Cinthia Wanner

On Monday, Nov. 25, 1991, Cindy Wanner was earning some extra money cleaning her sister’s brand new house in Granite Bay. Cindy was a 35-yr-old married mother of two little girls. She and her husband had recently moved to Rancho Cordova to be close to family members. Cindy was 5-foot-5, 135 pounds, with brown hair, hazel eyes and glasses. She was active in her church, and her family was her entire life. She was a no risk victim. 

•Susan and Phil, Cindy’s sister and brother-in-law had just moved from their home in Rancho Cordova to the a large custom home in Granite Bay. The house was set back off Auburn-Folsom Road, tucked behind a six-foot fence. 

•  It was one of three new homes that shared a private drive, but they were the first to move in. Construction crews were still finishing the other houses on the cul-de-sac. 

• At about 12:30 pm, Susan and Phil left for a meeting in Roseville. Cindy was cleaning a bathroom, and the baby was in her highchair at the dining room table, snacking on some Cheerios. Cindy’s husband left Rancho Cordova with the wood, stopped to pick up his 4 year old, and arrived at the Granite Bay house at 1:15 pm.

•Nothing at the house seemed amiss. Cindy’s car was parked in the driveway, and her husband could hear the baby crying inside. He rang the bell, but got no answer, and started trying all of the doors until he found one unlocked. Inside, he found his daughter, still in her highchair with unfinished Cheerios; she was crying hysterically. Cindy’s coat and shoes were in the house, and the only items out of place were a can of bathroom cleaner, and a rag found on the carpet in the hallway. Cindy, wearing blue jeans and a bright pink sweater, and her taupe-colored vinyl purse had vanished.

•It appeared that the kidnapper was already in the house when Cindy encountered him. She was cleaning the bathroom, walked out into the hallway holding the can of cleaner and rag, and dropped them on the hallway carpet. She may have been held at gunpoint and told that the kidnapper just wanted money. Cindy left her shoes, coat and baby, but took her purse. The killer had her ATM code, so there had to have been a robbery pretense at some point. 

•After searching the house and yard, and calling Susan and Phil at their meeting, Cindy’s husband called 911. Placer County investigators were immediately alarmed, and brought in search teams. They released Cindy’s photo to the media and, at 3:08 pm, detectives called the Rancho Cordova branch of Wells Fargo Bank—the issuer of Cindy’s ATM card, and asked officials there to put an alert on the card.

A cigarette butt was found on the walkway, and since nobody from the home smoked, it was believed to belong to the kidnapper, and collected into evidence.

•The search continued the next day, Tuesday, when 30 deputies and volunteers worked with dogs and a helicopter to search the fields and woods around the house. They found no clues. Cindy’s husband and brother-in-law agreed to polygraph exams, and investigators considered them both clear of any involvement in Cindy’s disappearance. They were also able to check the alibi of Cindy’s ex-boyfriend, and he was also cleared. Since the other two houses on the drive were still under construction, investigators checked the background and alibi of every person who worked on the project. Placer detectives came up with nothing, they had no motive, witnesses, or suspects.

•The first real clue in Cindy’s disappearance came nine days later, on December 4th, when detectives made an inquiry at Wells Fargo regarding Cindy’s account. It was then that they were informed that Cindy’s ATM card at been used at 4:00 pm on the afternoon of her abduction. That was 52 minutes after law enforcement put a freeze on the account. Wells Fargo both allowed the transaction to go through, and failed to notify anyone in law enforcement or Cindy’s family that the card had been used. Cindy’s family later filed a $5 million negligence lawsuit against Wells Fargo, but did not prevail. 

•Investigators immediately gathered at the location of the transaction to conduct interviews, and obtain surveillance footage. Unfortunately, the video of the person using the ATM had been taped over after a week, and nobody from the store remembered anything about that afternoon. All detectives knew was that someone has used the card, and Cindy’s PIN, to withdraw $40 cash from the machine at the AM/PM mini market located at Auburn Boulevard and Greenback Lane in Citrus Heights. They didn’t know if the video would have shown Cindy, her kidnapper, or both. 

