Search For Victims Of 'Speed Freak Killers' Expanding

LINDEN (CBS13) - Investigators on Thursday got a closer look inside the well where they've recovered remains of victims of the "Speed Freak Killers." Now their search is about to get even bigger, and one woman is hoping her husband's remains are among those recovered.

A camera was lowered down into the well in outside Linden where some 1,000 human bone fragments have been found. An expert take a look at video footage.

Thursday a woman from Calaveras County visited the site, fearing her husband is buried in a mass grave.

"I'm shaking, I'm just really shaking," Elaine Killam said. "It's been so many years."

Killam says she is 99.9 percent sure her former husband, Rick Giannini, is buried in the "boneyard" that death row inmate says former partner in crime Loren Herzog had him dispose of their victims.

"I realized this must be the place so I just stopped to see if this is where his body might be," she said.

Since Giannini vanished in 1989, Killam always believed her former husband was killed during a drug deal.

Even though she says Giannini knew Shermantine, she didn't make a possible connection until recently when Shermantine began speaking with investigators about locations of victims and Herzog killed himself, apparently distraught over Shermantine speaking out from death row.

"All these years I didn't put the two together until all these bodies came up, and then I started connecting," she said.

None of the 1,000 bone pieces found buried in the abandoned water well have been identified.

Killam, along with dozens of other loved ones, have flooded the San Joaquin County Sheriff Department' hotline with at least 80 calls hoping for closure.

The hardest part, Killam said, has been for their son, who was only 10 when Giannini disappeared.

"We've never had closure and it's been real important for me to see that my son gets closure," she said.

The sheriff's department hopes to bring in specialized human remains dogs from Santa Clara County to see if investigators need to dig in two remaining nearby wells.

"What the dogs would do is as they did in Calaveras County, they helped us pinpoint areas where we were successful in discovering human remains," department spokesman Deputy Les Garcia said.

The dogs could arrive as early as Friday.