California court OKs death penalty in ’80s sex slave murders

By DON THOMPSON
Associated Press

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — The California Supreme Court has upheld the conviction and death penalty for one of two men implicated in 11 horrific torture-slayings in Northern California in the mid-1980s. Charles Ng, now 61, was convicted in 1999 of killing six men, three women and two baby boys in 1984 and 1985. The high court on Thursday backed his sentence for the series of kidnappings in which they engaged in bondage and sadism while holding their victims in a remote Sierra Nevada compound. His partner, Leonard Lake, killed himself with a cyanide capsule after police arrested him for shoplifting in San Francisco in 1985.