Canadian Officials Testify in Ng Trial

Canadian investigators testified Monday of finding Charles Ng’s hide-out on the outskirts of Calgary, where the accused serial killer had cached a pistol and camping gear.

Prosecutors were expected to conclude their case this week in one of California’s longest and costliest murder prosecutions. The state alleges that Ng, 37, took part in the murders of seven men, three women and two baby boys in 1984 and 1985.

Prosecutors allege some victims were tortured and raped after being lured to the cabin of Leonard Lake in Wilseyville, about 150 miles east of San Francisco in the Sierra Nevada foothills. Lake committed suicide while in police custody in June 1985.

A conviction could result in the death penalty for Ng. The defense blames the murders on Lake.

Monday, Barry Whistlecroft, a former Calgary police investigator, and Dave Haddon, a Calgary detective, described how a teenager led them to a lean-to and a brush-hidden sleeping bag in Fish Creek Park on the southern outskirts of the city, where a sister of Ng’s lived.

Ng was arrested there in 1985 and fought extradition for six years. The case was transferred to Orange County in 1994 because of extensive media coverage in Calaveras County.

Whistlecroft told jurors that investigators discovered a hole where food had been stashed and a dugout covered with planks beneath a sleeping bag. Among the camping gear and duffel bags in the dugout was a Ruger .22-caliber pistol, he said.

The serial number he gave matched that of a Ruger pistol given to Lake by his sister, as she testified last week.