Speed Freak Killer #2 Trying to Get Out
SAN JOAQUIN COUNTY—In a 3 page letter sent to the Stockton Record, convicted serial killer Wesley Shermantine says he’s ready to reveal where he and former friend Loren Herzog buried the bodies of women they killed during a 15 year spree.
The letter was scrawled on a paper from a yellow legal pad. The offer is simple. “I’ll give up information about Loren Herzog if you let me out of prison in say 10 years,” says Record reporter Scott Smith.
The letter was addressed to Smith or any Record reporter. Smith has had off and on contact with Shermantine for years and has seen him taunt people with the possibility of information before.
“He’ll kind of hint at things, he’ll say, ‘I have some information, would you like to know what it is?’ So I don’t know what you can believe of what he says, really,” Smith told FOX40.
The bodies of at least five women believed to have been killed by Shermantine and Herzog, dubbed “The Speed Freak Duo”, have never been recovered.
Shermantine’s offer is a tempting one for prosecutors and they’ve heard before. Just after his conviction, Shermantine made the same offer, but demanded $20,000. A few years ago, Shermantine again said he’d reveal the location of the missing women – if the San Joaquin County District Attorney’s office bought him art supplies.
For their part, the D.A.’s office has been negotiating have the death penalty dropped from Shermantine’s sentence and reduce it life in prison in exchange for the info, but deputy district attorney Thomas Testa says this latest demand won’t fly.
“He wants to get out in 10 years, which is never going to happen,” Testa says. Testa prosecuted both Herzog and Shermantine and believes this latest tease is borne out of jealousy, “I think it really burns Wesley Shermantine up to see Loren Herzog free.”
Loren Herzog was released from custody this summer, though he’s still living on the grounds of High Desert State Prison in Susanville because no California county wanted him to move in.
“As Wesley wrote in that letter, he’s interested in making sure Loren gets back in custody, I think that’s what motivated him in part to show us where the bodies are,” says Testa. The letter to the Stockton Record asks for a “deal”, but it appears Shermantine has finally pushed too far and the San Joaquin County District Attorney’s office is pulling the plug on the cat and mouse game.
“We are washing our hands of Wesley Shermantine,” says Testa.
Wash your hands and stop letting this killer play games. Just say no.
The California Justice System already let Herzog out. Isn’t that bad enough?
Release controversy
Much to the mortification of the residents of Lassen County, Calif., Herzog was paroled to their area upon his release from prison in San Joaquin County: some of his victims’ relatives successfully petitioned to have his release moved out San Joaquin County, where many of his alleged crimes had been committed. Originally scheduled for release in July 2010, prison officials discovered that his sentence required him to serve several additional weeks. The discrepancy over the release date was chalked up to a “clerical error.” Although a number of influential politicians had tried in vain to keep Herzog locked up, the prison system said that there was little they could do given Herzog’s sentence and the ruling of the parole board. Dozens of area residents protested in Susanville three days before his scheduled release date.
It was established that Herzog’s parole would be for three years, supervised. Another condition of his parole, according to Sacramento’s News 10, was that Herzog be housed in a modular home on the grounds of neighboring High Desert State Prison in Susanville. Although the property is owned by the state prison system, it is located outside the perimeter of the prison itself. Herzog is required to wear a GPS monitoring device tracked 24 hours a day, and is subject to a curfew.
Nonetheless, thousands of residents are upset over Herzog’s release into their county. At the time of his release, many people were organizing to take their protest to the governor’s office.
“Everybody was completely outraged,” said an area resident to CBS 12 Action News. “The bottom line is nobody heard about it until the last minute.”
Assemblyman Dan Logue, a Republican from the California State Assembly’s 3rd District, was among those who had fought to keep Herzog in jail.
“I cannot believe that the parole board let this guy out so early,” Logue said. “He still has years to serve, so I’m looking into the reasons behind that also.”
Logue’s attempt to keep Herzog behind bars by utilizing a civil commitment law, which would have required the district attorney, through the court system, to have a mental evaluation done to determine if Herzog still possessed a propensity for violence, but was unsuccessful.
“He can still get in his vehicle and go wherever he wants to go,” said an area resident. “The ankle bracelet is not going to stop him from going anywhere in a small town like that.”
“There is no bigger injustice,” John Vanderheiden, Cyndi Vanderheiden’s father, said of Herzog’s release. “All Herzog’s release is doing is making me relive it all over again….Our justice system just didn’t do its job.”
Real Life Monsters 