Original subtitles

- As a documentary filmmaker, I'm fascinated by true crime

and the mystery and suspense of how they unravel.

I came across this murder case four years ago,

and it had more twists and turns

than any work of fiction.

I was surprised by how few people

had actually heard of this story.

This videotape was the key

to unlocking some of the horrors that occurred

in Wilseyville, California, almost 40 years ago.

This man here, Leonard Lake,

was responsible for some of the most heinous crimes

ever committed in the United States

and this videotape stands as his chilling manifesto.

It's impossible to know

just how many victims paid with their lives,

but for me this story all started...

with the disappearance of a man named Paul Cosner

and his sister, Sharon Sellitto,

who set out to find him.

- My brother Paul was a car dealer.

In the fall of 1984,

Paul had advertised a car for sale

in the "San Francisco Chronicle."

It was an orange/gold 1980 Honda Prelude.

He had a lot of calls on it,

and he thought it was gonna be a good, quick deal.

On Wednesday, October 31st,

a guy had called him and said

that he was interested in the car

and would like to take a test-drive

and could come meet him at his apartment.

So he came, and he took a test-drive.

Came back and said that he wanted to buy it.

On November 2nd, I had talked to Paul in the morning

because he thought he'd sold the car.

And I said, "Great. Who to?"

And he said, "Some weird guy."

And I said, "Well, be careful."

The next day Paul's girlfriend, Marilyn,

called me probably about 11:00.

She said that she and Paul had

had a date set for the night before.

They were supposed to cook dinner and watch a movie

that night, and he never came home.

And I said, "As far as I know, he was fine."

I thought there must be an explanation

'cause it didn't make sense...

'cause it's not like him.

Paul and I grew up in Ohio in farm country.

We didn't know our father.

Paul was definitely more than a big brother.

He was the father I never knew.

He protected me and was my best friend.

He was very witty, very kind and loving.

We were very close.

Marilyn was Paul's girlfriend.

He was really in love with her.

Marilyn didn't know,

but Paul told me he was gonna ask her to marry him.

He knew that she was the right one for him

and who he wanted to spend the rest of his life with.

- There was no logical reason for Paul to go away.

He had a very stable relationship with Marilyn.

He was looking to a bright future.

At this point, nobody knows what's happened to Paul.

And now the mystery begins.

- We really didn't know where he was or who he was with

or if he was okay.

I kept calling Paul's apartment.

And I didn't get any answer.

I was really getting worried.

Marilyn and Paul lived in the same building

in different apartments.

Paul's landlady let us in his apartment.

She opened the door.

And I thought, God, it was so neat.

It was so clean,

like it had just been vacuumed,

like a hotel.

That scared me because he didn't vacuum like that.

I didn't vacuum--

It looked like somebody was covering something up.

First thing we did was search the entire apartment.

We looked in the hall closet where Paul kept his guns,

and we couldn't find the .38-caliber revolver

or his 22 Derringer.

The ammo was there, but the guns were gone.

And then we discovered

that Paul's car wasn't there either.

So we thought

maybe it all had something to do with each other.

I called the police.

We were told that you couldn't report

anybody missing for 24 hours,

that we had to come down and do it in person.

We went to file a police report.

The policeman asked us, "Well, how old is he?"

And I said, "39," and he said,

"He's probably out drunk with a whore.

"You don't need to file a missing-persons report.

We don't look for anybody over six."

We looked at each other and were so shocked.

And I said, "Well, it's not my bicycle.

It's my brother. I want to file a report."

And he said, "Well, if you have to."

It was awful.

- We're talking about a police department

that was dealing

with 500 missing-persons cases per month.

They were dealing with the drug issues,

the gang issues, and they just don't have the manpower

and the people power in order to investigate all those cases.

- Paul Cosner had only been missing 24 hours,

and there really wasn't much

that police could do at the time.

There was nothing particularly suspicious about this case,

but Sharon felt otherwise.

- I didn't get any help, and it scared me.

And I called his good friends,

and none of them had heard from him.

I called everyone that had left messages

inquiring about the car

to see if Paul had called them back, made an appointment.

And none of them had.

I was going to Paul's apartment almost every day,

searching for the tiniest little hint

of where Paul could be.

One day I went in,

and the light was blinking on his answering machine.

