In the summer of 1984, San Francisco was gripped by fear. Neighbors, family members, and friends were vanishing without a trace, and police were perplexed. The investigation took a deadly turn when a killing field was uncovered high in the California mountains.
As the body count climbed, the evidence pointed to an elusive killer. To bring this murderer to justice, a small-town prosecutor would have to take a long, dark journey into the mind of a serial killer.
On the morning of October 26, 1998, the longest and most expensive criminal trial in California history got underway. With an investigation spanning 13 years and a case file weighing over two tons, the burden of prosecuting one of California’s most notorious killers would fall on Peter Smith, the district attorney of Calaveras County. A prosecutor’s job is to seek justice.
Smith reflected on the nature of his role, noting that many people look at prosecutors and think their job is to convict and put people in jail or prison. While that is part of the job, he emphasized that it is really the responsibility of the prosecution to make sure the justice system, particularly the criminal justice system, is carried out fairly to the point where justice is always sought.
On June 2, 1985, a South San Francisco dispatch operator received a call. A theft was in progress at South City Lumber. Officer Daniel Wright of the South San Francisco Police Department responded to the call.
Wright had just one year on the street at that time, and his thoughts were focused on officer safety. Like any call, he knew things could go awry at any time. A witness told Wright he had seen an Asian male stealing a 75-dollar table vise.
The thief, when confronted, tossed the vise into the trunk of a brown Honda and fled on foot.
Inside the Honda, Wright spotted a suspicious-looking case. He opened the case and found a . 22 Ruger with a cylinder-shaped object attached that was probably six to nine inches long.
Through his training, he observed it to be a silencer. The gun had been illegally modified. As Wright took a closer look, an agitated man burst from the store.
He told the officer he had paid for the vise and that his friend had taken it. Wright’s supervisor, Sergeant Paul Ziemer, arrived on the scene. The gun in the Honda made both officers suspicious, and the car was impounded.
They told the man he was going to be going down to the station to give a statement about the weapon. He was handcuffed and placed into Officer Ziemer’s vehicle and brought to the station.
On the way to the station, the man told Ziemer the shoplifter’s name was Charles Ng. The officer used his radio to request a background check on the name. They got a hit.
Ng was a former Marine born in Hong Kong. He had been convicted in military court for stealing automatic weapons from a military base in Hawaii, and he had once escaped from a military prison. At the South San Francisco police station, the subject was placed in a secure holding room.
He told the officer his name was Leonard Lake. He said he was a fugitive from justice and offered to make a statement, but first he wanted a piece of paper and a pencil.
The on-call detective that Sunday was called in. When they returned, Lake was on the floor convulsing wildly. Detective Hopper called the paramedics.
Lake was flopping around on the floor in a very violent manner, like a fish flapping out of water uncontrollably. They had no idea what was happening at the time, whether it was an epileptic seizure or just what was going on. Once the paramedics got him to the emergency hospital, they found out a little later that there was no activity at all in his brain.
He was apparently brain dead. An autopsy later revealed that Lake had ingested capsules containing cyanide. The doctor and lab technicians told Detective Hopper that it took about 20 to 25 minutes for the gel cap to dissolve before the cyanide actually hit his system.
That would probably coincide fairly well with the amount of time between when he was at the lumber yard and when he was brought to the police station.
Rather than writing a statement, Lake had written a note to a woman named Lynn. The note read, “Dear Lynn, I love you, I forgive you. Freedom is better than all else.
I’m sorry Mom, Patty and all. I’m sorry for all the trouble. Love, Leonard.”
Police were perplexed. Why had the suspect taken his own life? Whatever secrets Leonard Lake held, he took to the grave.
The answer might lie with Lake’s companion, Charles Ng. Police issued a warrant for Ng’s arrest for shoplifting. Then they processed the car Lake had been driving.
When they ran the serial number on the Honda’s engine block, investigators discovered that the car belonged to Paul Cosner. Cosner, a Bay Area resident, had been missing for seven months.
Detective Irene Brun of the San Francisco Police Department investigated Cosner’s disappearance. His sister had reported him missing months earlier, and she was quite distraught. Her brother had disappeared.
He had had a date that evening with his girlfriend for dinner, who also lived in the same apartment building where he lived. He failed to show up for that dinner date. In speaking to the girlfriend, Brun learned that Paul was going to show a car that he was selling through an advertisement in the paper.
Cosner was only one of many strange cases involving missing persons in the Bay Area. Detective Brun was also investigating the disappearance of an entire family.
On July 25, 1984, San Francisco police responded to a frantic call for help. Harvey Dubs, his wife, and their 16-month-old son Sean hadn’t been seen for several days. Police had to climb through a window to gain access to the Dubs’ apartment.
The Dubs family had indeed disappeared, and the signs of a struggle were apparent. Days earlier, Harvey Dubs had placed an ad in the newspaper to rent out his video equipment. That equipment was now missing.
Missing person cases usually fit a certain profile. They often involve teenage runaways or people who disappear without telling anyone, only to return a few days later. In the case of the Dubs, it was clear the family hadn’t left voluntarily.
Detective Brun feared they would never return.
In the house, there were things that were unusual and out of order. The baby’s room was out of order. Deborah’s medication was left at home, and it was something she had to take every day.
There were a lot of things that just didn’t look right. They left their cats locked in the house unattended, and they wouldn’t have done that. It is unusual for people like Paul Cosner or the Dubs family to simply vanish without a trace.
Without leads, both cases had gone cold. Brun noted that realistically, they get 500 missing person reports a month. One family disappeared on July 25th, and now it was November 2nd.
Because of the caseload, they weren’t trying to pin cases together. The only similarity was a newspaper ad.
Based on the discovery of Paul Cosner’s brown Honda, Brun and her partner reopened his case and searched the vehicle for clues. They found a driver’s license belonging to a man named Scott Stapley. They found a stun gun and several unspent bullets on the floor of the car.
A recent electric bill addressed to an unknown woman named Clerilyn Balaz was found under the passenger seat. In the roof of the car, investigators found a single bullet hole. The trajectory of the bullet indicated the shot was fired from the back seat.
The investigators sprayed luminol around the interior of the vehicle. Luminol reacts with proteins in blood, making even traces of blood fluoresce. High-velocity blood spatter associated with a gunshot wound appeared on the roof next to the front passenger seat.
Brun and her partner now suspected they would never find Cosner alive.
With Leonard Lake dead and his partner Charles Ng at large, investigators could only wonder how many more victims they might find at the end of this trail of blood. Leonard Lake’s mysterious suicide had now launched a full-scale police investigation. Brun and her partner drove to the home of Leonard Lake’s mother, who lived about an hour outside of San Francisco.
