An FBI team searching for victims of two men dubbed the "Speed Freak Killers" has uncovered discarded debris – but no new remains – in an ongoing well excavation in San Joaquin County.
Five weeks into excavation efforts in an abandoned well near Linden, FBI investigators and technical experts are working more than four stories underground.
They have been pulling out debris, including fencing material and garbage, from a 5-foot-wide well on a property adjacent to another well site where authorities found remains of three murder victims last year.
Though no additional victims have been found, FBI spokeswoman Gina Swankie in Sacramento said Tuesday, "This is an ongoing operation until otherwise stated. We have to reach the bottom of the well. Just because we've reached a debris area doesn't mean we've fully excavated the well."
Two drug-abusing murderers, Wesley Shermantine and Loren Herzog, have been blamed for as many as nine deaths in the Central Valley and nearby foothills in the 1980s and '90s.
Shermantine, sentenced to San Quentin's death row in 2001, claimed there were as many as 30 victims in wells he dubbed "Herzog's boneyard."
Herzog, who was paroled from prison in 2011, hanged himself after learning Shermantine was providing details on the pair's killing spree.
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