SAN JOAQUIN COUNTY, Calif — The San Joaquin County Sheriff Office is investigating after an apparent bone was found in a well.
At a press conference on Thursday, Sheriff Pat Withrow said a farmer was checking the integrity of the well with a camera in order to lease it out. While probing the well with the camera, Withrow said the farmer spotted what looked to be a bone and immediately contacted the sheriff’s office.
The sheriff’s office put another camera down the well, captured a photo of the object, and sent it off to an anthropologist at Chico State. Unfortunately, Withrow said, the anthropologist was unable to determine if the object was a human bone, an animal bone, or even a bone at all.
The sheriff said the investigation is continuing, with plans to send a better camera down the well with the hopes of making a remote identification. The sheriff’s office will then work on a plan to retrieve the object.
"That’s going to be a fairly long process," Withrow explained. "So, we’re hoping in the next three weeks or so to be able to get some equipment…and if we can examine it while it’s down there in the water, hundreds of feet down, and determine what it is then that would be great. If not, we’ll have to try and retrieve it and then examine it."
The move to announce the operation comes as rumors started to spread, according to Withrow. Although he did not mention any specific rumors, Withrow said the sheriff’s department has reached out to the families of victims of the infamous Speed Freak Killers to inform them of this investigation.
"As of this morning, I’ve reached out to as many family members that we could who had been victimized by the ‘Speed Freak Killers’ in the past to let them know we were going to have this press conference,” Withrow said. “We assured them that we do not know – and I’m going to say this over and over again – whether this is an animal bone or a human bone. But we don’t want people to find out about stuff by seeing it on TV.”
The sheriff did not say where the well is located, citing the integrity of the scene. A copy of the image captured inside the well was not released.
The Speed Freak Killers, Wesley Shermantine and Loren Herzog, were convicted in 2001 of multiple murders. Shermantine was sentenced to death. Herzog was sentenced to 78 years-to-life in prison. Herzog’s sentence, however, was overturned after an appeals court ruled his confession was coerced. He later pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and was paroled in 2010.
Herzog hanged himself in January 2012, hours after receiving a phone call from Leonard Padilla, a Sacramento area bounty hunter, according to the New York Times. Padilla told Herzog that Shermantine was going to reveal where additional bodies were hidden.
Meanwhile, families of missing loved ones are eagerly waiting any word the remains discovered might lead to closure. Phillip Martin, 47, disappeared on Sept. 30, 1993 after dropping off his wife on his way to work in Stockton.
Martin's daughter, Marie Gillit, told ABC10 that her father was a happy man who loved his five daughters. As a carpenter, Martin crossed paths with Speed Freak Killers Wesley Shermantine and Loren Herzog, who Gillit says were concrete workers.
Because of that, any lead that surfaces gives Gillit hope that one day her family will receive closure.
"Every time I hear something new, it just shakes me and takes me back," Gillit said.
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