What you need to know about Placer County cold case murder suspect and his sister
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- James Lawhead was identified as the suspect in the Placer County cold case using DNA.
- Authorities said Lawhead was found and arrested in the Arizona home owned by his sister.
- Terry Lynn Lawhead-Steele is accused of helping her brother hide from authorities.
The kidnapping and murder of Cinthia “Cindi” Wanner in Placer County went unsolved for 35 years. No arrests and no suspects identified. The homicide of the 35-year-old Rancho Cordova mother was a cold case.
Wanner was cleaning her sister’s Granite Bay home in November 1991 when she was kidnapped. She was taken by a suspect, leaving behind her 11-month-old daughter in a high chair, where she was later found crying and alone.
Wanner was sexually assaulted and left to die among trees near Foresthill, where her body was found more than two weeks later.
Earlier this year, analysts at a forensic lab in Contra Costa County identified James Lawhead, 64, as the suspect in Wanner’s murder using DNA evidence found on the woman’s body.
With Lawhead scheduled to return to court next week, the following is how investigators tracked down the Northern California homicide suspect, and how they arrested him in Arizona and his 71-year-old sister Terry Lynn Lawhead-Steele in South Carolina on allegations she helped hide her brother from authorities.
Sacramento County conviction
Lawhead was a convicted sex offender and had been released from prison 10 months before Wanner was killed.
Placer County Sheriff Wayne Woo said Lawhead was 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 said 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.”
After Lawhead was identified as the suspect in Wanner’s murder, investigators searched for him. Woo said the wanted suspect seemed to have “just disappeared” in 2005. They couldn’t find any records for him, even though he had been ordered by a court to register as a convicted sex offender.
Arizona cameras
The Sheriff’s Office produced a video about the cold case’s identified suspect. Sheriff’s officials were about to release the video, hoping the public could help investigators find Lawhead.
In the meantime, sheriff’s investigators contacted law enforcement agencies in other states with access to facial recognition technology. Woo said a crime analyst from the Scottsdale Police Department in Arizona used the technology and found a match in a state Department of Transportation database. That information led investigators to a home in Bullhead, Arizona, where authorities found Lawhead on April 24 and arrested him.
Woo said investigators believe Lawhead-Steele had been communicating with her brother. He had been living, investigators believe, under a false name at the Arizona home owned by his sister. The sheriff said investigators questioned her about her brother’s whereabouts in March.
“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,” Woo said in a news conference in April.
Sister arrested in South Carolina
The day after her brother was arrested, Lawhead-Steele, who is from San Clemente in Southern California, was arrested in Lancaster County, South Carolina. She was extradited about a month later and brought her back to California. She faces felony charges of accessory in Placer County.
Lawhead-Steele had lived in the Sacramento area up until four years ago, when she moved to Southern California to spend her retirement. Danielle Keller, her defense attorney, said in court that her client has a son and two grandsons who live in South Carolina, where she was visiting when she was arrested.
Keller said Lawhead-Steele has no previous arrests or criminal convictions. The defense attorney, who was asking a judge to release her client on her own recognizance, said Lawhead-Steele spent about four weeks in jail custody, forced to sleep on a makeshift bed on the floor because the jail cell was too crowded in South Carolina.
Placer County Deputy District Attorney David Tellman, the prosecutor in the cold case, argued that Lawhead-Steele is accused of lying to authorities of her brother’s whereabouts after he failed to register as a convicted sex offender. He said she also is accused of lying to investigators a few months ago when they were looking for her brother whose DNA was found on the body of the slain woman in 1991.
“These are serious offenses, and they all revolve around deception,” the prosecutor told the judge. “She covered for him on this horrendous crime as she covered for him for years.”
Judge Michael W. Jones set Lawhead-Steele’s bail at $500,000 for each of the accessory charges and ordered her to surrender her passport. Jones also ordered her to wear a GPS anklet bracelet to monitor her location while free on bail.
The prosecutor told the judge that Lawhead-Steele owns multiple homes, and securing a bail bond might be difficult for her but attainable to ensure she appears for all her court hearings.
As of Tuesday, Lawhead-Steele remains in custody at the Placer County Jail with her total bail set at $1 million.
Brother could face death penalty
Her brother remains in jail custody without bail. He’s accused of murder and kidnapping in Wanner’s disappearance and death. His charges include two special circumstance allegations that allege he killed her during the commission of rape and kidnapping.
Placer County District Attorney Morgan Gire told The Sacramento Bee that special circumstance allegations against Lawhead make the case against him eligible for the death penalty. Gire said he had not yet made a decision on whether his office will seek the death penalty against Lawhead.
The accused brother and sister are scheduled to return next Tuesday to Placer Superior Court. Lawhead is scheduled to be arraigned; the hearing has been postponed twice. His sister, who pleaded not guilty to the accessory charges, is scheduled to appear in court for further proceedings in her case.