The woman whose name appeared on the electric bill found in Cosner’s car was Clara Balaz. She was Lake’s ex-wife. They had been married for three years but divorced a year earlier.
Detectives suspected she might be the woman Lake addressed in his suicide note. They asked Balaz how an electric bill in her name wound up in Paul Cosner’s car. Balaz explained the address on the bill was for a cabin her family owned in Calaveras County in northern California.
Although Brun and her partner were eager to search the cabin, Balaz claimed she was too busy to take them there until the next day. The detectives postponed their search until the following morning. They called the Calaveras Sheriff’s Department and told them they were going to be coming up the following morning, why they were going, and asked if it was possible for them to have somebody keep an eye on the property.
Calaveras County covers over 1,100 square miles of wild terrain. A force of 34 officers protected the entire county in 1985. There hadn’t been a need for more.
The sheriff sent two deputies to watch the cabin, which was located outside the town of Wilseyville. A metal gate prevented them from driving onto the property. Because of their manpower shortage, they couldn’t have somebody sit there for the next 24 hours, but they would make passing calls, which was reasonable.
The following morning, Brun and her partner arranged to meet Clara Lynn Balaz outside the Wilseyville post office. They were surprised when she arrived. At that point, Carolyn admitted that they had driven up the night before on the pretext that Leonard was very untidy and they wanted to tidy up the cabin.
Concerned that Balaz and Lake’s mother might have compromised evidence at the cabin, Brun, her partner, and the Calaveras County sheriffs followed them to the property. The detectives asked Balaz about a cinderblock bunker near the cabin. She said she didn’t have the key and would not give them permission to search it.
Lacking sufficient probable cause for a warrant, detectives would have to limit their search to the cabin alone. At that point, they were still more interested in getting into the house, so they didn’t want to antagonize her because this was a consent search. Otherwise, they would have had to stop and go get a search warrant.
While her partner questioned Balaz, Detective Brun searched the house. She noticed something odd about the bed. There were holes drilled into the bedposts and the floor.
It seemed designed to tie someone up. Standing in front of a bookcase, she happened to turn around, and all of a sudden she recognized a piece of equipment. It dawned on her where she had seen it.
It was the Dubs’ video equipment. Brun recalled it had been stolen from the home of Harvey Dubs, the San Francisco man who vanished with his family 11 months earlier. She went over and called her office, asking them to check their inventory and read her the serial number.
They proceeded to start reading the serial number, and then she gave them the last three numbers from the piece of paper in her hand. At that point, they realized that this was getting even bigger. It wasn’t just Mr.
Cosner. Now they had the Dubs. At that point, Clara Lynn got very nervous and said, “You’ve been here long enough.
I want you to leave.”
To learn what other secrets the isolated cabin held, Detective Brun would need to obtain a search warrant. The investigators left the property, but this time they made certain the cabin would be secure until they returned. As investigators conducted a search of Leonard Lake’s cabin in Calaveras County, they had discovered video equipment that belonged to a family who had been missing for nearly a year.
This gave them sufficient probable cause to petition the judge for a warrant. Ron McFaul led the investigation for the Calaveras County Sheriff’s Office. They did get a warrant that day, and later that afternoon they went back to the residence to conduct a search of the residence and the property.
What looked like a tool shed at first was actually a cinderblock structure that bordered the driveway. Clarilyn Balaz referred to it as a fallout shelter. Leonard Lake had been a survivalist, and this was his fortress against nuclear holocaust.
As the heavy doors swung open, investigators could only wonder what they might find inside. They went into the tool shed and saw 21 photos of young ladies, 18 to 23 years old. They were at that point really concerned about who these females were.
Many of the photos were of young girls in various stages of undress, some were 𝓷𝓾𝓭𝓮. It was unclear who the subjects were or where they had been photographed. Everyone feared the pictures might be trophies, such as those serial killers often keep of their victims.
They also found a journal written by Leonard Lake. In it, he wrote of “The Collector,” a novel about a butterfly collector who captures his ultimate prize, a young girl named Miranda. In his journal, Lake wrote, “The Collector, has it really been near 20 years I’ve carried this fantasy, and Miranda, how fitting, my lovely little prisoner of the future.”
In other entries, Lake referred to a series of operations under the heading of “The Miranda Project.” The investigators could only speculate as to what this meant, but it seemed ominous.
100 yards from the bunker, Ron McFaul and the other investigators noticed the ground had been scarred by a series of several fires. They noticed approximately seven different burn sites on the property. They decided to look at the burn sites a little further and found what they thought may be bone fragments, but they really weren’t sure.
If the piles of ash did contain human bone fragments, someone had attempted to conceal an unspeakable horror. Now desperate for answers, investigators ran the license plates of a truck parked near the cabin. It belonged to Lonnie Bond, Lake’s neighbor.
Lonnie Bond lived with his wife and 18-month-old son in a house about 50 yards from Lake’s cabin. The smell of decayed food thickened the air. The house appeared to have been empty for some time, perhaps months.
Although it seemed the occupants departed abruptly, there was no sign of foul play.
Another vehicle found on Lake’s property belonged to Robin Scott Stapley. Stapley had been missing for some time, and his driver’s license was found in Paul Cosner’s car. Leonard Lake had used Scott Stapley’s driver’s license because they were both big fellows, and he had been trying to pass himself off as Scott Stapley.
Investigators were contacting Southern California to find out where Scott Stapley was. It turned out that he had been living at the cabin next door, and no one had seen him either. Investigators intensified their search.
Cadaver dogs, known for their acute sense of smell, were brought in to help. Authorities now suspected that eight missing people from Northern California were linked to the cabin. If they had been murdered as police feared, perhaps their bodies were buried on the property.
One of the dogs recovered a piece of bone. The deputies working the scene knew immediately that this was not an animal bone. It was human remains.
What had been a missing person’s case now became a homicide investigation. Investigators declared Leonard Lake’s property a crime scene and assembled a task force to process the cabin and surrounding property. Due to the expanding scope of the case, the Calaveras County Sheriff’s Office called in additional help.
The San Francisco Police Department and the California Department of Justice arrived to help with the investigation.
Three days after Leonard Lake’s suicide, a convoy of law enforcement vehicles descended on the property. Now that this was a murder investigation, police knew that all material recovered from the site could become vital to the eventual prosecution of the case. Each section of the property was assigned to a specific team.
The teams began a thorough search of the two acres surrounding the cabin. In a clearing about a hundred yards from the cabin, officers found a trench with loose dirt. They found the trench had been filled with personal belongings and debris.
