Excavation of Mass Murder Bunker Finds No New Clues

Excavation under the foothills bunker of survivalist Leonard Lake produced no new evidence in the mass murders apparently committed at Lake’s remote Sierra Nevada home, investigators said.

“There is absolutely nothing down to four feet under the floor of the bunker,” Calaveras County sheriff’s spokesman Jim Stenquist said Friday, after officers completed a day of digging and sifting dirt under the suspected sex and murder dungeon.

Focus of Inquiry

The fortress-like black cinder-block bunker, which investigators believe may have been built under Lake’s supervision by some of the murder victims, was the last major site remaining for investigators to probe on Lake’s 2 1/2-acre retreat in the Mother Lode foothills 130 miles northeast of San Francisco.

Investigators said Lake may have had accomplices other than fugitive Charles Ng in killing an undetermined number of captives at his rural home.

“We aren’t looking, really, at an organized thing,” Calaveras County Sheriff’s Sgt. Ron McFall said. “But we think there is a good possibility that others may be involved.”

McFall heads the county’s investigation into the slayings at the cabin site where Lake is believed to have sexually tortured at least some of his victims.

Over the last four weeks, detectives have unearthed 45 pounds of charred human bones, plus partial and full skeletons buried or scattered on the ground around Lake’s home. Those remains have been pieced together so far into nine different partial skeletons, of which only one so far has been positively identified. A total of 22 people linked to Lake or Ng are missing.

Target of Manhunt

Lake committed suicide four weeks ago while in the custody of South San Francisco police on a shoplifting charge, and Ng is believed to have fled to Canada. An international manhunt for Ng, on a kidnaping warrant issued by the FBI, is under way.

“All I can officially say now is that (Ng) has put a lot of miles between him and California,” FBI Agent Karen Alexander said.

Due to accounts of visitors to the Lake property while the 12-by-20-foot bunker was under construction, investigators expected to find a six-foot-deep pit under the bunker, where they suspected they might find more evidence or victims.

But Stenquist said investigators found nothing but natural layers of dirt.

Stenquist said officers planned to take the weekend off before resuming their investigation. But he refused to say what the next step would be except that officers “are going to keep on going over and over (the site) to make sure absolutely nothing is overlooked.”

San Mateo County Coroner Paul Jensen disclosed that Lake’s brain had been stored at the Chope Community Hospital morgue in San Mateo after his cremation June 11 and will be studied for clues to the behavior of psychopathic killers.