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I am your Norwegian host, Thomas Weiborg Thun. And tonight, dear listener, I have a special treat for you. In my previous episode, The Miranda Murders, you were introduced to Charles Ng and Leonard Lake, two serial killers that operated as a pair in a fashion very much resembling a horror movie.
They kidnapped, tortured, raped, and murdered at least 11 people, perhaps as many as 30 or more. Their modus operandi was to kidnap a woman, then drive her up to the Sierra Nevada mountains several hours away from San Francisco. There, in a remote concrete dungeon, Leonard and Charles tied their victims up.
taunted them, tortured them, raped them, and finally murdered them before cutting up the bodies and burying them or burning them around the property. If you haven't listened to the previous episode, please do so before continuing to listen to this one.
Because tonight I have with me for an interview none other than the producer of the excellent remake of the home videos that Lake and Ng recorded while torturing and killing their victims. His name is Gil Claveria and his movie is aptly called The Miranda Murders with the subtitle Lost Tapes of Leonard Lake and Charles Ng. Please check out my fan page on Facebook
Go to facebook.com slash the SK podcast for discussion, bonus content, and frequent interaction with me, your humble host. Also, feel free to visit my website at theserialkillerpodcast.com. And of course, my Patreon at theserialkillerpodcast.com slash donate. Any donation, no matter how small, is greatly appreciated.
Of course, being the modern podcast host that I am, I am now also to be found on Twitter under the handle SerialKillerPod, Instagram under the nickname SerialKillerPod, and I have recently created a subreddit on Reddit. You can visit and post to as you please at reddit.com slash r slash the SK podcast.
Finally, before we get on with the proper interview, I can now proudly introduce my dear listeners to the one and only official TSK store.
Go to theserialkillerpodcast.com slash store to buy exclusive t-shirts, coffee mugs, and even customized iPhone cases. Remember, buying TSK merchandise helps keep this podcast alive, and your friends and family will envy your excellent taste in fashion while doing it. Gil!
Welcome to the show. It is an honor to have the privilege to interview the man behind such a disturbing and historically accurate film. Thank you very much for joining me here tonight. How are you? I'm wonderful, thank you. It's an honor to be on the show. Great. And just a bit practical before we continue. Where are you at the moment? I am currently in Santa Barbara, California.
Sunny Santa Barbara. I would love to be there because I am in Norway. Yes, Norway. My wife's family is from Norway, so that's a great connection. Really? Yes. That's very interesting. Here it's minus 10 degrees Celsius and about a meter of snow. So the palms of Santa Barbara is alluring. Yes. Yes.
So before we begin, how about you tell our dear listeners about who you are and your background? Okay. My name is Gil Claveria, and I am the producer slash writer of the Miranda Murders Lost Tapes of Leonard Lake and Charles Ng.
To make it even more interesting, if you do watch the movie, I also play Charles Ng. So that makes it really fun. I did notice that when I watched the credits of the film at the end there. And if I do say so, you do make an excellent figure. Thank you very much. I appreciate that.
I have to admit, I was a little bit worried before we started the interview because in the movie, Charles has a very, very strong accent. He doesn't sound like he can speak English. Yes, I had to work on that completely. I was kind of hoping that, oh God, let's not have an interview where I have to ask four times the same question.
You know, for your listeners, I could do it in the accent, if you like. I could do it in the Charles-ing accent. Please do not. Okay. Please have it in American standard. Yes, yes, yes. Cool. So tell me, how did it come to pass that you and Matthew, is it? Yes. The Miranda murders.
Okay, let's see here. I want to say this started off, Matthew Rose Valley is the director and he's also the writer slash actor who played Leonard Lake. And we've been working together for a film festival, a horror film festival in Hollywood called Shockfest Film Festival. Matthew Rose Valley worked for me and I ended up writing a musical called
And I knew he was such a great actor. I've seen him play Edgar Allen Poe before. So I thought, wow, if Matthew Rose Valley could gain a little more weight, I think he could look like Charles Ng. I mean, Leonard Lake. And since I thought I could kind of pull off Charles Ng, at least slightly, I thought, wow, we should tell a story that no one's ever told before. Because it's very difficult to make this movie. I feel like it's a challenging film.
Just, you know, subject matter alone. And we wrote the script. We did the research. We read a few books. We got footage. And what ended up happening was we thought, I think this would make a great movie or an attempt to make a movie.
And we took different angles and we thought, what's the best way to go about this? And we thought found footage. We thought a found footage film would just be a very interesting piece. And on top of it, we thought, what about the pieces that you haven't seen? And that's creatively where we took the story. We wanted to get into the minds of Leonard Lake and Charles Ng. Very interesting.
And I have to ask, did you actually have access to the full original Miranda Motors tapes? Yes, actually we did. And it's interesting because one of the things that we wanted to do is we wanted to make sure that we stayed as close as possible to the truth of it. Again, this gets blurry because...
