James Lawhead Jr., 64, was arrested on Apr. 24, 2026, at his home in Bullhead City, Arizona, in connection with the 1991 kidnapping and murder of 35-year-old Cindy Wanner, solving one of Placer County's most notorious cold cases after 35 years.
The Placer County Sheriff's Office announced the arrest on Monday, April 27, with Sheriff Wayne Woo calling it "arguably one of the most horrific and infamous cold cases we have in our records."
Lawhead was booked into the Mojave County Jail on charges of kidnapping and murder and awaits extradition to California. Placer County District Attorney Morgan Gire filed one count of murder with two special circumstance allegations — murder during the commission of rape and murder during the commission of kidnapping, according to ABC News.
Wanner disappeared on Nov. 25, 1991, while at her sister's home in Granite Bay, California. Her husband arrived later with their four-year-old daughter to find the couple's 11-month-old baby alone, crying, and strapped in a high chair, with Wanner's shoes, coat, and car still at the scene.
Three weeks later, a hunter discovered her body in a remote wooded area near Foresthill, approximately 35 to 40 miles away; she had been raped and strangled to death.
Lawhead had been released from prison in early 1991 after serving 11 years of a 19-year sentence for breaking into a home, beating a grandmother, and raping her 11-year-old granddaughter.
State psychiatrists had classified him as a mentally disordered sex offender not amenable to treatment, yet he murdered Wanner within 10 months of his release. After a 2005 weapons arrest in Lincoln, California, he vanished, and investigators believe he assumed the alias Vincent Reynolds, the Sacramento Bee reported.
The break in the case came earlier in 2026 when analysts at a Contra Costa County forensics lab identified Lawhead through DNA evidence recovered from original evidence collected at the scene.
Because Lawhead had seemingly disappeared, the Placer County Sheriff's Office reached out to other law enforcement agencies with access to facial recognition technology. A crime analyst from the Scottsdale Police Department matched his photo using an Arizona Department of Transportation database, leading investigators to his Bullhead City residence.
When detectives executed a search warrant at the home, they seized multiple loaded firearms staged throughout the house, a bag containing $15,000 in cash, and a burner phone. Lawhead's 71-year-old sister, Terry Lawhead Steele, was arrested separately on Saturday in Lancaster County, South Carolina, on a charge of accessory to the crime.
Investigators said she had denied contact with her brother for decades, but evidence showed she owned the Arizona property where he had been living and had remained in communication with him, as per CBS News.
