Couples Who Kill (10 page)

Meanwhile Diane and David kept going to church and praying for forgiveness. But their religion didn’t prick their consciences sufficiently for them to tell police that they’d jailed the wrong boy.

The boy spent the next three weeks in jail, being held in squalid conditions. But at the end of the third week he was
polygraphed, passed with flying colours and was released.

By now the strain of being murderers was beginning to tell on Diane and David, who continued to hit each other. He told his friends not to mention other girls in her presence. They both applied for afterschool jobs but when only he was accepted she persuaded him not to take up the post.

Diane found it impossible to keep the murder secret and told one of her schoolfriends, but the teenager kept her counsel. It’s also rumoured that she told several of her relatives.

A few months later the star-crossed lovers went off to their respective colleges, she to the Naval Academy and he to the United States Air Force Academy. Interviewed about her success, she said that she attributed much of it to David and added ‘I owe so much to God.’

But on a more earthly plane, she had crying jags whenever David didn’t answer her emails. She found the physical arduousness of her new course difficult and soon forged an increasingly strong friendship with another man. She swore him to secrecy then told him that her fiancé David had killed a girl. Unsure whether or not to believe her, he didn’t pass her confession on to the authorities.

Diane now told David about her new friend and he tried to get the young man charged with sexual harassment. In turn, David invented a girl at the airforce base who he claimed fancied him. When she heard about this supposed new threat, Diane sent back an email referring obliquely to
Adrianne’s murder, reminding him of ‘the secret they shared.’

When David didn’t hear from Diane for a few hours he’d begin to pace the room. Eventually his weary room-mate asked for a transfer. Both Diane’s room-mates also found her impossible to live with as she talked about David constantly and kept hinting that he’d killed a girl. Unsurprisingly, she went through several changes of room-mates in a matter of months.

But Diane continued to talk, eventually telling her third set of room-mates that ‘someone is dead because of me.’ The next day the worried teenagers went to the chaplain and the police were called in.

Incredibly Diane was given a plane ticket home – but she swapped it for one which took her to the airforce base where David was stationed. The young couple then spent three days together, days in which it seems they rehearsed their stories which would then sound almost identical. She then flew back to her parents’ house but they’d been evicted so she moved in with them at her grandfather’s home.

David and Diane were arrested separately on 6th September 1996, nine months after battering and shooting Adrianne. Diane now retracted her story, claiming that she’d made it up to impress her room-mates – but she had a motive of sorts and so did her boyfriend David Graham.

He initially denied the murder and said that he’d never heard of Adrianne Jones. Only after he took a polygraph and failed spectacularly did he admit to killing her because ‘no one could stand between me and Diane.’ Ironically, no
one
was
standing between him and Diane. Both were their own worst enemies. Their pathological jealousy had caused them to invent an enemy and brutally slaughter her.

Diane also admitted to the crime, saying that she and David were jointly responsible. She showed no remorse for the pointless killing, and spent her nineteenth birthday in the county jail.

Inevitably the couple’s story was turned into an entertaining film,
Swearing Allegiance
. But the film gave the impression that Diane’s motive for wanting Adrianne dead was all about restoring the purity of Diane and David’s love. Though that was certainly a motive, the fear of others finding out was probably far stronger. Diane had seen her mother shamed through her father’s infidelity and she’d told everyone at school how perfect she and David were, so she risked a loss of face if he publicly admitted being attracted to Adrianne.

Both teenagers shared a fear of splitting up. Their families were disintegrating and Graham had lost the respect of his peers and superiors at the Cadet Air Patrol because he spent so much time with Diane Zamora. They literally only had each other. The right thing to do would have been to forge new friendships and build themselves a new peer group – but they opted not to do the right thing.

As usual, the media portrayed them as the ‘perfect couple’ and said that the murder was completely out of character. But the reality is that both teenagers were deeply troubled before they met and their relationship was increasingly violent. They simply looked for a scapegoat and took their confused rage out on her.

Hours after being found guilty, Diane Zamora allegedly slashed her arm with a razor in prison. She told a psychologist that it wasn’t an attempt to take her own life, but the prison played safe and placed her on suicide watch for twenty-four hours.

In her cell she wrote David endless letters, read her Bible and sang hymns. She wrote that ‘God has forgiven us’ and that ‘everything that happens, happens for a reason.’ She seemed incapable of recognising that the murder had happened because she battered Adrianne’s skull in and David shot her dead.

Meanwhile David’s lawyers said that he’d only confessed after thirty hours of interrogation and that the confession might be unsafe. When a reporter asked him if he had a message for Diane he said that he loved her and he made it clear to his legal team that he still expected to marry her.

