Hunting The Ultimate Kill

by Jack Rosewood

  The question continued to bother San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Department Homicide Detectives, so they turned to forensic science for answers. A team of forensic investigators went to the scene of the shooting to recreate the event, in order to see if it could have happened as Herzog claimed. The tests revealed that there were two shooters responsible for the murders.

  The evidence proved to be extremely vital. Some jurors later pointed out that the testimony about the King and Raymond murders swayed them to vote “guilty.”

  Herzog’s defense team, like Shermantine’s, put up a spirited defense despite the mountain of circumstantial evidence stacked against their client. Their defense was similar—blame everything on the other guy. Herzog had a better chance with this defense than Shermantine did. However, his lawyers would have to explain why their client was at the scene of multiple murders and why he never tried to stop any of them. And why didn’t he go to the police?

  In order to answer those questions, Herzog’s attorneys claimed their client was the victim of bullying.

  “This is not a dangerous person," said Herzog’s defense attorney Peter Fox. "It's not fair to call him a killer. He is guilty of having the world's worst friend."

  This weak defense was not enough. On October 23, 2001, Loren Herzog was found guilty of three counts of first degree murder.

  Herzog’s sentencing hearing was filled with far less drama than Shermantine’s. The fact that forensic evidence only linked Herzog directly to one of the murders helped his defense. The jury was more sympathetic towards him. He did not engage in any of the antics that his partner had during his trial, and Herzog also appeared more humble. His wife and other family members also testified about his good character.

  Shermantine had no character witnesses at his penalty hearing.

  The jury believed the argument that Herzog was a follower, who would not have committed murder under his own volition. Because of all the mitigating circumstances, the jury sentenced Herzog to life in prison with the possibility of parole.

  After Herzog was sent to do his time in a California prison, the people of San Joaquin County were glad to get on with their lives. They were ready for sense of normalcy to return to their community, but little did they know the saga of the Speed Freak Killers was only half over.

  There was still much more to come.

  Chapter 6:

  Later Developments

  San Quentin State Prison is one of the most famous prisons in the world. Located on the North Shore of the San Francisco Bay in Marin County, the prison has been home to some of the United State’s most notorious criminals. Inmates have included a few celebrities including Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver and country music icon Merle Haggard. During the 1960s and ‘70s, San Quinten was plagued by gang and racial violence: the Aryan Brotherhood, Black Guerilla Family, Mexican Mafia, and NeustraFamilia all fought bloody wars against each other for a spot on the yard, and a slice of the growing, and quite lucrative, drug trade. Riots were common until the 1980s, and many inmates and guards lost their lives in the battles on the yard or in the prison’s cell blocks. In more recent years, the visibility and reputation of San Quentin Prison has diminished as the prison population has exploded in the United States. Beginning in the 1980s, newer prisons were been built throughout the State of California to house maximum security inmates, which left San Quentin as primarily an intake/orientation facility for new inmates. It also serves as primary housing for the state’s male death row inmates and houses the death chamber itself.

  San Quentin’s notoriously violent history is only half the reason why the prison is such a notable landmark. During the 1960s and ‘70s, San Quentin also became a pop culture symbol when musicians such as Johnny Cash and B.B. King performed live concerts for the prisoners. In the 1980s and ‘90s, rapper Ice-T and comedian George Lopez also made televised appearances at San Quentin, which helped to make the prison a household name for new generations. Because of the numerous pop culture performers who have visited the prison, combined with its history of violence and notable inmates, San Quentin has become a part of American pop culture. The prison plays a role in numerous movies, books, and television shows.

  Truly, one could say that San Quentin is America’s prison.

  When Wesley Shermatine took his place on condemned row, he joined other infamous California serial killers like Doug Clark, the “Night Stalker,” Richard Ramirez, and “the Dating Game Killer” Rodney Alcala, and nearly 700 other men. The condemned cell block is extremely old and considered antiquated by many, but its population continues to rise, because California has not executed anyone since 2006.

  Compared to other death row cell blocks in the United States, many inmates on San Quentin’s condemned row have a lot of freedom. In fact, the condemned row is almost like a prison within a prison, with three different security levels. Most condemned row inmates are housed in the East Block, which is an old run-down cell block. Prisoners who cause fights with other inmates, or who assault staff with everything from their fists to urine and feces soaked “piss bombs,” are placed in the Adjustment Center. Inmates in the Adjustment Center have few freedoms and are generally only allowed out of their cells for brief exercise times, to shower, and to visit with their attorneys. The condemned row inmates who play by the rules are housed in the North Segregation unit where they are given more privileges.

  Inmates in the North Segregation and East Block units are allowed out of their cells for considerable parts of the day—they are given recreation time and are allowed to interact with other death row inmates in common areas and the recreation yard. Condemned row inmates are also housed in single cells and most are allowed personal television sets.

  This is the world that Wesley Shermantine has called home since his conviction. It is a bleak world, but as the family members of his many victims point out, it is a world in which he is allowed to live. As soon as Shermantine was given the death penalty, his case went into the appeals process.