There's different, you know, it's a discussion of truth. Just so you guys know my background, I'm a teacher. So I'm a college teacher and I love discussing truth and truth is always slippery in my opinion. So it's very tricky when you're discussing what truth is. But what we wanted to do was really get this story out on the map. I'm surprised that there aren't many films about Leonard Lake.
Because I find this a very fascinating, fascinating story. It is very fascinating. And when researching my podcast episode, I too was surprised of how little information there were available of Leonard Lake and Charles Ng.
very little on their childhoods for example I usually go into serial killers childhood to try to ascertain their if anything happened that forced them to go the path they do as adults but I only got very few fragments of their childhood so it was a bit of a challenge actually to research the episode but it
But I got just enough to make a proper episode. But going back to the original boom videos of Leonard Davis and Charles Ng, did you see the ones on YouTube or did you actually get the full thing from storage or where did you get them?
We actually got a lot of it from YouTube and everything that was available. And if you watch the film, just for your audience, part of it is we did scenes that, and again, this might take away from the mystique of the movie, but we ended up recreating certain scenes, which you probably know about. And that was probably...
The most challenging and most controversial part is actually recreating the footage as bland and as bleak as the scenes are. If you were to put the films and the actual footage and our scenes together, we were trying to get as accurate as possible, even our portrayals in it, even the nuances with dialogue as, you know, my accent, for example, or especially Leonard Lake's couch sequences.
I noticed that in particular. Leonard Lake, he almost comes across as a very early version of a talking head on YouTube.
He sits there in his couch and philosophizes about his desire to have a sexual slave that he can control and the rules he's going to implement and how he's going to do it. And he talks in a very odd way, very detached, very cold, very devoid of any emotion.
And that continued throughout your film, I noticed in particular, because when Leonard is punishing his victims, he doesn't scream or come across as angry. He seems very calm as he's doing these horrible things to these poor women. And at first, when you make a movie, I was kind of thinking, well, this is poor acting.
Right, right. Yeah, but then I saw one of the videos or a brief snippet of it, and it's spot on. It's very spot on.
Thank you very much. And that was one of the things that we were really focusing on. I think a lot of people who want to watch a Hollywood film or a film that mainly is for entertainment, I would say The Miranda Murders is not the movie, mainly because we didn't do a Hollywood style version of it. We made sure that we made a film that after you watch it,
you felt dirty and it felt wrong. The same way that when you watch the actual footage, there was always something off about it. And even the monotonous tones of the serial killers we portrayed as best as we could so that we didn't glamorize serial killing at all. Yeah, that's very true. Comes off dirty and kind of cheap. Yes. And almost mundane and repetitive.
They have these women and they kidnap them and then they taunt them in this kind of boring way and then they just start, you know, whipping them and raping them and then finally one of them kills them. So it's, yeah, it's not sensationalized and that is respectful. A lot of modern serial killer movies, they tend to sensationalize it and almost make it kind of a mythos.
elevating the serial killers into superstars. - Yes, and that was an interesting approach that we wanted to take, not only from the director, Matt Roseveille, but also from myself as the producer. We definitely didn't want to sensationalize, and we definitely didn't want to promote
anything they did. We wanted to make sure if you watched anything on YouTube, if you'd watch any documentaries, it would actually fit perfectly in as if you were watching actual footage. Yeah, definitely. And that's why I was so curious about if you did have access to the whole range of tapes, because there were quite a lot of them, I think. And I tried to research YouTube, but I only found three
There's the one where Leonard is on the couch talking about his plan and his philosophy on kidnapping women and keeping them as slaves. There's the woman sitting beneath this very bright lamp, complaining about the lamp.
And they taunt her, telling her that her baby is sleeping like a rock. I mean, probably buried her baby under a rock before they end that clip with Leonard saying suffer to the poor woman. And finally, you have several small snippets of of a woman trying to play along.
going into very graphic detail about how she wants Leonard to kidnap some child of 14 so they can have fun and how she has a nice ass and so on. So yeah, that's the only thing I found on YouTube. But of course your movie goes into far more detail. It's quite long. So that was very interesting.
You know, another interesting part, and this is a side note, our editor, Candice Rawlins, she was able to get access of more footage. And it's interesting, Matt Rose Valley and her had a small dispute on set, and she is actually making another film with the new footage.
that she was able to access, which is interesting because I feel kind of bad because I wish it was part of ours, but she took it. And I think she's in production right now making a piece with the actual footage that you're talking about. Right. So more like a regular documentary than maybe. Right. Exactly. And I think this is a very...
Interesting subject. It's relevant, actually, in today's time also. I always thought when it comes to Leonard Lake, he was doing a form of human trafficking and identity theft, which a lot of people are doing today, but he was doing it in the 80s.
Yeah, there's always relevance when it comes to serial killers, I find, because they tap into the very worst in human nature. And today with the hashtag MeToo thing going on, I mean, these guys, they show what true sexual harassment and rape and abuse of women, what it can really be when you go to the extremes.
