Charles Chitat Ng

A routine police response to a shoplifting incident at a South City lumberyard in South San Francisco led to the discovery of one of the most gruesome mass murder cases the country had witnessed. A clerk had reported an Asian man stealing a vice. He escaped, but another middle-aged bearded man was arrested after being found with several firearms, including an illegal silencer. The man, who used numerous aliases, was identified as Leonard Lake, a former Marine and criminal associate of Charles Ng.

At the time, police believed Lake to be nothing more than a petty criminal. Shortly after being taken into custody, he committed suicide by swallowing a cyanide pill, one of several concealed in his belt, but not before writing a note to his wife.

Police soon realised they had uncovered something far more serious than theft and illegal gun possession. The Honda truck in Lake’s possession belonged to a missing man named Paul Cosner. Inside the vehicle were stolen bank cards and an electricity bill in the name of Claralyn Balasz. Officers quickly contacted Balasz, Lake’s ex-wife, who lived in Bruno, only a few miles from where he had been arrested.

On 3 June 1985, Detectives Tom Eisenmann and Irene Brunn of the San Francisco Missing Persons Department interviewed Balasz. The electricity bill was for a property in Wilseyville, California, a remote area at the foot of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Balasz explained that the cabin belonged to her father and provided directions. However, she made sure to arrive first so she could remove several homemade pornographic videotapes that she feared would embarrass her.

When Balasz later took detectives to the cabin, they asked her to unlock it. The cabin contained two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a bathroom. Red stains resembling blood were found on the ceiling, along with two small-calibre bullet holes in the living room wall and kitchen floor. Most disturbing was a four-poster bed fitted with electrical cords tied to each post and a 250-watt floodlight attached to the wall.

Bloodstained mattresses, women’s lingerie, and video duplication equipment suggested that sinister activities had taken place there. Elsewhere on the property, an incinerator with fireproof walls and a mysterious bunker prompted further investigation, ultimately revealing a horrifying story of abduction, torture, and murder.

Claralyn Balasz became angry when questioned about her connection to the property, insisting that her father had purchased it and rented it out. When detectives asked to search the concrete bunker, she suggested they speak to Charles Ng, an Asian man she described as her ex-husband’s business partner.

Balasz explained that she had recently collected Charles Ng from his apartment to deliver a pay cheque before driving him to San Francisco Airport, although she did not know his destination. After authorities received Ng’s details, a task force was established to search the property.

The following day, investigators began excavating the site. A lye-soaked clearing near the bunker revealed a trench containing clothing, leading detectives to fear they had discovered a gravesite. Two bones were later recovered and sent for analysis.

After gaining access to the bunker, investigators noticed it appeared smaller inside than outside, suggesting concealed rooms. Further enquiries revealed the property had been rented by Lonnie Bond, his partner Brenda O’Connor, their infant son, and a lodger named Robin Stapley. All were reported missing.

The bunker’s main room resembled a workshop filled with hand tools and power saws, many bearing what appeared to be bloodstains. Behind a plywood tool rack was a hidden room containing a double bed, bedside table, reading lamp, and several books, including The Collector by John Fowles, about a man who kidnaps a young woman and imprisons her in his basement. The novel bore chilling similarities to events that had taken place in the bunker.

The room also contained an arsenal of weapons, firearms equipment, magazines, and manuals on producing chemical weapons. One wall displayed 21 photographs of young girls in various states of undress.

Among the most significant discoveries was Leonard Lake’s diary, in which he described how he and Charles Ng had abducted, raped, tortured, and murdered numerous victims.

Investigators also discovered another hidden room concealed behind a bookcase. Measuring only seven feet by three feet, it contained a single bed and a chemical toilet. Ventilation holes admitted air but not light, while a two-way mirror allowed observers outside to watch and listen to the captive inside.

While the excavation was underway, Leonard Lake’s mother, Gloria Eberling, arrived hoping to learn what had happened to her other son, Donald, who had disappeared two years earlier. Detectives questioned her about the videotapes removed by Claralyn Balasz. Eberling admitted Balasz had taken them to avoid embarrassment because they showed her nude and engaging in sexual activity with Lake. Balasz was ordered to return all of the tapes.

The FBI soon launched a full-scale murder investigation, believing Lake and Ng were responsible for multiple kidnappings, rapes, and murders. Although Lake was dead, Charles Ng remained at large.

The bodies of Kathleen Allen and her boyfriend Michael Carroll were recovered from the property. Allen had been lured to the cabin after Lake falsely claimed Carroll, a convicted felon and former cellmate of Ng, had been shot. Other victims included Robin Scott Stapley, whose identity Lake had assumed on the day of his arrest. Another victim was Charles Gunner, known as “The Fat Man,” who had served as best man at Lake’s wedding to Claralyn Balasz.

Lake’s neighbours Brenda O’Connor, her partner Lonnie Bond, and their infant son Lonnie Bond Jr. were also murdered, as were Harvey and Deborah Dubs and their baby Sean. The Dubs family had become targets after Harvey advertised audio equipment for sale. One videotape showed a terrified Brenda O’Connor being abused while Ng threatened, “If you say no (to co-operation) we’ll rape you and then we’ll take you outside and shoot you. Your choice.”