David also wrote to a friend quoting Biblical tenets and adding ‘God forgives people for anything.’ He told his friend that he was optimistic about the trial and asked him to hold onto his gear.

But David was unduly optimistic – for in February 1998 Diane Zamora blamed David Graham at her trial, saying that he had manipulated her into helping kidnap Adrianne. The jury found her guilty and she was given life imprisonment. She now works as a clerk in the prison warehouse and is regularly visited by her family.

Five months later David Graham went on trial. It then transpired that he hadn’t had sex with Adrianne Jones after the track meet as he’d claimed: indeed, another youth had
given her a lift home from that particular event. David and Adrianne knew each other from their cross country runs but they hadn’t had the full sex that he’d told Diane had taken place.

David’s separated parents were very supportive of him and jointly paid for his defence. Diane briefly took the stand at his trial but only to say that she was taking the Fifth Amendment and would not testify. He was subsequently sentenced to life. He has since become
co-editor
of a prison newspaper, ironic as his initial statement about loving Diane was described by reporters as ‘pure Mills and Boon.’

Under Texas law both killers will serve forty years before they can be considered for parole. Unless this is changed by a later appeal they will both be over sixty when they get out.

Diane had lost David through testifying against him so the love affair that she’d sworn would last ‘forever’ was over. In early 2003 she petitioned to marry a prisoner called Steve Mora. The couple had become close through exchanging letters but had never met. Steve had served previous sentences for auto theft and burglary and was on the last few months of a four year stretch for threatening someone involved in one of his previous crimes.

On 17th June 2003 the marriage took place in a
double-proxy
ceremony, with Diane’s mother standing in for Diane and a male friend standing in for Steve Mora. A judge in San Antonio performed the ceremony. Meanwhile the happy couple remained in their respective jails, Steve at Texas’s Ramsey Unit and Diane at the Mountain View
Unit of the maximum security Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

It’s unlikely that the couple will live happily ever after as Steve was due for release within months of the marriage whereas Diane won’t be free until 2038. A criminal justice professor commented that ‘They’re kind of naïve about realities. That’s really not surprising. If they were realistic, they probably wouldn’t be where they are.’

Male-male couples who kill tend to be more sadistic than male-female or female-female partnerships. But Lake & Ng plumbed new depths of depravity in killing babies as well as adults, and by the end of their lethal partnership at least sixteen people had died appalling deaths. Leonard Lake managed to convince himself that he was kidnapping women whom he could breed with and create a post-Holocaust society, but his true motivation was a combination of lust and rage.

Leonard was born on 29th October 1945 to Gloria and Elgin Lake. His father was in the Navy and the family resided in San Francisco. Unfortunately it was a poor marriage during which Elgin Lake anaesthetised himself with drink. Five years after Leonard the Lakes had a daughter and a year after that they had another son.

But the family remained in discord and shortly after the birth of this third child, Elgin left the marriage and Gloria understandably found it difficult to cope with three young children. The fatherless family now moved to the projects and were constantly hungry, frightened and cold. Leonard would later recall that he had no toys and would fantasise that he’d been sent to an orphanage instead.

When Leonard was six, his mother decided to follow her ex-husband to Seattle and ask for a second chance. Leonard apparently said that he didn’t want to go, and as he was settled at nursery school she decided to leave him
with his grandparents. But at the railway station he changed his mind and clung hysterically to her skirt. She had only booked places for her other children so had to leave him – and he would never forgive her for this.

Yet his life improved dramatically when he moved in with his grandparents, for he was no longer hungry, had pocket money and his own room. He was also allowed to breed pet mice.

Within a year his mother, brother and sister returned to San Francisco but Leonard remained with his grandparents. He was polite to his mother but no longer close to her. When he was eleven she remarried and asked him to live with her, but he said no, though he was civil to the two daughters she subsequently had.

Leonard didn’t just have misgivings about his mother but also about his younger brother Donald who had been hit by a train and suffered brain damage. The older boy despised his younger sibling who he saw as a burden on their mother and on the state. He would retain this viewpoint throughout his life, being openly contemptuous of anyone who needed welfare aid.

In his teens, the boy who wanted revenge on his mother became erotically charged by John Fowles’ classic book
The Collector
. The novel explores the life of a dull man who kidnaps a girl for sexual pleasure. Fantasies in which young women were debased and kept captive began to dominate his masturbatory dreams. He hadn’t been able to control the first woman in his life, but could endlessly control his fantasy lovers. They always did exactly what he said.