  The Appeals Process

  Shermantine kept a relatively low profile for the first few years he spent on death row. Until recently, he has given few interviews to the press and he has instead, focused his attention on his appeals, which have little merit.

  Before Shermantine was sent to San Quentin, there were threats on his life but there have been no attempts made on his life behind bars. In a 2012 letter written to a Sacramento reporter, Shermantine acknowledged that he is not the most popular guy on condemned row.

  “I’m not really having much trouble with other inmates, so much as all the bad mouthing behind me [sic] back, very few will say anything to me [sic] face to face, and the ones that do I respect.”

  At this point, Shermantine’s only hope may be time. As stated above, no one has been executed by the State of California since 2006. Today an inmate entering California’s death row has a greater chance of dying from natural causes, than by lethal injection. Many condemned inmates have been waiting more than thirty years for their executions to be carried out, which has led to efforts to repeal the death penalty. One of the more recent legal arguments made against California’s death penalty is the indefinite time spent on condemned row, amounting to cruel and unusual punishment, which is a violation of the United States Constitution’s Eight Amendment.

  More recently, anti-death penalty activists have also used a number of “botched” executions as their proof that the death penalty constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. One particular 2014 execution in Oklahoma became a rallying cry for activists, when the lethal drugs administered to the inmate failed to work properly, and the condemned man died of a heart attack instead of a lethal injection.

  The resulting backlash of these botched executions led many pharmaceutical companies to prohibit sales to prisons that use their drugs for executions.

  The move by the pharmaceutical companies has led to temporary shortages of the chemicals, which has further complicated executions in some states.

  The n
ationwide sentiment that is growing against the death penalty was harnessed by activists in the generally liberal State of California in the early 2010s.

  The issue was put on a ballot during the 2016 presidential election. Proposition 62 would convert all death sentences to life in prison, while Proposition 66 would limit the number of appeals a condemned inmate could have, as well as dedicate more state resources to death penalty cases. The idea of Proposition 62 was first put forward by actor Mike Farrel, and it soon found support from most of the state’s major newspapers, as well as many in academia and the people of Silicon Valley. The Proposition 62 campaign also raised over eight million dollars, which was about twice what the Proposition 66 campaign raised. Proponents of Proposition 62 were confident that their side would win—California had become a much more liberal state since the last time a similar proposition was placed on the ballot, so surely the progressive voters would vote to end the death penalty─ as surely as they would vote for Hillary Clinton.

  The liberal voters of the State of California did vote for Hillary Clinton by a wide margin, but they also chose Proposition 66 by a wide margin.

  Apparently, the majority of voters in California had no problem reconciling their otherwise liberal political beliefs with support of the death penalty.

  Despite the impending changes coming to California’s death row, which experts believe means executions will begin again soon, Wesley Shermantine still has many more years until he gets a needle stuck in his arm. In the meantime, everything that Shermantine held dear on the outside slowly slipped away.

  Not long after Shermantine was sent to prison, both of his parents died. Those close to him said the death of his father in particular, hurt him the most. The next to leave Shermantine was his wife, who continues to deny any knowledge of her husband’s crimes.

  According to some close to Shermantine, he showed little emotion when he learned that his wife wanted a divorce, but he was extremely upset when he had not heard from his sons. He believed that his wife had driven a wedge between him and his adult sons.

  In Wesley Shermantine’s world, everyone was out to get him.

  By the late 2000s, Wesley Shermantine was at a low point in his life. Everyone he once cared about was gone. His best friend and surrogate brother, Loren Herzog, had betrayed him, his wife had left him, his parents were dead, and he had limited contact with his sons. Although he still kept in sporadic contact with his siblings, their lives had moved on without him.

  Shermantine related some of his frustration and feelings of abandonment in his letters written in 2012. According to one letter, he was placed on suicide watch due to his sister, Barbara Jackson, calling the prison.

  “On February 12 at 830 PM a guard came to my cell and claimed the CTA hospital wanted to see me. I went to the hospital where my clothing was taken I was put in a smock and put in a cold room for 14 hours so they could monitor me. See my dumb ASS sister Barbara Jackson called and said I was suicidal. I have never giving [sic] Barbara power of Attorney [sic] over my life. Nor would I, should this ever happen again to me I’m filing a lawsuit against all parties, because CDCR will have to beat me really bad next, and break my bones to get me their [sic].”

  He continued to lament the fact that he had heard very little from Barbara since his incarceration, and she should not have been given the power to put him on suicide watch.

  “Barbara Jackson has not wrote [sic] in almost two years she never sends a Christmas card nor a B-day card. Now you tell me how she can judge my mental state. Her concern is about 13 years to [sic] late.”

  Like a true socio-path, everything is about Wesley Shermantine. In a letter he sent about two weeks later to the same reporter, Shermantine once more lamented the loss of his personal relationships.

  “Barbara Jackson and I were really closes [sic], you could say she raised me. I miss my sisters, but I really doubt I’ll see or hear from them.”

