
- 44:44Speaker 1: guilty of multiple murders, Canada would be required to hand
- 44:48Speaker 1: over the suspected killer before the extradition hearing could begin.
- 44:55Speaker 1: Ing would have to stand trial in Canada on shoplifting
- 44:58Speaker 1: and assault charges. In order to delay his extradition, Ing
- 45:03Speaker 1: waived his right to a jury trial and asked for
- 45:06Speaker 1: a speedier bench trial. He received a four and a
- 45:10Speaker 1: half year sentence. Until he completed that sentence, the Calaveras
- 45:15Speaker 1: County District Attorney could not initiate the complicated extradition process.
- 45:21Speaker 1: Even if they could prove their case, they would have
- 45:25Speaker 1: to wait over four years before they could begin. While
- 45:31Speaker 1: the Calaveras County District Attorney's office built their case against
- 45:34Speaker 1: Charles Zing, a search for evidence continued at Leonard Lake's
- 45:38Speaker 1: cabin By this time, five bodies had been found and identified,
- 45:49Speaker 1: hundreds of personal effects had been recovered, more than forty
- 45:54Speaker 1: pounds of unidentifiable human remains had been unearthed. Investigators believed
- 46:01Speaker 1: that as many as twenty five missing persons had been
- 46:04Speaker 1: linked to the cabinet. As the evidence against Ing continued
- 46:10Speaker 1: to grow, he used his time in a Canadian prison
- 46:13Speaker 1: to try to fend off any attempts at extradition. He
- 46:17Speaker 1: knew if he was successfully extradited back to the United States,
- 46:21Speaker 1: he would have to face a murder trial and the
- 46:23Speaker 1: possibility of the death penalty. He began to educate himself
- 46:29Speaker 1: on the American legal system.
- 46:31Speaker 13: For a boy with limited education raised in Hong Kong,
- 46:35Speaker 13: he was remarkably adept at knowing that the legal system
- 46:39Speaker 13: here and how to deal with it.
- 46:46Speaker 1: A guard reported to the prison warden he overheard Ing
- 46:49Speaker 1: say to a fellow inmate, if you want to delay
- 46:52Speaker 1: the system, you just have to fire your lawyers. On
- 47:00Speaker 1: October seventeenth, nineteen eighty eight, the extradition hearings finally began.
- 47:06Speaker 1: Ing lost the case and appealed all the way to
- 47:08Speaker 1: the Canadian Supreme Court. His appeal was denied.
- 47:17Speaker 2: Within the same day. Charles Ng was placed on an
- 47:20Speaker 2: airplane in Canada and flown back to California.
- 47:26Speaker 1: But the pursuit of justice was far from over. Charles
- 47:30Speaker 1: Ng had used his time in Canada to harm himself
- 47:33Speaker 1: with enough legal knowledge to wage an all out war
- 47:37Speaker 1: on the American judicial system. On September twenty sixth, nineteen
- 47:44Speaker 1: ninety one, suspected serial killer Charles Ng was finally returned
- 47:48Speaker 1: to California. The Calaveras County District Attorney charged Ng with
- 47:54Speaker 1: twelve counts of murder. Detective Sergeant Randy Grassmark transported Ng
- 47:59Speaker 1: daily from the California Department of Corrections to the Calaveras
- 48:02Speaker 1: County Courthouse.
- 48:04Speaker 23: We had high security, we had our swat team up
- 48:07Speaker 23: on the roof for a while. We had heard that
- 48:11Speaker 23: somebody wanted to kill Charles NG. Let's face it, the
- 48:14Speaker 23: last thing we wanted to do as Calverts County Sheriff's
- 48:17Speaker 23: Department was lose Charles NG.
- 48:20Speaker 1: Calaveras County was not prepared to handle a prisoner like
- 48:23Speaker 1: Charles NG. Their courthouse wasn't secure enough to hold a
- 48:28Speaker 1: maximum security prisoner. The county had to build a special
- 48:33Speaker 1: cage to house Ng during his legal proceedings. From the
- 48:38Speaker 1: moment Ang arrived in the county, he was intent on
- 48:41Speaker 1: wreaking havoc and creating delay. He began by trying to
- 48:48Speaker 1: fire his attorneys and complaining about his treatment. He filed
- 48:53Speaker 1: motions for better food and a shorter commute from the prisoner.
- 48:58Speaker 1: He demanded to have his cage dismanted. Although each motion
- 49:03Speaker 1: was frivolous, it sapped the resources of the Calaveras County
- 49:06Speaker 1: District Attorney's office.
- 49:11Speaker 2: I didn't realize how truly huge this case was. We're
- 49:15Speaker 2: very small. We have five attorneys, including myself. There's the
- 49:20Speaker 2: assistant District attorney, and then I have three deputy district attorneys.
- 49:24Speaker 2: We have two investigators and we have three support staff
- 49:28Speaker 2: and that's it in our criminal division. It's like a
- 49:34Speaker 2: very small offer.
- 49:39Speaker 1: The prosecution battled Charles Aim for a full year before
- 49:42Speaker 1: his preliminary hearing even started, Your honor.
- 49:45Speaker 7: At that point in time, we would like to present photos,
- 49:50Speaker 7: Alfi davids and videotapes into evidence against the defendant.
- 49:56Speaker 1: The purpose of this proceeding was simply to determine whether
- 49:59Speaker 1: the pills execution had sufficient evidence to try Ing for
- 50:02Speaker 1: the twelve.
- 50:03Speaker 11: Murder moving forward to trial.
- 50:07Speaker 1: Although the burden of proof is not as strict as
- 50:09Speaker 1: that of an actual trial, the prosecution had little direct
- 50:13Speaker 1: evidence linking Ing to the murders. Lacking eye witnesses, fingerprints,
- 50:19Speaker 1: and blood evidence, the prosecution would have to present its
- 50:23Speaker 1: case mostly on circumstantial evidence. Their strongest evidence was the
- 50:30Speaker 1: videotape found at the cabin entitled m Ladies. The preliminary
- 50:36Speaker 1: hearing was the first time the tape was played for
- 50:39Speaker 1: the public. On the tape, Lake and Ing were seen
- 50:43Speaker 1: torturing two women, one of whom was Brenda O'Connor. Inspector
- 50:49Speaker 1: Erdelatz explains the impact to the videotaped evidence.
- 50:54Speaker 16: Brend O'Connor is a woman who lived on the adjacent
- 50:56Speaker 16: property with her boyfriend and his friend and their little baby.