And they were not alone. I mean, the late 70s and most of the 80s were what I like to call on my show the golden age serial murder. It was really rampant. Women, especially in America, were targeted in a very large degree. And of course, it continues today. But it was really bad in the late 70s and 80s.
And another thing about Leonard, you mentioned identity theft. He murdered men as well, didn't he? Correct, he did. And what he would do is he would take their identities and then he would use their IDs and he would portray the people he murdered. And we actually have that in the film, if you notice. And we didn't change the names of characters like Lonnie Bonds. We actually stayed true to even the chronology of the film.
Yes, I noticed. It's very well made in that way. It follows from the very beginning and up until they get caught. And another side note on these poor men that were victims of Leonard. One of them was called Gunnar, his surname. He was actually his best man at his wedding, wasn't he? Yes, they were close friends.
Yeah, really strange. And also, I think one thing that was very much missing in a lot of the material that I went through, details about his wife. Because in your movie, the wife, she drives a car, I think. I may be wrong, but I think she drives a car and there's a chase scene. And one of the women almost manages to escape.
But then she stops down a car at the cabin, but it turns out to be the wife of Leonard stepping out of the car. Yes, you know, it's interesting. You're pretty close. Now, it's interesting you say that because in the true story of it, her name was Cricket. Carolyn Balazs was his wife. One of the things that Matt and I found very interesting was that she was not even part of the trial, even though she had information.
And we know that there was a connection. If you notice, she didn't serve any time. It was all thrown on Charles Ng. So we wanted to unravel that part of the wife without really pointing fingers saying she's guilty.
But her acknowledging and knowing that they were doing this project. And for the record, the projects that they were doing, they called it the Miranda murders based off of a novel that Leonard Lake really loved called The Collector, where in this novel, he was trying to make the perfect woman and condition her.
so that she would do the things that he would want her to do. Hence the Miranda Murders and the girl's name in that novel is Miranda. And that's how we got the title also, mainly because he called the work that he was doing the Miranda Project. And we thought the Miranda Murders would be a very interesting title to stay true also to the novel The Collector. Definitely. Have you read The Collector?
Yes, actually, Matt and I, when we first started, that was one of the things that we wanted to do. And I think this is why when it comes to the storyline as a film, it's not as grand as everyone wants it to be. So that was probably one of the critiques. But as a story.
That was the thing that we really focused on as writers. We wanted to make sure the dialogue was as stark and as bleak as the actual footage, that we stayed true not only to Leonard Lake's interest in the collector, which we wanted to make sure we had overtones from that story, but at the same time, we didn't want to sensationalize at all. There was no way that we were going to make a film that would be in Hollywood peace.
We're more fans of serial killer storylines and the mental state and the state of mind that that was the angle we were taking it. So we had zero desire to make a Hollywood film in that sense. Right.
And how did you go about finding actors and actresses for this film? Well, actors is you and Matthew, but there are a lot of women playing in. I love that question because this is a challenging movie to cast, especially during this challenging time in Hollywood. Right. With all the allegations.
So to be able just to pop in and say, all right, ladies, who wants to play a victim of Leonard Lake and Charles Inge's sex slaves? It was a challenging piece. I was lucky enough to have a lot of my friends play part in this. And they were excited because it was a historical biopic on one level. And they were very interested in portraying characters from the 80s that were true as actors were.
I would hope would want to do. So I want to say a good chunk of 75 to 80% of the actors I knew prior, I've worked with them on projects prior and just to do certain scenes, they would have to be able to trust me. I mean, there are, there is a scene there, there's rape sequences where we're actually naked, you know? So that in itself is a challenge.
where you have to have that trust with an actor and that they knew that we were doing this legitimately. And then on top of it, they read the screenplay and we did table reads. And when we did that, it was, they were in. Everybody was really excited to be part of this. And they do a very good job because in, I'd like to bring out one specific scene, one of the most disturbing scenes
It's the one where one of the female victims, I don't know the name, is sitting in a chair in her underwear. And Charlie is sitting on the floor having her hand in a vice. Leonard is ordering her to recite the rules for a sex slave, but she gets number six wrong.
And this results in Charlie crushing her hand with the vice. And I gotta say, the female actress, she's really good because she looks to be in genuine pain. Was all that scripted or was parts of it improvised? That was scripted. Actually, every scene was scripted because we wanted to make sure the pacing made sense chronologically. And she's a great actress, by the way. Her name is Joanna Ray. And...
She's played, if you watch any of her other films, she's just a terrific act, very versatile. And I feel like with that scene, it was very difficult. You know, I really believe scenes like that is, you know, I'm kind of reminiscing and just kind of thinking back of that scene because right after that sequence, you'll notice it just jumps and she just gets raped. And right after that, because even though she was, you know, after her things were crushed, it just jumps in where...
And I hope I don't say this because it's gratuitous on some level. She was just bent over and then Leonard Lake had her way with her. And it was that stark and that cold and that impersonal. Very much so. They treated the women as 100% objects, just sex objects to be used and abused.
And a lot of sexual psychopaths, they view other people not as humans with emotions and feelings, but just as objects they can use for their own entertainment and pleasure.