Sergeant Larry Copeland, an investigator for the Calaveras County Sheriff’s Office, joined in the search for clues. Every button, zipper, jewelry, everything that was taken out of there was turned over to the evidence officer, who took each one and individually photographed each and every piece of it. They were talking hundreds of items.
Everything excavated from the property was potential evidence. All of the items were collected and sent to the Calaveras County Sheriff’s Office, where they were meticulously catalogued. Investigators hoped that somewhere in this vast collection of evidence they would find the clue that would untangle the mysteries hidden on Lake’s property.
If they felt there was any chance of it being used, or something that either themselves or the defense could use, they took it and booked it. Investigators sorted through the survival gear and supplies Lake had stockpiled in his so-called fallout shelter. Lieutenant Ron McFaul remembers that during this phase of the search they made a surprising discovery.
There was a secret door inside the bunker. It was a false story. You really couldn’t tell just by looking at it, but there were shelving units, and after you wiggled the shelves, you saw that the door actually popped open.
Beyond the shelves was a double door leading to a hidden room. The inner chamber off to the side was another three-foot by six-foot compartment.
The cramped space contained a homemade wood cot, a crude shelf holding some toiletries, and a roll of toilet paper. A small hole had been cut into the wall near the ceiling, possibly for ventilation. A typed list of rules was affixed to one wall.
They included: “I must always be ready to service my master and must never speak unless spoken to. I must always be obedient and never look my master in the eye.” From outside, investigators could see into the small room through a two-way mirror.
They also noticed that the hinges of the door had been damaged at the bottom. The hinges were bent from obviously pressure from inside the door pushing out, trying to get the door open, both the top and bottom. Remembering Lake’s journal, investigators feared that Lake had acted upon his fantasy of kidnapping and holding captive a human slave.
Forensic specialists dusted for fingerprints and latent evidence. They hoped that if Lake had indeed kept a prisoner here, he or she had left behind some clue of their presence. They found nothing.
As the search of the property outside the bunker continued, an investigator noticed some blue soil next to the driveway. There they found a five-gallon plastic paint container. As darkness fell, the task force suspended its search.
Inside the cabin, the investigators viewed one of the videotapes they had found buried in the plastic container. They could hardly believe what they were seeing. This case was becoming more frightening with each piece of evidence they uncovered, but nothing could prepare them for what lay ahead.
After two days of searching Leonard Lake’s cabin, investigators feared more than eight people had been killed and possibly buried on the property. On the second night, the task force moved inside the cabin to view the videotape found buried in a plastic container. The tape depicted two women suffering extreme verbal and psychological 𝓪𝓫𝓾𝓼𝓮 at the hands of Leonard Lake and his accomplice, who demanded sexual submission under the threat of violence.
They also observed an Asian male on the tape. He had a knife in his hand, and he was cutting the clothing, the blouse, the top, as well as the bra strap, removing clothes from the female. The Asian male was identified as Charles Ng, the shoplifter Leonard Lake had identified just prior to his suicide.
The homicide division of the San Francisco Police Department launched a full-scale manhunt for Charles Ng. Investigators started with a search of Ng’s San Francisco apartment. They collected some video equipment and a number of videotapes.
Everything was tagged as evidence and sent for analysis. San Francisco homicide detective Ed Erdelatz led a task force that investigated the year-old disappearance of the Dubs family. The equipment Lake and Ng had used to videotape their captives had once belonged to Harvey Dubs.
Investigators had obtained his California driver’s license photo and had made up a photo collage. They showed it to neighbors and identified him as one of the people coming out of the Dubs’ home. One of the Dubs’ neighbors told investigators that the night before the family was reported missing, she saw two men leaving their residence.
One of the men was carrying a large duffel bag. It was dark, but she said she could identify him. The eyewitness’s critical identification of Charles Ng gave investigators probable cause to issue an arrest warrant.
Leonard Lake’s ex-wife was questioned about her ex-husband’s association with Charles Ng. She agreed to talk, but only after her attorney convinced the District Attorney’s office to grant her immunity from prosecution. Balaz claimed she didn’t know anything about the murders.
She did tell them that after the shoplifting incident, Ng walked to her house. The two drove back to the lumber yard to see if Lake was all right. When they saw him talking to the police, they returned to her house.
There they waited, expecting a call from Lake, who was now in police custody. When he didn’t call, Clarilyn drove into his apartment. Ng told Clarilyn he had to get out of town.
She said that she thought he would probably go to Chicago, that he had mentioned that he would go to Chicago if he had to get out of town. She claimed that was the last that she saw of him.
Because Ng was wanted for murder and there was reason to believe he had fled the state, the California investigators asked for assistance from the FBI. In response, the Bureau launched a massive manhunt for Charles Ng. At San Francisco International Airport, agents learned that a passenger fitting Ng’s description had boarded a plane to Chicago traveling under the name Mike Kimoto.
In Chicago, agents worked to track Ng’s movements. They started with an extensive background check. Investigators learned that Charles was born in Hong Kong and entered the United States on a student visa in 1979.
He enlisted in the Marine Corps but was eventually arrested for stealing weapons. He escaped from prison and, on the advice of a friend, hid out with Leonard Lake and his wife Clara Lynn. Ng stayed with Lake and his wife for six months in Philo, California.
At the same time, ATF agents were building a case against Lake for possession of illegal firearms. In the spring of 1981, they arrested both. Lake skipped bail and began his life as a fugitive.
Ng was sent back to prison to serve the remainder of his original sentence. Ng was released from prison in 1984 and immediately came back to the San Francisco Bay Area. He was picked up at the airport by Clara Lynn Balaz and rejoined his buddy Leonard Lake.
Charles Ng was an experienced fugitive with a wide network of friends who could help him. To develop more leads, the FBI placed Ng on their 10 Most Wanted list. For the time being, agents focused on Ng’s friends and acquaintances in the Chicago area.
As the investigation into Charles Ng expanded, a body count in Calaveras County continued to climb. Not far from Lake’s cabin, investigators unearthed two intact bodies wrapped in sleeping bags. Calaveras County coroner Terry Parker was on the scene.
They were mostly skeletal remains that were wrapped. You couldn’t really make out if they were men or women because of the time that the bodies had been there and the deterioration of the bodies. Parker could make only a cursory examination at the site.
It appeared both victims had been gagged and handcuffed. He asked for help from the San Francisco medical examiner. San Francisco has a very good forensic department, and they were more than happy to come up and assist.
They removed the bodies and transported them to his office for the forensic work.
