Placer sheriff’s detectives arrest suspect in 1991 murder of kidnapped mother
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- Placer County sheriff’s detectives arrested James Lawhead Jr. at his Arizona home.
- Lawhead is accused of kidnapping and killing Cinthia Wanner in Placer County.
- Investigators used DNA to identify the murder supect in the 1991 cold case.
Cinthia “Cindi” Wanner was cleaning her sister’s Placer County home 34 years ago when someone kidnapped her, taking the 35-year-old mother and 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 investigation into her murder went unsolved without any arrests for more than three decades until earlier this year, when authorities used DNA to identify a suspect. Last week, a crime analyst in Arizona used facial recognition technology to help investigators find the man believed to have killed Wanner.
James Lawhead Jr., 64, was arrested on suspicion of homicide in Wanner’s November 1991 disappearance and subsequent death, Placer County Sheriff Wayne Woo announced Monday at a news conference in Auburn. He said investigators arrested Lawhead in the driveway of his home in Bullhead, Arizona.
“Arguably, this is one of the most heinous and notorious cold cases we have here in Placer County,” Woo told reporters. “We hope that this arrest will help bring some justice and closure to Cindi Wanner’s family.”
He said Placer County sheriff’s detectives, the county’s Cold Case Investigations team and local police officers arrested Lawhead, “the monster responsible for this crime,” in the driveway of his home in Bullhead, Arizona.
Suspect in Arizona jail
Lawhead on Monday remained in custody at the Mohave County Jail, where he awaited extradition to California to face charges in the homicide case.
Placer County District Attorney Morgan Gire said his office would file a charge of murder against Lawhead, along with two special circumstance allegations for killing Wanner during the commission of rape and kidnapping.
“Just because the passage of time doesn’t mean justice diminishes in importance,” Gire said at Monday’s news conference. “This family has suffered in anguish for 35 years, and they deserve some accountability.”
The sheriff said Lawhead was a convicted sex offender and had been released from prison 10 months before Wanner was killed.
Woo said Lawhead had been sentenced to spend 19 years in prison for brutally attacking a 71-year-old grandmother and raping her 11-year-old granddaughter in 1980 in Sacramento County. He said Lawhead had broken into the home and beat the grandmother “nearly to death.”
The sheriff told reporters that Lawhead was released from prison after serving 11 years of his sentence, despite a state psychiatrist classifying Lawhead “as a mentally disordered sex offender who was not amenable to treatment.”
Rancho Cordova mother kidnapped
Wanner was cleaning her sister’s Granite Bay home on Nov. 25, 1991, when she was kidnapped.
About 12:30 p.m. that day, Susan Rye and her husband, Phil, had left their home just off Auburn-Folsom Road and headed for a luncheon meeting in Roseville, according to a February 1998 news story published in The Sacramento Bee. Wanner, Rye’s younger sister, stayed behind to clean the house. Ashley, Wanner’s 11-month-old daughter, was with her. Wanner had already dropped off her then 4-year-old daughter, Carlie, at a childcare center.
Robert Wanner, the slain mother’s husband, arrived at the Granite Bay home with Carlie and found Ashley sobbing, strapped into a high chair with an unfinished supply of dry Cheerios in front of her. His wife was missing.
Investigators searched the area and passed out Wanner‘s picture to news media. On Dec. 14, 1991, 19 days later, a quail hunter on a logging road about three miles from Foresthill discovered the missing Rancho Cordova woman lying face down in the woods, according to The Bee’s 1998 news story.
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.
The sheriff 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, and Woo said investigators assumed he was living under a false name.
Facial recognition technology
The Placer County 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. Woo said that information led investigators to the Bullhead home.
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 on 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.
“The last contact we had with her was in March where we explained to her exactly what her brother was wanted for and explained to her the circumstances in Cindi Wanner’s case,” the sheriff said about Terry Lawhead. “She still denied any knowledge, said she hadn’t seen or heard from her brother in over 20 years and that he may have possibly been dead.”
This story was originally published April 27, 2026 at 3:32 PM.