Bored with living at his grandparents and already possessed of a prodigious sexual appetite, he joined the US
Marine Corps on 27th January 1964. He was eighteen years old, six-foot tall and fighting fit, but his mental health was somewhat less robust than his physical health, something which became apparent as his love life and military life progressed …

Leonard became fascinated with guns whilst in the marines, a fascination which would remain with him. For the next six years he learned field survival techniques and aircraft radar technology. He travelled throughout the states and to Asia with the marines and won four medals – two for good conduct, the others for exemplary service whilst on a tour of duty in Vietnam.

When he was twenty-four he married a young woman, Karen, in California whilst home on leave, and almost immediately began to dominate her. He also joked constantly in front of his friends about selling her to them.

The following year he returned to Vietnam but soon began to crack up, becoming paranoid that his wife was being unfaithful. He also talked of having killed numerous Vietnamese, but as a radar technician he hadn’t seen active service. Eventually he asked to speak to a psychiatrist who thought that he was on the verge of schizophrenia. Sent home after only a month of this second tour of duty, he continued to act strangely and was discharged on mental health grounds in January 1971.

Often out of work or doing menial driving jobs, Leonard Lake now had time on his hands and became increasingly obsessed with sex, and for him that meant control-based activities. He persuaded Karen Lake to take a job in a topless bar and to meet with other couples to discuss
partner swapping. He also met with other women and took nude photos of them. He started to beat his wife – and when she left him he continued to stalk her. From Leonard Lake’s point of view, he had now been deserted by the first two women in his life.

Later that same year he began a love affair with a young woman he met through a contact ad. Again, he followed the same pattern that he had with his spouse, being incredibly sweet and attentive throughout the early dates and lovemaking. Only when his new girlfriend was deeply in love with him did he ask her to become a prostitute and start taking numerous nude photographs of her in bondage sex. He dropped the mister nice guy act and began to dominate every facet of her daily life, expecting her to account for all of her time and give him all of her money. When this verbal abuse turned to violence she, too, left.

Lake moved to a rural retreat 130 miles from San Francisco known as The Ranch. His new house was surrounded by miles of woodland: this inspired his already active survivalist fantasies. But, though he enjoyed his own company, he also wanted sexual partners and started relationships with various local woman. He was still an attractive man and an interesting one, but in time each of these girlfriends left him due to his controlling behaviour and overwhelming misogyny. He had so little sense of appropriate boundaries that he suggested a friend’s
ten-year
-old daughter pose nude for him – and he dated a fifteen-year-old until her parents sent her away to boarding school.

Perhaps fuelled by these numerous failed relationships,
the thirty-five-year-old made a videotape of his feelings in October 1980, stating ‘what I want is an off-the-shelf sex partner… And when I’m tired or satiated or bored or not interested I simply want to put her away.’ He was, in short, describing prostitution and many men in his position would simply have paid for the occasional callgirl. But Lake wanted to enjoy ‘girls as young as twelve’ and women who would literally be enslaved to him, doing all of his household chores as well as attending to his sexual desires. He’d decided to satisfy these requirements by kidnapping a young woman and training her ‘by a combination of painful punishments…and minor rewards’ to do exactly as he asked.

During these fantasy-based years, Leonard remained obsessed with guns and it’s likely that he was responsible for many local break-ins where weapons and dynamite were stolen. In his fantasies he was the survivor of a holocaust – but in actuality he only held down menial jobs.

Blocking out reality, he turned more and more to sexual fantasies in which he was king, and when he met Claralyn Balaz, invariably known by her nickname of Cricket, he was able to make this fantasy a reality for a while. Cricket, a teacher’s assistant, shared his love of domination and submission and the two enjoyed an orgasmic sadomasochistic relationship. Cricket was also bisexual so Lake got to photograph her and him with other women in bed. She enjoyed being whipped and he enjoyed doing the whipping so it was the perfect sexual relationship.

In other areas, though, the two weren’t an exact match as Lake was much brighter and better travelled. Cricket was also very much her own person so couldn’t be psychologically dominated – yet psychological domination was crucial to Leonard Lake.

Nevertheless, she soon joined him at The Ranch and they continued to live together, albeit arguing frequently, until he was caught stealing from his employer. The pair of them sold up and fled the area, relocating to a tiny hamlet in California, where Lake became a volunteer fireman.

In September 1981 Leonard married Cricket, the marriage witnessed by a female friend whom they’d both had sex with. Shortly afterwards the friend, who had been living with them, moved out, unable to endure the couple’s constant immature bickering. In the same time period, November 1981, Leonard was contacted by one of his survivalist acquaintances. The acquaintance told him about a young man who was on the run from the marines. If they caught the twenty-year-old youth he’d be facing a court martial so he needed someplace reclusive to stay.

