Original subtitles

- Hi, this is Paul at 346-8323.

I'm not home right now, but if you'd be kind enough

to leave your name and number

following the sound of the tone,

I'll be glad to return your call.

Thank you.

- Hi, Paul. This is Marilyn.

Just come on by when you're ready.

Bye.

Paul, this is Marilyn.

I hope everything's all right. I'm kind of worried.

I'll talk to you later. Bye-bye.

- Hi, Pauly. It's Sharon Lou.

Where are you?

Call me as soon as you get in, okay?

I'm at home. Bye-bye.

Hi, Paul. It's your sister again.

Uh, please call.

I'm still at home. Bye-bye.

- Missing is 39-year-old Paul Cosner,

who was trying to sell his car and ran an ad.

The disappearance of Paul Cosner

remains a mystery tonight

as police try to come up with any lead

to his whereabouts.

Those close to him say that it is totally out of character

for him to go off voluntarily without a word.

- He called my mother every week

and never hung up without telling her that he loved her.

- I just cannot imagine Paul going away

and not telling anybody.

- It was seven months ago when Channel 7 first brought you

the story of a San Francisco man named Paul Cosner,

who mysteriously disappeared.

- San Francisco Police say they found Cosner's car

in the possession of a man who was arrested

on a weapons charge two days ago.

- Tonight police are saying the man they found

with Cosner's car is Leonard Lake.

- A manhunt is on now for a second suspect,

Charles Chat Ng.

- Ng was with Lake before he was arrested Sunday

but escaped before police arrived.

- Tonight that case has taken a very bizarre twist.

- Following that arrest,

the suspect apparently swallowed poison.

Now he's in a coma.

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

- It turned out that Lake

had a cabin in Calaveras County,

about 150 miles east of San Francisco.

- The way this case unfolded is really the reason

I wanted to tell the story.

- We have bloodstains, bullet holes, and a cell.

- I also noticed a board with 21 photos of young ladies

that sent chills up my spine.

- We found portions of human remains.

And you can clearly see the skull of somebody.

- They had no idea where this was going

and how dark it was gonna get.

- There's the house right there.

- Here it is.

- So here's the-- - Really weird to be back here.

I tell you. - It is.

- You know, I spent a long time

trying to forget all this.

Going back to the property was interesting.

You sign on, and that's what you--

You know, your purpose in life is to protect and serve.

And that's what you expect to do.

And you run across something like this,

and you feel like you've failed your community

for allowing this to happen.

Somewhere we didn't do enough.

- Right where we're standing here

is where we found some bones.

And it was actually the first bones

that we had found at that point in time.

- It was my ultimate goal

in, you know, my life to be a police officer.

And so, you know, getting hired at Calaveras

was like a "dream come true" type thing.

But I never, ever figured

that I would be involved in a case like this.

- Sometimes it can be hard to talk about...

Especially being here.

- You know, to be honest with you,

my wife said, "Well, you need to, you know,

get it off your chest."

And how did it affect my life afterwards?

I don't know.

Still trying to figure that out.

At the time, I had been on the force

for a little over five years,

and I have never seen anything of this nature.

We started with a missing-persons case,

and short time later, we found the skull of somebody.

- It's not every day that you find human remains

buried in the backyard.

So the clock was ticking to find out

what the hell happened here.

- We knew that we needed more help

because just excavating that trench 100 feet long

was gonna take way more manpower than we had.

Ultimately, Sergeant McFall makes the decision

that we're gonna have to get a criminologist.

We're gonna have to maybe get some help

from outside agencies.

- We developed a task force,

and the task force consisted

of San Francisco Homicide investigators,

our district attorney investigator,

contacts with the FBI.

- Within a few hours,

some people came up from Department of Justice.

And additionally, we called for a backhoe

to help us excavate.

- As we started to excavate the trench to recover one body,

we discovered that there was two bodies.

- For investigators, they've got to be wondering,

"What is gonna come next?"

- While police continued their search of the property,

they came across a chicken coop.

And upon further examination, they discovered a third body.

It was evident that these human remains

had been there for some time,

but investigators had no idea who they belonged to.

- At this point in the investigation,

we still didn't know who was responsible for these murders.

Was it Leonard Lake, who was in the hospital,

comatose from having ingested a cyanide capsule?

