Sacramento Adult Entertainment: Shermantine’s victims’ kin describe grief of murders
Shermantine’s victims’ kin describe grief of murders
Originally published Feb. 28, 2001
SANTA CLARA — Jurors wept Tuesday as a Stockton woman described her downward spiral into drugs and prostitution, directly related, she said, to Wesley Shermantine murdering her older sister, Chevelle “Chevy” Wheeler.
When the 16-year-old Franklin High School student didn’t come home after skipping school with Shermantine 16 years ago, Marnie Wheeler, then 14, finally told her parents of her sister’s plans.
“I kind of felt that it was my fault for not telling my parents right away,” said Wheeler, crying uncontrollably on the stand. “So to kill the pain, I started using drugs and alcohol. … My parents were unable to control me.”
On Feb. 14, a Santa Clara County jury found Shermantine guilty of the murder of Chevy Wheeler, 16, in 1985. They also convicted him of killing Paul Cavanaugh, 31, and Howard King, 35, off Daggett Road in 1984 and Clements woman Cyndi Vanderheiden, 25, in 1998.