Ng Aided Lake’s Lesser Crimes but Is Not a Murderer, Defense Says

Charles Ng is a burglar and may have participated in twisted sex games with captives, but he is not a murderer, the defendant’s lawyers said Wednesday in closing arguments.

Defense attorney William Kelley’s statements marked the approaching end to the 14-year-old multiple murder case, one of the costliest and longest prosecutions in state history.

It would be a quantum leap, Kelly said, to conclude that Ng helped his survivalist friend Leonard Lake kill people just because Ng participated in some of Lake’s lesser crimes.

“I’d be a fool if I said he didn’t know some of the things that were going on,” Kelley told jurors.

Ng, 38, is accused of killing 12 people at Lake’s secluded Calaveras County cabin in the mid-1980s. According to authorities, Ng and Lake robbed their victims before killing them, and made at least two of the women their sex slaves.

The jury is expected to begin deliberations Monday.

Closing arguments in the 3-month-old trial were halted last week when Orange County Superior Court Judge John J. Ryan granted Ng’s last-ditch effort to testify. Ng, who faces a possible death penalty, finished his testimony Tuesday.

Ng admitted helping Lake burglarize a home and participating in Lake’s sadistic games with two women. However, despite admitting that he helped Lake bury two bodies, Ng maintained that he was not involved in the murders that his friend committed. Lake killed himself in 1985.

Weaving a complex pattern of mostly circumstantial yet compelling evidence, prosecutors Wednesday portrayed Ng as an active participant in Lake’s scheme, replaying a videotape to bolster their case.

“This videotape hasn’t lost its memory, this videotape hasn’t changed its story,” Calaveras County Dist. Atty. Peter Smith said.

In one videotaped segment, Ng is seen getting a massage from Kathi Allen of San Jose. A nude Ng is lying on the bed on his stomach, as Allen, wearing nothing but torn underwear, gives him a massage. Ng asks Allen to rub his buttocks.

“And he gets on the stand and tells us he didn’t have sex with her,” Smith said. “Incredible, ladies and gentlemen. . . . Do you really believe that Ng thought Lake would let her go?” Ng is charged with killingAllen and her boyfriend.

In his summation, Ng’s attorney attacked the government’s lack of physical evidence and reliance on jailhouse informant Joseph Maurice Laberge, a fellow prison inmate of Ng’s in Canada.

“There is one thing you never see [on the videotapes],” Kelley told jurors. “Anybody being murdered, or Ng murdering anyone.”

In 1985, after Ng and Lake were caught shoplifting in a South San Francisco lumberyard, Ng fled to Canada. Lake was arrested, but he killed himself shortly after. Ng was arrested in another shoplifting incident in Calgary a month later. He shot and wounded a security guard during the ensuing scuffle and served time in a Canadian prison, where he met Laberge.

Laberge testified during Ng’s extradition hearings that Ng had confessed to the murders with detailed drawings and explicit statements. But on Wednesday, Kelley said Laberge was a paid “jailhouse snitch” with a long criminal record who fabricated the alleged confessions.

“When the government has to rely on a snake, it tells you something about their case,” Kelley said.

The trial was transferred to Orange County in 1994 because of pretrial publicity in Northern California.