San Joaquin County "Speed Freak Killer" Wesley Shermantine dies in prison at 60
Wesley Shermantine, one half of the notorious "Speed Freak Killers," has died in prison while serving a death sentence for four murders tied to a yearslong killing spree in the San Joaquin Valley.
Shermantine died Thursday at California State Prison, Sacramento, state corrections officials announced Friday. He was 60.
A doctor pronounced him dead around 6 p.m. at the prison. The Sacramento County Coroner's Office will determine his cause of death.
Shermantine and childhood friend Loren Herzog became known as the "Speed Freak Killers," a nickname tied to their meth use and a string of killings and disappearances during the 1980s and 1990s.
A jury convicted Shermantine in 2001 of killing Cyndi Vanderheiden, Chevelle "Chevy" Wheeler, Howard King III and Paul Cavanaugh. He was sentenced to death.
Authorities suspected Shermantine and Herzog in other killings, but the true number of victims was never established.
San Joaquin County District Attorney Ron Freitas said Friday his office was thinking of the victims' families following Shermantine's death.
"For decades, these families have carried a heavy, unbearable grief," Freitas said in a statement. "While Wesley Shermantine's death marks the final chapter of his legal sentence, it doesn't erase the pain left behind."
The case drew renewed attention in 2012 when Shermantine began sending investigators maps and information from death row pointing to possible burial sites.
His tips led authorities to the remains of Vanderheiden and Wheeler on former Shermantine family property in Calaveras County.
Investigators also recovered more than 1,000 bone fragments from a well near Linden. Among the remains were those of Kimberly Billy and JoAnn Hobson, two other missing women investigators suspected were victims of Shermantine and Herzog.
Shermantine later admitted some involvement in the killings during a 2012 CBS News Sacramento interview from San Quentin after years of placing the blame on Herzog.
"I had an active role," Shermantine said.
Herzog died by suicide in 2012 while on parole. His murder convictions had previously been overturned after a court ruled his confession was illegally coerced. He later pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter in Vanderheiden's death.
Shermantine remained on death row until his death, although California has not carried out an execution since 2006. Gov. Gavin Newsom imposed a moratorium on executions in 2019, but condemned sentences remain in effect.
Since California reinstated the death penalty in 1978, 126 condemned prisoners have died of natural causes, compared with 13 who were executed by the state, according to CDCR. Shermantine's cause of death remains pending and is not included in that natural-causes total.