Yes, and that's why I feel like, for example, we had some reviews from numerous people where they were bothered because of that point that you just made. And I feel like most people want movies that glorify serial killers. And that was the part that disturbed Matt and I, because we made a film where there is no glorifying any of these moments. It's very bleak and very dark. And that scene that you were talking about with the vice...
Which is interesting because it's also a foreshadow later because that's how Charles Ng gets arrested, because of the broken vice. And that was something that we wrote in knowing that he gets caught by that moment of stealing a vice because they needed a new one. Yeah, that's often how serial killers actually get caught, or at least used to get caught. Because they tend to think they're smarter and better than the police.
But they have no compulsion about stealing or committing fraud or anything like that. So it's often mundane things. Like Ted Bundy, he was ultimately caught the first time because he was speeding.
It's often very mundane things. And the story about the vice and Leonard and Charles and how they were arrested by this police officer is almost funny. I have it in my episode on the Miranda murder. So, dear listeners, go back and listen to that if you want a description. You know, and that's why if you notice, there's that one scene where Leonard Lake in our film, he's reprimanding Charles Ng for breaking the vice.
And that one we took poetic license in, but I thought that stayed true to the character. And I thought it'd be an interesting kind of twist in his writer to add in that broken vice element because they end up, you know, it shows that, hey, we need a vice.
Yeah, that scene is very interesting. And I really do think it's accurate in how Charles and Leonard, their dynamic between them really was. Because you have Leonard very sternly telling Charles, why did the vice break? And Charles just keeps repeating, well, I wasn't the only one using it.
Then Leonard just repeats, I didn't say who used it. I just asked you why it was broken. And it just goes on and on with Leonard becoming more and more agitated. It's an interesting scene. I love it that you're saying that. I almost felt like I wanted to do the scene with you right now.
Because you're lying. You said it really pretty much verbatim. Like, you broke the vice, Charlie, as Leonard Lake would say. And then my character would say, you use it too, Leonard. You use it too. Yes. Let's not go into reenactment. Oh, yes, yes. Oh, I would have loved to do a scene with you. It would be great. Let's do that. You could play Leonard Lake. Ha ha.
Yeah, probably. I'm a fairly big guy, but I probably have to gain about 100 pounds, I guess. He was a very large man. Oh, he was a very large man at that point in his life. And interestingly enough, Matt Rose Valley also gained so many pounds. Actually, he was close to 300 pounds when he played that part, Matt did. And if you look at Matt now on his Facebook, he's dropped 100 pounds almost. Wow.
Yeah, so he did it just to play this part. And I remember he went on the beer drinking diet and alcohol diet. So just so he could gain weight quicker.
Well, that's dedication for you. Yeah, exactly. Right. He'll love me for that. But I know that that's that's what he usually tells everybody when we're all. So I'm kind of speaking for him, but he's very dedicated. And the next move after the Miranda murders was over, he started running. He started eating healthy and he's looking great now. So he completely did a 180 for his next project. Actually, we're working on a new project. So.
Fantastic. And we'll get back to that towards the end of the interview. But let's go back to the movie here, because in the movie, Charles is portrayed very much like the submissive one and Leonard as the dominant one.
But considering the guile and intelligence that Charles has shown during his very extensive legal case, do you think he was really that submissive or do you think it was somewhat of an act? It was completely an act in my opinion because even the way we wrote it, we wanted to make sure if the audience were to watch it first, you would think he was, wow, very submissive. But Matt and I were conscious that
of even the way we wrote it, that there was a mastermind quality behind Charles Ng because he spent years, and actually he's on death row right now, but he's been fighting this case constantly over and over again. And there's no way that a man who's been in this court system, even defending himself for this long, can be that stupid. So I feel like playing ignorant and playing dumb is a strategy that,
that I think a lot of people who are manipulative do. And that was one thing that we wanted to take Charles Ng as, where he could play the submissive. But in the end, he knew that he was getting benefits from this, not only from having so many women to rape, but also to be in good graces with Leonard Lake. Yes, and a very interesting scene is from around the middle of the movie.
And it's again the broken vice. And Charles ends the scene by storming off into a room. He locks the room and then we hear the sounds of a woman screaming. And in the following scene, Leonard says, you murder all my Mirandas.
And I know that you said the vice scene was poetic license, but the following thing about Charlie locking himself in a room with the woman and murdering her, was that based on actual footage, interviews, or is this speculation? I would say it had more speculation, but with our research, I felt like there's so much truth in...
Again, this is tough because there were many bodies missing and there was many bodies found in the back. So to answer your question, I would say speculation. But yeah, I mean, that would be the straight up answer without getting too deep into like even like the approach that we were trying to take because we really, really wanted to stay true to the story. So anybody who was a true serial killer fan would watch it
And they would know that we're not glorifying it and that it was very bland. We intentionally did it because, again, Matt and I are fans also with delving into the minds of serial killers. I mean, that's one thing that got us together in the first place. And we thought it'd be a great opportunity to make a film that no one's or rather very difficult to tackle. Indeed.
