Calaveras County crypt opened to help identify serial killer victims with DNA testing
On a mountainside just outside of Wilseyville in eastern Calaveras County, Leonard Lake and his accomplice Charles Ng murdered victims from as far away as the Bay Area and neighbors just next door.
“I was about 12 years old when this happened. I’ve heard many stories living in this community. This obviously touched a lot of members of our community,” said Lt. Greg Stark with the Calaveras County Sheriff’s Office of the 1980s serial killings.
A KCRA 3 crew was the first media escorted onto the site by the then sheriff. There was a cinder block building that was described as a torture chamber, and all around the property, investigators sifted shallow graves for bones — some fairly large and many just fragments.
This past weekend, investigators reopened the case by taking the top off of a crypt in a San Andreas cemetery and removing unidentified remains for advanced DNA identification. The hope is to give families of victims some resolution.
“We came across the Ng case and due to the increase in technology for DNA, we thought we would give it a shot to see if we could maybe identify some of the victims that were in the crypt,” Stark said.
Some of the pounds of bones found belong to victim Paul Costner, according to his sister.
“His glasses were found up there, his ID and some of his belongings. There's no question they were responsible for Paul being killed,” Sharon Sellitto said.
Lake was arrested in the Bay Area on a number of charges but took a poison capsule before he could be charged. Ng was found guilty of 11 murders and is on death row at San Quentin.
For Sellitto, justice for her brother has been a long time coming.
"I think it would finally put an end to this never-ending nightmare,” she said.
The exact number of victims may never be known. Investigators will only say between 11 and 25. But for the families who’ve spent decades waiting, the remains of loved ones may not have to be returned to an anonymous crypt that reads: "Though taken darkness you will forever live in light."