Lake agreed that the marine could live with himself and Cricket and do all of their chores in return for bed and board. He welcomed the slender, five foot seven Oriental. Their new lodger was surprisingly strong, keen to help out, and interested in survivalism. His name was Charles Ng.

Charles was born on 24th December 1960 to Oi Ping and Kenneth Ng in Hong Kong. (The surname is pronounced Ing.) The couple already had two daughters, Alice and Betty. Kenneth’s two-bedroomed house accommodated his immediate family plus both grandmothers and two aunts.

Kenneth Ng was a camera salesman who worked long hours to provide for his children. He fed them well and
took them on social outings. Unfortunately he also demanded that they excel academically. He punished all three when they failed to meet his lofty expectations but Charles was the least interested in his schoolwork so his father beat him frequently with a stick and a cane. The child tried to run away to escape the torment, but his father merely tied him up and continued the abuse. Even his wife tried to intervene, but Kenneth Ng was determined to beat intelligence and conformity into his only son. He was a Christian who had managed to persuade a Catholic school to take his children so he felt especially vulnerable when Charles got low grades, fearing he might be expelled.

Failed by the humans in his life, Charles turned to animals for comfort. But his relatives eventually killed his pet chicken and ate it for dinner. They also gave away his pet turtle, complaining that it smelled. He had doted on both creatures and was desolate to lose their love.

The sensitive little boy was desperate for some kind of release. He found this briefly at age ten by stealing explosive chemicals from the school chemistry lab and setting it on fire. As a result, he was sent to a behavioural psychologist. The psychologist noted that the boy was an arsonist and school bully. He was also an embryonic sex offender, having written obscene letters to one of his female teachers. The hurt that he had internalised throughout his junior years was beginning to turn outwards, seeking revenge. In real life Charles had absolutely no power – he wasn’t even allowed to choose his preferred style of haircut. But in his fantasies he could rule supreme.

Charles Ng began to draw pictures of women being
ill-treated 
and he hit and mocked other children, copying the abuses inflicted on him at home.

At age fifteen, he was expelled for stealing from another pupil and his parents briefly sent him to school in England. There he resided with an uncle. But (according to Charles’s mother) the man didn’t feed the boy well, his room was cold and he was visibly afraid. Noticing all of this on a visit, his mother took him back to Hong Kong. From there, the family sent him to San Francisco to live with another relative and complete his schooling. Bored and unable to make friends with the other students, he quit college at eighteen.

The increasingly immoral teenager was driving erratically one day when he hit a telephone pole. Rather than report the incident, he fled from the scene and was subsequently arrested. But the charges were dropped when he joined the Marines on 12th October 1979.

Charles remained a solitary figure who was sometimes picked on by the marine corps racists, but he made some acquaintances who shared his love of martial arts and weaponry. Unfortunately after two years service, he stole a cache of weapons worth eleven thousand dollars, was caught and faced a court martial. He was determined to escape but was kept under heavy guard.

Ng now deliberately injured his leg in order to get moved to the hospital. When his guard fell asleep, Ng left the building. Early the following morning he made his way to Leonard Lake’s remote home.

He now assumed the name of Charlie Lee, probably after Bruce Lee, his childhood hero. (One of the most prolific teenage killers profiled in
Children Who Kill
changed his name to Bruce Lee as he was equally in awe of
the martial-arts-trained actor and his films.)

For the next few weeks Lake and Ng talked about survivalist methods and about their shared love of weapons. Charles did most of the cooking and they shot rabbits for the pot. He saw Lake as a father figure and was impressed by his invented tales about active service in Vietnam, but Charles continued to steal for kicks, getting caught whilst taking a bed sheet from a department store. Cricket, whom he genuinely seemed to care about, bailed him out.

After six months of living with Leonard and Cricket, Charles Ng was re-arrested for his military crime. The police also arrested Leonard Lake because of his illegal store of weapons. Out on bail, Lake fled the area before his case could go to court. He now moved from one cheap motel room to another, funding himself through petty theft and by selling recreational drugs, primarily marijuana. But Cricket was unwilling to live as a fugitive so moved back to her parents’ house. She would continue to sleep with her husband – but, as usual, he also slept with other women. The marriage quickly disintegrated and Cricket asked for a divorce, which was finalised in November 1982.

Distraught at the loss of his friend and his wife, Leonard Lake may have looked for an easy target to take his anger out on. He invited his brother Donald, whom he’d always hated and frequently talked of killing, to stay. He shot the brain-damaged man – who he believed was his mother’s
favourite – through the head whilst he was asleep, then used his driving licence and other personal papers as fake ID.