And I thought,

"Now we're finally gonna find something out."

So I went over and hit the button.

And there was a message.

- I was going to Paul's apartment

almost every day,

searching for the tiniest little hint

of where Paul could be.

And the light was blinking on his answering machine,

and there was a message.

That was the entire message, and I could hardly breathe.

It wasn't, "Paul's gonna be dead

"unless you give us a million dollars.

Paul's gonna be dead unless you anything."

It was just a statement.

- Upon hearing this threatening message,

Sharon called San Francisco's Missing Persons Division

in the hopes that they would now take the case

more seriously.

So the case was assigned

to San Francisco's missing persons inspectors

Irene Brunn and Tom Eisenmann.

They searched the entire apartment

and found essentially nothing.

And within a few days, the case stalled.

- It made me think there wasn't any hope,

there wasn't any solving this.

I thought if I did everything I could think of...

I could follow the trail,

that I could find him and bring him home.

- Sharon becomes a one-woman detective,

a one-woman police agency.

She distributes flyers.

She went to morgues. She went to hospitals.

She kept the case going.

- At the beginning,

I was going in 100 different directions,

thinking I was gonna get a lead.

I was gonna get some information.

I had been calling the TV stations,

trying to get somebody to do a story

about Paul's disappearance.

- The San Francisco Police are asking for help tonight

in their search for a man

who placed a newspaper advertisement

to sell his 1980 Honda.

- We have been on the phone constantly.

He had a lot of friends that were used-car dealers.

They've been networking.

- If you have seen this man

or know what may have happened to him,

please call the San Francisco Police Department.

- It got kind of silent, and another month would go by.

Month after month after month

after month after month.

And people I know would say...

"Well, you've got to give up. You have to quit this.

You have to move on."

And I'd say, "You can't move on."

Paul was my life.

I just thought there had to be answers.

- At this point, law enforcement had no leads,

and Sharon's investigation had hit an impasse,

but then a new lead surfaced.

- One of the reporters that I talked to

mentioned that there was a whole family

from San Francisco, the Dubs family,

who had disappeared about three months before Paul.

- Harvey and Deborah Dubs were last seen

on the evening of July 26th.

The next day, the Dubs and their 18-month-old son

disappeared.

- Harvey Dubs was a local videographer.

He would routinely place ads

in the "San Francisco Chronicle"

to rent out video equipment that he owned.

Soon after placing an ad, Harvey Dubs,

his wife, Deborah. and their infant son, Sean, disappeared.

The case of the Dubs shared a striking similarity

to Paul Cosner's disappearance.

Both had placed an ad in the "San Francisco Chronicle."

Both had disappeared.

- I knew there had to be a connection,

so I called Debbie Dubs' father.

He told me that somebody had answered the ad,

stolen the equipment, and the whole family had disappeared.

And I said, "Well, don't you think

that it has to be tied in together?"

And he said, yes, it surely did.

- It was a highly publicized case.

Whole families simply don't vanish

off the face of the Earth.

- The day they disappeared,

Deborah Dubs is on the phone with her best friend, Karin,

and she's talking about the fact

that there is some weird guy they're gonna meet

that evening who wanted to rent

some of the equipment that he had.

While she's on the phone to Karin,

the doorbell rings, and Deborah says,

"Oh, that must be them."

That's the last time

anybody ever heard from the Dubs family.

- Karin Tuck's husband went over to the Dubs' house.

There was a key in the door.

And he went inside,

and he found that the house had been ransacked.

He immediately called the police,

and the officers responded to the scene.

- Inspector Irene Brunn

is called to come into the house.

As soon as she gets in there,

she starts to recognize something is wrong here.

Things are not the way they're supposed to be.

There's dirty dishes in the sink.

There's dirty diapers. There's missing items.

Videotapes, video equipment.

She already starts to suspect foul play is involved

with this particular disappearance.

- So, at that time,

Irene Brunn inventoried the scene

and was able to obtain

the serial number of some of the video equipment

that had apparently been taken from the home

when it was burglarized.

- I told the police I heard the top lock

and my neighbor's door locking

the very next day after the Dubs were reported missing,

and then I heard footsteps coming down the stairs.

And I leaned over, and I looked.