- 51:03Speaker 16: And you see her on film. She's handcuffed and she's
- 51:07Speaker 16: begging Leonard Lake and Charles Ing for her babyback. She
- 51:11Speaker 16: wants her baby back, and she's crying. Of course, they
- 51:15Speaker 16: killed this little baby, and it's such a sad thing
- 51:20Speaker 16: to see her asking for this little baby back.
- 51:26Speaker 1: The tapes were incriminating, but with so little physical evidence
- 51:31Speaker 1: directly linking Ing to the murders, the prosecution would have
- 51:35Speaker 1: to rely on the testimony of another criminal, Okay. Maurice
- 51:42Speaker 1: Laberge had served time with Ing in Canada. To pass
- 51:47Speaker 1: the time, Ing entertained Labert's with crudely drawn cartoons depicting
- 51:52Speaker 1: his crimes and with stories of what had happened at
- 51:55Speaker 1: Lake's cabin in California. To gain favor with his parole board,
- 52:02Speaker 1: Laberge turned over the cartoons and told authorities the details
- 52:06Speaker 1: of his conversations with Ing. One of the most damning
- 52:10Speaker 1: cartoons depicted Ing killing a baby. Laberg's testified at Ing's
- 52:16Speaker 1: extradition hearing, detailing everything Ing had confessed during their jail
- 52:21Speaker 1: time together. Laberg's testimony was presented as evidence. On November thirteenth,
- 52:31Speaker 1: nineteen ninety two, the court found sufficient grounds to try
- 52:35Speaker 1: Charles ng on twelve counts of murder. The judge set
- 52:40Speaker 1: his trial date for January twelfth, nineteen ninety three.
- 52:45Speaker 2: We felt that the case would be tried and over
- 52:48Speaker 2: with by ninety three, but no later than nineteen ninety four. Well,
- 52:55Speaker 2: that didn't happen. What did happen was delay.
- 53:02Speaker 1: Now that Ing knew he would stand trial for his crimes,
- 53:05Speaker 1: he began a desperate attempt to delay the proceedings in
- 53:08Speaker 1: any way possible. He filed a motion alleging that his
- 53:12Speaker 1: court appointed attorneys were incompetent. He succeeded in firing them,
- 53:18Speaker 1: and the court appointed him new council. Because pre trial
- 53:24Speaker 1: publicity made it impossible to find an impartial jury in
- 53:27Speaker 1: Calaveras County, King's new defense team filed a motion to
- 53:31Speaker 1: move the trial. A judge granted the motion, moving the
- 53:37Speaker 1: trial to Orange County in southern California. A fully loaded
- 53:43Speaker 1: thirty six foot truck delivered a mountain of case material
- 53:47Speaker 1: to Ing's new council, the Orange County Public Defender's Office.
- 53:52Speaker 1: The material included hundreds of boxes of records. Documenting eight
- 53:56Speaker 1: years of courtroom hearing's witness testimony, in investigative, medical and
- 54:01Speaker 1: police reports, and thousands of evidence photographs. William Kelly, King's
- 54:09Speaker 1: newly appointed counsel, asked for and received two and a
- 54:12Speaker 1: half years to prepare his client's case. The prosecution made
- 54:20Speaker 1: the move from Calaveras County, four hundred miles south to
- 54:23Speaker 1: Orange County, and prepared for the largest case of their careers.
- 54:31Speaker 1: The years of delay worried Prosecutor Peter Smith.
- 54:35Speaker 2: As you know, in any case, memories fade, witnesses die,
- 54:40Speaker 2: and things of that nature. And so when you tack
- 54:43Speaker 2: on six years to the life of a criminal case,
- 54:48Speaker 2: that's a long time to delay a case from going
- 54:52Speaker 2: to trial.
- 54:54Speaker 9: Morning, gentlemen have se as.
- 54:56Speaker 1: The prosecution and defense attorneys finalized their trial preparation, Ing
- 55:01Speaker 1: again attempted to delay the process, but Judge John Ryan
- 55:08Speaker 1: put a stop to his tactics. The case was finally
- 55:12Speaker 1: going to trial. A prosecution team from Calaveras County worked
- 55:20Speaker 1: out their strategy with Charlene Honaka, the Deputy Attorney General
- 55:24Speaker 1: for the state of California.
- 55:28Speaker 2: She's a tremendous lawyer and a better person. She was
- 55:32Speaker 2: in essence, the heart and soul for this case and
- 55:36Speaker 2: for the prosecution.
- 55:40Speaker 1: As prosecutors prepared to begin jury selection, the team suffered
- 55:44Speaker 1: a devastating setback. Malis Laberge was killed in a car
- 55:49Speaker 1: accident while on parole. He was the only person to
- 55:55Speaker 1: whom Ing had confessed his crimes. The prosecution had just
- 55:59Speaker 1: blow lost its key witness. Thirteen years had passed since
- 56:06Speaker 1: investigators began finding bodies at a mountain cabin in Calaveras County, California.
- 56:13Speaker 1: Although they eventually linked twenty five missing people to Lake's property,
- 56:18Speaker 1: they only had enough evidence to charge Charles Ng with
- 56:21Speaker 1: twelve counts of murder. Ng had managed to delay his
- 56:26Speaker 1: trial from more than a decade, but could delay no longer.
- 56:31Speaker 1: The murder trial of Charles Ng was finally about to begin.
- 56:36Speaker 1: The accused serial killer's fate would now rest with a
- 56:40Speaker 1: jury of his peers. Peter Smith's job was to select
- 56:44Speaker 1: that jury.
- 56:46Speaker 2: Because the case was going to take so long, we
- 56:49Speaker 2: had to time qualified jurors. We had to bring in
- 56:52Speaker 2: over two thousand people from Orange County to ask them, basically,
- 56:57Speaker 2: can you commit to the time is it'll take to
- 57:00Speaker 2: try this case?
- 57:02Speaker 1: While Council was in the midst of qualifying the jurors.
- 57:05Speaker 1: Being gluentety shouting obscenities, they tried to halt the proceedings,
- 57:12Speaker 1: telling the judge that he did not want a trial.
- 57:19Speaker 1: Judge Ryan ordered Ing to wear an electric stun belt
- 57:22Speaker 1: for the duration of the trial. The bailiff could trigger
- 57:27Speaker 1: the device by remote control if he became violent again.
