October 29, 1945 - Leonard Lake

Lake operated under a carefully constructed survivalist ideology that gave ideological cover to systematic abduction and prolonged captivity, with the remote Wilseyville property serving as the physical infrastructure for crimes that lasted nearly two years. The videotaped record he and Ng left behind became the primary evidentiary basis for the case — documentation of the crimes created by the perpetrators themselves. Lake died by his own hand within days of arrest, leaving Ng to face trial alone nearly fifteen years later.

From Wikipedia

Leonard Thomas Lake (October 29, 1945 – June 6, 1985), also known as Leonard Hill and a variety of other aliases, was an American survivalist and serial killer. He raped, tortured and murdered at least eleven and perhaps up to twenty-five victims with his accomplice Charles Ng. They held victims at a remote cabin near Wilseyville, California, 150 miles east of San Francisco, between 1983 and 1985. Lake was never convicted of murder, as he took cyanide pills soon after his arrest on shoplifting charges and died four days later. Lake was not identified as a murder suspect until investigation after his death.

Lake and Ng are sometimes referred to as the Sex Slave Killers because of the prolonged torture they imposed on their female victims which they often videotaped. Those tapes, along with human remains and journals, were used to convict Ng on eleven counts of capital murder in 1999.

⚠ Report a problem with this article