Wesley Shermatine, one half of the Speed Freak Killers duo, was reportedly let out of San Quentin’s death row to help investigators search for victims, FOX40.com reported.
Shermantine aided investigators for the day, and was taken back to prison Sunday night.
The Speed Freak Killers is the name given to serial killer duo Loren Herzog and Wesley Shermantine, together initially convicted of 4 murders (3 jointly), and suspected in the deaths of as many as 15 people, in and around San Joaquin County, California. Their nickname was given due to their being methamphetamine users, with "speed freak" a colloquialism for such. Shermantine is on death row. Herzog committed suicide in 2012. He had had his conviction overturned in 2004, and had been paroled in 2010. Bones recovered in 2012 from an abandoned well have been positively linked to the killings.
Herzog and Shermantine were arrested by the San Joaquin County Sheriff's Department in 1999 after the blood of 25 year old Cyndi Vanderheiden of Clements was found in Shermantine’s car. She had gone missing after having left with them one night in 1998. The duo had grown up as childhood friends in the town, and had been regulars at Cyndi's father's bar in Linden. In 2001, a jury found Shermantine guilty of four murders; Vanderheiden, two men shot dead in their car in 1984, and 16-year-old Chevelle "Chevy" Wheeler, who disappeared in 1985 from Franklin High School in Stockton, when she told friends she was leaving school to go with Shermantine to his family's cabin in San Andreas. Shermantine was given a death sentence, and is on death row at San Quentin State Prison. Herzog was convicted of three murders, and was sentenced to 77 years to life. The sentence was later reduced to 14 years. An appeals court overturned the first-degree murder convictions, after ruling his confession was coerced. Herzog was paroled in 2010 to a trailer adjacent to the High Desert State Prison in Susanville. He committed suicide, hanging himself outside the trailer in January 2012, after bounty hunter Leonard Padilla informed Herzog that Shermantine was planning to disclose the location of a well and two other locations where the duo had buried their victims. Prior to then, none of the bodies of their victims had been found. Both men maintained that the other did the killing in all cases. The citizens of Linden, a small town with fewer than 2,000 people, 95 miles east of San Francisco, were long aware of the duo's reputation as methamphetamine users.
Letters written to journalist Scott Smith, of the Stockton Record, by Shermantine led authorities, in February 2012, to a well on an abandoned farm outside of Linden, California, where more than 1000 human bone fragments were recovered. The bones were to be tested by the California Department of Justice for DNA profiling. Shermantine stated that he believed that Herzog was responsible for the kidnapping of Michaela Garecht. Shermantine had given investigators maps to the well, and other possible burial sites, after bounty hunter Padilla promised to pay him $33,000 for the information. Two bodies from separate sites were identified as those of Chevelle "Chevy" Wheeler and Cyndi Vanderheiden. In February 2012, authorities and Padilla searched for bodies on property owned by Shermantine's parents. The search for bodies was spurred by a letter written to Padilla by Shermantine, detailing possible locations of victims. In March 2012, the FBI's Evidence Recovery Team was asked to assist with the investigation.
Shermantine has stated he knows the location of bodies, of victims killed by other death row inmates, in the Cow Mountain Recreation Area. Lake County sheriffs were skeptical of the possibility of a successful recovery of any bodies in the large park.In August 2012, California Assemblywoman Cathleen Galgiani wrote to prison department Secretary Matt Cate asking him to briefly release Shermantine from prison, to assist in the discovery of any remains he may have knowledge of, under an emergency law she had written.
In February 2012, acting on Shermantine's directions, authorities found over 300 human bones and some personal items in an abandoned well in Linden, California. In late March 2012, the remains of two Stockton California teens who had been missing since the mid 1980's were identified as Kimberly Ann Billy, 19, who disappeared on December 11, 1984 and Joann Hobson, 16, who disappeared on August 29, 1985. The remains of an additional victim found the well has yet to be identified.
culled from FOXNEWS
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