DNA breakthrough sends Cindy Wanner’s killer to life without parole

A Placer County judge sentenced James Lawhead Jr. to life in prison without the possibility of parole after he pleaded guilty to kidnapping, raping and murdering Cindy Wanner, closing a 34-year cold case that began when she vanished from her sister’s Granite Bay home. The sentence was handed down at Placer Superior Court in Roseville.

Wanner was 35 when she disappeared on Nov. 25, 1991, while cleaning at her sister’s house in Granite Bay. Her 11-month-old child was in the home that day. Her body was found nearly three weeks later in a wooded area of Foresthill, northeast of Granite Bay, and an autopsy determined strangulation was the cause of death.

For years, the case remained in Placer County’s cold-case unit because the forensic tools available at the time could not identify the killer. Deputies preserved the evidence, then sent it for updated testing years later. That work produced a previously unknown male DNA profile, and the profile matched Lawhead, who was already in a national database. The Placer County Sheriff’s Office credited the breakthrough to years of work by its Cold Case Unit and a final DNA submission to the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office Forensic Lab.

Lawhead was arrested on April 24, 2026, in Bullhead City, Arizona, and investigators announced the arrest three days later. He had been living under another identity and had no documented record of his whereabouts since 2005. He was a convicted sex offender who had been released from prison about 10 months before Wanner was killed. Lawhead pleaded guilty on June 16, 2026, and Sheriff Wayne Woo said he had not seen another homicide case move from arrest to plea to sentencing that fast in 36 years.

The resolution also reached Lawhead’s sister, Terry Lynn Lawhead-Steele, who received time served and probation on an accessory charge. Placer County has more than 80 cold cases overall, including homicides, missing persons and unidentified remains. In 2025, the county launched a Cold Case Foundation to help pay for forensic work, with some cases costing upward of $50,000 to analyze.