Original subtitles

Hi, guys, how are you?

How are you?

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Back up.

There we go.

So everybody heard I'm mic'd up?

So no laughing at me if I go flying off this thing.

Here come our pooper scoopers

for today's parade.

The Linden Cherry Festival, it's like something you'd see

in a movie about the '50s.

It's a chance for the community to all get together

and watch each other's children grow up and share experiences

and gossip about each other, unfortunately.

After 50 feet,

investigators hit the deepest part

of the abandoned water well...

The way that the world has been shown Linden

is nothing but open fields, brown grass,

big open well,

body parts being removed from that well.

And nothing was shown about the beautiful community it is.

Hi, guys, how are you?

Thank you guys for being here.

Hey!

A sheriff is only second in constitutional power

to the President of the United States.

Hey, good. How are you?

- Good. - Good to see you, bud.

If you go in there with weak character,

then you can very quickly progress to a dictator

and think that you're above the law.

How are you? Hi, I'm Pat. Nice to meet you.

I don't answer to anybody other than

the people of San Joaquin County.

When I first come in, um,

there's not a whole lot of investigating going on.

It had been such a nightmare for the department

with the previous sheriff, Steve Moore.

We knew we were in trouble.

We had grown up with that guy in the office

and knew the type of person he was.

We knew what was coming, and we were right.

During that time in 2012, here we had this opportunity

to begin finding victims of some of the most prolific

serial killers in the nation's history.

But we had a sheriff that the only thing

he cared about was his budget,

not the protection of our citizens

and the solving of crimes.

I realized, "Hey, if I'm gonna complain about this,

I better be willing to step up and do something about it.

This man has failed for 12 years.

He's been in office for 12 years,

and this is everybody's worst nightmare,

a cop who's changing the facts of cases.

So we need everyone to get out and vote.

Part of the big push to get these cases

brought to light was getting rid of the previous sheriff.

And that took us eight years.

Congratulations, Sheriff Withrow.

Thank you.

I made a commitment that when I got into office,

I would do everything I could

to correct the wrongs that had happened,

and that we would look wherever we needed to look

to try and find other victims

and get closure for these families.

This is LG-74.

This is LG-74. This is the lavender jacket.

This one's much cleaner.

Small, too. This is pretty small, too.

So supposedly this is Chevy Wheelers'.

I'd like to note it is missing a button.

During the 2012 well dig that our sheriff's office completed,

there were some clothing pieces located,

some more whole than others.

Shermantine and Herzog may have dumped other items

belonging to other victims down that same well,

so it was very important to try to figure out...

what clothing belonged to which person.

One of the multiple victims that were located

in the well was an unidentified female.

According to the notes that were left for us,

they thought that this belonged to Jane Doe

and not Joann Hobson.

But her mom said, "I think that this red jacket is hers."

We could flip it over and see if there's anything on the back.

Flip it over, see if there's anything on the back.

Doesn't look like it.

It is pretty small.

Looks like the size of one of my daughter's jackets.

Yeah, which would definitely be in line

with Joann Hobson.

I can call her sister Michelle

and ask her if she has any pictures of her

in any of the jackets, in the jacket that she thinks is--

Is hers, to bring those.

Yeah.

Yeah, this one is...

kind of, like, half a jacket.

Yeah, there was another piece.

I didn't bring the whole thing over.

I think there was a couple of pieces, but...

This is barbed wire.

It's barbed wire?

So did they mention something

- about torturing somebody? - Yeah, Jane Doe.

Yes, Jane Doe, they tortured with the barbed wire.

This is the one that has barbed wire

twisted into the clothing,

so if that's the case, then this might be Jane Doe.

This is most likely Jane's.

Because these are barbed wires.

- Even right here. - It's all in here.

It's a letter that he totally describes, correct?

"So I was there in 1985 when he killed her.

She was a Black pregnant woman..."

"It was about 5:00 p.m.

They took her from Wilson Way,

somewhere out there in Stockton.

She was a hooker.

When I got there, Loren's truck was in the field

blocking the view from the road.