- 57:33Speaker 1: Attorneys from the prosecution and the defense took a month
- 57:36Speaker 1: to choose a jury of eight women and four men,
- 57:39Speaker 1: along with six alternates. To protect their identities, each member
- 57:45Speaker 1: of the jury was assigned a number. On Monday, October
- 57:50Speaker 1: twenty sixth, nineteen ninety eight, the trial began with opening
- 57:54Speaker 1: statements for both the prosecution and the defense. Opening statements
- 58:00Speaker 1: as an outline telling the jury what they are trying
- 58:02Speaker 1: to prove and how they intend to prove it. With
- 58:09Speaker 1: the years of waiting over, Charlene Hanaka rose to make
- 58:13Speaker 1: the opening statement for the prosecution.
- 58:18Speaker 14: What the evidence in this case is going to show
- 58:21Speaker 14: is that this defendant, with Leonard Lake, planned and committed
- 58:26Speaker 14: the twelve charged murders in this case. This is a
- 58:30Speaker 14: chart which lists the twelve counts. The evidence will show
- 58:36Speaker 14: that between a time frame from July nineteen eighty four
- 58:40Speaker 14: until nineteen eighty five. These twelve victims disappeared from the
- 58:47Speaker 14: face of the earth, and this trial will tell you
- 58:53Speaker 14: the story of what happened to them.
- 58:55Speaker 1: Onnaka described the property in Calaveras County as a killing
- 58:59Speaker 1: field mass graveyard.
- 59:01Speaker 14: Correct connecting this defendant.
- 59:04Speaker 1: She then told the jury about the m Lady's tape
- 59:06Speaker 1: found buried near the cabin and how they depicted a
- 59:10Speaker 1: partially nude ining demanding massages from Kathleen Allen and cutting
- 59:15Speaker 1: the clothes off of Brenda O'Connor.
- 59:20Speaker 14: We're going to play for you two segments from that
- 59:23Speaker 14: videotape as a means of demonstrating the evidence and in
- 59:30Speaker 14: helping you understand.
- 59:34Speaker 1: The videotape was the centerpiece of the prosecution's case. It
- 59:39Speaker 1: showed the jury exactly who Charles Ing was, a man
- 59:44Speaker 1: who not only tortured women, but who recorded his acts
- 59:47Speaker 1: on videotape so he could relive them again and again.
- 59:53Speaker 2: The videotapes dramatic. It is the most it is the
- 59:58Speaker 2: most incriminating piece of evidence I've been ever used in
- 1:00:01Speaker 2: a case. It is also the most emotional piece of
- 1:00:06Speaker 2: evidence I've ever used in a case. You can sense
- 1:00:12Speaker 2: the terror in the the fear those two victims had
- 1:00:21Speaker 2: when they realized the situation they were in.
- 1:00:24Speaker 1: Because this was the strongest physical evidence linking Ing to
- 1:00:27Speaker 1: the murders, the prosecution plan to use the videotape throughout
- 1:00:31Speaker 1: the trial to prove Charles Ng's guilt. William Kelly, Ing's
- 1:00:41Speaker 1: court appointed attorney scarcely mentioned the defendant in much of
- 1:00:44Speaker 1: his opening statement. His strategy was to shift the focus
- 1:00:51Speaker 1: of the accusations from his client, Charles Ng, to the
- 1:00:55Speaker 1: late Leonard Lake.
- 1:00:58Speaker 11: The defense in this case is really simple. That is,
- 1:01:03Speaker 11: Leonard Lake had a motive for murder. Leonard Lake also
- 1:01:08Speaker 11: had a plan for murder.
- 1:01:13Speaker 1: Kelly asserted that Lake's plan for murder was outlined in
- 1:01:17Speaker 1: his diary under the heading the Miranda Project. He then
- 1:01:21Speaker 1: read the jury excerpts from Leonard Lake's journal. Kelly suggested
- 1:01:26Speaker 1: that Lake's conspirator was not Ing, but Caroline Bellaz, Lake's
- 1:01:30Speaker 1: ex wife. He asserted that she knew about the Miranda
- 1:01:35Speaker 1: Project and even recruited potential victims.
- 1:01:39Speaker 11: Nobody's going to walk in here, sit down in that
- 1:01:42Speaker 11: jury box. Point of finger at Charles Ang and say,
- 1:01:46Speaker 11: I saw Charlie Ang murder somebody. It's not going to happen.
- 1:01:53Speaker 1: With very little physical evidence placing Ng at the murders,
- 1:01:57Speaker 1: Kelly intended to discredit the prosecut's circumstantial case and prove
- 1:02:02Speaker 1: it was Leonard Lake, not Charles Ing, who murdered the
- 1:02:05Speaker 1: twelve victims. He asserted that Ing killed no one. The
- 1:02:13Speaker 1: prosecution called Sergeant Larry Copeland of the Calaveras County Sheriff's
- 1:02:17Speaker 1: Department to the stand.
- 1:02:18Speaker 14: Can you tell us how long?
- 1:02:19Speaker 1: He told the jury about a startling discovery he made
- 1:02:22Speaker 1: while analyzing the videotapes confiscated from Ing's San Francisco apartments.
- 1:02:29Speaker 2: And I'd put this tape in and push played play
- 1:02:33Speaker 2: and it started with the credits.
- 1:02:35Speaker 15: So I thought, well, she with someone didn't rewind this tape,
- 1:02:38Speaker 15: So I pushed rewind, but I didn't push stop first.
- 1:02:41Speaker 15: I just pushed rewind, so it started playing in reverse,
- 1:02:45Speaker 15: and then all of a sudden, right at the end
- 1:02:46Speaker 15: of the tape, they went.
- 1:02:49Speaker 1: What Copeland discovered was a still image of two bodies
- 1:02:53Speaker 1: in a wheelbarrow. The image was entered into evidence. The
- 1:03:00Speaker 1: medical examiner was sworn. He was asked to identify two
- 1:03:05Speaker 1: photographs of bodies found at the cabin.
- 1:03:11Speaker 24: Yes, I believe that's the remains of Scott Stabley and
- 1:03:16Speaker 24: this next one, uh, those remains are from Lonnie Bond.
- 1:03:25Speaker 1: He went on to explay the way in which Lonnie
- 1:03:27Speaker 1: Bond and Scott Stapley were bound, gagged, and wrapped in
- 1:03:30Speaker 1: sleeping bags. The sleeping bags matched those on the tape.
- 1:03:36Speaker 1: The medical examiner testified that the bodies on the tape
- 1:03:39Speaker 1: were in full rigamortist the victims. Rigamortis occurs shortly after
- 1:03:46Speaker 1: death when the blood flow is interrupted. It only lasts
- 1:03:50Speaker 1: for a few hours until the body begins to decay.
