Leonard Lake: The Bunker, the Murders, and the Mind of a Sadistic Survivalist
- dthholland
- Jun 2
- 11 min read
“What I want is an off-the-shelf sex partner. Slave. There’s no way around it.” — Leonard Lake
It started, as so many grim tales do, with something as mundane as shoplifting. On 2 June 1985, a man named Charles Ng tried to steal a $75 metal vise from a hardware store in South San Francisco. His friend, a quiet and seemingly unremarkable man named Leonard Lake, stepped in to pay. But when police arrived, they noticed that Lake’s ID didn’t match his appearance, and things began to unravel. Within days, authorities uncovered a nightmare in the Sierra Nevada foothills, a bunker in the woods filled with human remains, videotapes of torture, and a journal detailing the twisted ideology of a man obsessed with control, survival, and sexual domination.
This is the story of Leonard Lake, survivalist, murderer, pornographer, and predator, and the killing spree he orchestrated alongside his accomplice Charles Ng. Between 1983 and 1985, the pair were responsible for one of the most disturbing serial murder cases in American history.
Leonard Lake: Early Life and Psychological Roots
Born in San Francisco on 29 October 1945, Leonard Thomas Lake was the first child of Elgin Leonard Lake and Gloria May Williams. His parents’ divorce when he was six left him in the care of his maternal grandmother—a woman whose permissive, even complicit, influence would arguably shape his disturbing trajectory.
Lake was an intelligent child, but one already exhibiting dark and antisocial tendencies. He became obsessed with pornography, photographing his sisters nude with their grandmother’s tacit approval, and allegedly forced them to perform sexual acts. He also developed a habit of killing small animals and dissolving their bodies in chemicals—an act that foreshadowed his later disposal methods for human remains.
After finishing Balboa High School, Lake joined the US Marine Corps in 1964 and served two tours in Vietnam as a radar technician. It was here, during the brutalising chaos of war, that he suffered what was described as a "delusional breakdown" and was eventually diagnosed with schizoid personality disorder. He was medically discharged in 1971.
Back in civilian life, Lake dabbled in university before dropping out and immersing himself in the Bay Area counterculture. He lived in communes, embraced the free-love ethos of the time, and even married briefly in 1969. That marriage collapsed when his wife discovered his growing interest in homemade pornographic films with bondage and sadomasochistic themes.
By the mid-1970s, Lake had settled in the back-to-the-land Greenfield Ranch commune in Northern California, where he married Claralyn Balazs, nicknamed “Cricket”, a woman who not only tolerated but participated in his increasingly deviant sexual fantasies. They lived in relative isolation, making pornographic films and dabbling in survivalism. Lake’s fear of nuclear holocaust drove him to build a bunker, a dark fantasy that would become all too real.
Operation Miranda: The Bunker of Horrors
Leonard Lake's disturbing vision for the future took shape not merely as survivalist paranoia, but as a calculated and methodically constructed system of enslavement, rooted in delusion and sadistic desire. While much of Lake’s outward identity revolved around prepping for the collapse of civilisation, stockpiling weapons, supplies, and gear, his true focus lay in orchestrating a private apocalypse of his own making. It was here, in the Sierra Nevada foothills, that “Operation Miranda” was born.
The name itself was taken from John Fowles’ 1963 novel The Collector, a book that had captivated Lake as a teenager. The novel tells the story of a socially inept man who kidnaps a woman named Miranda and holds her captive in his cellar, believing that love and submission will naturally follow confinement. Lake saw more than a story in these pages, he saw a blueprint. “Miranda” became the ideal name for the women he hoped to subjugate: not individual people, but characters in his fantasy of ownership, discipline, and obedience.
In Lake's mind, the world was on the brink of destruction, and civilisation as he knew it would crumble under the weight of nuclear war. He viewed his Wilseyville property, a secluded, heavily wooded area 150 miles east of San Francisco, as a haven, not just from fallout, but from law, ethics, and consequence. His journals described a scenario in which a man could emerge from catastrophe with food, supplies, and most chillingly, a stock of compliant women to use for repopulation and sexual gratification.