Was it Charlie Ng, who was on the run?

Or was it Claralyn Balazs,

Lake's ex-wife who owned the cabin?

Any or all...

could have been responsible and involved.

- Investigators decided to pay a visit

to Claralyn Balazs' house in South San Francisco.

She had stormed off her property in Wilseyville

when police revealed they were obtaining a search warrant.

- At that point, we began a series of interviews

of Claralyn Balazs regarding Charles Ng, Leonard Lake,

and everything that she knew about them

and about what was going on at the cabin.

- Claralyn told investigators that Lake and Ng

were weapons fanatics,

who had been introduced by a fellow Marine.

She claimed she didn't spend much time at the cabin

in Wilseyville,

so was unaware what may have gone on up there.

- Unfortunately, Claralyn didn't provide

too many answers.

She denied any knowledge of the hidden cell inside the bunker.

When police revealed to her

that they found human remains on the property,

she emphatically denied any knowledge of this.

- It was her property.

One has to ask this question.

Did she really not know

what was going on?

Really?

- While I was in the process of detailing the crime scene,

I discovered that at the back of the house

was what appeared to be some burn piles.

It's not unusual to see burn piles

anywhere in Calaveras County, 'cause that's how people

dispose of leaves and some paper trash.

But it is unusual to find

5 or 6 separate burn piles

15 feet apart

that had been cleaned up.

When I went down to go look at the burn piles,

I noticed that the one fresh one there

had bone residue, bone material.

At that moment, I realized that they're burning bodies.

- Investigators wondered how much worse this was gonna get.

Did they stumble upon some sort of killing field?

This was obviously a much bigger case

than anyone imagined,

much bigger than just a missing-persons case.

- Is this Paul Cosner?

Is this a member of the Dubs family?

Who are the victims in this ditch?

And how many victims are there?

- We are trying to find out who might some of these people be.

There were photographs of young women.

I believe there were 21.

And we are trying to identify those women

whose photographs were in the bunker.

Were possibly some of the women murdered?

And their bodies might be on the property.

- Leonard Lake was key to piecing this mystery together.

But unless he woke up from his coma,

investigators were essentially on their own.

While police started looking into the identities

of the women in the photographs,

investigators at the property sent the overwhelming amount

of human remains to the chief medical examiner

in San Francisco.

But this process would take weeks to complete.

- This crime scene was expanding minute by minute.

We were digging all over the property.

- We had criminalists all over the place.

We had law enforcement officers

from different agencies all over the place

in different areas of that residence,

in the trench, in the bunker, on the hillside,

all of them working feverishly,

and I had never seen anything like that before.

You can tell right from the beginning

because of the extent of the crime scene

that it was going to be a huge case.

- There was a lot of speculation in the news

about what exactly was going on at the property.

Unfortunately, news was leaked to the press

before authorities had a chance

to share their findings with Sharon Sellitto,

whose brother Paul Cosner was amongst the missing.

- I was at my house

doing a radio interview about the case.

The reporter said to me, "Well, what do you think

about the bodies they're digging up in Wilseyville?"

And I said, "I don't know what you're talking about."

She said, "They're digging up bones

and bodies in Wilseyville."

And I said, "What kind of question is that?"

And I had been told nothing by the police, nothing.

And I said, "Get out of my house.

"I'm not talking to you. It's over.

Get out. Get out."

- Human bones, the belongings of missing people,

a slave cell room.

- There were a number of serial cases

in Northern California at this time,

but nothing compared to this case.

- Police have found bodies buried on a property.

- San Francisco Police Chief

flew into Calaveras County today

to view Leonard Lake's ranch.

- We have learned that the San Francisco Police Department

has sent a team into the Sierra.

- We're still out on the property site,

digging through the ditches.

- The State Department of Justice

has called agents in on their days off

to help with the search.

- We're going through burned-out areas.

- No one is yet willing to put a limit

on the number of bodies they may eventually find.

- We don't know how big this is gonna get.

- It appears there may be a link to other cases,

including that of an entire family

which vanished almost a year ago.

- Investigators quoted as saying

that when all the facts come out,

this case will make Charles Manson

look like a man who organized Sunday school picnics.

- There was really no telling

how many bodies could be on the property.