- 1:03:56Speaker 1: In Canada, Ing told Inspector Hurtelats he helped barry Bond
- 1:04:00Speaker 1: and Stately twenty four hours after they were murdered. Whoever
- 1:04:06Speaker 1: had taken the picture had done so immediately after they
- 1:04:10Speaker 1: were killed. The single frame on the videotape found that
- 1:04:14Speaker 1: Ing's apartment linked him to the murder of Lonnie Bond
- 1:04:17Speaker 1: and Scott Stapley. Because so few of the remains found
- 1:04:22Speaker 1: when the property could be identified, the prosecution relied on
- 1:04:26Speaker 1: hundreds of personal effects discovered at Ing's apartment and the
- 1:04:29Speaker 1: cabin to link him to the victims. These items were
- 1:04:33Speaker 1: photographed and entered as evidence. The District attorney's lead investigator,
- 1:04:39Speaker 1: Mitch Reglicka, was in charge of witnesses testimony for the prosecution.
- 1:04:45Speaker 10: Well, we had over two hundred pieces of evidence that
- 1:04:48Speaker 10: we used in the guilt phase of the trial, and
- 1:04:52Speaker 10: we had about seventy five witnesses that we had to
- 1:04:54Speaker 10: bring in from various parts of the country as well
- 1:04:57Speaker 10: as Canada to prove that those items belonged to the
- 1:05:01Speaker 10: people who had gone missing and the victims in our case.
- 1:05:06Speaker 1: The prosecution then attempted to establish a link between Kathleen
- 1:05:10Speaker 1: Allen and Charles ng. Kathleen Allen was one of the
- 1:05:15Speaker 1: women on the m Lady's Dape who was tortured by
- 1:05:17Speaker 1: Lake and Ing. Although her body was never found, several
- 1:05:22Speaker 1: of her personal effects were unearthed near the cabin. The
- 1:05:27Speaker 1: prosecution asked her sister to identify a heart shaped pendant.
- 1:05:31Speaker 22: Miss Allan, I know this may be very difficult for you,
- 1:05:34Speaker 22: but I want you to look very closely at this
- 1:05:37Speaker 22: necklace and tell me if you recognize.
- 1:05:41Speaker 14: It's a necklace Kathy used to wear all the time.
- 1:05:48Speaker 5: Thank you, your honor.
- 1:05:50Speaker 20: We'd like the record to show that the witness identified
- 1:05:53Speaker 20: the necklace as belonging to the victim, Kathy Allen, And
- 1:05:57Speaker 20: at this time the people would like to move that
- 1:05:59Speaker 20: we play this in evidence.
- 1:06:02Speaker 1: The prosecution then began to construct the timeline of Kathleen
- 1:06:06Speaker 1: Allen's disappearance to explain.
- 1:06:08Speaker 22: How she got to the Capril fourteenth, nineteen eighty.
- 1:06:10Speaker 1: Fourth former supervisor discussed an odd phone conversation she had
- 1:06:14Speaker 1: while it worked, and can.
- 1:06:16Speaker 22: You tell us about that conversation?
- 1:06:18Speaker 15: Yes, she said she got a call and she said
- 1:06:22Speaker 15: she wanted to join her boyfriend because he got a
- 1:06:26Speaker 15: gunshot wound.
- 1:06:29Speaker 1: Kathleen Allen worked at a grocery store in Milpitas, California.
- 1:06:33Speaker 1: Her boyfriend, Mike Carroll, had met Charles Ing while serving
- 1:06:37Speaker 1: time in Leavenworth Federal Prison. Mike called Kathleen to say
- 1:06:41Speaker 1: he was in Lake Tahoe and had been shot. He
- 1:06:45Speaker 1: was sending a friend to pick her up and bring
- 1:06:47Speaker 1: her to him. Kathleen told her supervisor what Mike had
- 1:06:51Speaker 1: said and asked for some time off.
- 1:06:54Speaker 24: And what happened after that?
- 1:06:57Speaker 2: A man came by to pick her up in a
- 1:07:01Speaker 2: what in a brown or bronze Honda?
- 1:07:06Speaker 12: I think.
- 1:07:08Speaker 20: Did you have an opportunity to see the driver a little?
- 1:07:12Speaker 24: A little yes?
- 1:07:13Speaker 1: Can you tell us what he looked like?
- 1:07:16Speaker 2: He was in his forties, bald, dark hair, and he
- 1:07:22Speaker 2: had a beard.
- 1:07:24Speaker 24: That's all I remember.
- 1:07:28Speaker 1: A prosecution then showed the jury Kathleen Allen's videotaped ordeal.
- 1:07:34Speaker 1: John Crawford investigated her disappearance.
- 1:07:38Speaker 25: The video tape picks up from there and shows that
- 1:07:42Speaker 25: Kathy is brought into the residence, into the living room
- 1:07:45Speaker 25: of the residence in Wilseyville, she is handcuffed and she
- 1:07:49Speaker 25: is seated in a chair. Kathy was told, if you
- 1:07:53Speaker 25: don't agree with us right now, we're going to take
- 1:07:56Speaker 25: you into the bedroom, tie you to the bed, rape you,
- 1:07:59Speaker 25: to take you outside, and put a bullet in your
- 1:08:02Speaker 25: head and bury you in the same place we buried Mike,
- 1:08:06Speaker 25: who was her boyfriend, Mike Carroll.
- 1:08:09Speaker 22: Did you ever hear from her again?
- 1:08:11Speaker 1: Kathleen was never seen or heard from again. Her manager
- 1:08:16Speaker 1: later received a typewritten letter saying she had gotten a
- 1:08:19Speaker 1: job in Lake Tahoe and didn't intend to return. The
- 1:08:23Speaker 1: letter was dated May sixth, three weeks after she left
- 1:08:27Speaker 1: the grocery store. Many of the victims co workers families
- 1:08:37Speaker 1: and friends received typewritten letters from the victims to explain
- 1:08:41Speaker 1: their absence. A comparison of the letters showed they all
- 1:08:46Speaker 1: originated from the same typewriter. An Olympia typewriter found in
- 1:08:53Speaker 1: the cabin was analyzed by forensic document examiners. They concluded
- 1:08:58Speaker 1: that it was the one on which the letters were written.
- 1:09:02Speaker 1: The prosecution entered the typewriter into evidence. A prosecution next
- 1:09:09Speaker 1: tried to prove that Charles Ing was responsible for the
- 1:09:12Speaker 1: abduction and murder of the Dubbs family. Miss Tuck, you.
