Jury Convicts Wesley Shermantine of Four San Joaquin Valley Murders
The Stockton-area man was found guilty of killing Paul Cavanaugh and Howard King in 1984, Chevy Wheeler in 1985 and Cindi Vanderheiden in 1998.
Published
On Wednesday, February 14, 2001, a jury convicted Wesley Shermantine Jr. of four San Joaquin Valley murders, the first committed in 1984. "To me, it's 15 years too late," the prosecutor said.
Shermantine, 35, sat quietly as the verdicts were read in a Santa Clara County courtroom, where the trial had been moved because of publicity around Stockton. Relatives of the victims wept, and so did two of the jurors. The jury found him guilty of killing Paul Cavanaugh, 31, and Howard King, 35, in 1984; Chevy Wheeler, 16, of Stockton, in 1985; and Cindi Vanderheiden, 25, of Clements, east of Stockton, in 1998.
No one had witnessed any of the killings. Cavanaugh and King had been shot to death in a car off a remote road late at night, and tire tracks at the scene matched Shermantine's pickup. Wheeler disappeared after skipping school and driving into the mountains with him; he was suspected in her death for years but was not arrested until 1999, after DNA tests showed that drops of blood found in his mountain cabin almost certainly came from her. Vanderheiden disappeared after leaving a bar with Shermantine and his friend Loren Herzog, and the prosecution said her blood was found on a headrest and in the trunk of Shermantine's car.
The trial lasted three months, and the jury deliberated for eight days. "This is the verdict, frankly, we expected," prosecutor Thomas Testa said. "For 15 years he's gotten away with a large number of sexual assaults, abductions, kidnappings, other crimes. Finally, he's being held accountable." Testa said Shermantine had boasted of killing as many as twenty-two people and was a suspect in killings elsewhere in California and in Utah and Nevada, though none of that was allowed into the trial. Herzog, charged in three of the same killings and two others, was awaiting his own trial.
Some of the families had driven two hundred miles round trip to watch the case. John and Terri Vanderheiden still did not know where their daughter's remains were. "I'm glad, from now on, he won't hurt anybody," John Vanderheiden said. "He deserves to die." The jury was due back on February 21 to decide between execution and life in prison without parole, and Shermantine was later sentenced to death.
Sources
- Suspected serial killer convicted of four Stockton-area murders, San Mateo Daily Journal (wire report)
- Condemned Person Wesley Shermantine Dies, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation
Related News
- October 23, 2001: Jury Convicts Loren Herzog, Wesley Shermantine's Boyhood Friend, of Three Murders
- February 9, 2012: Map Drawn by Condemned Killer Wesley Shermantine Leads Searchers to the Remains of Cyndi Vanderheiden
- September 18, 2026: "Speed Freak Killer" Wesley Shermantine Dies on California's Death Row at 60