At autopsy, the San Francisco medical examiner determined both victims were males and that they had been shot to death. Using dental records, he identified the men as Lake’s neighbors Lonnie Bond and Scott Stapley. In Chicago, the FBI got their first lead.
They learned that after serving time on the weapons charge, Ng had kept in touch with his former cellmate. A man described how he had driven Ng first to Detroit, then to the border town of Chatham. There, he said, they split up.
A witness came forward and told agents that he had seen Ng board a bus in Chatham bound for Toronto. Agents were aware that Ng’s sister lived there. The FBI deployed a surveillance team at her apartment house, but the fugitive never showed.
After days of following, the trail grew cold. A suspected serial killer was now roaming free in Canada.
As word of the multiple murders spread, the news media descended on the property in Calaveras County. Don Lasseter is a true crime author who wrote a book on the Charles Ng case. He noted that when the media first heard of this, they rushed to the site, and daily the media coverage grew.
It got coverage all over California, all over the United States, and certainly even in Canada. Investigators agreed to let the media on the property. They showed them the site and allowed them to videotape some of the evidence they had collected up until that point.
Up until then, they had relied on their imaginations to visualize the story, but now they had pictures, pictures that would probably leave many people with an everlasting image of the horror that occurred at the end of this road. These were some of the bone fragments that had been found, and investigators said there were countless fragments just like those scattered over a third of an acre. The California Conservation Corps had been recruited to pick up the bones.
Most of them worked on their hands and knees, raking the ground with their fingers. Investigators came up with 10 pounds of bones. The local coroner said five bodies had been found there so far.
The Calaveras County Sheriff once told the media he believed there were as many as 20 victims buried on the property.
Investigators were counting on the media exposure to help identify the 21 women depicted in the photographs tacked to the wall of Lake’s bunker. They certainly wanted to know the circumstances of the photos and when they were taken. They were interested in knowing anything they could about Mr.
Lake and Mr. Ng. A telephone hotline was set up by the Calaveras Sheriff’s Department, and calls soon began pouring in.
Detectives believed Leonard Lake and Charles Ng crossed paths with as many as 25 people who were later reported missing. Working under San Francisco investigator Ed Erdelatz, the task force tried to piece together any leads that would locate Ng or help identify the growing list of victims. Anybody that had anything to do with either Lake or Ng, they attempted to identify and find out if they were still alive, and if they were, what their relationship was.
It was through that process that they began to identify different victims.
Members of the task force were sent around with photos of personal belongings found on the property in an effort to identify anyone who had been at the cabin. Relatives and friends of the missing realized their loved ones might be among the dead. There was the Dubs family from San Francisco, who placed an ad in the newspaper to rent their video equipment and were never heard from again.
Randy Jacobson, a friend of Leonard Lake’s, was found buried near a chicken coop behind the cabin. Jeff Gerald, who worked with Ng at a San Francisco moving company, disappeared along with his friend Clifford Perranto, who worked at the same company. Ng’s longtime friend Mike Carroll and his girlfriend Kathleen Allen had disappeared.
Lake’s neighbors were also missing: Lonnie Bond, Brenda O’Connor, and their 16-month-old child Lonnie Jr. Their friend Robin Scott Stapley had vanished with them. And finally, Paul Cosner, whose car had originally led investigators on this trail of kidnapping and murder.
The task force received one bit of good news. They finally caught a break. They were able to ID all the women in the photographs, and they were all still alive.
Finding the girls alive was a relief, but Lake’s property still held many mysteries. Agents feared they would never know the complete story of the Calaveras County murders unless they found Charles Ng. He had left California, and after weeks of searching, they still had not located the fugitive.
Then, on July 6, 1985, a boy riding his bicycle in a Canadian park spotted the perfect place for a play fort. He was surprised to see a man living there. He went to the police and told them he had found a campsite and had seen a man who looked like Charles Ng.
The boy recognized him from wanted posters. He led police to the makeshift shelter, only to find that Ng had fled.
Later that same day, Charles would make the mistake investigators had been waiting for. Ironically, it was the same mistake that started the police investigation a month earlier. A security guard confronted a young Asian male as he slipped stolen merchandise into his knapsack in a Calgary department store.
As the security guard struggled with the gun, he was shot in the hand. Still, he managed to wrestle the weapon from the shooter and hold him until police arrived. Charles was captured and booked on charges of attempted murder, robbery, and possession of a firearm.
Charles Ng was in a Canadian jail that night, and the worldwide manhunt had ended. Ng was captured by security guards in a Calgary department store, but not before he engaged them in a brief gun battle and wounded one of the guards. Ng was quickly subdued by store patrons and was taken into police custody.
San Francisco Police Inspector Ed Erdelatz was eager to question the suspect. He flew to Calgary, where Ng was being held in a maximum security prison. They spent quite a few hours with Charles in the detention center in Calgary.
Although he did talk with them, most of his responses were one- and two-word answers. There was very little dialogue and primarily denial. They could have gone into a lot of things had he been willing to talk to them about those things, but that didn’t occur.
The murders, Ng claimed, were all the work of Leonard Lake. When pressed, Ng did admit to Erdelatz that he had helped Lake dispose of the bodies of Lonnie Bond and Scott Stapley the day after they were murdered.
In Calaveras County, the District Attorney’s office indicted Ng on 12 counts of first-degree murder, making it possible for the prosecution to seek the death penalty. But Ng’s flight to Canada had created a significant obstacle. District Attorney Pete Smith explained that there was an extradition treaty between the United States and Canada at the time, and in that extradition treaty there was a condition that nobody would be extradited from Canada back to the United States who faced the death penalty.
There were some exceptions to the treaty, however. If the District Attorney’s office could prove to a Canadian court that Ng was guilty of multiple murders, Canada would be required to hand over the suspected killer. Before the extradition hearing could begin, Ng would have to stand trial in Canada on shoplifting and assault charges.
In order to delay his extradition, Ng waived his right to a jury trial and asked for a speedier bench trial. He received a four-and-a-half-year sentence. Until he completed that sentence, the Calaveras County District Attorney could not initiate the complicated extradition process.
Even if they could prove their case, they would have to wait over four years before they could begin.
While the Calaveras County District Attorney’s office built their case against Charles Ng, the search for evidence continued at Leonard Lake’s cabin. By this time, five bodies had been found and identified. Hundreds of personal effects had been recovered.
More than 40 pounds of unidentifiable human remains had been unearthed. Investigators believed that as many as 25 missing persons had been linked to the cabin. As the evidence against Ng continued to grow, he used his time in a Canadian prison to try to fend off any attempts at extradition.