- 1:09:17Speaker 14: Told us that your last contact with Debora Dubbs.
- 1:09:20Speaker 1: Called Karen Tuck, who was asked to testify about the
- 1:09:23Speaker 1: last time she spoke with her friend Deborah Dubbs on
- 1:09:25Speaker 1: the teleplaws.
- 1:09:27Speaker 14: Well, that was expecting someone to come over to talk
- 1:09:29Speaker 14: to Harvey or see his video equipment.
- 1:09:31Speaker 2: And then the doorbell rang or someone knocked and we
- 1:09:35Speaker 2: terminated the conversation.
- 1:09:36Speaker 14: So someone came to her door while you were in
- 1:09:38Speaker 14: the phone conversation with right, Hi.
- 1:09:42Speaker 22: Hi, We'll hear about the video equipment. Yeah.
- 1:09:45Speaker 1: Harvey Dubbs, a part time wedding photographer, had placed an
- 1:09:49Speaker 1: ad in a newspaper offering to rent his video equipment.
- 1:09:55Speaker 12: He's got a heavy uny coax came.
- 1:09:56Speaker 1: Into Karen Tuck told the court she tried to call DEBRAA.
- 1:09:59Speaker 1: Dubb the next day, but no one answered the phone.
- 1:10:04Speaker 1: The Dubbs family disappeared on July twenty fifth, nineteen eighty four.
- 1:10:10Speaker 1: Their bodies were never found.
- 1:10:16Speaker 24: Was expecting someone to come over.
- 1:10:17Speaker 1: Tarent Tuck was the last person to speak with Deborah
- 1:10:20Speaker 1: Dubbs on the days she and her family were abducted
- 1:10:22Speaker 1: from their San Francisco homes.
- 1:10:25Speaker 11: It takes really good pictures.
- 1:10:26Speaker 1: After placing an ad in the newspaper to rent some
- 1:10:28Speaker 1: video equipment, Harvey Dubbs, his wife Deborah, and his son
- 1:10:32Speaker 1: Sean had been robbed and taken from their homes. The
- 1:10:37Speaker 1: family was never seen again. Detective Irene Brunn found an
- 1:10:43Speaker 1: inventory of Harvey Dubbs equipment at his home.
- 1:10:47Speaker 3: Harvey was meticulous in keeping records and photographs, and he
- 1:10:50Speaker 3: kept the original receipts from when he purchased him. He
- 1:10:53Speaker 3: had serial numbers, brand names for everything that he.
- 1:10:56Speaker 1: Had, Boulevard Rapp, Harvey Dumbs. Detailed records enabled investigators to
- 1:11:04Speaker 1: trace his equipment to Leonard Lake's cabin, but some video
- 1:11:08Speaker 1: equipment was also found in Charles Ing's apartment. One of
- 1:11:13Speaker 1: these pieces matched Harvey Dubbs's inventory. The prosecution entered the
- 1:11:19Speaker 1: video equipment into evidence. Seems the Dubbs' bodies were never found.
- 1:11:26Speaker 1: The prosecution strategy was to use overwhelming circumstantial evidence to
- 1:11:30Speaker 1: tie in to the missing family.
- 1:11:33Speaker 2: The cases is like a puzzle. You have to start
- 1:11:36Speaker 2: putting the pieces together so that the jury can get
- 1:11:39Speaker 2: a clear understanding of what took place. And to prove
- 1:11:44Speaker 2: a case, you have to fit enough pieces of the
- 1:11:46Speaker 2: puzzle together so that a jury believes, beyond a result
- 1:11:50Speaker 2: doubt that a particular defendant murdered or committed a crime,
- 1:11:54Speaker 2: and focused our attention on this bunker.
- 1:11:57Speaker 1: Sergeant Larry Copan was called back to the stock when
- 1:12:00Speaker 1: we first came on. He testified about the seven burn
- 1:12:04Speaker 1: sites they had found. He also described the hundreds of
- 1:12:09Speaker 1: bone fragments he found, many of which had been crushed, burned,
- 1:12:13Speaker 1: and scattered around the property a complete Judging from the
- 1:12:17Speaker 1: size and number of burn sites, investigators suspected Lake and
- 1:12:21Speaker 1: Ing had used fire to dispose of the bodies of
- 1:12:24Speaker 1: many of their victims. The condition of the remains would
- 1:12:28Speaker 1: make it impossible to identify all the victims. No one
- 1:12:34Speaker 1: had witnessed any of these crimes. The prosecution's next move
- 1:12:39Speaker 1: was to put Ing's confessor on the stand. During his
- 1:12:44Speaker 1: Canadian prison term, Ing told Maurice Laberge he helped Lake
- 1:12:48Speaker 1: abduct victims and burn their bodies. Laberge was the prosecution's
- 1:12:53Speaker 1: key witness. His first person account and the drawings Ing
- 1:12:57Speaker 1: gave him would cement their case, but Laberge died before
- 1:13:04Speaker 1: the trial began. At the extradition hearing in Canada, Laber's
- 1:13:10Speaker 1: testified about everything Ing had told him. In a calculated move,
- 1:13:16Speaker 1: the prosecution argued to have the written transcripts of Laberge's
- 1:13:20Speaker 1: Canadian testimony read into the record.
- 1:13:24Speaker 9: Show a letter.
- 1:13:25Speaker 1: Despite the defense's strong objections, the judge ruled to admit
- 1:13:29Speaker 1: the transcript. Sergeant Raymond Monroe, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police,
- 1:13:38Speaker 1: took the stand and read Laberge's prior testimony. In the transcript,
- 1:13:45Speaker 1: Laber's described how Ing gave him the grotesque cartoons and
- 1:13:49Speaker 1: spoke of the crimes he committed, including the videotaped sessions
- 1:13:53Speaker 1: with Kathleen Allen and Brenda O'Connor.
- 1:13:57Speaker 6: Following statement, he told me that the videotape shows a
- 1:14:02Speaker 6: female complaining that it's too warm, and he had had
- 1:14:05Speaker 6: a butterfly knife, he called it.
- 1:14:07Speaker 1: He flicked it open and cut her clothes off.
- 1:14:10Speaker 9: Thank you.
- 1:14:12Speaker 1: Maurice Laberge was a career criminal who served repeated terms
- 1:14:16Speaker 1: for robbery and sexual assault. On Cross, Kelly attacked Laberge's credibility.