This poor Black pregnant woman was screaming,

'I'm sorry, you'll get your money.

Please don't hurt my baby.'

Loren asked me if I had my piece with me, .357 pistol.

Her hand ripped free,

and she was gone just like that."

But then he changes the story again later, doesn't he?

And later on he changes it again to he's the one that shot her.

Specifically with Jane Doe,

who was located in the well in 2012.

I'm cautious to repeat what Shermantine says

because we don't know that he's telling the truth.

We know that it's a female.

We know that she was pregnant.

We know that she was likely Hispanic

or African American descent

or a mixture of races.

We know that she was taller than the other females.

And that's really all we know about her,

and that's just based off of her remains.

Our main focus for Jane Doe

is to put the pieces together of who she was

and to let her family know that

we did locate her and what took place.

As horrible as it is, the family needs to know.

San Joaquin County, I've always referred to it

as this unknown jewel, really.

San Joaquin County is in the northern

central part of California.

Sacramento is to the north, San Francisco is to the west.

Though we do have larger cities like Stockton,

the majority of our county is farming land.

People will call our sheriff's office

for cows in the roadway or horses that have gotten loose,

things that I had no idea how to deal with

being from a large city.

It's probably the richest valley

agriculturally in the world.

And yet the income for San Joaquin County

is very low, which is conducive to a higher crime rate.

Everybody out there has a shotgun.

I don't care whether it's Grandma

or the kids you leave for half the day.

Everybody takes care of themselves in that aspect,

but occasionally it doesn't go right.

Wesley Shermantine and Loren Herzog

grew up in the Linden area of our county.

I don't think there'd ever been a murder in Linden,

and I'm not sure I'd ever had a case

from Linden, because Linden is a tiny town.

It has a main street, it has the bare necessities.

It's a rural way of life.

They were best friends when they were young.

They went hunting together,

they went gambling up in Reno together.

Wes was clearly the dominant personality.

Loren was the sidekick.

Loren was a self-described "dumbass country boy,"

kind of shy and soft-spoken.

You can see that in his interactions with the police.

Wesley Shermantine is one of the few individuals

who in my career actually gave me the creeps

to sit anywhere close to him.

They took a mug shot of him,

where his superiority to the mug photographer

was so patent that he just stared

right through the camera.

Which really was a window into his soul,

which is that nothing could touch him.

Loren has always been described as a follower,

but Loren was also smart enough to know

what was the difference between right and wrong.

Let's get that straight.

Cyndi Vanderheiden has been missing

for quite some time.

You've spoken with Detective Scheffel,

you've spoken with a few other people,

and have provided several different statements,

some of which we know to be true

and some of it we know not to be true.

When we initially brought Loren Herzog in,

we knew that they had some hand in it,

we just didn't know what the details were.

Why don't you tell us in your own words

without us prodding you or telling you

or saying, "Well, what about this or what about that?"

Tell us...

Start with when you arrived at the bar that night.

What he tells us is that they did meet up

with Cyndi at the Linden Bar.

At some point in the evening,

Cyndi asked them if they had any methamphetamine.

Loren says that he and Wes

drive Wes's car back to Clements,

where they meet up with Cyndi at the cemetery.

They had done some drugs in the parking lot

and they drove to a remote location,

Waverly Road, on the edge of Linden.

You could smell the fear from him.

He was exhausted and done,

knowing that we got Cyndi Vanderheiden's blood

in the trunk of the car that he said that

he was driving with his partner.

How do I answer this?

Point everything at Wes.

The strategy was,

"Hey, he wants to talk, let him talk."

But our concentration was Cyndi,

because we still had no body.

We had enough information to arrest Wes after that interview.

33-year-old Wes Shermantine Jr.

is accused of murder, kidnapping, and rape

in the disappearance of Cyndi Vanderheiden.

You tell me, what are the possibilities

of Cyndi's blood being in your trunk?

We're telling you.

It's 169 million to one.

There was no doubt in my mind after talking to him

that he was a narcissistic sociopath.

But you could also tell that

he was always thinking and trying to stay a step ahead.

So let's go back that night.

What happened?

