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'Speed Freak Killer' Wesley Shermantine sends new letter, claims he knows of more than 70 murder victims over 70 murder victims

CBS Sacramento received this letter from death row inmate Wesley Shermantine (top left) claiming he knows of more than 70 murder victims CBS Sacramento/AP Photo, top left

(CBS/AP) SACRAMENTO, Calif. - CBS Sacramento has received a second letter from convicted serial killer Wesley Shermantine, which claims he knows of more than 70 murder victims.

Shermantine wrote to reporter Koula Gianulias at the station saying that his accomplice, Loren Herzog, and a third man killed 72 people. CBS Sacramento did not identify the third man.

Shermantine, one of the so-called "Speed Freak Killers," is on San Quentin's State Prison's death row for killing four people from 1984 to 1999.

Herzog was convicted of three murders, but authorities had said previously that they suspect he and Shermantine killed about 20 people.

Herzog's convictions were overturned after a judge determined his confession was illegally coerced. He instead struck a plea deal on one count of voluntary manslaughter and was paroled in 2010.

He died in an apparent suicide in January, hours after receiving a call from bounty hunter Leonard Padilla warning him that Shermantine planned to reveal the burial locations.

The letter CBS Sacramento received Wednesday comes after Shermantine wrote the station in February, claiming that he knew where additional victims had been dumped. Both letters bore a San Quentin State Prison postmark, the station said.

Maps that Shermantine had previously provided led authorities to at least three locations, with Shermatine claiming that 10 bodies or more could have been stashed in the area.

Investigators found remains belonging to two of Shermantine's victims in Calaveras County. They also found hundreds of bone fragments in a well in an abandoned ranch in San Joaquin County.

The newest letter can be read here.

Complete coverage of Wesley Shermantine on Crimesider

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