Speed Freak Killers

Loren Joseph Herzog (December 8, 1965 — January 16, 2012) and Wesley "Wes" Howard Shermantine Jr. (born February 24, 1966) grew up in the town of Linden, California, and lived on the same street as each other.

Both boys were friends with one another because there were not many other children in their neighbourhood to play with, and it appears that they did not have any other friends throughout high school and into adulthood.

Shermantine's father was a successful local contractor and real estate developer who frequently "spoiled" Wesley with gifts and money throughout his life.

Shermantine and Herzog were both avid hunters and fishermen who spent much of their childhood exploring the San Joaquin County countryside.

They graduated from Linden High School in 1984 and took pleasure in bullying other people, drinking alcohol, and using drugs, especially methamphetamine, in their apartment in nearby Stockton, California.

During this time, Herzog had a brief affair with a young woman named Kim Vanderheiden.

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 and also knew them as regulars at the Linden Inn bar, which was owned by Kim's father.

In 2001, a jury found Shermantine guilty of four murders: those of Vanderheiden, the robbery-murder of drifters Howard King, 35, and Paul Raymond Cavanaugh, 31, whose bodies were found shot to death in a car off a remote road on Roberts Island on November 27, 1984, and 16-year-old Chevelle "Chevy" Wheeler, who disappeared in 1985 from Franklin High School in Stockton after telling friends she was leaving school to go with Shermantine to his family's cabin in San Andreas.

During his trial, numerous witnesses testified that they had been brutalized by Shermantine.

He was accused of severely raping or sodomizing five different women, including a babysitter who claimed she was attacked when she went to get money he owed her.

Shermantine's sister disclosed that she had been also sexually assaulted by the two.

One woman claimed that after rear-ending her car, he held her hostage with a knife when she pulled over to exchange insurance information.

She leaped out of his moving vehicle and made it to safety.

Shermantine's ex-wife also spoke of how he had abused her severely for years, even while she was pregnant and held their kids in her lap.

Shermantine was sentenced to death and is on death row at San Quentin State Prison.

Herzog ultimately divulged incriminating details such as describing how Shermantine had shot a hunter they ran into while on vacation in northern Utah in 1994.

Utah police confirmed that a hunter had indeed been killed, but his murder was still classified as unsolved.

Herzog also said Shermantine was responsible for killing Henry Howell, 41, who was shot dead and found parked off the road on Highway 88 in Alpine County near Hope Valley with his teeth and head bashed in.

Herzog said he and Shermantine passed Howell parked on the highway, and Shermantine stopped, grabbed Howell's shotgun, killed him, and stole what little money he had.

Additionally, Herzog gave specific details about how Shermantine killed Robin Armtrout, 24, whose nude body was found stabbed nearly a dozen times on the east bank of Potter Creek near Linden.

Kim's 25-year-old sister, Cyndi Vanderheiden of Clements, California, went missing after leaving the Linden Inn with Herzog and Shermantine on November 14, 1998.

Investigation into Vanderheiden's disappearance continued into 1999, Shermantine as the prime suspect.

In mid-January 1999, Shermantine's car was repossessed and subsequently searched by the San Joaquin Sheriff's Department.

Cyndi Vanderheiden's blood was discovered in the car, and while DNA test results were being confirmed, the sheriff's department focused on Herzog, Shermantine's friend and suspected accomplice who was extensively questioned.

Herzog and Shermantine were arrested by the San Joaquin County Sheriff's Department and charged with several counts of murder each on March 17, 1999.

Herzog was charged with five counts of murder in 1999: those of Vanderheiden, Howell, Cavanaugh, Armtrout and King.

In his 2001 trial, a jury found him guilty on three murder counts (Vanderheiden, Cavanaugh, and King), the lesser charge of accessory to murder in the Howell count, and acquitted him on the Armtrout count.

Herzog was given a 78-year sentence.

An appeals court overturned all of Herzog's convictions in August 2004, ruling that three of Herzog's four confessions were coerced.

In the case of the fourth, that of Vanderheiden, a retrial was ordered.

This retrial never took place.

Rather, a plea bargain was reached, and Herzog pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and furnishing amphetamine in the Vanderheiden case and to being an accessory to murder in the Cavanaugh, King, and Howell cases.

Accordingly, Herzog's sentence was reduced to 14-years, with credit for six years served.

With credit off his sentence for good behavior, Herzog served 11-years in prison and was in a position to be paroled by 2010.

Opposition to the inevitability of Herzog's parole was extremely vocal, especially from victims' families.

That no California county wanted to take him for parole led the California Department of Corrections to parole him to a trailer stationed outside the front gate of the High Desert State Prison in Susanville, California in Lassen County in September 2010.

The Speed Freak Killers is the name given to serial killer duo Loren Herzog and Wesley Shermantine, together initially convicted of four murders — three jointly — and suspected in the deaths of as many as 72 people in and around San Joaquin County, California based on a letter Shermantine wrote to a reporter in 2012.

They received the "speed freak" moniker due to their habitual methamphetamine abuse.

Herzog committed suicide in 2012.

Shermantine remains on death row in San Quentin State Prison, in San Quentin, California.