New Bones Discovery Strengthens Belief Mass Murder Toll May Hit 25

“You want to see bones?” asked Steve Matthews as he scraped his hand across the ground.

After sifting out the red soil, the Calaveras County sheriff’s detective held eight or nine bone fragments.

The ease with which Matthews produced the fragments Friday illustrates the nature of the task facing authorities here as they continue their investigation of the activities of suspected mass killer Leonard T. Lake.

By day’s end, investigators had recovered 15 to 20 more pounds of apparently human remains from yet another “major bone find” at the remote cabin used by Lake.

Speculation Bolstered

The grim discoveries bolstered speculation by authorities that as many as 25 people may have been kidnaped and murdered by Lake, 39, and his suspected accomplice, Charles C. Ng, 24.

About a dozen volunteers from the California Conservation Corps formed a human chain Friday and scoured an embankment along the long driveway leading to the cabin.

The Associated Press reported that the latest finds also include children’s teeth and three plastic storage containers containing 1,800 turn-of-the-century silver dollars and one krugerrand, a South African gold coin.

Reporters being escorted on a tour of the area around Lake’s cabin saw the crew rapidly picking bone fragments out of a thick growth of a local ground cover called “mountain misery.”

It was from this area that the 15 to 20 pounds of bone fragments were recovered Friday and packed in small plastic bags.

Calaveras County sheriff’s spokesman Jim Stenquist warned that the fragments were from an area considered lightly covered with bones. “It’s going to get heavier,” he said.

Apparent Suicide

Lake died June 2, an apparent suicide, while in police custody for allegedly possessing an illegal handgun. Ng, who fled the arrest scene, is now the focus of an international manhunt stretching from Canada to London to Hong Kong, where he was born.

Meanwhile, San Jose police officers, probing the disappearance of several people who may have been among Lake’s victims, said Lake had been admitted as a psychiatric patient at the Oak Knoll Naval Hospital after his release from the Marine Corps in 1971.

Hospital officials would say only that he had been admitted Feb. 3, 1971, and declined to discuss why he was in the facility.

Lt. Don Trijillo of the San Jose Police Department described Lake as “a cowardly deviant who preyed on women and fantasized about his role as a dominant male.”

“He was into bondage and other deviant types of sexual behavior,” added the officer, citing unidentified sources, including some of Lake’s former lovers.

That assessment was supported by the tour of Lake’s cabin taken Friday by reporters.

A bed in the cabin’s master bedroom was equipped with eyebolts at each corner, apparently to allow someone to be tied to the bed.

Blood Visible

Blood was visible on the living room ceiling; a portion of the ceiling and all furniture in the cabin had been removed for analysis.

Next door to the cabin, inside a curious cinder-block bunker--labeled a “torture chamber” by some officials--two small rooms were found hidden behind a false wall.

Authorities believe one of the rooms is a cell where Lake and Ng held their captives.

The room is small, only 3 1/2 feet wide and a little over 6 feet long. It is dominated by a plywood locker that also served as a bed; in the locker was a bucket apparently used as a chamber pot.

Except for a bare-bulb light fixture and an electrical socket, the only item on the wall was a two-way mirror that allowed the cell to be viewed from the other hidden room.

That other, larger room apparently served both as an office and living quarters. It had a bed, dresser, desk, bookshelves and file cabinet.

Continuing Search

Authorities said they expect to dismantle the bunker soon and begin digging beneath it in their continuing search.

“There are bones everywhere,” said one newsman who toured the site as a member of a media pool that shared its findings with other reporters. “It’s obviously very spooky up there.

“They’ve gotten so many new bones; it’s obvious there are a lot of people buried up there,” added the reporter, George Frost of the Stockton Record.

Deputies said Lake apparently tried to incinerate most of his victims, then used a five-gallon plastic bucket to spread their remains over the rugged 2 1/2-acre parcel on which he lived. The land belonged to his ex-wife, Claralyn Balazs, and her family.

The job of identifying victims by reconstructing the charred and battered remains will be a monumental one, authorities said.

“Just to give you an idea of the pathological problem, they are finding pieces as small as one-sixteenth of an inch (in length),” said Officer Carri Lucas of the San Francisco Police Department, which is assisting in the probe. “The larger pieces, they said, are three or four inches.”

Calaveras County Coroner Terry Parker said three skeletal remains have already been unearthed.

Fourth Person

Enough ash and bone fragments to account for a fourth person also were discovered last week, he added, and the most recent discovery could account for a fifth and perhaps even a sixth or seventh.

Estimates of the number of victims found at the site has varied dramatically among authorities here. On one day, for example, the Sheriff’s Department said two bodies had been found, the chief deputy coroner here said three, the San Francisco coroner said four, while Parker put the number at five.

Parker said the discovery of partial bodies and bone fragments makes precision difficult.

Neither the bone fragments nor any other evidence have yet been thoroughly examined, said Charles C. Jones, special agent from the state Department of Justice.

“We haven’t analyzed anything,” he said. “You have to understand, there’s a lot of evidence.”

For example, San Francisco police said they have collected 50 videotapes from Lake’s cabin, Ng’s house and from Claralyn Balazs.

‘Sexual Tapes’

Not all the tapes have yet been viewed. Some apparently are copies of old San Francisco ‘49er football games; others were described by San Francisco Homicide Inspector Jeff Brosch as “sexual tapes” showing “consensual sex,” although he declined to identify any people shown on the tapes.

Only two tapes so far viewed include scenes of relentless mental torture and sexual harassment inflicted on unidentified women by Lake and Ng. There are no scenes of murder, said Assistant Chief Joseph Lordan.

Lordan added that Claralyn Balazs will be given immunity from certain small crimes in return for her cooperation in sorting out the activities of her ex-husband.

This agreement covers a charge of possession of stolen property, which she faced for having used a credit card belonging to Deborah Dubs.

Dubs, her husband and their 18-month-old son are among the 25 people whom police fear may have died at the hands of Lake and Ng.

Times staff writer Saul Rubin in San Francisco contributed to this story.