Authorities say Wesley Shermantine and Loren Herzog, dubbed the “Speed Freak Killers,” wantonly murdered many throughout California’s rural Central Valley before their arrest in 1999. Now, motivated by a bounty hunter’s promise to pay, one of those convicted killer’s is breaking his long-held secret and leading investigators to burial sites that have yielded hundreds of human bones.
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.
