Charles Ng: One Half Of An Evil Duo
Charles Ng was born on Christmas Eve 1960, in Hong Kong. As a child he was abused by his father who was a strict disciplinarian. As he teen, he also had a rough time and was described as a loner and was expelled from multiple schools. At 15, Charles was arrested for shoplifting and his father had enough and sent him to a boarding school in England.
Once there, it did not have the desired effect and Charles was quickly expelled for stealing from another student and sent back to his father in Hong Kong.
Charles eventually moved from Hong Kong to the United States where he went to university but he dropped out after one semester.
In early 1980, having nothing else to do Ng joined the US marines but served less than a year before he was dishonourably discharged for theft of weapons. He would be charged with attempted desertion and sentenced to 14 years in a military prison. However, his sentence was commuted and released just 2 years later.
In 1983 Charles Ng met a man named Leonard Lake. The two men found that they had a lot in common, most notably a wish to murder. Lake had property he owned that he had built a ‘dungeon’ on the side of. Before he met Charles, Lake was already suspected of murdering he brother Donald and his friend Charles Gunnar. Whose body was unearthed at the property in 1998.
Over the next year, Lake and Ng went on a rampage of the murder, rape and torture of many men, women and children. They would kill the men and infants instantly, but kept the women in the dungeon to rape and torture. They would murder some of the women, but others they would leave to die from their torture injuries.
In July of 1994 two men were shot by an Asian man who broke into their flat and shot them. One of the men died in the attack but the other didn’t and identified Ng as his attacker. On June the 2nd 1985, Ng had stolen a vice from a lumber store and the police were called. When the police arrived, Ng threw the vice into the boot of his car and run away. Lake was there as well and he was arrested as he looked nothing like his driving licence.
The police got a warrant to search Lake’s property and found human remains and the dungeon. Once in a cell Leonard Lake committed suicide before he could go to trial. Meanwhile, Ng had fled to Canada.
On July the 6th 1985, Ng was arrested for shoplifting again and resisting arrest in Canada. Ng aimed a gun at the two arresting officers and shot one in the hand. Eventually the officers overpowered Ng and took him into custody. Ng was charged and convicted of shoplifting, assault and possession of a concealed gun and he received 4 years in a Canadian prison.
During the search of Lake’s property they found evidence that connected Ng to the crimes and after a very long process of getting him extradited back to the US, Ng was handed over. In 1998, Ng stood trial on 12 counts of murder and was convicted on February the 11th 1999, of 11 murders (6 men, 3 women and 2 little boys). Charles Ng received the death sentence and is currently awaiting execution on death row in San Quentin Prison. His trial would go down in history as the most expensive trial ever in California.