The Speed Freaks

Wesley Shermantine and Loren Herzog grew up on Fine Road in Linden, California, a farm town east of Stockton. They hunted together as boys and knew every back road, creek bed and abandoned ranch in the county. By the mid-1980s both were using methamphetamine heavily, and people around them started to disappear.

Chevelle “Chevy” Wheeler, 16, vanished from Stockton in October 1985 after skipping school. Robin Armtrout, 24, had been found stabbed to death near Linden the month before. In November 1998, 25-year-old Cyndi Vanderheiden was last seen with the two men. Blood recovered from the Shermantine family cabin was matched to Wheeler, and both men were arrested in March 1999. Shermantine was convicted of four murders in 2001 and sentenced to death. Herzog was convicted of three and acquitted over Armtrout’s death; he received 78 years, cut to 14 after an appeals court threw out his statements in 2004.

Herzog was paroled in September 2010 and took his own life in January 2012. Weeks later, maps Shermantine drew from death row led investigators to a site in Calaveras County, where the remains of Wheeler and Vanderheiden were recovered, and to an abandoned well on a cattle ranch outside Linden holding more than a thousand bone fragments. Two victims from the well were identified in March 2012 as Kimberly Billy, 19, and JoAnn Hobson, 16.