But if we go for your theory, well, your interpretation of how their dynamic was in regards to who murdered the victims most and who were the dominant and who were the submissive, you can draw the conclusion that Charlie is the one that killed the most of the victims. Yes.
And Leonard was only an infrequent killer if the victims did oppose him too much or maybe even just by accident. And of course, he was a sexual sadist. But one can speculate that his motive wasn't to kill, only to have a sex slave, while Charlie could be said to be an actual murderous psychopath.
Yeah, you know, I could agree with that. And I think I portrayed it that way as an actor. But as a writer, one of the things that we did do was we took a line from his court trial. And this isn't verbatim, but he basically stated that in court to the judges and the jury, he basically said, you can't judge me.
with these 20 minutes of footage that you found. I'm not sure if you heard that in the trial. It was really famous. You can't judge me with these videos that you found me in with these 20 minutes. What we ended up doing is we actually wrote a line in the film, so there's an actual line from the film that we made where Charles Ng says that again, saying, Leonard Lake, Leonard, they're going to judge you if they catch any of these video footages.
So we actually took the line from his trial. We plugged it in to the scene when they're driving through San Francisco in the 80s. And we thought that'd be an interesting kind of foreshadow for the story, which again reveals that I feel like Charles Ng knew so much more than he portrays. And with that said, I do agree that his hands have a lot of blood on them. Of course,
He could play dumb at this point because Leonard Lake killed himself before even getting close to any authorities grilling him on the murders. Yeah, he took two cyanide capsules, swallowed them in the interview room. Yes.
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Visit betterhelp.com slash serialkiller today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash serialkiller. It's quite a horrible way to die. I don't know how people get a hold of cyanide pills. One would think it would be very difficult to get a hold of.
Right. You know, one of the things one of the things that we researched is, you know, they're both ex-military guys also. And that was one thing that they had a bond in. They also knew each other through correspondence from Fortune, like Fortune magazine, Soldier of Fortune magazine from the 80s. So they were really into living off the grid.
that kind of mentality. So, you know, not, not that you could get cyanide easily. I'm not saying that at all, because you're right. It is an interesting thing, but you know, dabbling with black market things or even the deep web these days, I'm sure if you really want something, whoo,
With today's internet and the dark net, well, you can get anything you want, of course. But yeah, this was the 80s, before the age of YouTube and dark net and Silk Road and all that stuff. Right. But yeah, probably, as you say...
Being ex-military men and survivalists and Soldier of Fortune guys, it's not inconceivable that he would be able to quite easily get a hold of Cyanide. One of the first things when we started writing the script, we actually started the footage as survivalist videos because he was making a bunker
in case the end of the world were to come. So that was one of the angles we started writing the scene. We actually, we have footage of us rehearsing these bunker sequences of building the bunker. And that was an interesting angle, mainly because of the survivalist angle first. And then of course that evolved into the, uh, the torture of women and again, treating them like animals.
Very much so. It's in his diary, I think. He mentions building the bunker and it has, I think he mentions three main purposes. Purpose one was to be able to survive in case of civil war. And purpose two, some shelter in case of nuclear fallout. And case three, being a dungeon for keeping sexual slaves.
Yes, you got it right on. Yeah. In internet meme language, that translates as that escalated fast. Yes. I'm glad you had that list because that's where we started with the story. And then, of course, then we started doing the sex slave rules, which we thought really corresponded with the kind of person he was.
especially in his diary notes. And that was another way we did a lot of adaptation for the footage that we did. And if you look at it, even though it might just look like home footage, there was a lot of thought behind it because we really wanted to make sure that it paralleled the actual footage. Very much so. All right. And now on with the show.
I looked there for a moment and because you touched upon a little bit of something that I remembered at the back of my head, I couldn't really grasp it until the latest moment. And that was why suddenly I was reminded of another serial killer case that was very, very similar to the Leonard Lake and Charles Ng Miranda murders case. Have you heard about the Toy Box Killer? No, I have not.
Aha. Well, you should check out my podcast and the episode known as The Toy Box Killer. Because this is a guy, his name was David Parker Ray. And what he did, lived in the American Southwest. He kidnapped women, usually from a bar.
or from parties where they were coked out of their heads on drugs and stuff. And he brought them back to his trailer that he had converted into a torture chamber. Very much in line with how Leonard Lake and Charles had converted their bunker into a torture chamber. And he had them there strapped to a gynecologist chair. And when they woke up,
He remotely from outside of the trailer started to play a tape where he goes into graphic detail, relaying his rules. He had like 20 rules or something that he told his women and what would happen if they broke his rules.
So because you talked about going into detail in the movie about the rules that Leonard Lake and Charles Ng indoctrinated their victims with and something clicked. And then I remembered, hey, Toybox, you did the very same thing. You know, I'm glad you brought that up because I love the parallels. And this actually triggered something in me.
