300 bones found in well may be victims of serial killers

More than 300 human bones have been unearthed from a well in rural California, where a convicted serial killer said there might be ten or more victims from a killing spree in the 1980s and 1990s.

The remains were found in just two days of searching an abandoned cattle ranch over the weekend, San Joaquin County sheriff’s spokesman Deputy Les Garcia said.

“We are bringing the dirt and debris up using excavators and we’re searching piles,” Mr Garcia said yesterday

The remains were found with the help of a map prepared by death row inmate Wesley Shermantine. He and childhood friend Loren Herzog became known as the “Speed Freak Killers” for a methamphetamine-fuelled killing spree that claimed as many as 15 victims from the 1980s until their arrests in 1999.

Shermantine was convicted of four murders and sentenced to death. Herzog was convicted of three murders and sentenced to 77 years to life in prison, though that was reduced to 14 years.

Herzog was paroled in 2010 to a trailer outside the High Desert State Prison.

He committed suicide outside that trailer last month.