And it was becoming obvious very quickly

that this was a major, major murder case

involving God knows how many people.

- Once the press caught wind

of what was going on in Wilseyville,

we all began to wonder, who was this guy Leonard Lake?

So the media began questioning those who knew him.

- We talked to neighbors.

They say Lake lived in the area

for about the past three years.

- He kept to himself.

He wasn't a real friendly person.

He wasn't unfriendly. He just didn't mix.

- We learned that Lake came from a broken household

and he displayed early signs of depravity.

Lake reportedly killed mice by dissolving them in chemicals

and coerced his sisters into making homemade pornography.

- Lake was a Marine.

He had served two tours of duty in Vietnam,

had a psychotic episode

and was released from the military.

He ends up in a hippie commune

up in Mendocino County, Northern California.

This is where he meets his future wife, Claralyn Balazs.

- Although she was blissfully unaware

of Lake's troubled past,

she fulfilled his sexual fantasies.

- With so many unanswered questions,

police will be working throughout the next few days,

gathering evidence

and ultimately trying to find the motive behind this case.

- After finding human remains buried at the cabin,

we were constantly probing around the property

with our stick, looking for softer ground.

And we actually find something.

- We uncovered some leaves, and there was a bucket.

And in that bucket, we discovered a firearm,

and it was a 22-caliber handgun.

Also, we found

identification papers in there.

And it was of Paul Cosner.

- The police called and told me

they had dug up a bucket, a pail...

And that it had Paul's glasses in it...

and his wallet

and his driver's license.

It was the hardest phone call.

I felt like I knew Paul was dead.

I just wanted to find his body.

- Could Paul have been one of those victims

buried at Wilseyville?

All they could do was wait

until the coroner returned his findings.

In the meantime, authorities received some news

from the hospital in San Francisco.

- On June the 6th, we were informed

that Leonard Lake was taken off life support

and pronounced dead.

- He's the one that had the answers.

And in one second,

taken all the answers to our questions away.

He couldn't stay around to tell the story.

I was very mad.

- Police painstakingly continued their investigation.

By this time, investigators had discovered three bodies

and countless other bone fragments.

- While we were conducting the investigation at the cabin,

the landlord of the next-door property

came over and reported that he had not seen

the family living next door in the last several weeks.

It was a young family--

Lonnie Bond, Brenda O'Connor,

and their son, Lonnie Jr.

And along with them, we discovered

staying with them was Robin Scott Stapley.

He was missing as well.

We learned that Robin Scott Stapley

was a name Leonard Lake used

while being arrested at the lumberyard

in South San Francisco.

And it was Lonnie Bond's license plate

that was discovered on the car

Leonard Lake was driving in South San Francisco

belonging to Paul Cosner.

- Four people are missing from the house next door.

The owner of that house

is concerned about his former tenants.

- I thought the people just left

because my real estate agent had called me

and said that the guy next door had told him

they had been gone for about ten days.

- Based on this information, Detective Copley and I

went over to the Bond cabin to investigate.

We entered the house and really found nothing.

It was empty.

Now, closer inspection in the house,

we realized that in the bedroom that we figured

had to have belonged to the child,

there were some pretty substantial bloodstains...

on the wall,

as if the baby crib had been up against the wall

and the baby was bludgeoned to death.

We can only conclude

that the baby was probably murdered in that crib.

- Once investigators suspected

that 18-month-old Lonnie Jr. was killed,

they feared that the child's parents.

Lonnie Bond and Brenda O'Connor,

had also been murdered.

Although authorities couldn't be certain

until they found bodies,

they decided to reach out to relatives

to see if they could provide any additional information.

But when they reached Brenda O'Connor's father,

this was the first that he had heard

that his daughter was missing.

- You got to understand, in the '80s,

that you didn't have all these cell phones.

So, while we're in Michigan,

they're all the way out in California.

When they called my dad

and told him that my sister was missing,

the first thing my dad said is, "Where's my grandson?

Where's my son-in-law?"

And that's when they said, "We believe they're missing, too."

- For 23 years in the police department,

I've worked a number of serial-murder cases

involving multiple victims.

But this was a very unusual case,

to say the least, in many respects,

not just because of the number of bodies

but the fact that it involved so many different victims,

including small children.

- At this point, police still needed answers.

