Terror in East Lansing: The Tale of MSU Serial Killer Donald Miller
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It was during the years that Lake lived on the "back-to-the-land hippie settlement," spanning some 5,600 acres, that a "survivalist paranoia" took shape.4 The notion that a nuclear war worldwide was imminent captured his imagination, and he became obsessed with guns as a consequence, building a bunker and stockpiling it with weapons to defend against such an attack.
In April 1982, Lake was arrested on the ranch for firearms violations by federal authorities. Jumping bail, he started using the pseudonym Charles Gunnar, the stolen identity of a man he had murdered. Gunnar, thirty-six, and an ex-postal worker, had been Lake's best man at his wedding.
Lake and his wife fled to a remote cabin belonging to Balazs in Wilseyville, an unincorporated area in the Sierra Nevada foothills in Calaveras County, California. Nearby, Lake built a bunker where he amassed illegal weapons and video equipment that he stole. The bunker also had a hidden room that would become a place of sexual slavery, torture, and murder.
Lake's marriage to Cricket proved to be short-lived as the sexual perversions and criminality, combined with his delusional behavior, became more than she could handle.
It has been reported that in 1981, after placing an advertisement in a survivalist magazine, Lake met his future partner in sexual criminality and homicide, Charles Ng. The two former U.S. Marines found other common ground with their antisocial and sadistic personalities and grew close. Not long after, Lake invited Ng to move to the ranch, which he readily accepted, as a prelude to the two men living their lives as sexually-motivated serial killers.
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NOTES
1. R. Barri Flowers and H. Loraine Flowers, Murders in the United States: Crimes, Killers and Victims of the Twentieth Century (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004), p. 174.
2. Charlotte Greig, Evil Serial Killers: In the Minds of Monsters (New York: Barnes & Noble, 2005), p. 9.
3. "Leonard Lake and Charles Ng," Criminal Minds, http://criminalminds.wikia.com/wiki/Leonard_Lake_and_Charles_Ng.
4. Cited in Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, "Leonard Lake," http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Lake.
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Read the entire riveting story, The Sex Slave Murders 3, available in eBook and audio.
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The following are bonus excerpts from the bestselling true crime short
THE AMITYVILLE MASSACRE
The DeFeo Family's Nightmare
By R. Barri Flowers
In the wee hours of Wednesday morning on November 13, 1974, shots rang out in the upscale home at 112 Ocean Avenue in Amityville, New York, a village within the town of Babylon. The house belonged to forty-three-year-old Ronald DeFeo, Sr. and his forty-two-year-old wife, Louise, who lived there with their five children, ranging in age from nine to twenty-three. The DeFeos and four of their children—Dawn, eighteen years old; Allison, age thirteen; Marc, age twelve; and John, nine years old—were all shot to death.1 The surviving member of the family, Ronald "Butch" DeFeo, Jr., twenty-three, was suspected of being the shooter. The police investigated the horrible crime, before it went to court, with solid evidence pointing toward the killer. The case of the Amityville massacre has left many wondering how it happened, and if it could happen again. The chilling scenario, motive, mental state of the accused, the trial, and the shocking supernatural implications of the mass murder of the DeFeo family in Amityville are recounted in this true crime short.
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On September 26, 1951, Ronald "Butch" DeFeo, Jr. was born in Brooklyn, New York at Adelphi Hospital to parents Ronald DeFeo, Sr. and Louise DeFeo. He was the first of four children for the couple. DeFeo, Sr. made a good living for the family as a car salesman for a Buick dealership owned by his father-in-law in Brooklyn. Apart from providing the comforts of a home, where the family had lived since 1965, Ronald DeFeo was described as a "domineering authority figure," who "engaged in hot-tempered fights with his wife and children."2
Ronald DeFeo, Jr. was often most victimized by the parental abuse, which was compounded by the overweight, glum youth being frequently taunted by classmates. When he grew older, DeFeo got bigger and stronger and fought back when his father victimized him. According to one authority, "Shouting matches often degenerated into boxing matches, as father and son came to blows with little provocation."3 Others also became the target of Butch DeFeo's belligerent behavior.
Against his wishes, DeFeo's worried parents forced him to get psychiatric care. Once the therapy ended with no sign of his violent episodes going away, Ronald and Louise DeFeo tried to use money and gifts to calm their troubled son. This included a speedboat that cost $14,000.
Unfortunately, things continued to go downhill for Butch DeFeo, as by the time he reached seventeen years of age, he was using heroin and LSD and engaging in petty theft. He got kicked out of school because of violent conduct.
These issues notwithstanding, the DeFeos sought to pacify their oldest child any way they could. When he was eighteen, Butch was given a job at the family Buick dealership, along with a new car and an allowance weekly with no strings attached. DeFeo took advantage of this generosity by delving further into substance abuse with alcohol and drugs.
He also became interested in firearms during this time, taking it to extremes by once using a 12-gauge shotgun on his father while the elder DeFeo was involved in a domestic altercation with his wife. Though Butch DeFeo attempted to fire the gun at point blank range, it malfunctioned, likely saving his father's life.4
In late October 1974, DeFeo's unstable character became even more ominous when he attempted to embezzle over $20,000 belonging to the car dealership that he was supposed to deposit in the bank. He and a friend made plans to divide the money after pretending a robbery had taken place. But a police investigation pointed the finger directly at Butch DeFeo as the culprit for the missing funds, causing him to react with fury.
When Ronald DeFeo, Sr. started to believe his son was responsible for the crime and wondered aloud about his stonewalling the authorities, Butch DeFeo threatened his life.
It was a prelude to the family massacre that was to come.
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NOTES
1. R. Barri Flowers and H. Loraine Flowers, Murders in the United States: Crimes, Killers and Victims of the Twentieth Century (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004), p. 75.
2. "Ronald DeFeo Biography," Bio (September 17, 2014), http://www.biography.com/people/ronald-defeo-580972#synopsis.
3. Douglas B. Lynott, "The Real Life Amityville Horror," Crime Library: Criminal Minds & Methods, http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/family/amityville/2.html.
4. "Ronald DeFeo Biography."
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Read the entire riveting tale, The Amityville Massacre, available in eBook and audio.
And read more shocking true crime tales by R. Barri Flowers, including the short story collections: Murder Chronicles, Murders in the United States, and Serial Killer Couples. The author’s titles are available in eBook, print, and audio.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
R. Barri Flowers is an award-winning criminologist and bestselling author of more than seventy books and numerous articles and short stories. He has also edited two American Crime Writers League mystery short story anthologies.
His true crime books include Murder Chronicles, Masters of True Crime, Serial Killer Couples, The Sex Slave Murders 1, 2 & 3, and Murders in the United States.
His criminology titles include College Crime, Male Crime and Deviance, Sex Crimes, Prostitution in the Digital Age, and The Dynamics of Murder.
The author has appeared on the Biography Channel's Crime Stories, Investigation Discovery's Wicked Attraction, and Oxygen’s Killer Couples, and has been interviewed by ABC News. Flowers is the recipient of the prestigious Wall of Fame Award from Michigan State University's renowned School of Criminal Justice.
Follow the author on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Goodreads, LibraryThing, Wikipedia, and www.rbarriflowers.com.
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