Placer County officials this week announced a major breakthrough in one of the area’s most “heinous and notorious” cold cases from more than 30 years ago — a woman who disappeared without a trace from home, where her 11-month old was located hours later, crying alone in a high-chair.
During a press conference Monday, Placer County sheriff’s officials announced the arrest of James Lawhead Jr. last week — a man had been living in Arizona under a fake identity — for the murder of Cindy Wanner, a married mother of two who was allegedly kidnapped from her sister’s house in the daytime hours of November, 25. 1991.
Her shoes, coat, and vehicle were left at the scene, officials said. Her remains were found three weeks later in the Forest Hill area. Pathologists at the time believed she had been kept alive for some time after she went missing. She was found to be strangled to death, officials said.
“This was an enormous case that devastated a family and shook a community,” said Placer County District Attorney Morgan Gire. “I was in high school at the time … I remember my parents talking about this case. The entire community talked about this case and the Wanner family.”
Investigators faced substantial roadblocks over the years with forensic testing, until they got a hit: Lawhead Jr., a sex offender who had spent 11 years in prison for sex crimes. Officials believe Lawhead Jr. murdered Wanner within a year of his release.
Officials this week charged Lawhead with one count of kidnapping and one count of murder carrying two special circumstances: rape during a murder and kidnapping during a murder.
Officials also arrested his sister, 71-year-old Terry Lawhead, of San Clemente (Orange County) as an accessory to the murder. Lawhead told officials over the last 20 years that she hadn’t seen or heard from her brother, and believed he could be dead. In reality, the two had been in communication and she owned the Arizona home he was living in, officials said.
In 1980, Lawhead Jr. broke into the Sacramento County home of a grandmother and beat her unconscious, before raping her 11-year-old granddaughter. He served 11 years of his 19-year prison sentence and was classified as a “mentally disordered sex offender who was not amenable to treatment,” officials said.
Years after allegedly killing Wanner, he failed to register as a sex offender in Placer County and was arrested. In 2005, after he was arrested for an outstanding weapons charge, officials said he vanished without a trace and assumed the identity of Vincent Reynolds.
Through a collaboration with multiple law enforcement agencies and the use of sophisticated facial recognition technology, officials apprehended Lawhead Jr. in the driveway of his home in Bullhead, Arizona. Officials seized a number of items from his home, including multiple loaded firearms staged throughout the house and a bag with his clothes, $15,000 in cash and a burner phone.
He will be brought back to Placer County to be prosecuted, officials said.