He knew if he was successfully extradited back to the United States, he would have to face a murder trial and the possibility of the death penalty. He began to educate himself on the American legal system. For a boy with limited education raised in Hong Kong, he was remarkably adept at knowing the legal system and how to deal with it.
A guard reported to the prison warden that he overheard Ng say to a fellow inmate, “If you want to delay the system, you just have to fire your lawyers.”
On October 17, 1988, the extradition hearings finally began. Ng lost the case and appealed all the way to the Canadian Supreme Court. His appeal was denied.
Within the same day, Charles Ng was placed on an airplane in Canada and flown back to California. But the pursuit of justice was far from over. Charles Ng had used his time in Canada to arm himself with enough legal knowledge to wage an all-out war on the American judicial system.
On September 26, 1991, suspected serial killer Charles Ng was finally returned to California. The Calaveras County District Attorney charged Ng with 12 counts of murder. Detective Sergeant Randy Grassmark transported Ng daily from the California Department of Corrections to the Calaveras County Courthouse.
They had high security. They had their SWAT team up on the roof for a while. They had heard that somebody wanted to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 Charles Ng.
The last thing they wanted to do as the Calaveras County Sheriff’s Department was lose Charles Ng.
Calaveras County was not prepared to handle a prisoner like Charles Ng. Their courthouse wasn’t secure enough to hold a maximum security prisoner. The county had to build a special cage to house Ng during his legal proceedings.
From the moment Ng arrived in the county, he was intent on wreaking havoc and creating delay. He began by trying to fire his attorneys and complaining about his treatment. He filed motions for better food and a shorter commute from the prison.
He demanded to have his cage dismantled. Although each motion was frivolous, it sapped the resources of the Calaveras County District Attorney’s office. Pete Smith noted that he didn’t realize how truly huge this case was.
His office was very small, with five attorneys including himself, the assistant district attorney, and three deputy district attorneys. They had two investigators and three support staff, and that was it in their criminal division. It was like a very small law firm.
The prosecution battled Charles Ng for a full year before his preliminary hearing even started. The purpose of this proceeding was simply to determine whether the prosecution had sufficient evidence to try Ng for the 12 murders. Although the burden of proof is not as strict as that of an actual trial, the prosecution had little direct evidence linking Ng to the murders.
Lacking eyewitnesses, fingerprints, and blood evidence, the prosecution would have to present its case mostly on circumstantial evidence. Their strongest evidence was the videotape found at the cabin entitled “M Ladies.” The preliminary hearing was the first time the tape was played for the public.
On the tape, Lake and Ng were seen torturing two women, one of whom was Brenda O’Connor. Inspector Erdelatz explained the impact of the videotaped evidence. Brenda O’Connor was a woman who lived on the adjacent property with her boyfriend, his friend, and their little baby.
You see her on film. She’s handcuffed, and she’s begging Leonard Lake and Charles Ng for her baby back. She wants her baby back, and she’s crying.
Of course, they killed this little baby. It’s such a sad thing to see her asking for this little baby back.
The tapes were incriminating, but with so little physical evidence directly linking Ng to the murders, the prosecution would have to rely on the testimony of another criminal, Maurice LaBerge. LaBerge had served time with Ng in Canada. To pass the time, Ng entertained LaBerge with crudely drawn cartoons depicting his crimes and with stories of what had happened at Lake’s cabin in California.
To gain favor with his parole board, LaBerge turned over the cartoons and told authorities the details of his conversations with Ng. One of the most damning cartoons depicted Ng killing a baby. LaBerge testified at Ng’s extradition hearing, detailing everything Ng had confessed during their jail time together.
LaBerge’s testimony was presented as evidence.
On November 13, 1992, the court found sufficient grounds to try Charles Ng on 12 counts of murder. The judge set his trial date for January 12, 1993. The prosecution felt that the case would be tried and over with by ’93, but no later than 1994.
That didn’t happen. What did happen was delay. Now that Ng knew he would stand trial for his crimes, he began a desperate attempt to delay the proceedings in any way possible.
He filed a motion alleging that his court-appointed attorneys were incompetent. He succeeded in firing them, and the court appointed him new counsel. Because pre-trial publicity made it impossible to find an impartial jury in Calaveras County, Ng’s new defense team filed a motion to move the trial.
The judge granted the motion, moving the trial to Orange County in Southern California.
A fully loaded 36-foot truck delivered a mountain of case material to Ng’s new counsel, the Orange County Public Defender’s office. The material included hundreds of boxes of records documenting eight years of courtroom hearings, witness testimony, investigative medical and police reports, and thousands of evidence photographs. William Kelly, Ng’s newly appointed counsel, asked for and received two and a half years to prepare his client’s case.
The prosecution made the move from Calaveras County 400 miles south to Orange County and prepared for the largest case of their careers. The years of delay worried prosecutor Peter Smith. In any case, memories fade, witnesses die, and things of that nature.
When you tack on six years to the life of a criminal case, that’s a long time to delay a case from going to trial.
As the prosecution and defense attorneys finalized their trial preparations, Ng again attempted to delay the process, but Judge John Ryan put a stop to his tactics. The case was finally going to trial. The prosecution team from Calaveras County worked out their strategy with Charlene Honaka, the Deputy Attorney General for the State of California.
Smith described her as a tremendous lawyer and a better person. She was in essence the heart and soul for this case and for the prosecution. As prosecutors prepared to begin jury selection, the team suffered a devastating setback.
Maurice LaBerge was killed in a car accident while on parole. He was the only person to whom Ng had confessed his crimes. The prosecution had just lost its key witness.
Thirteen years had passed since investigators began finding bodies at a mountain cabin in Calaveras County, California. Although they eventually linked 25 missing people to Lake’s property, they only had enough evidence to charge Charles Ng with 12 counts of murder. Ng had managed to delay his trial for more than a decade but could delay no longer.
The murder trial of Charles Ng was finally about to begin. The accused serial killer’s fate would now rest with a jury of his peers. Peter Smith’s job was to select that jury.
Because the case was going to take so long, they had to time-qualify jurors. They had to bring in over 2,000 people from Orange County to ask them basically if they could commit to the time it would take to try the case.
While counsel was in the midst of qualifying the jurors, Ng tried to halt the proceedings, shouting obscenities and telling the judge that he did not want a trial. Judge Ryan ordered Ng to wear an electric stun belt for the duration of the trial. The bailiff could trigger the device by remote control if he became violent again.
Attorneys from the prosecution and the defense took a month to choose a jury of eight women and four men, along with six alternates. To protect their identities, each member of the jury was assigned a number.
