In Northern California, people were vanishing from their everyday lives. They opened the door to a customer, went to sell a car, agreed to a side job, or believed a phone call about a loved one. For nearly a year, these disappearances seemed like unrelated stories. What connected them was a minor theft from a store. This is reported by “Moskovsky Komsomolets.”
In June 1985, police officer John Callas in South San Francisco noticed a man who had taken a large bench vise from a lumberyard without paying. Standing near a car was Leonard Lake.
The man with the vise walked away, but Lake stayed. In the trunk of a gold-colored Honda, police found a backpack containing a semi-automatic pistol and a silencer. The weapon was registered to Robin Scott Stapley—a person who had already gone missing.
The vehicle’s license plate was linked to Lonnie Bond, and the car’s identification number led police to Paul Cosner. Lake identified himself as Stapley and presented a driver’s license under that name.
At the police station, he took cyanide and died in the hospital several days later. Inside the car, they discovered a bill from a utility company, which led them to a property in Wilseyville, Calaveras County.
For almost a year, these incidents didn’t form a pattern. First, a family with a child disappeared. Harvey Dubs was selling video equipment; on July 25, 1984, he told a coworker he had to meet someone who had responded to an ad.
That evening, his wife Deborah was on the phone with a friend when the call was cut short by a knock at the door. The next day, Harvey didn’t show up for work; later, a man calling himself James Bright phoned and said Harvey had left for Washington State.
Then Paul Cosner vanished while trying to sell his car. Clifford Peranto worked with Charles Ng at a moving company; in January 1985, he failed to show up for work, and his employer received a letter, supposedly from Peranto, about a new job and a move.
Jeffrey Gerald also worked with Ng. On February 24, 1985, he said he was going to help a friend move for $100 and never returned. On April 14, 1985, Kathleen Allen got a call at work, after which she told a colleague that her boyfriend Michael Carroll might have been hurt or killed, and that someone would come for her.
The investigation of the property took five weeks, involving four law enforcement agencies. Thousands of bone fragments and teeth were found on the site.
Near the house was a bunker: three rooms, two behind a hidden door, one with a bed and food, and another with a wooden door that could only be opened from the outside. Ng’s trial began in 1998; on February 24, 1999, the jury found him guilty of 11 counts of first-degree murder. In 2022, the California Supreme Court upheld the conviction and death sentence.
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