Infamous California serial killer Wesley Shermantine dies in prison

Wesley Shermantine, half of one of California’s most infamous serial killer duos, died in prison last week, officials announced. Loren Herzog, the other member of the Speed Freak Killers, died in 2012.

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Shermantine and Herzog grew up together in Linden, a small community in San Joaquin County just east of Stockton, in the 1970s. Coming out of high school, the pair were infamous for their methamphetamine addictions and abusive personalities. From the mid-1980s until 1999, over a dozen people who came into contact with the pair mysteriously vanished.

In 1998, 25-year-old Cyndi Vanderheiden was seen leaving a bar in the Linden Inn with Shermantine and Herzog. When San Joaquin County Sheriff’s deputies checked Shermantine’s car, they discovered blood matching Vanderheiden’s. As the case progressed, investigators began pairing other missing person reports with the two Linden men. Eventually, they discovered over 1,000 bone fragments in a well. It’s believed they killed at least 20 people.

Herzog and Shermantine were arrested in 1999. Shermantine was sentenced to death, but Herzog had his convictions overturned in 2004 when an appeals court determined some of his confessions had been coerced. Loved ones of his victims were furious when he was granted parole, but when no California county would allow him to move there, Herzog was paroled to a trailer outside of a Susanville prison in 2010. Herzog killed himself in 2012.

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Shermantine was on death row at San Quentin, but with the death penalty moratorium, he was moved to California State Prison, Sacramento. At 6 p.m. Thursday, he was pronounced deceased by a doctor at the prison’s health center. The Sacramento County Coroner’s Office will conduct an autopsy to determine his cause of death. Shermantine was 60. 

“He got his punishment that he deserves right now,” Vanderheiden’s father, John Vanderheiden, told ABC10. Shermantine “shouldn’t have lived that long,” he added.