Charles Ng and Leonard Lake V2.Pages
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Cold Open: Big true crime tale today. A serial killer double feature. Two men who very possibly killed separately - one for SURE did - and then they joined forces to kill, in all likelihood, at least 25 people, and probably quite a few more than that in central and Northern California in the early and mid-80s. Leonard Lake was a former Marine obsessed with preparing for a nuclear apocalypse, taking nude photos of as many women as possible, having sex with as many of those women as possible, and pursuing what he called, “Operation Miranda” - a sick plan based on the novel The Collector, that involved kidnapping young women to imprison and train to be sex slaves. Lake was obsessed with building a bunker to both imprison these women and also, hopefully, survive the nuclear apocalypse he believed was about to happen any day, so that he could then continue to sexually imprison women to be sex slaves after society collapsed. Leonard Lake was a complete and total psychopath. And his murder-buddy, Charles Ng, was arguably scarier than he was. Charles Ng was an immigrant from Hong Kong who was really good at coming up with paperwork to create new identifies for himself. Good enough to join the Marines less than a year after making if to the US. Like Lake, he also would become obsessed with apocalyptic survivalism and he’d be arrested for trying to steal and smuggle military weapons, then escape and meet up with Lake who’d meet through another man interested in survivalism. And then, when Ng wasn’t behind bars, he would help Lake with operation Miranda, and, in all likelihood, also kill and rape and torture a lot of other people. These were two very, very scary dudes. Two men, trained in how to use military weapons, two weapon who had a large stockpile of these weapons who weren’t afraid to use them on anyone who got in their way. Anyone who tried to shut down Operation Miranda. And now one of these men is dead and one is behind bars in a California prison. Find out who lives and who dies, and learn about all the crazy shit that leads up their arrests in a “how is this story not more well known,” fascinating true crime edition of Timesuck! PAUSE TIMESUCK INTRO I. Welcome! A. Happy Monday: Happy Monday, Meatsacks! Hope life is well in whatever facet of the multiverse you’re living in today. I’m doing well in this one. I’m Dan Cummins, the Master Sucker, the Mush Mouth King, Lucifina’s Plaything in a ton of universes, and just a regular dude doing the best he can to understand something new every week in this one. I’m feeling better this week. I feel a little more unhinged than normal the past few weeks. Our new normal had me all shook up but I’m recalibrated. Got my head back down, focused on work and family, and plowing ahead. Hail Nimrod - give me strength! Hail Lucifina - give me fun! Praise Bojangles - give me courage! And Triple M - keep me silly you Yacht Rock demigod. B. Thank You For Reviews: Thanks for the good feed back on the new standup special Get Outta Here; Devil, out on Google Play, Amazon Prime Video, Spotify, iTunes, Pandora and more. Thanks for the ratings and reviews across various platforms. C. Additional Announcements: Very cool knowledge and truth tee in the store today at Bad Magic Merch dot com. Gotten so many compliments on the store and on the merch today. Thank you Logan and Kate at Spicy Club for running our store, and giving us the sickest shit, I think, in the whole podcast came. And now we have Timesuck phone cases! 13 different phone models to choose from. Hard cases with a rubber plate. Logan has one on his iPhone now and it looks so good. A variety of color options. D. Charity: Quick reminder that we gave $5400 to the PenFed foundation this month. Thank you, Space Lizards! PenFed was the first national Veterans Service Organization to launch its COVID-19 Relief Program for emergency financial assistance in March. The mission of the PenFed Foundation for Military Heroes is to empower military service members, veterans and their communities with the skills and resources to realize financial stability and opportunity. They help veterans buy homes, go to school, and, help them pay their bills when times get tough, like right now. Go to https://penfedfoundation.org/ to find out more. Link in the episode description. E. Segue to Topic: And now for another crazy ass tale. A tale of two men, both twisted and horrible on their own, who found each other and together, brought even more pain to a lot of innocent people who ended up in their crosshairs in Central California. True Crime Suck starts now. Yip, yip, yaw! PAUSE TIMESUCK Interlude II. Intro/Establish Premiss: We don’t often end up knowing exactly why certain people do certain terrible things. They either refuse to admit guilt or speak to their motives once they’ve been caught, or the do choose to speak to their motives but obviously lie to either make themselves look better than they are of inflict further pain on society. With one of today’s two serial killers - we know exactly why he did what he did. He put a very candid confession to his motives on tape that investigators found. A confession that lines up perfectly with what he confessed to others, and what investigators know he did. Leonard Lake didn’t care about the wants and desires of almost any other people. He didn’t care about his victims feelings or desires. He wanted a sex slave. Pure and simple. He was, arguable, a sex addict who didn’t have a problem finding women to sleep with, but he didn’t enjoy the other aspects of relationships with women. He wanted someone to have sex with him when he wanted it and how he wanted it, and then he wanted them to leave him the Hell alone. Like Bob Berdella, the Kansas City Butcher from a few weeks ago, he was heavily influenced by The Collector. He loved the book that the movie Bob watched was based on. A book about a man who kidnaps a woman and makes her live as his captive in the hopes that she will fall in love with him. Except, Lake didn’t need her to fall in love with him. He just wanted to have a woman who didn’t try to escape and understood it was in her best interest to satisfy his needs, whatever they happened to be. He also didn’t want to work. Work got in the way of his sexual desires. He’d rather kill people, steal their money and sell their belongings and do things like collect their disability checks so they could continue to provide him money after their deaths so he could not work and instead focus on Operation Miranda - kidnapping women and keeping them as sex slaves. The name Miranda coming from the Collector - that was the name of the woman protagonist captured. Lake was evil and he knew he was evil and didn’t care. He only cared about pursuing his desires. The cost to others didn’t bother him. And he enjoyed bringing Charles Ng along for the ride. As bad as Lake was, I think Ng was probably worse. Maybe Ng made Lake feel better about himself. If he was bad, he at least wasn’t as bad as his buddy, Charlie. So let’s get to know these two pieces of shit. Let’s find out what they did and glean further insight into what may have made them tick in a big old Timesuck Timeline that will cover both from the time they were born to the death of one and the incarceration of the other. PAUSE TIMESUCK TIMELINE III. TIMESUCK TIMELINE 1. October 29th, 1945: On October 29th, 1945, in San Francisco’s St Francis Hospital, Leonard Thomas Lake was born to Gloria Lake - age not listed in any sources and twenty-one year old US Navy sailor Elgin Lake. And little Leonard was NOT born to a happy couple. Elgin and Gloria argued constantly, and Elgin was an alcoholic who constantly got drunk. Still, they stay married long enough for Leonard to have a little sister, Sylvia, born in 1950, and a little brother, Donald, born in 1951. And everything was GREAT after that! When a couple with one child can’t stand each other, the best thing to do is, obviously, to have more kids. That ALWAYS fixes everything. 2. 1951: Shortly after Donald was born, Elgin bounced. He left his wife and kids and moved to Seattle to start a new life and not pay child support. So, he was an awesome dude. Leonard clearly had a great role model for a biological father and it’s crazy he turned out the way he did. Abandoned, with three small children, Gloria barely managed to scrape by for the next several months, living in some cheap public housing. Constantly worried about how she’s going to survive, she reaches out to Elgin to repair the marriage. And they agree to have her and two of the three kids come up and live with him in Seattle. Not all the kids. Just 2/3rds of them. They continue to make awesome decisions. Leonard had started kindergarten, and Gloria decided she didn’t want to interrupt the beginning of his education, which is so stupid.