Loren Herzog, Paroled After His Speed Freak Killers Murder Convictions Were Overturned, Dies by Suicide
He was found in his trailer beside High Desert State Prison just as Wesley Shermantine had begun revealing where victims were buried.
Published
Loren Herzog, whose murder convictions in the Speed Freak Killers case were overturned, was paroled to a trailer beside a California prison. On January 17, 2012, officials said he had died by suicide.
Herzog, 46, was found late on January 16 in the trailer on the grounds of High Desert State Prison near Susanville, where he had been required to live since his parole in September 2010, and was pronounced dead at about 12:30 a.m. the next day. His parole agent had been alerted at about 11 p.m. that his GPS ankle monitor's battery was low and, unable to reach him by phone, asked prison staff to check on him, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The Lassen County Sheriff's Office, the Lassen County District Attorney's Office and the corrections department investigated, and the state Office of Inspector General was notified. Medical examiners later concluded that he had taken his own life on January 16.
Herzog and Wesley Shermantine, boyhood friends from Linden, were tried over killings in the 1980s and 1990s. A Santa Clara County jury convicted Herzog in 2001 of the murders of Cyndi Vanderheiden, Paul Cavanaugh and Howard King III, but an appeals court overturned all of his convictions in 2004, ruling that investigators had coerced him while questioning him about three of the deaths. He then pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter in the 1998 death of Vanderheiden and to being an accessory to three other killings. Shermantine, on death row, had begun late in 2011 to reveal where victims were buried, blaming Herzog, and no remains had been found when Herzog died. Prosecutor Thomas Testa said half of the knowledge of where the victims were was now gone.
Sources
- Convicted killer Loren Herzog commits suicide, Lodi News-Sentinel (citing CDCR and Lassen County Sheriff's Office releases)
- Speed Freak Killer's cause of death, deep anger revealed, The Mercury News (The Record, Stockton)
Related News
- 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