BULLHEAD CITY, AZ (AZFamily) — Residents in northwestern Arizona are shaken up after their next-door neighbor was arrested in connection with a decades-old homicide.
James Lawhead Jr., 64, was arrested in Bullhead City for the 1991 murder of Cindy Wanner in California. Police say he had been living in the area for years under the alias Vincent Reynolds.
The arrest shook the Bullhead City neighborhood where Lawhead had been living.
“I assumed it was some kind of murder or something like that because the SWAT came,” one neighbor said.
Lawhead is accused of kidnapping Wanner in the Sacramento area in 1991. Three weeks later, she was found dead. Investigators believed Wanner was kept alive for some time before she was raped and strangled.
James Lawhead Jr., 64, was arrested in Bullhead City for the 1991 murder of Cindy Wanner in California.(Arizona’s Family/Placer County Sheriff’s Office)
Lawhead has a long criminal history, including breaking into a 71-year-old woman’s home, beating her unconscious and then sexually assaulting her 11-year-old granddaughter. He was released from prison just 10 months before Wanner was murdered.
With the help of facial recognition technology, Lawhead was identified and arrested in Bullhead City.
Alonso Avalos lives around the corner from where the arrest happened. He saw police swarm the house and says he’s spoken to Lawhead before.
“We did communicate with him. We talked to him. If it’s the same guy that I think it is…really shocking,” he said.
Avalos says the neighborhood is still in shock.
“It is kind of concerning because you never really know who people are. It’s kind of scary,” he said.
Lawhead is waiting to be extradited from Arizona to Placer County, California, where he will be charged with murder and kidnapping.
Investigators say they are now looking into other crimes Lawhead might be connected to in the years he was on the run. He lived in multiple states before his arrest.
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