And there was this Asian man in his mid-20s, I'd say,

and another man carrying something

that seemed to be fairly heavy.

So I just blurted out, "Excuse me.

Are you a friend of the Dubs?"

He turned around, then he walked to the car.

I noticed that the license plate

said "V Dubs".

So I knew something was going on,

'cause it was the neighbors' car

and I could see that the driver

was not Harvey or Deborah.

And they just peeled off.

- The investigators believed that these two men

were likely involved in the Dubs' disappearance.

- But who were they?

And did these same men have anything to do

with Paul Cosner's disappearance?

- Life as I'm living it

is boring.

The challenge of this project...

the excitement...

the thrill if it succeeds...

even...

the exciting experience if it fails.

As long as I don't get caught...

it's very attractive.

It's something that I fantasize...

daily about.

We'll see.

- Two days following

the reported Dubs' disappearance,

there was a break in the case,

in that there was activity on their bank card.

An ATM card of the Dubs had been used

to take money out of a Wells Fargo account

belonging to the Dubs family.

Investigators found surveillance photos

from the ATM machine.

An Asian man with a fisherman's cap

used the Dubs' ATM card to remove cash.

Missing Persons found that the card was used

at the Benihana restaurant

near the airport in South San Francisco.

There were three people

in the restaurant using this card--

a Caucasian man and an Asian man

and a Caucasian woman.

- Right now police are looking for several people

who used one of Mrs. Dubs' credit cards on the peninsula.

- The San Francisco Police Department

held a press conference in which they distributed

sketches of the three individuals

that were linked to the Dubs' disappearance.

A month after their disappearance,

the Dubs' automobile

was located in long-term parking

at San Francisco Airport.

- When I heard that their car was recovered,

I knew this was not good,

and I had really a bad feeling

that they were probably no longer with us.

- After Paul disappeared,

when I heard they had found the Dubs' car at the airport,

I went to the airport parking lot

to see if Paul's car was parked there, too,

but it wasn't there.

And I did the same thing in San Jose

and the same thing in Oakland.

I discovered the police kept hot sheets,

which meant, when they were driving around

that they had a sheet

with cars they were looking for

that were maybe stolen or used in a crime or something.

But they were dropped off the hot sheet every 28 days.

So I called the San Francisco Police

and reported Paul's car stolen every 28 days

to make sure it was

in front of every policeman in San Francisco.

- Sharon does everything she can

to find out what happened to her brother.

And as the months went by,

it was looking less likely that this would have a happy ending.

- The police are still looking for Paul

and also for his car.

- We have to find something concrete...

the car or him

or anybody with information

that they may have seen him someplace

somewhere outside of the city, or in the city.

We don't have nothing.

- Sharon never gave up hope, but it was looking less likely

that Paul or his car were gonna be found.

And then seven months to the day

after his disappearance,

an event occurs that breaks this case wide open.

- Good evening, everyone.

It was 7 months ago when Channel 7 first brought you

the story of a San Francisco man named Paul Cosner,

who mysteriously disappeared.

Tonight that case has taken a very bizarre twist.

- So I'm out on patrol on Sunday, June 2, 1985.

I get dispatched to South City Lumber

on a petty theft of a vise.

I pull in-- the reporting party

happened to be an off-duty police captain.

Explained to me they saw a Asian male

take the vise, put it in the car,

and then he walked away from the car.

I look over at the car. The trunk's open.

I see the vise.

I start to move things around.

As I do so, I find a 22 Ruger automatic...

and with the gun is a silencer.

It was the first time I ever seen a silencer.

This is like, wow.

You know, this is the real deal.

- A weapon equipped with a silencer

is illegal in California under any circumstances.

The fact that there's a silencer on a firearm

leads one to believe there's criminality involved.

- Just about then, a man came out

and said, "There's a misunderstanding here.

"My friend took the vise,

"thinking that I had paid for it,

"and I hadn't paid for it yet.

I paid for the vise. Everything's okay now."

- The white male they're talking to

is asked what his name is.

He says his name is Robin Scott Stapley.

- I asked him for ID.

When I looked at it,

he had the beard and the rounded face.

But once I had already found the weapon,

he is a threat because I don't know

if he has a weapon on him himself.

I patted him down,

and I actually handcuffed him for my safety.

I ran the license plate on the back of the vehicle.

