Northern California ‘Speed Freak Killer’ Wesley Shermantine dies in prison at 60
FOLSOM, Calif. —
Wesley Shermantine, known as one of the notorious “Speed Freak Killers,” died at California State Prison, Sacramento on Thursday, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said.
Shermantine was convicted of four murders and sentenced to death.
He and his childhood friend, Loren Herzog, were suspected of killing more than 70 other people in the 1980s and 1990s in and around San Joaquin County.
They were dubbed the “Speed Freak Killers” because they were high on methamphetamine during the 15-year killing spree before their arrests in 1999.
(Video below from 2022: San Joaquin deputies try to link evidence to possible victims of the Speed Freak Killers.)
Herzog was convicted of three murders. But an appeals court later tossed the convictions, saying his confession was illegally coerced. He instead pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and was paroled in 2010. He died by suicide in 2012.
Bounty hunter Leonard Padilla said at the time that after he agreed to pay Shermantine to disclose the bodies’ locations he called Herzog warning him to get a lawyer. Herzog was found dead inside his Lassen County trailer hours later.
Shermantine’s tips led officials to unearth the remains of several victims in San Joaquin and Calaveras counties.
Bone fragments belonging to 25-year-old Cyndi Vanderheiden and 16-year-old Chevelle “Chevy” Wheeler found on a former Shermantine family property.
The remains of Joann Hobson, 16, and Kimberly Billy were found in Linden wells.
Shermantine was pronounced dead on Thursday at 6 p.m. at the prison’s central health building. The coroner’s office will determine his official cause of death.
CDCR said there are 563 people in the state who have been sentenced to death. The state has kept a moratorium on the death penalty since Gov. Gavin Newsom’s executive order in 2019.
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