CALGARY, Alberta -- Mass murder suspect Charles Ng, wanted in the grisly sex-torture slayings of up to 25 people in northern California, was captured Saturday after pulling a gun and firing on department store security guards, police said.
The 23-year-old fugitive opened fire with a .22-caliber handgun, wounding one of the guards who had stopped him on suspicion of shoplifting, Calgary police inspector Roy Anderson said.
Anderson said a bullet hit security guard John Doyle in the left hand, but Doyle and another guard grabbed Ng and held him until Calgary police officers arrived to take him into custody. Doyle, 46, was treated at a hospital and then released.
Ng -- his name is pronounced 'ing' -- had been on the run from American authorities for more than a month. The capture of Ng, whom the guards reportedly stopped for trying to steal a bag of food and a soft drink, ended an international manhunt.
In San Francisco, FBI spokesman Robert Gast II said U.S. officials had begun extradition proceedings for the Hong Kong-born Ng, an ex-Marine whom Canadian police charged with attempted murder in the shooting of the security guard.
He said FBI agents, San Francisco police and sheriff's officers from California's Calaveras County planned to fly to Calgary to pick up the suspect.
Ng's capture around noon (2 p.m. EDT) in the Hudson's Bay Co. department store in Calgary, a city of some 600,000 people about 150 miles north of the U.S. border, capped a monthlong search for the second of two suspects in a series of gruesome slayings in northern California.
Ng and his friend Leonard Lake, an ex-Marine and 'survivalist' who killed himself, were suspected of killing up to 25 people at a remote mountain hideaway near Wilseyville, Calif., 125 miles northeast of San Francisco.
Lake, 39, committed suicide by swallowing a cyanide pill when he was arrested after a shoplifting incident June 2 in the city of South San Francisco. Ng disappeared at the same time, vowing he would never be caught alive.
About 40 pounds of fragmented human bones -- none more than 3 inches long -- were dug up from the grounds of the mountain cabin where Lake lived.
Sheriff's deputies found a concrete bunker containing a 'cell' that they charge was used for grisly sex-torture sessions. Videotapes of naked and partially dressed women also were discovered on the property.
Ng was wanted on a kidnapping warrant and the FBI had alerted authorities in the United States, Canada and Asia to be on the lookout for him.
Ng, a martial arts expert, was charged with three counts of kidnapping and false imprisonment after authorities discovered the bodies of three people near Lake's cabin in Wilseyville.
Six more bodies have been found at the hideout in addition to the bone fragments, police said.
Lake's suicide led police to the Wilseyville property, and an investigation turned up the names of 25 missing people who were believed to have some link with Lake or Ng. Most of those people, if not all, are thought to have been murdered.
The car Lake and Ng were using when Lake was arrested was traced to a San Francisco man, Paul Cosner, who vanished last November.
Searching the Wilseyville hideaway, officials found videotape equipment belonging to Harvey Dubs, a San Francisco man who disappeared with his wife and young son in July 1984.
Police said some of the videotapes they confiscated showed Lake and Ng forcing women to perform sexual acts. Authorities also discovered an incriminating 250-page diary kept by Lake.
On June 4, maggots swarming near the Wilseyville cabin prompted investigators to start digging on the property. Two days later, they found the remains of three people -- two adults and a child.
They also discovered a cell -- 3-feet-wide, 7-feet-long and 6-feet-high -- in a cinderblock shed on the property, equipped with leg and arm restraints and a one-way window. On a wall were 21 pictures of nude or scantily clad women.
Also found were 18 photo albums of women in various stages of undress and an electric saw with bloodstains, officials said.
Ng, the son of a wealthy Hong Kong businessman, believed he was a reincarnated 'Ninja warrior,' the black-garbed assassins who roamed medieval Japan, according to Honolulu attorney Earle Partington.
'Ng seemed to live in a fantasy world where he thought he was a Ninja,' said Partington, who represented one of three Marines charged with helping Ng in the October 1981 theft of weapons from a Marine base in Hawaii.
Ng was convicted of stealing $11,500 in weapons, including three grenade launchers, two assault rifles, seven pistols and a night-vision rifle scope from the Kaneohe Marine Corps Air Station armory. The weapons were recovered.
Ng testified as a prosecution witness against his accomplices, then escaped the Marine stockade and fled to California, where he joined Lake, an ex-Marine whom he apparently met through a classified ad in a 'survivalist' magazine.
They lived on a ranch in the California town of Philo, about 100 miles north of San Francisco, until the FBI tracked down Ng in April 1982 and sent a helicopter-borne SWAT team to arrest him.
Ng was tried on the weapons theft charges and imprisoned at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. He was released in June 1984, but the Marine Corps failed to notify the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service that Ng should be deported.