And the big thing that got triggered is, what makes the Miranda murders and Charles Ng and Leonard Lake so unique is they were a duo of serial killers. They did it as a partnership. That, to me, is fascinating. Do you know any other ones that did it as a duo? Oh, yeah. There are quite a few, actually. You have the Moores murders in England.
It's a guy and a girl, I don't have the names in front of me right now, but it's called the Moors Murders, M-O-O-R-S Murders. And what they did was that the woman, she lured young girls and young boys into the car with her and her husband, and they would drive home the children repeatedly, the guy would, while she was egging him on.
and laughing and taking photographs. They would torture the child and then they would kill the child and drive the child up on the high moors. It's like a highlands area outside of the city and bury the kids there. And they took a lot of pictures of the woman standing on top of the graves and smiling and posing and that sort of thing. Wow.
And you have in Canada, you have the case of, I think it's called the Ken and Barbie murders because there's this very attractive couple, both of them blonde, slim model looks, very successful, upstanding people. But the guy was a really, really out there sexual psychopath.
And again, she would help him get young girls so he could rape and murder them. And this went on for many years. And this woman that helped him do this, I think her name was Homolka. Yeah, Homolka. She's free. And she has a new husband and kids and everything. Wow. She served like 10 years or something.
You know, this is great about you and what you do is you're very informative. You always open my mind and I'm sure all your listeners' minds. With that said, I have a question for you that I feel would be very helpful to me. If you were to rewrite the movie that we made, what were some things that you would want to see from it? Just for the record, like being an enthusiast and a professional on this, what would you have wanted to see?
Well, I guess I would like to have... The thing about the movie is that I see it very much as a recreation of the home video tapes, not as a documentary.
And as a recreation of the home videotapes, of course, you don't have the arrest. You don't have the trial. You don't have the stuff leading up to the murders. As you said, the building of the bunker, Charles coming home from being in the military, them meeting up, them stealing a lot of guns, I think.
and celebrating doing that. You don't have that and that's very natural because this is a recreation of the home videos. But in the home videos, that's why I've been asking you if you have access to the whole set of the videos that they made, is that although you have, yes, you have a few explicit scenes
They're very short and they don't show anything. I would perhaps, I see that there are reviews online that you went too far.
I would go the other way and say that, well, if you're first going to do this whole let's keep it as real as possible, I would do it all the way. I would show the whole thing, like hold nothing back, show full nudity, show the woman getting her hand crushed in the vice, show them chopping up the bodies, you know, all that stuff. Just show the whole horror of it. And keep it bleak because...
The great thing about the movie, the thing that I really like, is how, as you say, you don't sensationalize it. You keep it very mundane. You keep it low-key. You keep it bleak. So keep that, but I would probably go even further and have even more of the horrible stuff that they did because...
That's one thing that at least I do in my show here on the Serial Killer podcast, is that I go into very much detail. I tell the listener not just who the killers were and what they did. I go into very much detail and explain how they did their terrible things.
And it's not because I think it's done with torture porn or anything like that. It's that I think it's important for people to understand how horrible murder and sexual torture actually is. And it's very difficult to get a feel for that in today's society because murder is portrayed almost clinical, almost inhuman, where you don't really have
Any real feeling of the terror. For an example, in one of the earlier episodes I did, I talked about a guy who murdered his women using his hands to choke them. And when you see a Hollywood movie about someone getting choked, you almost get the impression that it's painless.
that the guy just, he holds the woman around the throat, she gasps a little bit, maybe thrashes a little bit around, and then she's silent on the floor. But being choked to death is actually one of the most horrible and painful ways you can die, because ligaments get ruptured, your trachea gets crushed, you often don't just get your...
airways stop, you often drown in blood because of the wounds that that causes inside the body. So I think it's important when you're going into detail about what serial killers did to expose the full horror
You know, I love that you said that. And I love that you commented on the comments that we've been getting because we've had numerous comments telling us that we've gone too far. And I love that you said we didn't go far enough. I love that you said that because now it opens up this question. And I wonder when it comes with, you know, with viewers, just viewership was alone. What does it say about those people who said,
It went too far. It was rape porn. It was torture porn. It shouldn't be on Amazon Prime. This garbage is just pure sodomy. It almost seems, and then of course you say the other angle, which is it didn't go far enough, which again, I love that you say that.
Glad to hear it. I think it's down to, it's probably the venue. It's on Amazon Prime. They're used to silly series and Top Gear and mainstream blockbuster movies. And then comes along this very real, very different movie. And it catches you by surprise because it's difficult to get a hold of
"Okay, what are these guys trying to make here? What is this?" For me, it was really good because I had seen a lot of the home movies of Leonard Lake and Charles Ng beforehand. So I immediately recognized and I think I understood what you were trying to do and I really appreciated it. But if you're, let's say, a couple sitting on the couch going to binge something on Amazon Prime,
And they're used to seeing like bland serial killer documentaries like, for example,
a mind hunter where very little detail is given graphically and then they go into the Miranda murders and then you see this fat guy getting his rocks off some poor woman having her hand in a vice. So of course it's probably the contrast with the other material available on that venue. That's great information and you know what I'm like my first thought is
Next time, we're going to need you as our consultant. Well, that sounds great. I charge... That's good. That's good. On a side note, have you had time to listen to my podcast yet? Yes, I have. And this is the great part about what you do. I feel...
