No Kill No Thrill: The Shocking True Story of Charles Ng-One of America's Most Ruthless Serial Killers

Louis A. Knafla is a professor of history at the University of Calgary,
the co-editor of Law, Society, and the State: Essays in Modern Legal
History, and the author of Lords of the Western Bench.

This book’s main title is a quotation from Charles Ng, who also
uttered the infamous phrase, “Daddy dies, momma cries, baby fries.”
No Kill No Thrill relates the story of two ex-marines who, in 1984,
murdered the husbands and children of women they were holding as sex
slaves in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of Northern California. Born into
a wealthy Hong Kong family, Ng was a violent psychopath who took pride
in being a “death technician” during his service with the Marine
Corps. His accomplice, ex-marine staff sergeant Leonard Lake, was a
fellow psychopath and weapons freak. This crisply written, absorbing,
and balanced account also details Ng’s escape to Calgary in 1985, his
arrest and trial for robbery that same year, the extradition proceedings
that followed discovery of the murders, and Ng’s trial and conviction
in a California courtroom (he received the death penalty). Both authors
are award-winning investigative reporters.