That plate came back to a Lonnie Bond.

I said, "Who's the car belong to?"

And he said, "Oh, it's my neighbor, Lonnie Bond."

I said, "Okay, where's Lonnie now?"

"Oh, he's up in the hills." "Oh, okay."

And I left it at that because it seemed legitimate.

The plate came back clear.

It wasn't related to any missing person

or any wanted person.

And then I explained to him

that during the time I was doing a search of the trunk,

I did find a gun.

With the gun was a silencer.

His whole demeanor changed.

His head went down.

He started to pace back and forth.

I went over, ran the serial number on the gun,

and the gun did come back to R Scott Stapley.

Now we got a problem.

- Police immediately arrested

the man who claimed to be Robin Scott Stapley

for possession of an illegal silencer,

and they took him back to the station

for further questioning.

In the meantime, Officer Wright stayed with the car.

- I ran the VIN, and the car came back

to a missing person by the name of Paul Cosner.

- Two men, one white and one Asian,

enter this South San Francisco hardware store.

- An Asian man reportedly took an expensive vise

and took off on foot.

That man got away. His companion did not.

- The South San Francisco Police arrived

and began questioning the remaining man.

And when the police checked

the vehicle identification number of his car,

they discovered that this was in fact Paul Cosner's car.

The man was taken

to the South San Francisco Police Station

for questioning.

- I was by myself...

And the phone rang.

It was Lieutenant Al Sonoda from San Francisco PD,

and he said...

"Sit down, Sharon."

And I said...

"Oh, my God," and I sat down.

And he said...

"We found Paul's car."

"And Paul?" He said, "No."

And I kind of collapsed on the couch.

I just wanted some answers.

- The emphasis at that point

was trying to find Paul Cosner.

Was he alive, or was he dead?

Back at the police station, the suspect told the officers

that his real name was not Scott Stapley

but Leonard Lake.

He said that he was a fugitive.

- A background check revealed that he was a former Marine

who was arrested by the FBI

on 17 counts of felony weapons charges.

Now, Lake skipped bail on those charges

and had been a fugitive ever since.

- He said that his crime partner,

the fellow who was with him in the lumberyard,

was Charles Ng.

We also learned that Charles Ng

had served in the Marine Corps.

He was arrested for the theft of weapons from an armory

and was sent to Leavenworth Prison

in Kansas.

- At this point, they have

no idea where Charles Ng is.

- Investigators asked Lake

where they could find Charles Ng,

and that's when he revealed Ng was headed to the home

of Lake's ex-wife, Claralyn Balazs,

in South San Francisco.

- At one point, Leonard Lake asked for a pen and paper.

I believe the officers thought he might provide

additional information regarding Paul Cosner,

and they left him with the pen and paper

and stepped out of the room.

- It was on Sunday, June 2nd.

In the early afternoon,

I received a page,

and they told me to respond

to the police station immediately.

I came down to the jail section of the department here,

specifically to the interview room...

To meet Mr. Lake and talk to him.

This is the interview room we were in.

And just as I opened the door,

Lake had fallen down onto the ground,

rolling around in convulsions.

I called the paramedics,

who were in the same building with us,

and they transported him to Kaiser Hospital...

In critical condition,

and he was immediately put in the Intensive Care Unit.

- We knew nothing

about what the medical problem was with this suspect.

Was he upset over getting arrested?

Did he have a heart problem, medical issues?

We didn't know.

- The note he was writing

before he fell to the floor and convulsed said,

"Dear Lyn,

"I love you. I forgive you.

"Freedom is better than all else.

"Tell Fern I'm sorry.

"Mom, Patty, and all, I'm sorry for all the trouble.

Love, Leonard."

On the note, he wrote down "Lyn,"

and we're pretty sure that he meant his ex-wife,

Claralyn Balazs.

- I was told that Lake was on life support.

I'm thinking, "What is going on here?"

- Lieutenant Al Sonoda from San Francisco PD

called and told me, "One of the guys got away,

and the other one--they've taken him to the hospital."

"What do you mean? What do you mean?

What about Paul?"

And he said, "We don't know anything yet."

- Doctors at the hospital told investigators

that Leonard Lake was in a coma after ingesting a cyanide pill.

They speculated when he could've swallowed the pill.