I mean, you said it like you will. I think the first thing is your voice. I think that's the thing that got me drawn to you. There's something about your voice is for starters. And again, you're very detailed and you're very explicit. I feel like the element of being explicit is something that is necessary. And when you gave me that advice and I'm going to tell Matt
Rose Valley, our director, to make sure to listen to this, especially this part of the segment, because that advice is true. I almost feel that we didn't go as far as we should have. And that's why I kind of made that statement about consultant, because I feel like you completely get what needs to be done when it comes to with serial killers. I feel like we were
We were on a weird space with this because we thought we might go too far and that we wouldn't have a venue to even have it so people could watch it. That was like our concern. Like we would make something that no one would watch.
Well, I will be happy to be consulting on any future projects. So feel free to get in touch regarding that. And thanks a lot. Regarding my voice, that's the main criticism that I get from my listeners. It's very much a love-hate thing. Either you like it or you don't.
You know, I really love it. And I was worried because like even knowing like your other podcast, knowing that I was coming on, I know my energy is completely different. And I was worried of how I was going to approach the interview with you because I feel like I didn't want to break your style. Like the kind of guy I'm really like, I've got this high energy. And even playing Charles Ng, I had to tone that down. So if you...
Or when you watch the film, you'll notice that I'm completely different than the Charles Ng character. So even getting in that space took a lot of acting. I very much can see that. In the movie, you play, it's so good. It's very well made. And it's creepy. I have to say, that Charles Ng guy, he's like the ultimate creep.
The way that he talks, the way that he's almost rat-like in the way he crouches and approaches the women in this hunched, sort of down on the ground kind of way. And climbs on top of them like a rodent. Yeah, it's very good acting, I have to say.
Thank you very much. I appreciate you saying that because right after that, I actually got hired to be on the cover of a romance novel. It's actually the cover of my Facebook picture. So I went from like romance novel from Charles Ng, who's like a rat guy, creep face guy, then straight into the cover of a romance novel, which is so hilarious to me. Those are two extremities that I feel like
should not be mixed together because you wouldn't want to see Charles Ng on a romance novel cover ever, ever, ever, ever. He is, I mean, you do look better than Charles Ng, I have to say. He is not a handsome man, Charles Ng. Especially now, he's gained a lot of weight in prison. Yeah, he looks terrible.
Right, so moving a bit on here, you mentioned that you did some research, of course, in preparation of the movie, excluding the collector. Did you read any other books about the Miranda murders? Yeah, actually, there's one in particular that I really loved, and it was called Die For You. Have you heard of that one? Nope. That one was one that we referenced.
Probably more so than any other one. I felt like it was comprehensive and it was a quick read. And I remember Matt and I spent probably a day or two just reading it. It was like a day and then the next day we kind of went back, but we finished it really quickly. We really fell in love with that writer. And from that point on,
It was, again, researching this is interesting because we, you know, Matt had a different angle because he was the director. So he wanted to make sure that it was stark and bleak and really mundane and dark and creepy. But I was wanting to make sure that we hit everything chronologically. And you'll notice that even in the Miranda Murders film, we have dates and the dates we made sure were accurate.
I did notice that. It's one of the best things about the film because it keeps you grounded in what's actually happening. Right. So this is a divisive question. Who is your favorite serial killer? And by favorite, I, of course, mean the one you find most interesting and fascinating. I assume you, just as everyone else, do not admire in any way.
This is a tough question because I know my go-to answer, and I feel like it feels so cliche. So I almost feel like just to kind of preface that. And I wouldn't consider him a serial killer, but he kind of gets thrown into this mix. And I'm sure all your listeners know this because he's probably the most popular, was Charles Manson. And I know he didn't actually do it, but I was just fascinated with his charisma.
Yes, Charlie. Good old Charlie. He's dead now. Yes, I know. Recently. Yeah. The man with the swastika carved into his forehead. As you very correctly say, he was not a serial killer. He was a cult leader who made his followers commit serial murder. You can say he was a serial killer by connection, I guess. I think he got a...
I mean, he deserved life in prison, of course, but I think too much responsibility was laid at his feet. My impression is that his cult followers, their agency was taken away by the prosecutor in a large degree. I think they chose to do a lot more than what Charles actually had ordered them to do.
I'm probably going to have an episode about Charlie at a later date where I go into more detail about this, but there's a lot of interviews with Charlie in prison. They're fantastic to watch. He's so entertaining and his, as you say, charisma is incredible. He goes into prison
what he actually told the women and texts before they went to the Polanski household to murder everyone there. They had asked him, "Shall we go and kill these people?" And Charles had said something in the form of, "Well, yeah, sure, but if you do it, make sure you do it properly."
