[citation needed] Ng moved to the United States on a student visa in 1978 and studied biology at the College of Notre Dame in Belmont, California.

Ng joined the Marines in October 1979 with the help, he claimed, of a recruiting sergeant and false documents attesting to his birthplace as Bloomington, Indiana.

Facing court-martial, Ng escaped custody in 1980 and made his way back to northern California, where he met Leonard Lake.

[7] In 1982, federal authorities raided the mobile home Ng and Lake shared in Ukiah, seizing a large stash of illegal weapons and explosives.

Lake was released on bond, but he jumped bail and hid at a remote cabin owned by his wife, Claralyn Balazs, in Wilseyville, a community in Calaveras County located in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada.

Under the terms of this plea deal, he was paroled and dishonorably discharged in 1984 after serving eighteen months in the military stockade at the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

Before Ng's arrival, Lake is believed to have already murdered his brother Donald, whom he lured to the cabin and shot in his sleep in 1983, and his friend and best man Charles Gunnar.

[8]: 92 [9] In July 1984, an Asian American man broke into and robbed the apartment of Don Giulietti, a San Francisco disc jockey, and his roommate, Richard Carrazza, shooting both men in the process.

The Honda was registered to Paul Cosner, who disappeared from San Francisco on November 2, 1984, after leaving his apartment to show the car to someone interested in purchasing it.

On June 4, San Francisco Police detectives and Calaveras County Sheriffs investigators searched the Wilseyville cabin with Balazs's permission.

In one of the bedrooms, they discovered video equipment belonging to Harvey Dubs, who had vanished from his San Francisco apartment along with his wife Deborah, and their infant son, Sean, in July 1984.

In his teenage years, Lake had read a 1963 John Fowles novel called The Collector, which tells the story of a man who captures a woman (named Miranda) and keeps her as a slave in the hopes she would eventually fall in love with him.

[citation needed] In a makeshift burial site nearby, police unearthed roughly 45 pounds of burned and crushed human bone fragments, corresponding to a minimum of 11 bodies.

On one of the tapes, labeled "M-Ladies", Charles Ng is seen telling victim Brenda O'Connor, as he cuts her shirt off with a knife, "You can cry and stuff, like the rest of them, but it won't do any good.

In another part of the tape, Kathy Allen is seen seated in a chair, with Leonard Lake warning her, "If you don't go along with us, we'll probably take you into the bed, tie you down, rape you, shoot you, and bury you."

He eventually settled in Calgary, Alberta, where he lived undetected in a lean-to in Fish Creek Provincial Park until he was arrested by the Calgary Police Service on July 6, 1985, after shooting security guard Sean Doyle in the hand while resisting arrest for stealing a can of salmon from the Hudson's Bay Department Store.

[2][10] He was charged, and, in December 1985, convicted of shoplifting, assault with a weapon, and possession of a concealed firearm, and was sentenced to four and a half years in prison.

[11] Ng fought a protracted legal battle against extradition on the grounds that Canada, which did not have the death penalty for most offenses, would be violating the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms by permitting him to stand trial in California for capital murder.

He sued the state over his temporary detainment at Folsom Prison, where he was caught hiding maps, fake IDs, and other escape paraphernalia, and filed challenges against four of the judges assigned to his case.

He lodged a long series of complaints regarding the strength of his eyeglasses, the temperature of his food, and his right to practice origami in his jail cell.

[13] After claiming that he had lost trust and confidence in all of his lawyers, he was allowed to represent himself, which delayed the trial another year while he researched applicable laws.

[7] He further maintained that he was dependent upon Lake for direction, that the abuse he suffered at the hands of his father was a mitigating factor, and that his good behavior behind bars showed that he should be imprisoned for life rather than executed.

Clinical psychologist Abraham Nievod agreed with the diagnosis of dependent personality disorder and opined that Ng's behavior in the tapes indicated that he was attempting to "mirror" and please Lake.