On Monday, October 26, 1998, the trial began with opening statements for both the prosecution and the defense. Opening statements serve as an outline, telling the jury what they are trying to prove and how they intend to prove it. With the years of waiting over, Charlene Honaka rose to make the opening statement for the prosecution.
She told the jury that the evidence in the case would show that this defendant, with Leonard Lake, planned and committed the 12 charged murders in this case. She displayed a chart which listed the 12 counts. The evidence would show that between a time frame from July 1984 until 1985, these 12 victims disappeared from the face of the earth, and this trial would tell the jury the story of what happened to them.
Honaka described the property in Calaveras County as a killing field and a mass graveyard. She then told the jury about the “M Ladies” tape found buried near the cabin and how it depicted a partially 𝓷𝓾𝓭𝓮 Ng demanding massages from Kathleen Allen and cutting the clothes off of Brenda O’Connor. She announced they would play two segments from that videotape as a means of demonstrating the evidence and helping them understand it.
The videotape was the centerpiece of the prosecution’s case. It showed the jury exactly who Charles Ng was: a man who not only tortured women but who recorded his acts on videotape so he could relive them again and again. Smith later reflected that the videotape was dramatic, the most incriminating piece of evidence he had ever used in a case, and also the most emotional.
You could sense the terror and the fear those two victims had when they realized the situation they were in. Because this was the strongest physical evidence linking Ng to the murders, the prosecution planned to use the videotape throughout the trial to prove Charles Ng’s guilt.
William Kelly, Ng’s court-appointed attorney, scarcely mentioned the defendant in much of his opening statement. His strategy was to shift the focus of the accusations from his client Charles Ng to the late Leonard Lake. Kelly asserted that the defense in this case was really simple: Leonard Lake had a motive for murder, and Leonard Lake also had a plan for murder.
Kelly asserted that Lake’s plan for murder was outlined in his diary under the heading “The Miranda Project.” He then read the jury excerpts from Leonard Lake’s journal. Kelly suggested that Lake’s conspirator was not Ng but Carolyn Balaz, Lake’s ex-wife.
He asserted that she knew about the Miranda Project and even recruited potential victims. Kelly told the jury that nobody was going to walk in, sit down in the jury box, point a finger at Charles Ng, and say, “I saw Charlie Ng murder somebody.” It wasn’t going to happen.
With very little physical evidence placing Ng at the murders, Kelly intended to discredit the prosecution’s circumstantial case and prove it was Leonard Lake, not Charles Ng, who murdered the 12 victims. He asserted that Ng killed no one.
The prosecution called Sergeant Larry Copeland of the Calaveras County Sheriff’s Department to the stand. He told the jury about a startling discovery he made while analyzing the videotapes confiscated from Ng’s San Francisco apartment. He put the tape in and pushed play, and it started with the credits, so he thought someone didn’t rewind the tape.
He pushed rewind but didn’t push stop first, so it started playing in reverse. All of a sudden, right at the end of the tape, they went, “Whoa.” Copeland discovered a still image of two bodies in a wheelbarrow.
The image was entered into evidence. He was asked to identify two photographs of bodies found at the cabin. He identified the remains of Scott Stapley and the remains of Lonnie Bond.
He went on to describe the way in which Lonnie Bond and Scott Stapley were bound, gagged, and wrapped in sleeping bags. The sleeping bags matched those on the tape. The medical examiner testified that the bodies on the tape were in full rigor mortis, which occurs shortly after death when the blood flow is interrupted.
It only lasts for a few hours until the body begins to decay. In Canada, Ng told Inspector Erdelatz he helped bury Bond and Stapley 24 hours after they were murdered. Whoever had taken the picture had done so immediately after they were killed.
The single frame on the videotape found at Ng’s apartment linked him to the murder of Lonnie Bond and Scott Stapley.
Because so few of the remains found on the property could be identified, the prosecution relied on hundreds of personal effects discovered at Ng’s apartment and the cabin to link him to the victims. These items were photographed and entered as evidence. The District Attorney’s lead investigator, Mitch Hurblicka, was in charge of witness testimony for the prosecution.
They had over 200 pieces of evidence that they used in the guilt phase of the trial, and they had about 75 witnesses that they had to bring in from various parts of the country as well as Canada to prove that those items belonged to the people who had gone missing and the victims in the case.
The prosecution then attempted to establish a link between Kathleen Allen and Charles Ng. Kathleen Allen was one of the women on the “M Ladies” tape who was tortured by Lake and Ng. Although her body was never found, several of her personal effects were unearthed near the cabin.
The prosecution asked her sister to identify a heart-shaped pendant. The sister confirmed it was a necklace Kathy used to wear all the time. The prosecution moved to place it in evidence.
The prosecution then began to construct the timeline of Kathleen Allen’s disappearance to explain how she got to the cabin. On April 14, 1984, her former supervisor discussed an odd phone conversation she had while at work. Allen said she got a call and said she wanted to join her boyfriend because he got a gunshot wound.
Kathleen Allen worked at a grocery store in Milpitas, California. Her boyfriend, Mike Carroll, had met Charles Ng while serving time in Leavenworth Federal Prison. Mike called Kathleen to say he was in Lake Tahoe and had been shot.
He was sending a friend to pick her up and bring her to him. Kathleen told her supervisor what Mike had said and asked for some time off.
After that, a man came by to pick her up in a brown or bronze Honda. The supervisor had an opportunity to see the driver a little. She described him as in his 40s, bald, with dark hair and a beard.
The prosecution then showed the jury Kathleen Allen’s videotaped ordeal. John Crawford investigated her disappearance. The videotape picks up from there and shows that Kathy is brought into the residence, into the living room of the residence in Wilseyville.
She is handcuffed and seated in a chair. Kathy was told, “If you don’t agree with us right now, we’re going to take you into the bedroom, tie you to the bed, rape you, take you outside and put a bullet in your head and bury you in the same place we buried Mike,” who was her boyfriend. Kathleen was never seen or heard from again.
Her manager later received a typewritten letter saying she had gotten a job in Lake Tahoe and didn’t intend to return. The letter was dated May 6th, three weeks after she left the grocery store.
Many of the victims’ co-workers, families, and friends received typewritten letters from the victims to explain their absence. A comparison of the letters showed they all originated from the same typewriter. An Olympia typewriter found in the cabin was analyzed by forensic document examiners.
They concluded that it was the one on which the letters were written. The prosecution entered the typewriter into evidence.