That sort of thing. Very generic. Very like, yeah, go ahead and kill these pigs, but just make sure you do it well as you do anything in life. He wanted them to do it thorough. But they, of course, went far beyond just killing. They tortured and they
stabbed a very pregnant woman in the belly and they they sprung up a guy and tortured him and I mean they did so many awful horrible things and wrote on the walls I mean it's really like a horror film and I honestly don't think that Charles wanted them to do that but yeah it's an interesting case he is a very fascinating guy yeah definitely
He really is, and I'd like to go back to something you said right in the beginning, where you had a difficult time finding the childhood of Leonard Lake and Charles Ng. And with that said, I'm interested in Charles Manson's earlier days. And the thing that fascinated me, again, was not only the charisma, but also his interest and passion as a musician, as a failed musician at that. And I feel like I would love to just see the evolution of
of how he became that cult leader. But before that, I would, I feel like that story before, like you said, that bad rap that he gets, I would have loved to see him as the struggling musician artist that, you know, worked with the Beach Boys. Definitely. And there's, there's actually several, several places you can go to find
very good depictions of that. And one of them is, I think on Netflix, David Duchovny. He plays in a TV show called Aquarius.
which is great. I don't know why it hasn't been hyped more, because in my view, it's probably one of the very best depictions of true crime in a serial format out there. It's so good. It's very good. And it's about Charles Manson, his cult, and how they operate.
And the guy playing Charlie is, oh man, it's so spot on. And it goes into detail in how Charlie really, really tries to become a rock star. But his whole childhood, he was in prison. So he doesn't know how society works because he hasn't been taught. His whole life, he's been locked up since he was like eight years old.
So he doesn't have the capacity to understand how you record an album and that you have to do several takes or how a microphone works. Yeah, so all of these things are totally foreign to Charlie and he reacts, of course, very violently. So it's a really good show and I don't usually recommend it
other podcasts about serial killers because this is the one place you go for serial killers. But there is one podcast that covers Charles Manson in a way that I don't think I will be able to. That is the podcast You Must Remember This. It's a really, really good podcast and they have a whole anthology on Charles Manson where they go into...
so much detail and they do it very well. So I recommend that to both you and all my dear listeners. Gil, do you have any favorite fictional depictions of serial killers in film or book form that you would like to recommend? Let me think about this. Now we're talking fiction, completely fiction. Yes. And I'm a big movie buff, so I'm like thinking of all different kinds of films and
And I'm thinking in terms of movies. So my first thought, just so you know, is I thought about Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but I'm not sure if that would qualify. But the first thing that popped in my head was Texas Chainsaw because I was a big fan of that film.
And especially for the period of time when it did come out, it was actually one of the films that inspired the style of our film, The Miranda Murders. We wanted it to have that grindhouse, creepy feel like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It's definitely a film about a guy killing several people with a cooling off period in between. So yes, it's a serial killer film. And it's inspired me.
by a very true killer, serial killer or not, called Ed Gein. Yes. And I'm going to do an Ed Gein episode later this year. So keep a head out for good old Leatherface. So finally, Gil, before we log off and say our goodnight's
Any future projects that you are working on that our dear listeners should be on the lookout for? And where can they go and buy your movie, The Miranda Murders, or stream it? Okay, so one of the latest projects that we're working on was a play that Matt and I wrote about another person who murdered
his wife and mother-in-law in front of his kid set in Paris. And this is also a true story. And we wrote it as a play and I was able to perform in it. And one of the reasons why I played in it was because he was a famous Filipino painter in Paris in the 19th century. And this story has never been told, but we did the research, ended up writing the play as a magic show slash murder show.
Then we adapted it. And right now we will be filming this springtime of 2018. And the title is The Dark Side of Juan Luna based on the life and murders of Juan Luna, which is a true story. So that's the current project that we're in pre-production. And for anybody interested in seeing the dark, bleak, mundane film of the Miranda murders, you can see it on Amazon Prime if you've got it.
Or you can go to Amazon and check it out there. Fantastic. Gil, it has been a true pleasure talking to you tonight. Hopefully you will get in contact with me regarding that consulting commission. I hope you had a good time on the show as well. And I wish you the very best.
I wish you the very best and thank you again for having me on your show. It's an honor and it's so cool to be able to have your voice with mine. I just find that awesome. Great. And so, dear listener, ends the tale of the Miranda murders. The next episode of the Serial Killer Podcast will air on the 1st of February, 2018. So, as they say in the land of radio, stay tuned.
I have been your host, Thomas Weiborg Thun. Doing this podcast is a labor of love. Also, this podcast has been able to bring serial killer stories to life. Thanks to you, dear listener. And especially those of you that support me via Patreon. You can do so at theserialkillerpodcast.com slash donate. There are especially...
a few patrons that have stayed loyal for a long time. Ward, Wendy, Thomas, Craig, Charlotte, and Brandon. Your monthly contributions really help keep this podcast alive. You have my deepest gratitude, as always. Thank you, dear listener, for listening.
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