In October 1984, Ng was arrested for shoplifting in Daly City, Calif., but was bailed out by Lake's ex-wife and was believed to have teamed up with Lake again soon after that.
'Without Ng,'
They also discovered a cell -- 3-feet-wide, 7-feet-long and 6-feet-high -- in a cinderblock shed on the property, equipped with leg and arm restraints and a one-way window. On a wall were 21 pictures of nude or scantily clad women.
Also found were 18 photo albums of women in various stages of undress and an electric saw with bloodstains, officials said.
Ng, the son of a wealthy Hong Kong businessman, believed he was a reincarnated 'Ninja warrior,' the black-garbed assassins who roamed medieval Japan, according to Honolulu attorney Earle Partington.
'Ng seemed to live in a fantasy world where he thought he was a Ninja,' said Partington, who represented one of three Marines charged with helping Ng in the October 1981 theft of weapons from a Marine base in Hawaii.
Ng was convicted of stealing $11,500 in weapons, including three grenade launchers, two assault rifles, seven pistols and a night-vision rifle scope from the Kaneohe Marine Corps Air Station armory. The weapons were recovered.
Ng testified as a prosecution witness against his accomplices, then escaped the Marine stockade and fled to California, where he joined Lake, an ex-Marine whom he apparently met through a classified ad in a 'survivalist' magazine.
They lived on a ranch in the California town of Philo, about 100 miles north of San Francisco, until the FBI tracked down Ng in April 1982 and sent a helicopter-borne SWAT team to arrest him.
Ng was tried on the weapons theft charges and imprisoned at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. He was released in June 1984, but the Marine Corps failed to notify the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service that Ng should be deported.
In October 1984, Ng was arrested for shoplifting in Daly City, Calif., but was bailed out by Lake's ex-wife and was believed to have teamed up with Lake again soon after that.
'Without Ng,' San Francisco Police Chief Cornelius Murphy said during his disappearance, 'we'll never clear up this case.'
Ng, the son of a wealthy Hong Kong businessman, was expelled from more than one elementary school before being sent at age 16 to Bentham Grammar School in Yorkshire, England, relatives said.
Rufus Good, Ng's uncle, said his parents hoped the teenager would learn discipline. But he said that during the nine months Ng spent there in 1977 and 1978, he kept to himself at the school and was nicknamed 'Charlie-boy,' which he did not like.
'The other boys would keep out of his way, because they knew he was stronger than they,' said the instructor, adding that Ng also was known for angry and violent explosions.
After graduating from high school, Ng went to live with relatives in San Leandro, Calif., 10 miles southeast of San Francisco. He had a student visa but flunked out of the College of Notre Dame in nearby Belmont after one semester.
In the autumn of 1979, Ng was convicted of fleeing a non-injury auto accident and ordered to pay restitution. Instead, he enlisted in the Marines and fraudulently listed his birthplace as Bloomington, Ind.
Ng believed he was a reincarnated 'Ninja warrior,' one of a group of black-garbed assassins who roamed medieval Japan, according to Honolulu attorney Earle Partington.
'Ng seemed to live in a fantasy world where he thought he was a Ninja,' said Partington, who represented one of three Marines charged with helping Ng in the October 1981 theft of weapons from a Marine Corps base in Hawaii.
Ng was convicted of stealing $11,500 in military weapons, including three grenade launchers, two assault rifles, seven pistols and a night-vision rifle scope from the Kaneohe Marine Corps Air Station armory. The weapons were recovered.
Ng testified as a prosecution witness at the court-martial of his accomplices and later escaped the Marine stockade and fled to California, where he joined Lake, a former Marine he apparently met through a classified advertisement in a survival magazine.
The two lived, along with Lake's then-wife, Claralyn (Cricket) Balazs, on a ranch in the California town of Philo, about 100 miles north of San Francisco.
In April 1982, the FBI tracked Ng to Philo and a SWAT team arrived by helicopter and arrested him.
Ng was tried on the weapons theft charges and imprisoned at Fort Leavenworth, Kans. He was released in June 1984, but the Marine Corps failed to tell the Immigration and Naturalization Service that Ng should be deported.
In October 1984, Ng was arrested again for shoplifting in nearby Daly City. He spent one night in jail until the then recently-divorced Balazs paid his $1,000 bail. He had been working occasionally for a Bay Area moving company and also visiting Lake, who by then had moved to Wilseyville.
In April 1985, police said Ng was seen taking valuables from the San Francisco apartment of the Dubs family, later reported missing.
'Without Ng,' said San Francisco Police Chief Cornelius Murphy, 'we'll never clear up this case.'