Whenever you would talk to him, he would have this little pause.

And to me, that's a red flag.

I want the truth of what happened that night.

There's blood in your car. There's a simple explanation.

He knows it, I know it.

It's there.

Take the opportunity.

Okay.

Mm-hmm.

The best proof that Loren was not well-versed

in legal matters is the fact that

he gave these hours of interview without saying,

"I want a lawyer."

You have to say it that way.

You have to say, "I want a lawyer."

Those are the magic words.

We called it a night and allowed him

to take a break for the night in a county jail.

Meanwhile, we rushed back to our desks

and fanatically gathered information from old homicides

so that we can go at him again the next day.

Prior to me coming in, there was concern

about cold cases in our department.

There was a grand jury report that came out

that addressed the lack of movement

or attempted movement on any of the cold cases.

Family members felt that no one was listening to them.

The Shermantine case was the catalyst for us

to be able to have as big as cold case unit as we have.

And then I see in one of the crime scene photos

there was a shotgun that looked like

- it was laying around. - The shotgun.

Jocelyn Smith

brings a lot of experience with homicide

and to have that experience is priceless.

Department of Justice comes out, they process the scene.

We start running whatever recovered fingerprints

that they have, we get a match.

As a robbery homicide detective working active cases,

you're constantly getting new leads.

Having moved to cold case,

you don't have those tips coming in.

You don't have those witnesses calling saying,

"Hey, I heard this or I saw that."

So you're having to dig a little deeper.

He had five guns. I only can find four.

If he did kill himself and then somebody came by,

saw the gun and stole it, I mean--

- It has happened in the past. - It is always a possibility.

Detective Chris Sterni,

he's been with our department for years

and has a natural ability

to see things in a different light.

There's no hole in the roof,

no hole in the passenger side window.

Too many questions.

We have a bunch of old cold cases

and we're trying to see if they're related to Shermantine.

Detective Jeremy Davis is from Linden.

It's nice that he knows the lay of the land really well.

He ran around there as a kid.

My friend lived directly across from Herzog's house.

My friend was driving his Trans Am up and down the street.

He was probably going a little bit fast.

Next thing we know, Loren Herzog is threatening me and my friend

saying that he's gonna kill us if we don't slow down.

And then when the story came out that Herzog had been involved

in the death of Vanderheiden, we're like,

"Wow, uh, he wasn't kidding."

Sergeant Jimenez really created

a unit from scratch, setting up what we wanted

cold case to look like for our county.

We have 200 cold case homicides,

approximately 100 long-term missing people,

and I think we have about 100 to 150

unsolved sex assaults.

We have a case from 1995,

which was a unidentified female

found inside of a refrigerator.

This is where the woman's body was found,

right down there in the mud

alongside this irrigation ditch, not far from...

This is a potential Shermantine-Herzog case.

When I first came to cold case,

this is one of the cases they were talking about,

"Hey, we have this case, '95,

the lady was found stuffed in a fridge,

bound, uh, gagged.

Her level of decomposition was pretty bad."

She had been there for quite some time

and there was no identifying markings.

When you have a John Doe or Jane Doe

like that lady in the fridge,

when we're comparing

to potential missing persons in the area,

if they've never been reported because they've either,

you know, lost contact with the family

and the family just doesn't know,

or if they don't have family and disappeared as adults

and-- and nobody ever reported them,

we'll never be able to match that up

to a missing persons report,

and it makes it really difficult.

Until you find out who she is, your hands are tied.

You don't have any leads to follow up on.

You don't know who her friends or family are.

You don't know who the last person she was with.

The only thing you have is the clues

that are in that refrigerator.

Definitely a trekking shoe.

- There was gonna be decomp. - Decomp.

And that's what her thing was. There's gonna be--

All of her DNA is gonna be on it.

All of her DNA is gonna be on it.

They're not really worn. Look at the tread.

No, they're-- they're pretty new.

So these milk cartons were

inside of the fridge with her.

And they're all, I'm assuming, the same brand.

All-- all-- it looks like...

- They were Crystal. - ...they were Crystal.

