Robert Keller - Twice As Deadly Volume 2: 16 Serial Killer Teams and Couples

Leonard Lake was born in San Francisco on October 29, 1945. His parents had a rocky relationship, which led to frequent breakups. As a result, Leonard and his siblings were shipped off to various relatives until they eventually landed a permanent home with their grandparents in 1951. That, in theory, should have provided the children with a stable base. But if they were looking for role models, they found none. Leonards grandmother was an unconventional woman who encouraged him to take photographs of nude girls, including his sisters and cousins. Unfortunately, this bizarre attempt at liberal parenting had an unintended consequence. The boy developed a precocious obsession with pornography, as well as a taste for incest.

Still, Leonard was a relatively intelligent boy who graduated high school in 1965. In 1966, aged 19, he enlisted in the Marine Corps, where he trained as a radar operator. Hed served two tours of duty in Vietnam, although both were interrupted for unspecified medical reasons. Thereafter, he returned to the US and remained in the Corps for five more years until his eventual discharge on medical grounds.

Back in civilian life, Lake settled in San Jose, California, where he married and acquired a reputation as a gun buff and survivalist. He also resurrected his childhood interest in pornographic photography and filmmaking, much to the distress of his wife, who divorced him soon after.

In 1980, Lake was charged with the theft of building materials from a construction site. He got off with 12 months probation. A year later, he married for the second time and moved to a communal ranch at Ukiah, California. A few months later, he met Charles Ng (pronounced Ing) another ex-Marine. Together they would go on to commit one of the most heinous series of murders in California history.

Charles Chitat Ng was born in Hong Kong, in 1961, the product of wealthy Chinese parents. Yet, despite his privileged upbringing, the boy displayed worrying anti-social signs from an early age. First, he was expelled from school in Hong Kong. Then, after being shipped to an exclusive private academy in England, he was caught stealing from his classmates. He was let off with a warning, but a subsequent shoplifting arrest saw him expelled there as well.

Ing returned to Hong Kong, remaining there until, at age eighteen, he obtained a student visa to study at Notre Dame College in Belmont, California. He dropped out after just one semester. In October 1979, Ng enlisted in the Marines, falsely listing his birthplace as Bloomfield, Indiana.

In 1981, Ng and three accomplices were involved in the theft of weapons from an armory at Kaneohe Marine Base in Hawaii. A month later, he was arrested, but within days of his incarceration, he escaped and made his way to California, where he answered an ad that Lake had placed in a survivalist magazine.

In spite of Lakes racism (which seemed to apply only to Blacks and Hispanics), the two men hit it off immediately. Ng moved into the Ukiah Ranch with Lake and his wife, and they began assembling an arsenal of automatic weapons. But their gunrunning activities brought them to the attention of the federal authorities. In April 1982, agents raided the Ukiah ranch and arrested Lake and Ng. Released on $6,000 bond, Lake promptly disappeared, using a variety of aliases as he moved from one northern California location to the other. His second wife divorced him shortly after the arrest, although they remained on good terms.

Ng, meanwhile, had been denied bail. And as a deserter from the Marine Corps, he was probably looking at a stiff sentence on the weapons charges. However, a deal was struck, allowing him to plead guilty to weapons theft in exchange for a 14-year sentence. He served just 18 months before being paroled. Soon after, he returned to California where he hooked up with Lake on a two-and-a-half-acre woodland property near Wilseyville. The two then began stockpiling weapons and video equipment. They also began building a fortified concrete bunker.

Leonard Lakes neighbors were amused by the reason he gave for constructing the bunker. He said it was a fallout shelter for the nuclear holocaust to come. Many of them even helped with the building. Theyd have been decidedly less enthusiastic had they known its real purpose.

On June 2, 1985, about 15 months after Charles Ng joined Leonard Lake at Wilseyville, San Francisco police officers responded to a routine call about a shoplifting at a lumberyard. A sales clerk had seen an Oriental man smuggle a $75 vice out of the store and place it in the trunk of a Honda automobile. When another employee approached the man, he ran away, leaving the vice behind.

The car was still parked outside when police arrived, a bearded man sitting at the wheel. Asked his name, the man produced a driver's license in the name of Robin Stapley, even though it was plain to see that he bore no resemblance to the photograph. And the officers had further cause for suspicion when they searched the trunk and found a .22 caliber pistol, equipped with a silencer. When they called in the license plate, another inaccuracy came to light. The plates on the Honda belonged to a Buick, registered in the name of Lonnie Bond. The officers then advised the man of his rights and arrested him for possession of an illegal firearm.

The suspect was taken to South City police station where he continued to insist that his name was Robin Stapley. After about an hour of questioning, he asked for a glass of water. While one of the interrogators went to fetch that for him, he admitted to the other that his real name was Leonard Lake and that he was a fugitive, wanted by the FBI. He also gave his accomplices name as Charles Chitat Ng. Who would have thought a lousy bench vice would bring me to this? he said, then brought his hand to his mouth. A few seconds later, his eyes rolled back and he started convulsing. Soon he collapsed to the floor in an apparent coma.

Lake was rushed to Kaiser Permante Hospital where it was determined that hed swallowed two cyanide capsules. That left the investigators perplexed. Why would a man take his life over a shoplifting charge, a minor misdemeanor at best? By the time Lake died four days later, they had their answer.

The first clue to the mystery came via the drivers license Lake had been carrying at the time of his arrest. The name of Robin Stapley was real enough. Stapley was a founding member of the San Diego chapter of the "Guardian Angels," an organization that had been formed to protect private citizens from criminals. The only thing was, hed been missing since April.