In the mid-1980s, California serial killer Leonard Lake lurked in the remote Sierra Nevada foothills. A Vietnam veteran, survivalist, and fugitive from justice, Lake built a torture chamber underneath his cabin. Here he imprisoned, raped, and tortured at least three women, sometimes videotaping the brutalities. Together with his accomplice, Charles Ng, he financed this life by murder and theft. During a nine month period in 1984 and 1985, the pair filled the earth around the cabin with the corpses of eleven victims and the bones of an estimated additional fourteen. Among the dead were entire families and a man who was best man at Lake's own wedding.

Abandoned by his mother as a child, Lake lived a life of violence and fantasy. He joined the Marines, fought in Vietnam, and later managed a motel. By the 1980s, he had become a survivalist, expecting the imminent destruction of the world...