More than three decades after a young mother was snatched from her home and her infant daughter was left alone in a highchair, authorities say they have finally caught the man responsible.
The Placer County Sheriff’s Office announced Monday that 64-year-old James Lawhead Jr. was taken into custody on Friday in Bullhead City, Arizona, marking a major breakthrough in the 1991 kidnapping and murder of Cindy Wanner.
The case began on Nov. 25, 1991, when the 35-year-old Wanner disappeared from her Granite Bay, California, home under chilling circumstances. Her car, coat, and keys were all left behind, and her 11-month-old baby was found unharmed but abandoned in the house.
Three weeks later, Wanner’s body was discovered in a remote wooded area near Foresthill, roughly 40 miles from her residence. Investigators confirmed she had been strangled.
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For years, the trail went cold, but detectives recently turned to advanced DNA testing to breathe new life into the investigation. Those tests pointed directly to Lawhead, who was 30 years old at the time of the murder. Lawhead had been released from prison just months before Wanner’s disappearance after serving 11 years for prior sex crimes involving a child.
Police say Lawhead managed to drop off the grid entirely after 2005, living under the alias “Vincent Reynolds” in Arizona.
His arrest was not the only one in the case; his 71-year-old sister, Terry Lawhead Steele, was arrested Saturday in South Carolina. She faces a charge of being an accessory to the crime.
According to the Sheriff’s Office, Steele told detectives just weeks ago that she hadn’t heard from her brother in 20 years, yet investigators found Lawhead was living in a home she owned and that the siblings had been in regular contact.
Placer County Sheriff Wayne Woo called the case one of the most “notorious and heinous” in the county’s history.
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“We’ve never given up pursuing justice for Cindy and her family, we hope this is a small step in the healing process,” Woo said in a statement. “James Lawhead will be brought back to Placer County where he will answer to the charges for this crime.”
Placer County District Attorney Morgan Gire emphasized that time does not erase the urgency of such investigations. “Cold cases are not forgotten cases—they remain urgent, they remain personal, and they remain a promise we intend to keep,” Gire stated.
Lawhead is currently held in Arizona awaiting extradition to California. While he faces charges for Wanner’s death, detectives are now looking into whether he may be linked to other unsolved crimes during his years on the run. It is currently unknown if Lawhead has retained an attorney.
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