And they weren't able to find any numbers.

They weren't able to find any lot numbers

due to the condition of them.

In the freezer portion,

there was a Glacier ice bag.

We were able to determine when that ice was produced.

There was evidence that that ice was sent

to a Bethel Island business.

And we don't know if this was ever tested for DNA.

Nothing was-- has been sent away for DNA yet.

We got multiple tips that it could have been Shermantine.

I don't know, like, where the body was found

off Bacon Island, but the Shermantines had access

and used the boar hunt on Bacon Island Road.

Shermantine and Herzog could be responsible.

They definitely had a particular type.

They liked the smaller stature females.

She was obviously smaller in stature

to fit inside the refrigerator.

With new technology, we're able to retest some items

that were collected as evidence.

Hopefully that'll bring us new investigative leads

that we can move forward in solving her murder.

These cases take a long time.

Sometimes it's disappointing and frustrating

because you can't get where you really want to go

and as-- and as fast as you want to go.

Direct communication with Mr. Shermantine

would be really helpful.

"Dear Sergeant Jimenez...

...hello. Thank you for writing.

There was no miscommunication.

The FBI didn't want to listen

to what I had to say.

I gave them the location to another well

where I saw a person killed and dumped.

Herzog spoke of many murders

where he either buried them or dumped them into a well.

You should visit me after COVID-19 is over.

I'd appreciate it if you could visit in Maine Visiting,

where you could buy me a hamburger and soda

and I'm not all chained up."

I started in '99,

um, and so he'd already been arrested.

They've been under suspicion for months...

One of the females that said that he raped her,

she didn't know who had raped her,

but when they plastered his face all over the news,

she recognized his face and the mole.

I was called to take photographs of his face,

so I had to go to his jail cell.

They were telling me to be careful

because his toenails were kind of long

and they were worried about him kicking me or something.

Not something I'll mention, though, on our visit.

I understand they searched your cabin

-up in Calaveras County. - No, I never took her north.

You never took her up there.

-She was never in that cabin? - Mm-mm.

Debbie Scheffel was one

of the original investigators on this case,

and I was lucky to work with her.

She was fabulous. I learned a lot from her.

But then all of a sudden you stop cooperating

and then I get an opportunity to examine your vehicle

and I find blood in the trunk.

If you were the investigator, what would you be thinking?

I'd think the person was suspicious.

Okay. And...

It's still a man's job, kind of a man's world,

but I think a lot of those good female investigators,

they are the ones that paved the way for me

to be able to do this,

and I guess some people could probably say

I'm paving the way for some of the others.

You gonna test next time around?

Fuck no. I'm gonna retire as a deputy.

Shut up.

- I like being a worker bee. - I know.

That's why when, "Why'd you do that?"

"You told me to."

You're bossy enough. You'll be fine.

♪ And the home of the ♪

♪ Brave ♪

So, uh, we're gonna start off

with, uh, Lieutenant Matthew Lindemann.

So Matt Lindemann...

This is an agency that really believes

in fostering young deputies and trying to bring people up.

This isn't a job that we're at for a year or two

and then we move on.

We're here for 20-plus years for our career.

So Matt, congratulations.

Ladies and gentlemen...

Everyone's here for your marriages

and your kids and your promotions.

You grow up together like brothers and sisters.

We're working real hard to get the-- the men and women here...

One of the other pressures regarding our office

is to redeem ourselves as well.

There are many families that are disappointed

in the San Joaquin County Sheriff's Office

and how we handled locating remains

from the Shermantine and Herzog killings.

And trying to make those wrongs right

is a lot of pressure.

I think almost without exception,

any of the family members that I've met so far

related to the Shermantine investigation are very angry

at the way the case has been handled

throughout the years, at the way they've been handled.

Both Shermantine and Herzog have blamed each other.

It creates a lot of doubt as to what's real, what's not real,

what can you prove, what can you disprove.

There's so much tape.

I'm sure I've spent more time with it than anybody else.

He said about his...

He's trying to ingratiate himself with the police,

and, uh, they were basically just playing him.

They were playing him.