The prosecution next tried to prove that Charles Ng was responsible for the abduction and murder of the Dubs family. They called Karen Tuck, who was asked to testify about the last time she spoke with her friend Deborah Dubs on the telephone. Tuck said that Deb was expecting someone to come over to talk to Harvey or see his video equipment, and then the doorbell rang or someone knocked, and they terminated the conversation.
Someone came to her door while she was on the phone conversation. Harvey Dubs, a part-time wedding photographer, had placed an ad in a newspaper offering to rent his video equipment. Karen Tuck told the court she tried to call Deborah Dubs the next day, but no one answered the phone.
The Dubs family disappeared on July 25, 1984. Their bodies were never found.
Karen Tuck was the last person to speak with Deborah Dubs on the day she and her family were abducted from their San Francisco home. After placing an ad in the newspaper to rent some video equipment, Harvey Dubs, his wife Deborah, and his son Sean had been robbed and taken from their home. The family was never seen again.
Detective Irene Brun found an inventory of Harvey Dubs’ equipment at his home. Harvey was meticulous in keeping records and photographs, and he kept the original receipts from when he purchased them. He had serial numbers and brand names for everything that he had.
Harvey Dubs’ detailed records enabled investigators to trace his equipment to Leonard Lake’s cabin. But some video equipment was also found in Charles Ng’s apartment. One of these pieces matched Harvey Dubs’ inventory.
The prosecution entered the video equipment into evidence.
Since the Dubs’ bodies were never found, the prosecution’s strategy was to use overwhelming circumstantial evidence to tie Ng to the missing family. A case is like a puzzle. You have to start putting the pieces together so that the jury can get a clear understanding of what took place.
To prove a case, you have to fit enough pieces of the puzzle together so that a jury believes beyond a reasonable doubt that a particular defendant murdered or committed a crime.
Sergeant Larry Copeland was called back to the stand to focus attention on the bunker. He testified about the seven burn sites they had found. He also described the hundreds of bone fragments he found, many of which had been crushed, burned, and scattered around the property.
Judging from the size and number of burn sites, investigators suspected Lake and Ng had used fire to dispose of the bodies of many of their victims. The condition of the remains would make it impossible to identify all the victims.
No one had witnessed any of these crimes, but the prosecution’s next move was to put Ng’s confessor on the stand. During his Canadian prison term, Ng told Maurice LaBerge he helped Lake abduct victims and burn their bodies. LaBerge was the prosecution’s key witness.
His first-person account and the drawings Ng gave him would cement their case. But LaBerge died before the trial began. At the extradition hearing in Canada, LaBerge testified about everything Ng had told him.
In a calculated move, the prosecution argued to have the written transcripts of LaBerge’s Canadian testimony admitted. Despite the defense’s strong objections, the judge ruled to admit the transcript. Sergeant Raymond Monroe of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police took the stand and read LaBerge’s prior testimony.
In the transcript, LaBerge described how Ng gave him the grotesque cartoons and spoke of the crimes he committed, including the videotaped sessions with Kathleen Allen and Brenda O’Connor. LaBerge stated that Ng told him the videotape shows a female complaining that it’s too warm, and he had a butterfly knife, he called it, and he flicked it open and cut her clothes off. On cross-examination, Kelly attacked LaBerge’s credibility.
He established that Maurice LaBerge was a career criminal who served repeated terms for robbery and sexual assault. Kelly also established that as part of an agreement with the Canadian government to enter the witness protection program, Maurice LaBerge received $36,000. Kelly implied that LaBerge’s testimony had been bought and paid for.
He also brought out that when LaBerge died in a car accident, there was $20,000 in cash found in the vehicle. Kelly’s cross-examination had been successful in insinuating that LaBerge would say anything for money.
Sergeant Monroe was one of the prosecution’s last witnesses. After presenting their case for 12 days, the prosecution rested on November 17, 1998. William Kelly began presenting Ng’s defense to the jury.
He had a relatively simple strategy: to prove that Leonard Lake was the real killer and Ng was just a bystander. First, Kelly called a series of women to the stand. Each testified as to their bizarre sexual encounters with Leonard Lake.
The women spoke of his interest in bondage and taking lurid photographs. One woman had a year-long relationship with Lake and posed for dozens of photos. She explained she left him because of his frightening fantasies involving 𝒔𝒆𝒙 and death.
Another woman testified that Lake had threatened to rape her and that he believed in human sacrifice. The testimony painted Lake as the monster and established that none of the witnesses had even met Charles Ng.
Another witness testified that he had seen Lake verbally abusing Ng, with Ng working as sort of his assistant or helper. This helped the defense establish that Ng was subservient to Lake. By calling witnesses who had often seen Balaz with Lake at the cabin, the defense attempted to show that Balaz herself was an accomplice to Lake.
Kelly also used this testimony to demonstrate that Ng spent little time at Leonard Lake’s cabin.
The defense’s strongest proof that Lake planned to kidnap, torture, and murder his victims was his journal. It was here that Lake outlined the so-called Miranda Project. While the jury was out, Kelly moved to enter an edited version of the journal into evidence.
Because the edited version eliminated references to Charles Ng, the judge resisted. The judge stated that he believed the court should eliminate misleading evidence, and the edited diary could do just that. If it was intended to show that Leonard Lake killed all 12 victims without the help of Charles Ng, the judge believed the diary needed to be excluded.
The judge noted that most of it was just pure junk, but the diary showed that Lake was thinking of the fantasy for 20 years. The jury knew what Lake planned. The edited diary was inadmissible.
Kelly’s attempt to put Leonard Lake on trial appeared blocked, but he countered the prosecution strategy with his next witness. In his opening statement, Kelly asserted Clarilyn Balaz knew of the Miranda Project and helped Lake recruit women to photograph. Kelly believed she played a far more active role than she admitted and asserted it was Balaz, not Ng, who was Lake’s accomplice.
The prosecution had not called her as a witness, so as Balaz took the stand, everyone in the courtroom, including the prosecution, wondered what she would say. Then Kelly read the immunity agreement to the jury. It was an immunity agreement between the State of California and Clara Lynn Balaz.
The State of California promised the witness transactional immunity for all crimes, including but not limited to murder, conspiracy to commit murder, aiding and abetting murder, theft, and receiving stolen property related to the victims.
In a stunning move, Kelly chose not to question Balaz. He created the appearance she had something to hide, and since she had not spoken on the stand, the prosecution could not cross-examine her. Balaz made her immunity deal with the prosecution, but in the end she provided them with little information and became a witness for the defense.
Kelly then called another witness who could not be cross-examined. He played a tape made by Leonard Lake describing his rationale for the Miranda Project. On the tape, Lake said, “What I want is an off-the-shelf 𝒔𝒆𝒙 partner.