The Dubs family, the Bond family,

and Robin Scott Stapley were all still considered missing.

And while police had their suspicions

that Leonard Lake and Charles Ng

were somehow responsible for their disappearances,

their motive was still very much unclear,

until they literally uncovered

the biggest piece of evidence yet.

- The county backhoe driver was, with a shovel,

digging the soft dirt on the edge of the driveway.

While he was doing that, he ran across something hard,

and he said, "Hey, I have something here."

They started to remove the dirt

and found, buried in the ground,

a five-gallons tub.

- In the tub, they found a document

of several hundred pages

and two VHS tapes.

- If you're burying something, you wanted to hide it,

and if it's worth hiding, then it's worth watching.

- As the investigators were digging up the property,

they don't know where this is going to end.

And then they find a tub.

- In the tub,

they found a document of several hundred pages

and two VHS tapes.

- Immediately what police want to know is,

what's on these tapes.

- Of the two videotapes inside the bucket,

one was labeled "M ladies Kathi and Brenda."

The other was labeled "M."

If you're burying something, you wanted to hide it,

and if it's worth hiding, then it's worth watching.

So, utilizing the video equipment in the house,

we put it in the video labeled "M."

- This tape was essentially a 15-minute manifesto

in which Leonard Lake starts out detailing his plan

to enslave a young woman.

Deborah Dubs is missing, Brenda O'Connor.

There were pictures of 21 women on the wall.

What happened to all these women?

As investigators continued to watch the tape,

the mystery started to unfold.

- There's a part of that tape that shows him on a bulldozer

working on the bunker.

You got the sense as you're watching this

that he was very pleased with himself

and very kind of proud of what he had done

and didn't have any qualms whatsoever about the plans

to enslave and brutalize women.

- When you watch this tape,

you're not talking about a madman

who is screaming and yelling at you.

He's relaxed,

he's composed,

and he's extremely thoughtful in it.

- The language that he used told me

that he had intelligence.

He was monotone the whole time,

and it just made it even more sinister

that he did it that way.

- Normally, you do not have videotapes

of this nature.

This is the first time that I or any fellows I worked with

had ever seen something like this.

- It's my feeling that Leonard Lake

wanted this tape to be found.

And it's almost like he's talking to us from the grave,

calmly outlining his plans to enslave women

and use them at his free will.

Leonard Lake explained his dark, sadistic fantasy.

What they didn't know

was whether or not he went through with them.

- Investigators would find their answer

when they watch the second video tape labeled "M Ladies."

No one was prepared for what was on that tape.

- Investigators now have an idea

of what was going on here.

They now understand what a horror show it is

that they've opened up.

- When investigators played the second tape labeled "M ladies,"

they quickly realized that they were watching

a home videotape that Leonard Lake had filmed

at the Wilseyville property.

- One of the VHS tapes was of a young woman

sitting in a chair.

She's also seen on a video

where she's tied down to a bed in the cabin.

- In the video,

Lake was calling a woman by the name Kathi,

which was significant, because also inside the tub,

they found a California driver's license

for a woman named Kathleen Allen.

They had suspected that Kathi was likely short

for Kathleen Allen.

- Now we had a name that we could work with.

And we found out that she was

from the Milpitas, San Jose area.

We made contact with the San Jose Police Department

to get additional staff to help us.

We found out she was a missing person.

- Police investigators discover

Kathleen Allen works at a local grocery store

in the San Jose area.

On Sunday, April 14, 1985, she goes missing.

- After her shift,

investigators learn that Kathleen was picked up

by a slightly balding, heavyset man in his late 30s

in an orange-gold Honda Prelude.

They immediately suspected

this was Leonard Lake in Paul Cosner's car.

- Investigators discovered during the week of May 5th,

Kathleen's manager receives a letter asking for her checks

to be sent to a PO box.

That PO box has a return address

of Wilseyville, California.

That's the last anybody has ever heard

from Kathleen Allen.

- There's another woman

who also appears on the VHS tape.

Leonard Lake refers to her--

calls her by the name of Brenda.

- Brenda was the name investigators recognized.

They suspected that the woman in the video

was the next-door neighbor Brenda O'Connor,

who'd mysteriously vanished.