- 1:14:24Speaker 11: Isn't it true that Maurice le Burge had an extensive
- 1:14:26Speaker 11: criminal history?
- 1:14:27Speaker 21: Objection, your honor.
- 1:14:28Speaker 14: We've already established that overall.
- 1:14:33Speaker 6: Thank you. Sure.
- 1:14:34Speaker 11: Isn't that correct, yes, sir? And isn't also true that,
- 1:14:39Speaker 11: as part of an agreement with the Canadian government to
- 1:14:42Speaker 11: enter the witness protection program, that Maurice Leburg's received thirty
- 1:14:46Speaker 11: six thousand dollars.
- 1:14:49Speaker 14: I believe that was the deal that we struck with him.
- 1:14:51Speaker 22: Yes.
- 1:14:53Speaker 1: Kelly implied that Laberge's testimony had been bought and paid.
- 1:14:57Speaker 11: For sexual assault and robbery.
- 1:15:00Speaker 17: Yes, it is.
- 1:15:00Speaker 1: And do you recall offhand, what.
- 1:15:04Speaker 11: If any contents were retrieved from the automobile at the
- 1:15:09Speaker 11: sight of the accident.
- 1:15:11Speaker 25: There was twenty one thousand dollars in cash found in
- 1:15:14Speaker 25: the vehicle.
- 1:15:15Speaker 11: We see thousand dollars in.
- 1:15:17Speaker 1: Cash Kelly's cross examination had been successful in insinuating that
- 1:15:23Speaker 1: Laberge would say anything for money, your career police officer,
- 1:15:27Speaker 1: the prosecution's key witness had taken the stand by proxys. Yes,
- 1:15:32Speaker 1: They now feared the defense attack had destroyed his credibility,
- 1:15:35Speaker 1: Isn't it true? Sergeant Munroe was one of the prosecution's last.
- 1:15:39Speaker 11: Witnesses had numerous convictions.
- 1:15:41Speaker 1: After presenting their case for twelve days, the prosecution rested.
- 1:15:48Speaker 1: On November seventeenth, nineteen ninety eight. William Kelly began presenting
- 1:15:52Speaker 1: Ing's defense to the jury. He had a relatively simple
- 1:15:58Speaker 1: strategy to prove that Leonard Lake was the real killer
- 1:16:02Speaker 1: and Ing was just a bystander. First, Kelly called a
- 1:16:09Speaker 1: series of women to this day. Each testified as to
- 1:16:16Speaker 1: their bizarre sexual encounters with Leonard Lake. The women spoke
- 1:16:21Speaker 1: of his interest in bondage and taking lurid photographs. One
- 1:16:26Speaker 1: woman had a year long relationship with Lake and posed
- 1:16:29Speaker 1: for dozens of photos. She explained she left him because
- 1:16:34Speaker 1: of his frightening fantasies involving sex and death. So that
- 1:16:39Speaker 1: would have been fifteen years ago. Another woman testified that
- 1:16:43Speaker 1: Lake had threatened to rape her and that he believed
- 1:16:46Speaker 1: in human sacrifice. The testimony painted Lake as the monster
- 1:16:52Speaker 1: and established that none of the witnesses had even met
- 1:16:56Speaker 1: Charles Zing.
- 1:16:57Speaker 22: Thank you.
- 1:17:01Speaker 1: Another witness testified that he had seen Lake verbally abuse.
- 1:17:05Speaker 13: Ing, working as a sort of his assistant.
- 1:17:07Speaker 1: Or helper, helping the defense establish that Ing was subservient
- 1:17:11Speaker 1: to Lake. By calling witnesses who had often seen bellahs
- 1:17:15Speaker 1: with Lake at the cabins, the defense attempted to show
- 1:17:18Speaker 1: that Bellas herself was an accomplice to Lake. Kelly also
- 1:17:25Speaker 1: used this testimony to demonstrate that Ing spent little time
- 1:17:28Speaker 1: at Leonard Lake's cabin. The defense's strongest proof that Lake
- 1:17:33Speaker 1: planned to kidnap, torture, and murder his victims was his journal.
- 1:17:39Speaker 1: It was here that Lake outlined the so called Miranda Project.
- 1:17:45Speaker 1: While the jury was out, Kelly moved to enter an
- 1:17:48Speaker 1: edited version of the journal into evidence because the edited
- 1:17:53Speaker 1: version eliminated references to Charles Ing. The judge resisted.
- 1:17:58Speaker 9: I believe the court sho eliminate misleading evidence, and this
- 1:18:03Speaker 9: edited diary could do just that if it is intended
- 1:18:07Speaker 9: to show that Leonard Lake killed all twelve victims without
- 1:18:12Speaker 9: the help of Charles Ang. I believe the diary needs
- 1:18:16Speaker 9: to be excluded. Most of it is just pure jump.
- 1:18:19Speaker 11: But the diary shows that Lake was thinking of the
- 1:18:22Speaker 11: fantasy for twenty years.
- 1:18:25Speaker 9: The jury knows what Lake planned. This edit to diary
- 1:18:29Speaker 9: was inadmissible.
- 1:18:33Speaker 1: Kelly's attempt to put Leonard Lake on trial appeared blocked,
- 1:18:38Speaker 1: but he countered the prosecution strategy with his next witness.
- 1:18:46Speaker 1: In his opening statement, Kelly asserted Clarlyn Bellaz knew of
- 1:18:51Speaker 1: the Mirnda project and helped Lake recruit women to photograph.
- 1:18:56Speaker 1: Kelly believed she played a far more active role than
- 1:18:59Speaker 1: she admitted, and asserted it was Blaz, not King, who
- 1:19:03Speaker 1: was Lake's accomplice. The prosecution had not called her as
- 1:19:08Speaker 1: a witness, so as Belas took the stand, everyone in
- 1:19:12Speaker 1: the courtroom, including the prosecution, wondered what she would say.
- 1:19:18Speaker 1: Then Kelly read the immunity agreement.
- 1:19:21Speaker 11: I'll read it to the jury. This is an immunity
- 1:19:25Speaker 11: agreement between the State of California and Clarlyn Belaze. The
- 1:19:31Speaker 11: State of California promises witness transactional immunity for all crimes,
- 1:19:36Speaker 11: including but not limited to, murder, conspiracy to commit murder,
- 1:19:41Speaker 11: aiding and abetting murder, theft and received stolen property related
- 1:19:46Speaker 11: to the victims no questions.