To prepare for this imagined new world order, Lake set to work constructing what he described as a “survivalist bunker”—though the term drastically understates what it became. Built with concrete blocks, the structure was roughly six-and-a-half feet long by three-and-a-half feet wide, with barely enough room for a person to sit, let alone stand or stretch. It contained a crude toilet bucket, a roll of toilet paper, and little else. The walls were fitted with a one-way mirror, allowing Lake to observe his captives unseen, further amplifying his control over both their environment and their psychological state.
The physical layout echoed elements of his fantasies, but it was only part of a larger system. Lake developed a set of “rules” for his captives, jotted down in his journals and occasionally vocalised in his disturbing home videos. These included statements like:
“I must always be ready to service my master.”
“I must never speak unless spoken to.”
“I must always be quiet when locked in my cell.”
His intentions were not merely violent but systematically dehumanising. The women he abducted were not simply victims of sexual assault, they were methodically broken down, robbed of identity, and made to live as anonymous, voiceless beings inside a calculated fantasy. Lake fantasised about creating a kind of post-apocalyptic harem, where women would be used at his whim, discarded when they no longer satisfied him, and replaced as necessary.
This disturbing plan moved from thought to reality in the early 1980s. In 1982, Lake met Charles Ng, a younger man of similar disposition. Originally from Hong Kong, Ng had drifted into Lake's orbit via a classified advert Lake had posted in a survivalist magazine. Ng was a fugitive from military justice, having escaped from a U.S. Marine detention centre where he was serving time for weapons theft. He found in Lake not only refuge, but a mentor figure who embodied the violence and control he himself craved.
The two men, each already immersed in personal fantasies of dominance and nihilism—clicked almost immediately. They were both veterans, both obsessed with survivalism and weaponry, and both harboured disturbing views toward women and morality. Lake, older and more calculating, became the dominant partner; Ng, chaotic but impressionable, the enthusiastic accomplice.
After Ng’s release from military prison in 1984, he rejoined Lake and Claralyn “Cricket” Balazs at the Wilseyville cabin. By this time, Lake had fully transitioned from theory to action. The bunker was completed. The ideological justification for kidnapping, torture, and rape was well-documented in his writings. All that remained was to find victims.
What followed was a grim evolution of Lake's so-called Operation Miranda. Together, Lake and Ng began luring individuals to the property—some through personal ads, others simply by proximity or convenience. Women were kept in the bunker for days, sometimes weeks, subjected to rape, verbal abuse, physical torment, and psychological manipulation. Men and children were often killed quickly, viewed as obstacles rather than usable assets in Lake’s twisted new world.
A Catalogue of Victims
The full number of Lake and Ng’s victims remains uncertain. At least 12 individuals were positively identified from remains found on the Wilseyville property, though authorities estimate the true number may be as high as 25.
Among their victims:
Donald Lake, Leonard’s mentally impaired younger brother, who disappeared in 1982. Leonard later cashed his disability cheques and impersonated him.
Charles Gunnar, Lake’s close friend and best man at his wedding, vanished in 1983. His identity was also stolen.
The Dubs family—Harvey, Deborah, and their infant son Sean—disappeared after two unknown men came to their home in July 1984. Video equipment from their apartment was found in Lake’s cabin.
Paul Cosner, who had advertised his Honda Prelude for sale in 1984, disappeared after describing a “weird” buyer. His car was found in Lake’s possession at the time of his arrest.
Brenda O’Connor, her partner Lonnie Bond Sr., their son Lonnie Jr., and family friend Robin Stapley were killed after moving into a nearby property and possibly witnessing too much.
Kathleen Allen, lured under the pretence of seeing her boyfriend Michael Carroll (who had already been murdered), appeared in one of the videotapes found at the property.