  In his lonely cell in San Quentin prison, Wesley Shermantine was finally exposed as the pathetic man that he was all along.

  The only thing Wesley Shermantine had left by 2010, was the knowledge of all the missing persons he was responsible for killing.

  Perhaps Shermantine could still use that knowledge to his advantage.

  While Shermantine was working on his appeals from death row, Herzog was doing the same thing from the general population. One would think that Herzog’s time in prison would be easier than Shermantine’s, but that was not the case.

  Herzog spent most of his time in the High Desert State Prison, near Susanville, California in the far northeastern part of the state. The prison is one of the newer high-security facilities specializing in housing trouble makers sent there from other prisons. When Herzog entered the prison in late 2001, no one there was impressed with the number of people he killed. Most of the inmates noted that his victims were primarily females and many of them were young girls.

  Many inmates are fathers and have sisters, so the thought of Herzog walking the yard freely was viewed as disrespectful. In the California system, and most prison systems in the United States, there is an unwritten code of proper protocol that is conceived and enforced by the more powerful inmates.

  The prison code determines what area of the yard, cafeteria, and common areas an inmate can frequent, based on his race and gang affiliations. The prison code also includes a very distinct hierarchy, one where child molesters are at the bottom, and gang leaders serving life sentences are at the top.

  A serial killer of women and girls is usually located just above, but not far, from child molesters.

  Herzog was viewed as a “killer-rapeo,” prison jargon.

  Like Shermantine, Herzog immediately received threats when he entered prison. He tried to keep a low profile, but he was unable to do so because of his case.

  Other inmates constantly asked Herzog about his case and since it was a high-profile case, he was unable to lie. Due to prison politics, Herzog was forced to spend most of his time around other white inmates, but they were the ones who wanted him the most.

  Young white inmates, who wanted to enter the ranks of one of the established white gangs for protection, increasingly saw Herzog as a ticket for their own safety. Assaulting or even killing Herzog, they reasoned, would send a signal to the gangs of all ethnicities that they were not to be bullied.

  There were also rumors that one or more of the white gangs had a contract out on Herzog’s life.

  On May 9, 2002, Herzog was stabbed in the stomach by another inmate who claimed he was angered about his case. Luckily for Herzog, the homemade “shank” missed all major veins and arteries, but the wounds required hospitalization.

  After he recovered from his injury, Herzog spent time in protective custody,but he eventually returned to the general prison population, where he had a bull’s eye on his back. He was ostracized by the other inmates and forced to spend a lot of time alone. Eventually, though, he befriended a few of the inmates. One inmate in particular, who at this point wishes to remain anonymous, claims that Herzog felt comfortable enough around him to reveal very telling information.

  According to this inmate, Herzog told him that he played a much more active role in most of the murders, contrary to what he told the investigators when he was arrested in 1999. The source stated that Herzog claimed him and Shermantine both raped Robin Armtrout before Herzog himself, stabbed her over and over, “because she just wouldn’t die.”

  As stated earlier, there were some investigators who also believe this version of Armtrout’s murder.

  During other conversations, the inmate claimed that Herzog confessed to killing 112 people with Shermantine during the course of their serial killer careers. This number seems quite high, almost unbelievable, and it should be noted that this inmate was trying to get transferred to what he believed was a better institution. With that said, prosecutors certainly believe that Herzog played a much more active role in many of the murders, than what he stated during his long confe
ssion.

  It may be that Herzog was telling stories to keep the inmate barracudas at bay, because after his wounds healed, there were new whispers of threats on his life. Rumors swirled around prison that some of the Speed Freak Killers’ victims had pooled their resources to buy the services of a jailhouse hit man, while others claimed that the guards were going to make sure the next attempt on his life was successful.

  In the early 2000s, it looked like Loren Herzog’s life sentence could become a death sentence at any moment, unless a miracle happened.

  Miracles come in all shapes and sizes, and for Herzog it came in the form of a well-crafted legal appeal and a sympathetic panel of judges.

  But would the State of California actually release a convicted serial killer?

  The Release of a Serial Killer

  In the American justice system, the parole of a serial killer is virtually unheard of. Although a number of world famous serial killers have been paroled, nearly all of them have been in other countries.

  American serial killer, Coral Watts, was one of the worst serial killers to be nearly paroled in the United States. Watts killed scores of white women in a racially charged murder spree during the 1970s and ‘80s. He was serving a life sentence in the State of Texas when he was nearly released on parole in 2006. Unfortunately for him, the State of Michigan charged him with more murders.

  Watts died in a Michigan prison in 2007.

  Charlene Gallego is an American serial killer who was actually released from prison on parole in 1997. Similar to Herzog, Charlene was the weaker half of a serial killer duo that was led by her husband Gerald. The couple killed nine young women, and a man, in Nevada and Northern California in the years just before the Speed Freak Killers became active. Charlene was able to avoid a life sentence primarily because she testified against her husband at his trial. She received a sixteen year sentence in the Nevada Department of Corrections in 1984. Behind bars, she was an exemplary inmate, which helped her win an early release in 1997 under strict conditions.