It could've been in the interrogation room

when he was penning the letter that they thought was

a suicide note to his ex-wife, Claralyn Balazs.

But you have to wonder, who carries a cyanide pill

in the event that they get caught by police?

What are you hiding

that you would rather kill yourself for than divulge?

- I've worked numerous cases.

I have never worked one

where anybody took poison,

especially cyanide.

- That night news about the incident

was on every Bay Area television station.

- The first clue to surface thus far

in the mysterious disappearance of a San Francisco man

may only serve to frustrate his loved ones.

- Police arrested a man

they found to be driving Cosner's car,

but before they could find very much out,

the man's believed to have poisoned himself.

He is now in a coma.

- Later that day,

Paul Cosner's car was towed from the lumberyard

in South San Francisco to the police department impound,

where it was gone over by the crime lab forensic team.

And it was evident that blood splatter

was present in the automobile.

And there was a bullet hole found behind the visor

on the passenger side of the car.

- It appears that someone had shot somebody

from the back seat forward into the vehicle.

There was also another bullet hole

found in a passenger door.

For investigators now,

there's hardly any other conclusion you can draw.

Someone was shot by somebody in Paul Cosner's car.

- It was clear to investigators

that something criminal had taken place,

but they weren't even sure if it was Paul who was shot

or if it was someone else.

There was some pressure on

for investigators to find answers.

They had no idea where this was going...

And how dark it was gonna get.

- It was pretty clear that something criminal

had taken place inside of Paul Cosner's car.

So there was some pressure on

for investigators to find answers.

- There were bullet holes and blood.

It didn't mean it was Paul's.

And it was some information.

There had been silence for seven months.

It wasn't hopeful, but it was something.

I was gonna get an answer.

- The investigators processing Paul Cosner's car

also found a utility bill

for a property in Wilseyville

in a remote area up in Northern California.

The utility bill was in the name of Claralyn Balazs...

Leonard Lake's ex-wife.

- Later that evening,

we got together with the two sergeants that were here,

Irene Brunn and her partner from San Francisco,

and went to Claralyn Balazs' house

to interview her

up on Pecks Lane

in South San Francisco.

- They told her that her ex-husband, Leonard Lake,

was transported to the hospital

after ingesting a cyanide tablet

and was now in a coma.

They wanted to know if Charles Ng

had tried to make contact with her,

but she denied having seen or heard from him.

- Investigators told Claralyn that inside Paul's car

they found a utility bill with her name on it

from a property in Wilseyville, California.

Claralyn confirmed

that she did have a cabin in Wilseyville,

where Leonard Lake and Charles Ng

would stay from time to time.

But she claimed she had never heard of Paul Cosner

and had no idea why Leonard Lake

would've been driving his car.

- Claralyn explained

that although she and Leonard Lake were divorced,

they still maintained a close relationship,

but she was unaware of his day-to-day activities.

- Going to the cabin was the next logical thing to do

in terms of pursuing this investigation.

Claralyn told the investigators

that it was in a very remote area

and that they would have difficulty

being able to locate it on their own.

She did agree to accompany the investigators

to the cabin on the morning of June the 4th.

Paul Cosner still had not been found,

and it was certainly possible

that he may have been taken to the cabin.

- The police had told me they were going up

in the mountains to look at some property

that they thought maybe

would have something to do with Paul.

I didn't know if he was being held somewhere alive.

- San Francisco PD requested our assistance

in going to a cabin in Wilseyville

regarding a missing-person case that they were working with.

The property itself is a dirt road with a gate.

You drive up this driveway

that is roughly 200, 300 yards.

You go up a little hill.

You can see the cabin on the left-hand side

and it's kind of a split-level

carved into the bank of the hillside.

Around the corner and on your right is a cement workshop.

We asked Claralyn, "What is that for?"

And she replied that it was

the fallout shelter Leonard Lake had built.

- Claralyn told investigators that Leonard Lake

became a survivalist after he was medically discharged

from the Marines.

He had experienced a complete mental breakdown

while serving in Vietnam

and feared a nuclear apocalypse was imminent.

- We took her at her word for it

and asked her if we could look around the cabin.

When we entered the cabin, on the wall,

Inspector Eisenmann noticed that there was a rack

that contained TV and audio/visual equipment, VCR.