- 1:19:58Speaker 1: In a stunning move, chose not to question Bellaz. He
- 1:20:04Speaker 1: created the appearance she had something to hide, and since
- 1:20:08Speaker 1: she had not spoken on the stand, the prosecution could
- 1:20:11Speaker 1: not cross examine her. The laws made her immunity deal
- 1:20:16Speaker 1: with the prosecution, but in the end she provided them
- 1:20:19Speaker 1: with little information and became a witness for the defense.
- 1:20:26Speaker 1: Kelly then called another witness who could not be cross examined.
- 1:20:30Speaker 1: He played a tape made by Leonard Lake describing his
- 1:20:33Speaker 1: rationale for the Miranda project.
- 1:20:38Speaker 19: What I want is an office shop sex partner. I
- 1:20:42Speaker 19: want to be able to use a woman whenever and
- 1:20:47Speaker 19: however I want, and when I'm tired or say she
- 1:20:52Speaker 19: is a board, I'm not interested. I simply want to
- 1:20:57Speaker 19: put her away.
- 1:21:00Speaker 1: With a final glimpse into the mind of Leonard Lake,
- 1:21:03Speaker 1: the defense rested its case. Peter Smith made the final
- 1:21:09Speaker 1: closing argument for the prosecution. He reminded the jury of
- 1:21:14Speaker 1: the evidence they had seen and asked them to return
- 1:21:17Speaker 1: a guilty verdict. Then the trial took its most surprising turn.
- 1:21:25Speaker 1: After hearing the prosecution sum up their case against him,
- 1:21:28Speaker 1: Ing filed a handwritten motion, demanding he be allowed to
- 1:21:32Speaker 1: testify on his own behalf. When Kelly tried to convince
- 1:21:37Speaker 1: his client otherwise, Ing threatened to fire him against the
- 1:21:42Speaker 1: advice of his attorneys, Charles Ing would be taking the
- 1:21:45Speaker 1: witness stand. Observers in the Charles Ing trial were stunned
- 1:21:53Speaker 1: when they entered the courtroom on January twenty seventh, nineteen
- 1:21:56Speaker 1: ninety nine. The accused serial killer himself was now on
- 1:22:01Speaker 1: the witness stand. Ing was charged with killing twelve people,
- 1:22:06Speaker 1: and after three months of listening to his case, he
- 1:22:09Speaker 1: demanded to testify on his own behalf. Assuming the prosecution
- 1:22:17Speaker 1: would use Laberge's testimony to corner Ing, Deputy public Defender
- 1:22:21Speaker 1: Clapp decided to take the offensive and prove that Laberge
- 1:22:25Speaker 1: had lied.
- 1:22:29Speaker 5: Did you tell him that, with regard to Brenda O'Connor
- 1:22:34Speaker 5: Kathy Allen, that you shot them in the head while
- 1:22:38Speaker 5: they were handcuffed and blindfled.
- 1:22:41Speaker 8: No.
- 1:22:43Speaker 1: Ing testified that he had helped to imprison Brenda O'Connor
- 1:22:46Speaker 1: and Kathleen Allen, but had not intended to hurt or
- 1:22:49Speaker 1: kill them.
- 1:22:51Speaker 5: Did you tell Maurice Leberge that you put their bodies
- 1:22:57Speaker 5: on a pile of wood and ignited it with gasoline.
- 1:23:01Speaker 1: No, did you agree to kill and tend to kill
- 1:23:06Speaker 1: or kill any of the victims in the twelve murder charges.
- 1:23:09Speaker 9: No.
- 1:23:11Speaker 1: Christ Niles continued for hours as Clapp went over every
- 1:23:14Speaker 1: statement Ing allegedly made to his jail mat that we
- 1:23:18Speaker 1: gave Ben Clapp moved to have Ing explain away the
- 1:23:21Speaker 1: prosecution's other key evidence, the M Lady's tape. On the tape,
- 1:23:26Speaker 1: Rendo O'Connor begged Ing not to take her baby away
- 1:23:30Speaker 1: with regard to the video, which he replied, it is
- 1:23:33Speaker 1: better than the baby is dead.
- 1:23:37Speaker 5: Why did you say that?
- 1:23:39Speaker 26: I don't know why I said that. It was just
- 1:23:41Speaker 26: in the heat of the moment. Some of the comments
- 1:23:43Speaker 26: and remarks I made. I don't even know. I may
- 1:23:46Speaker 26: until I saw the transcripts.
- 1:23:49Speaker 1: The m Lady's tapes had been transcribed during the extradition
- 1:23:52Speaker 1: hearing so that every word spoken on the tape could
- 1:23:55Speaker 1: be understood. When Charlene Honaka Cross examined it, she used
- 1:24:01Speaker 1: the transcripts to turn his own words against him.
- 1:24:05Speaker 14: Were you present at the extradition hearing when mister Laberg's
- 1:24:08Speaker 14: testified that you told him that you could hear on
- 1:24:12Speaker 14: the video, the sounds of handcuff's clicking.
- 1:24:16Speaker 26: I remember that statement he made.
- 1:24:19Speaker 14: How would mister Laberge know that you could hear the
- 1:24:21Speaker 14: sounds of handcuff's clicking. That's not on the printed transcript,
- 1:24:26Speaker 14: right of them ladies.
- 1:24:28Speaker 1: Right Onaka demonstrated for the jury that the only way
- 1:24:32Speaker 1: Laberge could have known about the sound of the handcuffs
- 1:24:35Speaker 1: was if Ing told him. It was clear, despite Ing's
- 1:24:40Speaker 1: denials on the stands that he had told Maurice Labert's
- 1:24:44Speaker 1: the details of the torture and the killings details, Laberge
- 1:24:48Speaker 1: couldn't have known any other way. Honaka then set out
- 1:24:52Speaker 1: to establish that Charles ng was not a bystander but
- 1:24:55Speaker 1: a willing participant in the crimes. She replayed a scene
- 1:25:01Speaker 1: from the m Lady's tape showing Ing cutting the shirt
- 1:25:05Speaker 1: off Brenda O'Connor.
- 1:25:07Speaker 14: So you never talked to Leonard ahead of time about
- 1:25:10Speaker 14: your plan to cut her clothes off right?
- 1:25:13Speaker 26: No, not on the tape.
- 1:25:16Speaker 14: So you just decided on your own to cut her
- 1:25:18Speaker 14: clothes off right, Yes, without any specific instruction from Leonard Lake.
- 1:25:30Speaker 1: Wanaka again turned to the videotapes. She played a portion
- 1:25:35Speaker 1: of the tape where Ing tells Leonard Lake that a
- 1:25:37Speaker 1: gun is on the table.