Deborah Dubs, shown on tape enduring such severe sexual assault that experts believe she could not have survived.
Sheryl Okoro, Clifford Peranteau, Jeffrey Gerald, and Maurice Rock, all tied to the Wilseyville site through evidence, belongings, and DNA.
The killers had a pattern: they would quickly kill male victims and children, sometimes using their identities for financial gain. Female victims were often held captive for extended periods—raped, tortured, and demeaned before being murdered and disposed of by burning or dissolving in acid.
Discovery and Arrest
By mid-1985, Leonard Lake and Charles Ng had constructed a chilling regime of terror from the safety of a remote cabin in Calaveras County. Their atrocities, concealed by rural isolation and a façade of off-grid living, might have continued unnoticed had it not been for a single, almost trivial event: the attempted theft of a metal vice from a hardware store in South San Francisco.
On 2 June 1985, Ng was caught trying to steal the vice. A store employee confronted him, prompting Ng to flee on foot and toss the item into the trunk of a nearby vehicle—a brown Honda Prelude. Shortly afterwards, Leonard Lake appeared at the shop, attempting to pay for the item and cover for his companion. But by then, the police had arrived. Officers quickly noticed that Lake didn’t resemble the person in the driver’s licence he presented, which bore the name Robin Scott Stapley, a man who had recently been reported missing by his family.
Lake’s cool demeanour began to unravel. Officers opened the car’s boot and found not just the vise but a firearm equipped with a prohibited silencer, an immediate felony offence in California. Lake was arrested on weapons charges and transported to a police station for questioning. What no one knew at the time was that Leonard Lake had carefully prepared for this moment.
Once at the station, Lake was placed alone in an interview room and provided with a pen, a notepad, and a glass of water. When detectives returned, they found him convulsing violently. Medical personnel were summoned, but it was too late. Lake had swallowed a capsule of cyanide, one of several he had sewn into the lining of his clothing as a precaution. Though he was rushed to hospital and kept alive on a ventilator for several days, he never regained consciousness and was declared dead on 6 June 1985.
In his pocket was a brief suicide note—one final act of control from a man who had long viewed himself above the law.
The Aftermath: Buckets, Bones, and Videotape
Lake’s death left detectives with more questions than answers. But the investigation took a crucial turn when authorities traced the registration of the Honda Prelude. The car had once belonged to Paul Cosner, a man who had gone missing in November 1984 after going to meet a potential buyer for his vehicle. That buyer, as it turned out, was Leonard Lake.
Also found in the car was a utility bill addressed to the cabin at Wilseyville—the isolated property that Lake had been renting from his in-laws. A search warrant was issued, and a team of law enforcement officers descended upon the site in the Sierra Nevada foothills.
What they discovered shocked even the most seasoned investigators.
Behind the main cabin stood a small concrete structure, a bunker lined with thick insulation and a one-way mirror. It was dark, cramped, and devoid of comfort. Inside were restraints, a toilet bucket, and various instruments associated with confinement. It became quickly apparent that this was not a survival shelter. It was a prison cell designed for human captivity.
Just beyond the building, buried in shallow graves or concealed under debris, were human remains, over 40 pounds of charred and crushed bone fragments, later determined to belong to at least eleven individuals, though the true number is likely higher. Some bodies were burned beyond recognition; others had been chemically degraded, echoing Lake’s childhood experiments with acid and animal carcasses.
During their search, detectives uncovered a hand-drawn map, leading to two buried five-gallon buckets. One contained documents: driver’s licences, Social Security cards, and personal effects from a wide range of individuals, many of whom had never been reported missing. These were the relics of stolen identities. The second bucket was more disturbing—it held Leonard Lake’s handwritten journals, chronicling his actions in meticulous detail, along with videotapes capturing the abuse, degradation, and psychological torment inflicted upon his captives.