I want to be able to use a woman whenever and however I want, and when I’m tired or satiated or bored or not interested, I simply want to put her away.” With a final glimpse into the mind of Leonard Lake, the defense rested its case.
Peter Smith made the final closing argument for the prosecution. He reminded the jury of the evidence they had seen and asked them to return a guilty verdict. Then the trial took its most surprising turn.
After hearing the prosecution sum up their case against him, Ng filed a handwritten motion demanding he be allowed to testify on his own behalf. When Kelly tried to convince his client otherwise, Ng threatened to fire him. Against the advice of his attorneys, Charles Ng would be taking the witness stand.
Observers in the Charles Ng trial were stunned when they entered the courtroom on January 27, 1999. The accused serial killer himself was now on the witness stand. Ng was charged with killing 12 people, and after three months of listening to his case, he demanded to testify on his own behalf.
Assuming the prosecution would use LaBerge’s testimony to corner him, Deputy Public Defender Clapp decided to take the offensive and prove that LaBerge had lied. Clapp asked Ng if he told LaBerge that with regard to Brenda O’Connor and Kathy Allen, he shot them in the head while they were handcuffed and blindfolded. Ng said no.
Ng testified that he had helped to imprison Brenda O’Connor and Kathleen Allen but had not intended to hurt or 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 them. He denied telling LaBerge that he put their bodies on a pile of wood and ignited it with gasoline. He denied agreeing to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 or intending to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 or killing any of the victims in the 12 murder charges.
Denials continued for hours as Clapp went over every statement Ng allegedly made to his jail mate. Then Clapp moved to have Ng explain away the prosecution’s other key evidence, the “M Ladies” tape. On the tape, Brenda O’Connor begged Ng not to take her baby away, to which he replied, “It is better that the baby is dead.”
Clapp asked Ng why he said that. Ng replied, “I don’t know why I said that. It was just in the heat of the moment.
Some of the comments and remarks I made, I don’t even know I made until I saw the transcripts.” The “M Ladies” tapes had been transcribed during the extradition hearing so that every word spoken on the tape could be understood.
When Charlene Honaka cross-examined Ng, she used the transcripts to turn his own words against him. She asked if he was present at the extradition hearing when Mr. LaBerge testified that Ng told him that he could hear on the video the sounds of handcuffs clicking.
Ng remembered that statement. Honaka asked how Mr. LaBerge would know that you could hear the sounds of handcuffs clicking, since that’s not on the printed transcript of “M Ladies.”
Honaka demonstrated for the jury that the only way LaBerge could have known about the sound of the handcuffs was if Ng told him. It was clear, despite Ng’s denials on the stand, that he had told Maurice LaBerge the details of the torture and the killings, details LaBerge couldn’t have known any other way.
Honaka then set out to establish that Charles Ng was not a bystander but a willing participant in the crimes. She replayed a scene from the “M Ladies” tape showing Ng cutting the shirt off Brenda O’Connor. She asked if he never talked to Leonard ahead of time about his plan to cut her clothes off.
Ng agreed. She asked if he just decided on his own to cut her clothes off. Ng said yes, without any specific instruction from Leonard Lake.
Honaka again turned to the videotapes. She played a portion of the tape where Ng tells Leonard Lake that a gun is on the table. She asked Ng if he told Leonard at one point that the piece was on the table.
Ng remembered saying something like that. When asked what he meant by “the piece,” Ng said he just wanted to let him know the gun was on the table in case Kathy might grab the gun and shoot him with it. Honaka pointed out that Kathy was handcuffed and had leg manacles on, and there were two of them and one of her.
She asked if the reason Ng told Leonard that the gun was on the table was because he was afraid Kathy might pick it up and shoot him. Ng said something like that. Honaka had shown that Ng was more than a bystander to Leonard Lake’s crimes.
He was an active participant who sometimes even directed Leonard Lake.
Because Ng took the stand after the prosecution closed, the judge gave them the opportunity to restate their closing arguments after Ng’s testimony. Honaka argued that it was never Ng’s fault, that he always laid the blame on someone else. He was not under the control of Leonard Lake.
He was his own person, making his own independent choices and doing the things he wanted to do. William Kelly then gave the closing arguments for the defense. He asserted the prosecution had simply failed to prove their case and attacked their most important piece of evidence, the “M Ladies” tape.
He argued that no matter how many different ways they showed it and excerpts from it, there was one thing the jury never saw: anybody being murdered. They didn’t see Charles Ng involved in anybody’s murder. No matter how many times they saw him cut the clothes off Brenda O’Connor, and as offensive as that was, and he granted it was offensive, it wasn’t murder.
It just wasn’t.
Charles Ng had been charged with the murders of seven men, three women, and two babies. His fate was now in the hands of the jury. Anyone who prosecutes cases or tries cases knows there’s never a sure thing with the jury.
That’s the difficult aspect of being a prosecutor. You have to convince 12 people beyond a reasonable doubt, and they all 12 have to agree. It has to be unanimous.
The jury deliberated for a week, then two weeks. The media coverage intensified as the deliberations stretched into their third week. The prosecutors became increasingly concerned that the jury was having difficulty making a decision.
This was not a good sign for the prosecution, who knew their case was mostly circumstantial. If the jury demanded strong physical evidence linking Ng to the crimes in order to deliver a guilty verdict, Charles Ng might go free. As time dragged on, all the prosecution could do was wait.
On February 24, 1999, after three weeks of waiting, the jury informed the judge they had reached a decision. The prosecutors had called approximately 75 witnesses and presented about 200 pieces of evidence to prove the charges against Charles Ng. All that evidence was now in the hands of the jury.
As the jury reached its verdict, the foreperson announced they were deadlocked on one count. The judge asked the defendant to rise and face the jury. The verdict was read: “We the jury in the above entitled case find the defendant Charles Ng guilty of the murder of Sean Dubs as charged in Count One.”
The jury found Charles Ng guilty of 11 counts of first-degree murder. They could not come to a conclusion on the death of one victim. They did not feel they had enough evidence to convict on that count.
Charles Ng was sentenced to death. For the prosecution, the long ordeal was finally over. Peter Smith expressed that he was just happy for the people of Calaveras County that finally Mr.
Ng was found guilty of these murders after so many years. He said he was proud of the fact that he was the District Attorney at the time and prosecuted Charles Ng, and that he was in essence the last person standing from Calaveras County after all these years. With a final cost of over 20 million dollars, the longest and most expensive criminal case in California history came to a close.
For 13 years, the prosecution never wavered in their pursuit of justice. Charles Ng now sits on California’s death row.
