By Will Kane
The San Francisco Chronicle
SAN JOAQUIN COUNTY, Calif. — A man once convicted in a string of killings that terrorized San Joaquin County for more than a decade was found hanged in his residence on the grounds of a state prison in northeastern California, officials said Tuesday.
Loren Herzog, 46, apparently committed suicide in his trailer on the grounds of the High Desert State Prison near Susanville Lassen County, where his body was found around 11:45 p.m. Monday, said Luis Patino, a spokesman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Herzog was required to live in a trailer outside the prison while on parole for the 1998 killing of 25-year-old Cyndi Vanderheiden in Linden San Joaquin County.
Herzog was convicted in 2001 of the methamphetamine-fueled rape and murder of Vanderheiden and the killings of two other people in the mid-1980s. His trial and the case against a co-defendant, childhood friend Wesley Shermantine, were moved to Santa Clara County from San Joaquin County because of extensive pretrial publicity over what were dubbed the “speed freak killers.”
Herzog was sentenced to 78 years to life, but an appeals court threw out his conviction in 2004, saying investigators had illegally forced a confession from him.
Unable to use the statement at a new trial, prosecutors agreed to a deal under which Herzog pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter for killing Vanderheiden.
Herzog received a 14-year sentence and was released on parole in 2010. The terms of his parole required that he live in a trailer near the High Desert State Prison, meet a strict curfew and wear a GPS-tracking bracelet. Herzog was free to come and go during the day.
Shermantine remains on Death Row for four murders dating from 1984.
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