Ng also targeted male victims. After placing an advertisement in a sex magazine offering oral sex, he met Donald Giuletti, a 38-year-old San Francisco disc jockey. Giuletti was later found dead in his home, having been shot three times. His roommate identified Ng as the visitor who had come to the apartment.

Other victims were raped, humiliated, and filmed while fellow captives watched in terror. Sheriff Ballard described the videotapes as resembling horror films. Police estimated that approximately 21 missing women, aged between twelve and their early twenties, appeared on the recordings being sexually assaulted, raped, and sodomised. Six women shown on the tapes were later found alive, but many others remain missing and are believed to have been incinerated.

Ng had sisters in Toronto and Calgary, an uncle in Yorkshire, England, and former Marine friends in Hawaii. Interpol and Scotland Yard were informed of his possible whereabouts in the hope of arresting him in one of several locations.

Although bones and articles of clothing had already been recovered at the bunker site, several more days passed before the first skeletal remains of two people were unearthed. The bones had been sawn into pieces and burned. Investigators also discovered a sealed container holding personal belongings and several videotapes. One tape showed Kathleen Allen chained to a chair and forced to perform a striptease while being taunted by two unseen men.

Another videotape showed Leonard Lake describing his fantasies of kidnapping women and enslaving them. Most disturbing of all was footage of Brenda O’Connor pleading for information about her baby.

The baby and O’Connor’s partner, Lonnie Bond, had most likely been killed before the recording was made. O’Connor eventually appeared to agree to cooperate, and she was later heard taking a shower, almost certainly under duress, with the same men who had taunted Kathleen Allen.

Further excavations, including the demolition of the entire bunker, ultimately uncovered the remains of up to ten victims—seven men, three women, and two baby boys—along with forty-five pounds of bone fragments. Evidence suggested that as many as 25 people had been murdered.

On the day Claralyn Balasz drove Ng to San Francisco Airport, he boarded an American Airlines flight to Chicago. The FBI traced him to a hotel, but he had checked out four days earlier. Ng then travelled to Detroit with a friend before crossing into Canada. He evaded capture for nearly a month until a shoplifting incident at a Calgary grocery store prompted police intervention. During the confrontation, one officer was shot in the hand, but Ng was eventually subdued and charged with robbery, firearm possession, and the attempted murder of a police officer.

When American investigators learned of Ng’s arrest, efforts to extradite him were delayed by legal obstacles. Canadian authorities refused to extradite prisoners facing charges that could result in the death penalty, and the dispute continued for six years.

During this period, Ng was questioned by U.S. detectives. He denied responsibility for the killings connected to the Wilseyville bunker and claimed that Leonard Lake had carried out most of the kidnappings and murders.

While serving his four-year sentence in Calgary for theft and assault, Ng devoted his time to studying American law.

This marked the beginning of a prolonged legal battle in which Ng used every available tactic to delay his murder trial. He was finally extradited to the United States on 26 September 1991 and held in Sacramento Prison while awaiting trial.

During his incarceration, Ng continued exploiting his knowledge of American law to prolong proceedings. He filed numerous complaints, including allegations of poor treatment and bad food, and even claimed that medication for motion sickness rendered him unfit to appear in court.

One particularly effective tactic was requesting permission to represent himself, requiring lengthy legal preparations, only to withdraw the request at the last moment.

Ng and his lawyers also sought to move the trial to Orange County, arguing that media coverage in San Andreas would prevent a fair hearing. The request itself became another lengthy dispute after Orange County officials argued the trial would bankrupt the county. The matter was eventually resolved when the State of California agreed to cover all associated costs.

After years of delaying proceedings—including dismissing his own lawyers and filing a one-million-dollar lawsuit against them for alleged incompetence—Ng was finally brought to trial in October 1998, thirteen years after his original arrest.

In the presence of the victims’ families, the jury heard how Charles Ng and his older accomplice Leonard Lake had abducted, raped, tortured, and eventually murdered up to 25 people, including two babies. Ironically, Lake’s own diary confession was ruled inadmissible by the judge, but other evidence, including incriminating videos showing victims restrained and taunted, contributed to Ng’s conviction for murdering six men, three women, and two babies.

Throughout the trial, Ng’s attorneys insisted that he had been an “unwilling” accomplice who had not participated in the killings but had taken part in some of the sexual assaults. The jury rejected this argument and also considered evidence that, while in custody, Ng had drawn cartoons depicting murders in disturbing detail. He had also written a motto on his cell wall that read: “No kill, no thrill – no gun, no fun”.

Ng was sentenced to life imprisonment and remains on death row at San Quentin Prison, California. Despite this, his attorneys have continued to file appeals against what they describe as the harshness of his sentence.

The court proceedings lasted thirteen years and cost taxpayers twenty million dollars to convict one man who faced overwhelming incriminating evidence, including video footage showing him acting as a cruel and sadistic captor of several murdered victims.