- 1:25:40Speaker 14: You told Leonard at one point that the piece was
- 1:25:43Speaker 14: on the table, right.
- 1:25:45Speaker 26: Yeah, I remember saying something like that.
- 1:25:47Speaker 14: What did you mean by the piece?
- 1:25:50Speaker 26: Oh, just wanted to let him know that gun was
- 1:25:52Speaker 26: on the table in case Kathy might grab a gun
- 1:25:56Speaker 26: and shoot him with it.
- 1:25:58Speaker 14: Well, now she's had cuffed, right, yes, and she's got
- 1:26:03Speaker 14: leg madicals on.
- 1:26:05Speaker 26: Yes, I believe so.
- 1:26:06Speaker 14: And there are two of you and one of her,
- 1:26:09Speaker 14: right yes. And the reason you told Leonard that the
- 1:26:13Speaker 14: gun was on the table is because you were afraid
- 1:26:16Speaker 14: Kathy might pick it up and shoot him.
- 1:26:19Speaker 1: Hmmm, something like that. Onnaka had shown that Ing was
- 1:26:24Speaker 1: more than a bystander to Leonard Lake's crimes, Thank you.
- 1:26:28Speaker 1: He was an active participant who sometimes even directed Leonard Lake.
- 1:26:35Speaker 1: Because Ing took the stand after the prosecution closed, the
- 1:26:38Speaker 1: judge gave them the opportunity to restate their closing arguments
- 1:26:42Speaker 1: after Ing's testimony.
- 1:26:47Speaker 14: It's never Ng's fault. He always lays the blame on
- 1:26:51Speaker 14: someone else. He was not under the control of Leonard Lake.
- 1:26:58Speaker 9: He was his own person.
- 1:27:00Speaker 14: He was making his own independent choices and doing the
- 1:27:03Speaker 14: things he wanted to do.
- 1:27:11Speaker 1: William Kelly then gave the closing arguments for the defense.
- 1:27:16Speaker 1: He asserted the prosecution had simply failed to prove their
- 1:27:19Speaker 1: case and attack their most important piece of evidence the
- 1:27:23Speaker 1: m ladies take.
- 1:27:25Speaker 11: No matter how many different ways they show it to
- 1:27:28Speaker 11: you and exerts from it. There's one thing.
- 1:27:29Speaker 6: You never see.
- 1:27:33Speaker 11: Anybody being murdered. And you don't see Charles ang involved
- 1:27:39Speaker 11: in anybody's murder, no matter how many times you see
- 1:27:47Speaker 11: him cut the clothes of Brenda O'Connor. And as offensive
- 1:27:53Speaker 11: as that is, and I grant you it's offensive, but
- 1:28:02Speaker 11: it ain't murder.
- 1:28:07Speaker 8: It just.
- 1:28:11Speaker 1: Charles Ing had been charged with the murders of seven men,
- 1:28:14Speaker 1: three women, and two babies. His fate was now in
- 1:28:18Speaker 1: the hands of the jury.
- 1:28:22Speaker 2: Anybody who prosecutes cases or tries cases knows there's never
- 1:28:27Speaker 2: a sure thing with a jury. And that's the difficult
- 1:28:31Speaker 2: aspect of being a prosecutor. You have to convince twelve
- 1:28:33Speaker 2: people beyond a reasonable doubt, and they all twelve have
- 1:28:36Speaker 2: to agree. It has to be unanimous.
- 1:28:40Speaker 1: The jury deliberated for a week, then two weeks. The
- 1:28:46Speaker 1: media coverage intensified as the deliberations stretched into their third week,
- 1:28:53Speaker 1: the prosecutors became increasingly concerned that the jury was having
- 1:28:56Speaker 1: difficulty making a decision. This was not a good sign
- 1:29:01Speaker 1: for the prosecution, who knew their case was mostly circumstantial.
- 1:29:07Speaker 1: If the jury demanded strong physical evidence linking Ing to
- 1:29:10Speaker 1: the crimes in order to deliver a guilty verdict, then
- 1:29:13Speaker 1: Charles Ing might go free. As time dragged on, all
- 1:29:18Speaker 1: the prosecution could do was wait. On February twenty fourth,
- 1:29:26Speaker 1: nineteen ninety nine, after three weeks of waiting, the jury
- 1:29:30Speaker 1: informed the judge they had reached a decision. The prosecutors
- 1:29:35Speaker 1: had called approximately seventy five witnesses and presented about two
- 1:29:39Speaker 1: hundred pieces of evidence to prove the charges against Charles Ing.
- 1:29:45Speaker 1: All that evidence was now in the hands of the jury.
- 1:29:55Speaker 9: As the jury reached its verdict, we are deadlocked.
- 1:30:02Speaker 26: We are deadlocked on one count.
- 1:30:04Speaker 9: Did the defendant rise and faced the jury? Please read
- 1:30:10Speaker 9: your verdict.
- 1:30:13Speaker 26: We the jury and the above entitled case find the defendant,
- 1:30:17Speaker 26: Charles Ng guilty of the murder of Sean Dobbs's charged
- 1:30:21Speaker 26: and count one.
- 1:30:23Speaker 1: The jury found Charles Ing guilty of alte counts of
- 1:30:26Speaker 1: first degree murder. They could not come to a conclusion
- 1:30:31Speaker 1: on the death of the Podcast case. They did not
- 1:30:33Speaker 1: feel they had enough evidence to convict guilty. Charles Ing
- 1:30:38Speaker 1: was sentenced to death. For the prosecution, the long ordeal
- 1:30:44Speaker 1: was finally over, and.
- 1:30:46Speaker 2: I was just happy for the people of Calvert's County
- 1:30:49Speaker 2: that finally mister Ying was found guilty of these murders
- 1:30:57Speaker 2: after so many years. I'm proud of the fact that
- 1:31:01Speaker 2: I was the district attorney at the time and prosecuted
- 1:31:05Speaker 2: Charles Ing, and I was in essence the last person
- 1:31:08Speaker 2: standing from Calver's County after all these years.
- 1:31:13Speaker 1: With a final cost of over twenty million dollars, the
- 1:31:17Speaker 1: longest and most expensive criminal case in California history came
- 1:31:21Speaker 1: to a close. For thirteen years, the prosecution never wavered
- 1:31:26Speaker 1: in their pursuit of justice. Charles Ing now sits on
- 1:31:33Speaker 1: California's death row.