In the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains of California during the early 1980s, Leonard Lake was methodically building an underground dungeon

In the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains of California during the early 1980s, Leonard Lake was methodically building an underground dungeon.

There, he and an accomplice held dozens of people captive, tortured and sexually assaulted them, and eventually, incinerated their bodies. And worst of all, they videotaped everything. 

Watch one of Lake’s homemade video tapes and step inside the demented mind of a serial killer by clicking the link in our bio.

Leonard Thomas Lake (October 29, 1945 – June 6, 1985), also known as Leonard Hill and a variety of other aliases, was an American serial killer. During the mid-1980s, he and his accomplice, British Hong Kong-born Charles Ng, raped, tortured and murdered an estimated eleven to twenty-five victims at a remote cabin near Wilseyville, California, in the Sierra Nevada foothills, located 150 miles east of San Francisco.

After his 1985 arrest on unrelated charges, Lake swallowed cyanide pills that he had sewn into his clothing and died four days later. Human remains, videotapes, and journals found at Lake's cabin later confirmed Ng's involvement, and were used to convict Ng on eleven counts of capital murder.

Lake met fellow former Marine Charles Ng, originally from Hong Kong, through a survivalist magazine advertisement he placed in 1981.[8] In 1984, Ng was dishonorably discharged after serving time for theft and desertion, and Lake invited him to share a cabin near Wilseyville that had belonged to Balazs's family.[4]: 92  Next to the cabin, Lake had built a structure described in his journals as a "dungeon". He probably had already murdered his brother, Donald Lake, and his friend Charles Gunnar, stealing their money and Gunnar's identity.[4]: 92 [3]

Over the next year, Lake and Ng began a pattern of rape, torture, and murder. Leonard Lake and Charles Ng are confirmed to have murdered at least eleven people. Because of the massive amount of burned, shattered bone fragments found at Lake’s cabin, they are thought to have killed as many as fourteen others.

Their victims included their neighbor Lonnie Bond, his girlfriend Brenda O'Connor, their infant son Lonnie Jr., as well as Harvey and Deborah Dubs and their young son Sean. According to court records, they killed the men and infants immediately but kept the women alive, raping and torturing them, before killing them or allowing them to die from their injuries.

 Other known victims included relatives and friends who came looking for Bond and O'Connor, two gay men (one of whom survived), and some workmates of Ng.

Lake and Ng targeted women but were not hesitant to abduct entire families. After killing the men and children to get them out of the way, they would hold the women captive in a custom-built room in a bunker at Lake's ranch, tie them up and torture and rape them, videotaping each other while doing so. Sometimes they also lured men to the compound with promises of work but would instead rob them, after which Lake stole their identities. After killing the victims by either strangling or shooting them, they would often bury them in shallow graves on the property, although there is evidence that some were also dismembered and burned and their remains scattered.