Lonnie was most probably Lonnie Bond,

Brenda O'Connor's husband, who also disappeared,

along with their baby, Lonnie Jr.

- It's a very difficult tape to watch.

She's crying.

She's asking these guys, "What about my baby?

What have you done with my baby?"

- This tape was completely heartbreaking,

especially because investigators suspected

that Brenda's baby, Lonnie Bond Jr., was dead.

It had only been hours earlier

that they had found blood spatter

on the walls of the baby's bedroom.

- Normally, when we do investigations,

you're not getting that emotional connection

with that person...

where you can see it in their eyes and hear it in her voice.

That's something that will stick with you forever.

- As we were watching the tape,

it was clear that there was another individual

with Kathi and Brenda.

- It was Charles Ng.

- After investigators identified Charles Ng

on that tape, it confirmed for them

that he was much more than just a shoplifting suspect.

Now they were wondering

if he was aiding and abetting Leonard Lake in his fantasies.

And what was the level of Charles Ng's involvement?

Was he involved in murder?

Was he involved in Lake's sexual fantasies?

The next step was to obtain a search warrant

for Ng's apartment back in San Francisco.

So, while police put in the request,

investigators started sifting through the stack of documents

found inside the bucket.

- Further examination, they discovered

Leonard Lake's diary.

This was the key to unraveling the whole investigation.

- This is Leonard Lake's diary.

It spans a period of time from the 1st of January, 1983,

to November 9, 1984,

and it is filled with a lot of information.

- The diary had mundane aspects of it, too--

"did the dishes, cleaned the house,"

you know, "did some repairs."

- What stood out at the time to investigators

were the numerous code names and references in this diary

to something called Operation Miranda.

- We were able to determine that Operation Miranda

was basically to enslave

and kidnap a female

and hold her hostage

and do the things he wanted to do with her.

Throughout the diary,

he had referred to the book "The Collector."

- On the 19th of February, 1983,

Leonard Lake writes...

- "The Collector" is a book

about a character

who's kind of failed at his relationships,

who comes into money, and he builds a cell

where he keeps a woman

who he wants to fall in love with him,

and that woman's name is Miranda.

- The main character, Miranda, eventually dies

and is buried by her captor.

Leonard Lake had been inspired by this 20 years prior.

And he had carried this fantasy for nearly two decades.

- Operation Miranda was the realization

of a sexual fantasy that Leonard Lake had.

Leonard Lake starts describing in detail

how he's gonna build this bunker,

how he's gonna capture women and make them his slave,

make them do his bidding.

- Investigators made the connection

that the "M" in "M Ladies"

was likely code for the word "Miranda."

It was becoming clear that Brenda O'Connor

and Kathleen Allen were likely victims

to Lake's Operation Miranda.

If this was true, they were likely dead.

Once investigators determined that Leonard Lake's motive

was to enslave women for his own sexual gratification,

they wondered whether there are other potential M Ladies

amongst victims found on the property.

So they started sifting through the diary page by page

in the hopes of finding any clues.

- It was the same

with all of these pictures of young women

that were found in the bunker.

And we certainly questioned

whether or not any of those women were still alive,

were any of them...

any of them or all of them abducted

and perhaps later done away with.

- There were still things amiss here.

What did Operation Miranda have to do with missing people

like the Dubs family and Paul Cosner?

- As investigators are going through his diary,

they start to find out hints

that Leonard Lake is just not killing people.

He wants to assume their identity.

They discover that he often picks his victims

'cause they look like him.

And by assuming their identity,

he's not only killing them, he will assume their names.

He will take their checks. He will open up accounts.

He'll collect social security.

He will do everything. He will take over their lives.

He considers this a military operation.

- So investigators are starting to piece together,

"Is this what happened to Paul Cosner?

"Did Leonard Lake kill him

so he could steal his identity and his car?"

- The very last page of Leonard Lake's diary

becomes key to the investigation.

It brings everything together.

Friday, November 2, 1984,

"Met Charlie. Performed Op.

"Met resistance for the first time.

"Unsuccessful in obtaining credit cards or bank codes.

"Drove to country for completion.

Canceled Charlie's running debt to me."

That was the day that Paul Cosner disappear.

- So, apparently, there was some type of debt

that Ng owed Lake.