And he said, "Hey, this looks like the stuff

"that San Francisco PD's looking for

for the Dubs case."

- Irene Brunn takes down the serial number

and calls it in to see if it matches the serial number

on Harvey Dubs' missing equipment.

She then exclaims, "Holy sh--, it's a hit.

That is Harvey Dubs' video equipment."

- Now we have questions that need to be answered.

We came there looking for a sign of Paul Cosner

or Charles Ng,

but now we have property belonging

to a whole nother missing-persons case.

While Inspector Brunn

is looking at the video equipment,

I start looking around the front-room area,

and I notice that there was suspicious stains

on the ceiling that looked to me like blood stains.

I noticed there was a potential bullet hole

in the floor.

At that point, I was thinking,

"Why is there blood on the ceiling,

and why is there a bullet hole in the floor?"

Your investigative mindset just gets turned up.

It's like, holy sh--, and now we possibly have a murder.

- After investigators had discovered

the bullet holes, the bloodstains,

and the Dubs' missing video equipment,

it was becoming evident that something much more sinister

had taken place here in the cabin.

- Inspector Brunn spoke with Claralyn Balazs

and advised her that we were gonna get

a search warrant for the house and property.

- Claralyn immediately became irate

and demanded to leave the property.

- Inspector Brunn

allowed her to leave due to the point--

At that time, we had not reached

the search warrant yet,

nor did we have enough probable cause

or evidence to arrest Claralyn.

- The next day, once we got the search warrant,

Steve Matthews said,

"Let's take a look inside this building,"

that appeared to be made out of cinderblock.

So I went in with him.

- As we entered the cinderblock house,

I noticed that it was pretty much carpentry

and yard tools in a small space.

At that moment, I realized the size of the building

on the outside was way bigger

than what you're looking at on the inside,

which led me to believe there's something

further behind the paneling.

We removed that stuff and found

that there's a door there and opened the door.

- It swings inward, and now you have this room in there.

You know, I'm gonna be honest with you.

I was, like, scared to even think about going in there.

It was like, what the hell's in here?

But it was freaking me out, and that was, like,

shock level number nine.

We realized that there was a secondary room in there...

Followed by a living area.

The living area had a sleeping bag,

survival magazines and books,

and some miscellaneous stored food.

The confined area had a separate door,

locked from the outside.

We instantly realized that this is a actual cell.

Who else would have locks on the outside of a door?

It's obvious that that was someplace to confine somebody

that would not be able to get out.

- Then we looked on the wall,

and there was a list of rules.

And the rules were about remaining quiet.

"Don't try to yell or scream.

You obey the master."

Also, there was a mirror,

so that if you're inside the cell,

you can't look through the mirror other than yourself.

In the main area of this bunker,

there was a camera set up to be able to record

anything that was occurring inside that cell.

And I also noticed a board

with 21 photos of young ladies.

Some of them were in the nude,

others just a little bit of clothing on them.

Why is this in the shed?

Why were these photos taken,

and where are these young ladies now?

- We start off our investigation

going up to San Francisco PD with a missing-persons case,

and a short time later end up with bloodstains,

bullet holes, and a cell.

Now we know we have to look all around the property

to see what we could find.

And we notice there's this trench behind the bunker

that's about 100 feet long.

I remembered a chair sticking out of it,

household goods, papers, magazine.

It was obvious that there was clothing

stacked and buried in there--

windshield to a car.

There was just a lot of stuff in this trench.

And then we look through the ditch a little closer...

and you can clearly see the skull of somebody.

We knew we had a bigger problem.

Like holy sh--. Now what? You know?

So we were wondering,

could this be part of the Dubs family?

Could this be Paul Cosner?

- One of the most significant murder investigations

in San Francisco Police history.

- Going through burn piles, finding bones.

- They found buried in the ground a five-gallon tub.

- In the tub, they found two VHS tapes.

- She's asking, "What have you done with my baby?

Where's my baby?"

- It sent chills up my spine, no doubt about it.

- Lake's companion, Charles Ng, got away.

Police have issued a warrant for his arrest.

- People were disappearing.

Were there more bodies to be found?

The clock was ticking to find out

what the hell happened here.

- This case will make Charles Manson look like

a man who organized Sunday school picnics.