Among the most harrowing footage were two tapes that came to define the case. In one, victim Brenda O’Connor is shown being threatened by Charles Ng, who sneers: “You can cry and stuff, like the rest of them, but it won’t do any good.” In another, Kathleen Allen sits terrified as Lake outlines her options:
“If you don't go along with us, we’ll probably take you into the bed, tie you down, rape you, shoot you, and bury you.”
These videos, along with journal entries like “What I want is an off-the-shelf sex partner. Slave. There’s no way around it,” revealed a level of premeditation and cruelty that chilled even veteran homicide investigators.
Charles Ng: The Fugitive and the Trial
With Lake dead, attention turned to Charles Ng, who had vanished shortly after the arrest. The manhunt ended in Calgary, Alberta, on 6 July 1985, when Ng was apprehended after another shoplifting incident—this time for stealing a can of salmon. A confrontation with a security guard turned violent. Ng shot the guard, who survived and managed to detain him until Canadian police arrived.
Ng was imprisoned in Canada for four and a half years for the shooting. During this time, he fought extradition to the United States, arguing that as a non-citizen he should not be subjected to the death penalty, which California prosecutors were actively pursuing. After lengthy legal wrangling, Canadian courts agreed to extradite Ng in 1991, with the understanding that he would face a fair trial.
The trial was anything but brief. Due to numerous pre-trial motions, delays, and the enormous volume of evidence—including video recordings, journals, and forensic material—Ng’s case stretched on for years. Finally, in February 1999, Charles Ng was convicted on eleven counts of first-degree murder—including the deaths of six men, three women, and two infants. The jury deadlocked on the murder of Paul Cosner, whose body was never conclusively identified, but whose car and licence had led police to the crime scene.
Despite maintaining his innocence and insisting that Lake was the sole perpetrator, the court found Ng’s role undeniable. His voice and face appeared on video during assaults; witnesses placed him at the scene of multiple disappearances; and his personal belongings linked him to items stolen from the victims. As the presiding judge noted at sentencing: “Mr. Ng was not under any duress, nor does the evidence support that he was under the domination of Leonard Lake.”
Ng was sentenced to death by lethal injection and remains on California’s Death Row at San Quentin State Prison. Due to a statewide moratorium on executions enacted by Governor Gavin Newsom in 2019, he is unlikely to be executed any time soon.
Conclusion: A Chilling Legacy
The crimes of Leonard Lake and Charles Ng occupy a uniquely grim space in the history of American serial murder. Unlike many killers who act alone, impulsively, or without coherent rationale, Lake and Ng constructed a detailed system—a physical and ideological infrastructure—to support their horrors. They were not only sadistic, but methodical, and disturbingly philosophical about their actions.
Lake’s journals, recovered at the Wilseyville cabin, were not simply records of what had occurred—they were manifestos. He viewed human beings as resources to be exploited or discarded, and imagined himself a sort of post-apocalyptic patriarch. Ng, while perhaps more chaotic and impulsive, was no less complicit. Together, they turned survivalism into a justification for unspeakable crimes.
Their downfall—set in motion by the theft of a vise and the presentation of a stolen ID—serves as a reminder of how even the smallest crack in a façade can expose a monstrous reality. The full number of victims may never be known. Many remains were too badly destroyed to yield identification. Many names may have gone unrecorded.
But the story of Leonard Lake and Charles Ng endures as one of the most haunting examples of calculated, ideologically driven violence in modern American criminal history. It is a story of control masquerading as preparedness, of depravity disguised as philosophy, and of monstrosity hidden behind quiet domesticity—until, as always, the truth clawed its way to the surface.
Sources
Murderpedia - Leonard Lake & Charles Ng profiles
SFGate Archives – "Ng sentenced to death"
The Collector by John Fowles (inspiration for “Operation Miranda”)
Court TV: Crime Library – “The Miranda Murders”
San Francisco Chronicle – "The horrors in Wilseyville"