And he fulfilled that debt

by participating in the murder of Paul Cosner

and the theft of his car.

- I don't think a car would be worth it,

but I don't know.

- In our wildest imaginations...

We never, ever expected this.

- Later that day, with a search warrant in hand,

police descended

upon Charles Ng's San Francisco apartment.

When police entered, they quickly discovered

several important pieces of evidence.

- We found a holster that belonged to Paul Cosner.

We found a map of San Francisco

in which the Dubs residence on Yukon Street

had been circled.

- Investigators also find in the apartment

a credit card belonging to Lonnie Bond...

a photo of Brenda O'Connor,

Harvey Dubs' video equipment,

some of the equipment that was missing from his property,

videotapes...

which Harvey Dubs himself had labeled.

- Police painstakingly reviewed every tape

they found in the apartment.

Most were old films, television shows,

nothing remarkable.

- While investigators were going through the videotapes,

they rewound one to the beginning

and made an amazing discovery.

- At the head of the tape,

a horrific image flashed on screen.

- In that single frame,

you could see two bodies

in a wheelbarrow

in sleeping bags.

- Once investigators discovered the shocking image

on the videotape,

they were trying to connect these dots.

Whose bodies were inside the sleeping bags?

Could it be Paul Cosner?

Could it be the Dubs?

Could it be Lonnie Bond or Robin Scott Stapley?

It wasn't long before investigators got their answer.

They had expanded their search outside of the property,

and it was on one of these drives

that they made an unexpected discovery.

- We were driving up and took a left-hand turn

onto a road where they had reforested the trees.

And just out the corner of our eye,

we saw freshly dug dirt.

Coyotes or some sort of animal had dug into the ground,

disturbing it enough to draw our attention to it.

Also present was

the heavy smell of decaying body.

And we went over to investigate that.

That's when we noticed that the material

of, like, a green sleeping bag was in there.

And the sleeping bag is identical

to the one seen in the video at Charles Ng's apartment.

- On further inspection,

investigators discovered a body jammed headfirst into the bag.

He was handcuffed, shot in the head with a single bullet.

In the other sleeping bag,

they found another man bound and gagged

that had been shot in the head four times.

The coroner would later identify the bodies

as Lonnie Bond and his friend Robin Scott Stapley.

- At this point in the investigation,

Charles Ng was the suspect in at least nine murders.

But we didn't know at that point where he was.

- For Sharon, it was heartbreaking

to think that the person responsible

for her brother's death was on the run.

She feared that authorities would never find him.

- Nobody was gonna get away with that.

Nobody was gonna go and live the rest of their life

without a thought and take my brother.

I just wasn't gonna have that happen.

- Investigators decided to contact Leonard Lake's ex-wife

and property owner Claralyn Balazs again

to see if she had seen or heard from him.

- When we asked about Charles Ng again,

Claralyn changed her story.

She admitted that, after the incident at the lumberyard,

Ng came to her home and told her what had happened

concerning Leonard's being arrested.

She drove him to his apartment in San Francisco,

and then she later drove him to the airport.

And when we asked her where he was going,

she said that she believed he was going to Chicago

and then later into Canada.

- With a suspected serial killer on the loose,

investigators left further questions

for Claralyn to a later date.

They were more concerned about Charles Ng

getting out of the country,

which would make him much more difficult to find.

- So now the clock was ticking to find Charles Ng

before he could flee the country

and literally get away with murder.

- There's now an arrest warrant out on Charles Ng.

- Charles Ng is being hunted all over the country tonight.

- Charles Ng, now the object of a nationwide manhunt.

- Police say he is armed

and has said he will not be taken alive.

- The investigation is now focusing on Charles Ng,

who is still at large.

- Ng was arrested

at a Calgary department store yesterday

when he shot a security guard in the hand.

- I grabbed ahold of the gun, and he shot off one shot.

- The wait has been interminable.

I think he deserves the death penalty.

- It was probably the most gruesome investigation

in the history of our state.

The family members of the alleged victims

may actually see the terror their loved ones endured.

- That's the only question I asked them was,

"Was my sister murdered on tape?"

- Charles, what are you going to do to us?

Why are you doing this?

- This was really a roller coaster of a trial.

- I'm sure he did it, but they didn't prove it.

- You, Charles Ng, you deserve to die.