DNA breakthrough leads to guilty plea in 35-year-old California cold case

A 35-year Placer County cold case closed with a guilty plea after advanced DNA analysis and facial-recognition work pointed investigators to James Lawhead Jr., the man accused of kidnapping, raping and killing Cinthia “Cindi” Wanner. On June 16, 2026, Lawhead, now 64, admitted first-degree murder and the special-circumstance allegations tied to kidnapping and rape, and prosecutors said he accepted life in prison without the possibility of parole and waived his appellate rights.

Wanner was 35 and living in Rancho Cordova when she disappeared on November 25, 1991, from her sister’s home in Granite Bay. Her 11-month-old child was found crying in a high chair, and her shoes, coat and car were still at the house. Her body was found about three weeks later in a remote wooded area near Foresthill, roughly 35 to 40 miles away, leaving Placer County detectives with a brutal scene and no arrest for decades.

Investigators kept returning to the evidence as forensic tools improved. The Placer County Sheriff’s Office said multiple items had been tested over the years without a break until a final piece of evidence went to the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office Forensic Lab, where advanced DNA analysis identified Lawhead as the suspect. Detectives then tracked him to Bullhead City, Arizona, where he was living under the name Vincent Reynolds. With help from the Scottsdale Police Department, a facial-recognition comparison helped confirm the match, and Lawhead was arrested on April 24, 2026. Authorities said he had no documented record after 2005 and believed he had assumed a new identity.

The plea also pulled in a second family member. Terry Lynn Lawhead-Steele, 71, pleaded no contest the same day to a felony accessory charge after prosecutors said she helped her brother hide from investigators for the past 20 years and concealed information about his whereabouts. She was arrested in South Carolina on April 25, 2026, later held on $1 million bail, and agreed to a deal calling for two years of probation and time already served. Her sentencing was set for July 14, 2026, and she was ordered to remain in California until then.

Prosecutors said the conviction brings a measure of accountability to one of the most notorious cold cases in Placer County history. Sheriff Wayne Woo called it one of the county’s most notorious and heinous cases, and after 35 years, the mystery around the Granite Bay disappearance ended not with a rumor or a lead, but with a plea that finally put a name and a sentence to the crime.