Free World's Worst Crimes: An A-Z of Evil Deeds by Charlotte Greig

the cyanide pills he had sewn in to his clothes. After revealing his true identity and that of Ng, he went into convulsions from cyanide poisoning and died four days later.
    Kilos Of Bone
    Further investigation soon led the police to the Wilseyville ranch. Ng was nowhere to be seen. However, they found Scott Stapley’s truck and Lonnie Bond’s Honda there and, behind the cabin, they found the dungeon. Officers noticed a human foot poking through the earth, and proceeded to unearth 18 kilograms of burned and smashed human bone fragments, relating to at least a dozen bodies. (A month or so later, less than a mile away, they were to find the bodies of Scott Stapley and Lonnie Bond, stuffed into sleeping bags and buried.) They also came across a hand-drawn ‘treasure’ map that led them to two five-gallon pails buried in the earth. One contained envelopes with names and victim IDs suggesting that the full body count might be as high as twenty-five. In the other pail, police found Lake’s handwritten journals for 1983 and 1984, and two videotapes that showed the horrific torture of two of their victims. If there was any doubt that the missing Ng was as heavily involved as Lake, it was dispelled by these tapes, that showed Ng right there with Lake, even telling one of the victims, Brenda O’Connor: ‘You can cry and stuff, like the rest of them, but it won’t do any good. We are pretty – ha, ha – cold-hearted, so to speak.’
    Ng, meanwhile, was on the run. He had flown to Detroit and crossed the border into Canada where he was eventually arrested. In a Canadian prison, he began an epic legal battle against extradition back to the United States on the grounds that Canada did not have the death penalty, and thus to send him back to the US would be in breach of his human rights. It was not until 1991 that he finally lost this battle and was shipped back to the States. Even that was not the end of the story. Ng stretched out pretrial proceedings for seven years at the cost to the state of $10 million. Finally, in May 1999, Ng was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. To no one’s surprise, Ng appealed against the verdict.
    In 2012, he was still on death row in San Quentin prison awaiting the outcome of his latest appeal. He had also taken up art, enrolling for a correspondence course at the University of Fraser Valley.

    Leonard Lake – custom-built a dungeon in the woods.

    Charles Ng – shoplifting was to be his downfall.

Dark, Dark Fantasies
    On the surface, Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka seemed the most unlikely of serial killers. They were a middle-class young Canadian couple, both good looking and fair-haired. However, these ostensibly model citizens conspired together in the rape, torture and murder of at least three young women, including Karla’s own sister, Tammy. At her trial, Karla blamed all the crimes on her abusive husband Paul. Subsequent evidence showed that she herself was deeply implicated. However, it is probably true to say that without Bernado, Homolka would never have killed – while Bernardo almost certainly would have done, whether or not he had had a lover to aid and abet him.
    Abusive Father
    Paul Bernardo was born in the well-to-do Toronto suburb of Scarborough in August 1964, the third child of accountant Kenneth Bernardo and home-maker Marilyn. At least that is what Paul believed when he was growing up; it was only when he was sixteen that his mother revealed him to be the offspring of an affair she had had. By this time, it was abundantly clear that all was not well in the seemingly respectable Bernardo household. Kenneth was physically abusive to his wife and sexually abusive to his daughter; meanwhile, Marilyn had become grossly overweight and remained virtually housebound.
    Nevertheless, up to that point Paul appeared to be a happy, well-adjusted child, who enjoyed his involvement in scouting activities. It was only when he became a young man that he revealed a darker side to