Suspect in 1991 cold case now in Placer County to face murder, kidnapping charges
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- James Lawhead Jr., 64, was flown from Arizona Thursday to face charges in Placer County.
- Lawhead is accused of kidnapping a woman in Granite Bay and killing her in 1991.
- The homicide investigation was a cold case until the suspect was identified this year.
A man, who is accused of kidnapping a woman 34 years ago in Granite Bay and killing her, was flown in a sheriff’s plane Thursday from Arizona to Placer County to face charges in the murder case.
James Lawhead Jr., 64, was arrested last week on suspicion of homicide in the disappearance and subsequent death of Cinthia “Cindi” Wanner in November 1991. Lawhead was taken into custody last Friday in the driveway of his Bullhead, Ariz., home.
In social media posts Thursday afternoon, the Placer County Sheriff’s Office shared video of sheriff’s deputies and a detective arriving at an airport in Kingman, Ariz., to pick up Lawhead for a flight back to Placer County.
Lawhead, awaiting the extradition process, had been in custody at the Mohave County Jail. Sheriff’s officials said Lawhead will be booked at the county jail in Auburn pending his first appearance in Placer Superior Court.
The Placer County District Attorney’s Office, as of Thursday afternoon, had not formally filed a criminal complaint against Lawhead, court records show. His arraignment hearing had not yet been scheduled.
At a news conference on Monday announcing Lawhead’s arrest, Placer County District Attorney Morgan Gire said his office will file a charge of murder against Lawhead, along with two special circumstance allegations for killing Wanner during the commission of rape and kidnapping. Lawhead will also face a charge of kidnapping in Wanner’s death.
On Nov. 25, 1991, Wanner was cleaning her sister’s Granite Bay home when she was kidnapped. The 35-year-old Rancho Cordova mother was taken by the suspect, leaving behind her 11-month-old daughter in a high chair where she was found later crying and alone.
Wanner was sexually assaulted and left to die among trees in the Foresthill area, where her body was found more than two weeks later.
The homicide investigation became a cold case that languished for more than three decades.
The murder suspect remained unidentified until earlier this year, when analysts at a forensics lab in Contra Costa County identified Lawhead as the suspect using DNA evidence collected from the 1991 homicide.
At Monday’s news conference, Placer County Sheriff Wayne Woo said his investigators searched for Lawhead, but the wanted suspect seemed to have “just disappeared” in 2005. They couldn’t find any records for Lawhead.
The Sheriff’s Office had produced a video about the cold case identifying the suspect and was about to release it, hoping the public would help investigators find Lawhead.
In the meantime, the sheriff’s investigators contacted law enforcement agencies in other states who have permission to use facial recognition technology. Woo said a crime analyst from the Scottsdale Police Department in Arizona used the technology and found a match on a state Department of Transportation database. That information led investigators to the Bullhead home.
The sheriff said Lawhead had been living, investigators believe, under a false name at the Arizona home owned by his sister, Terry Lawhead, 71, of San Clemente in Southern California.
Woo said Terry Lawhead was arrested last Saturday in Lancaster County in South Carolina on suspicion of being an accessory to a crime, helping her brother avoid authorities. He said investigators believe she had been communicating with her brother.
It’s unclear when Terry Lawhead will be brought back to California to face the accessory charge in Placer County.