This is, of course, the classic prisoner's dilemma,

which is a game theory trope.

If you confess and your buddy doesn't,

you get released.

If you both hold your mud, you still have to do a year.

But if you both confess, you both do life.

So they're saying, "He's gonna confess on you,

so you're gonna have to snitch on him before he does on you."

Okay.

All right.

Hurry, sale ends soon.

I think Loren was partially truthful.

However, he diminished his involvement.

Or left his part out.

- Or left his part out. - Yeah.

And that's a blame game.

And in this case,

it evolved into a real big blame game.

We had gone back

and contacted Stockton Police Department,

find out any old homicides

they may have been involved in committing.

And-- and lo and behold, their worst cases.

I'd, like, kinda leaving my stuff back here

so I can see what's going on.

They tag teamed him,

the Stockton Police and the sheriffs.

Good morning, I work for

the Stockton Police Department.

And they got statements

from him about the killing of Henry Howell.

So they made a U-turn.

And he said he sat in the car

and watched Wes pull the shotgun out

and heard the-- the blast.

Loren drew a couple maps of how the car was parked

and where the, uh, gentleman was laying.

And everything matched.

These events that he was talking about happened in '84 and '85

when they were 18, 19 years old.

Two men were killed,

Howard King and Paul Cavanaugh,

in a car that was parked outside Stockton

off Highway 4 on Daggett Road.

This is an area that a lot of people park

to do their drugs or sexual activity.

So they pull up behind the car.

And according to Loren,

Wes grabs his shotgun,

walks up to the driver's side...

fires into the driver's side,

killing the driver.

Loren then says he comes back to the truck

and grabs Loren's gun

and shoots the second guy.

The pockets were slit and the money taken out,

which was very similar to the Howell case.

Robin Armtrout lived in the east side of Stockton,

and she was stabbed to death and her body was found in Linden.

Dirt road.

Robin Armtrout,

she lived by across the street from the park.

Um, and that was

probably less than a half a mile away from my home.

Robin was older than us, and she was feisty.

She was a prostitute who hung out

and had boyfriends in east Stockton.

I do believe that people who were sex workers

or people who were homosexual,

there would be a big discount on their murder case.

And you would see in the early '80s,

they'd say, "How about four years," you know?

They would-- they would discount um, the punishment

based on the status of the victim.

And the DAs, they had a slang, "NHI,"

which is "no humans involved."

When we're talking about cases from the '60s,

'70s, and '80s, we have females who were killed,

who in life were linked to sex work,

and because of the attitude

towards their line of work at that time,

their cases weren't always given

the amount of time and consideration

that they probably should have been.

Because there was an attitude of,

they just weren't important.

They weren't people, right?

That was how cases were treated back then.

And because of that, that's gonna be a barrier

to us solving the case today.

But it's just something that we have to overcome.

Shermantine does say that Jane Doe was a prostitute.

Until we identify her, we won't know the truth of her story.

One thing that has changed since the time her remains

were found in 2012 is genetic genealogy.

That's one option in finding out her identity

and her story finally after all these years,

because we haven't been able to identify her

through conventional means.

We use an outside lab out of Texas.

They not only pull a DNA extract,

but they also do the genealogy work

to help identify who they are.

We sent off the remains of Jane Doe from the well

for them to try to identify,

as well as the unidentified female

that was found in the refrigerator in 1995.

The Shermantine case really changed

the innocence of the Central Valley,

the farming community.

Humans hunting other humans within our county.

And we didn't know it was going on.

When I'm looking back at all these cold cases,

I'm considering Herzog and Shermantine for every case.

They were known to potentially have victims

anywhere from the Bay Area up to the mountains, Nevada or Utah.

Until we can prove that it's not them,

it possibly is them.

We need to continue looking until

there's nobody else unaccounted for.

Is he being truthful? Is he not?

You have to investigate every single piece of information.

Is there a possibility that there's more victims?

Absolutely.

With serial killers,

you just never know.

I don't know how many victims there are.

The killings went on without stopping.

Everyone thinks I've told the story already.

Hell...

we're only getting started.