Hunt Pressed for Suspect in 25 N. California Deaths

Police pressed a nationwide manhunt Monday for a former Marine sought in the killing of as many as 25 people, while investigators attempted to link charred bones and other remains to persons who have disappeared.

“We absolutely must find him,” San Francisco Police Chief Cornelius Murphy said at a weekend news conference in San Francisco, referring to fugitive Charles Ng, 24. “Without Ng we won’t be able to completely solve the case.”

“I don’t know how committed he is to suicide, but he has made statements indicating he would not be taken alive,” Murphy said. The fugitive is known to be heavily armed.

Although none of the victims has been positively identified, police have linked 10 missing persons to Ng, of San Francisco, or his companion, Leonard Lake, 39, who occupied a remote foothills cabin where the human remains have been found, along with evidence of sadistic sexual torture.

Believed Slaughtered

Police believe as many as 25 men, women and children may have been slaughtered by Ng and Lake, who killed himself following his capture by police in South San Francisco last week.

Police investigators say the two men were caught up in sadistic sexual domination and combat-type survival fantasies at the remote foothill retreat.

Five large bags of human bones and the partially decomposed bodies of a man and a woman have been unearthed so far in a search for more victims.

In addition to the bones, more than 40 bags of evidence were gathered, including clothing, jewelry, handcuffs and pornographic photographs and videotapes showing scenes of sexual torture involving Lake, Ng and women victims, Calaveras County Sheriff Claud Ballard said.

The search for more victims was expected to take weeks at the heavily wooded, two-acre compound 125 miles northeast of San Francisco. The property is owned by the family of Lake’s ex-wife and had been occupied by Lake.

Other remains may be scattered at other burial sites, officials said.

The estimate of as many as 25 murder victims is based on identification papers of missing people, clothing and jewelry, Lake’s day-to-day diary since 1983 and videotapes found at the site, police said.

Bone Fragments

Hundreds of human bone fragments, some charred, have been found since last Thursday in shallow graves near the Lake cabin, according to investigators.

Officials so far have not been able to identify any victims.

The property near the town of Wilseyville included a small cinder block building with a secret sex-torture chamber and a two-way mirror.

Lake and Ng were “living out fantasies of sexual torture and survival in bunkers, nuclear explosions, that kind of thing,” Murphy said.

In one of many videotapes found at the backwoods cabin, Lake talked about a “philosophy” about guns and survivalism and twisted sexual fantasies, investigators said.

Other tapes showed women being forced to undress and threatened with death. One woman was told her job “was to serve Lake as a sex slave and other menial ways,” Murphy said.

Authorities believe a terrified, handcuffed woman in one tape is Brenda O’Connor, the mother of a 2-year-old boy, who lived next door to Lake with two other people. All are missing.

Diary Found

Police said other evidence included photographs of women and girls in various stages of undress. Some of the girls were no older than 10.

The diary, chronicling Lake’s daily activities since 1983, contained an account of “Operation Miranda,” Lake’s name for his practice of keeping women in captivity as sex slaves, Murphy said.

Geneva Southern, a woman who said she helped Lake waterproof the cinder-block bunker on the site, told the San Jose Mercury News that he invited her to attend a meeting of a San Francisco cult that practiced murder.

“He scared the hell out of me,” she said. “He said the group . . . believed in life sacrifices, and if somebody deserved to die, they should be dead.”

Lake swallowed a cyanide pill June 2 after being picked up by police in a shoplifting incident and it was discovered that he had been driving the car of a missing San Francisco man. He lapsed into a coma and died four days later without regaining consciousness.

Ng, who was dishonorably discharged from the Marine Corps last year and served time in military prison for stealing weapons, was sought on charges of kidnaping and false imprisonment.

Ng, born in Bloomington, Ind., was living in a rented basement apartment in San Francisco. His mother was Chinese and his father was involved in business in Europe, where he graduated from high school, officials said.