•This all looks like “Nancy’s” abduction in reverse. Cindy was taken in Granite Bay, a mile and a half from where “Nancy” was almost killed 14 years earlier. Cindy’s kidnapper then drove down to Citrus Heights and used her card on Greenback Lane, exactly a mile and a half west of the shopping center where “Nancy” had been kidnapped. While it’s possible that it’s all total coincidence, it’s not as if either Citrus Heights or Granite Bay has ever been a hotbed for daytime kidnappings of no risk women. 

•Cindy’s body was found in the foothills above Auburn. On Saturday, December 14th, at about 3:30 pm, a 24-yr-old man from the town of Foresthill was hunting for quail between Foresthill and Baker Ranch. He found Cindy face down in an area of tall pines and underbrush. She was wearing nothing but her bra. 

• The only outward signs of violence were angry red ligature marks around her neck. No matching rope or cord was found at, or near the scene. Criminalists from the state Department of Justice and Placer County detectives searched the area looking for shoe prints, fiber evidence, hair, and soil samples. They were unable to locate her socks, jeans, sweater, underpants, and purse. Those items have never been found. 

•Investigators determined that Cindy likely was not murdered where she was found. It was impossible to drive all of the way to her location, so she had to be carried or dragged. The site was 50 yards off Auburn-Foresthill Road, just past the end of a dirt logging road. There was no sign that she had been restrained or beaten, and there were no signs of sexual assault found at autopsy. Additional labs were all negative for the presence of seminal fluid, sperm, or saliva, including later testing of her bra. 

•The case was already highly unusual, with a daytime kidnapping from a $350,000 house in a county with a violent crime rate so low, PCSO couldn’t qualify for federal law enforcement grants. For what? $40?   The killer risked being caught at the house, mini mart, and at a road pull out to make Cindy withdraw $40? 

•The science in the case showed that Cindy’s body still had a measurable level of Tylenol in her blood at the time of her death. Likely the same Tylenol she was known to have taken on the morning that she disappeared. Since Tylenol breaks down quickly within the body, Cindy was killed within six hours of being kidnapped. There was no demand for ransom, and the killer was free to use the ATM at 4:00 pm. 

•Depending on what time Cindy was kidnapped, and how long the killer spent on Foresthill Road, the killer would have driven away from the Foresthill scene sometime between 1:45 and 3:00 pm. The drive back to the ATM in Citrus Heights was 50-55 minutes going the speed limit, and the card was used at 4:00 pm. It was extremely risky to use Cindy’s card at a busy mini mart/gas station full of cameras. Did the killer want to give the impression that Cindy was still alive at 4:00, and that she had left voluntarily? Although it sounds absurd given her infant, shoes, coat, and car at the scene, PCSO Johnnie Smith actually started to move the investigation away from a kidnapping until Cindy's body was found. 

• The physical evidence in the case is both sparse and muddled, maybe intentionally so. There are no known witnesses who saw the suspect or his vehicle. There were no fingerprints found at the kidnapping scene. 

• DNA testing of the cigarette butt failed to develop a profile, and it was negative for fingerprints. The evidence photo of the filter and filter paper look pristine—it does not look as if a person put the cigarette in his mouth, or dragged smoke through it. The butt may have been planted as a false clue.

•Tests were unable to pull any male DNA profile from Cindy’s body and bra. The lab found some unidentified green wool fibers on her neck and in her hair, and these appeared to match similar green fibers found in a brown paper bag in a garbage pile at a car pullout a few hundred feet from Cindy’s body. In the paper bag were four beer cans, a pornographic video tape, and pornographic magazines. 

• The lab was able to develop prints from at least one of the beer cans and the video tape, but it is unclear if they matched each other. Investigators were not able to identify the owner of the fingerprints. Past attempts to develop a DNA profile from the items in the bag, including the empty beer cans, were unsuccessful.

•The bag of porn led investigators down a new convoluted path. They decided that Cindy’s killer was the owner of that porn, and that it provided the motive for Cindy’s murder. From that they developed the theory that the killer was a sexual deviant who was into specific sex acts depicted in the porn, that he had targeted Cindy for these acts, kidnapped her, but her Christian values caused her to resist, and she was killed. Investigators stated that when they identified the fingerprints from the items in the bag, they would have their killer.

•The green fibers were likely transferred to both the bag and the body from a third source at the scene. Based on scrape marks, hair arrangement, and the fact that Cindy’s bra was slightly rolled up in the back, it appears she was dragged on her back, by her feet, at least a short distance. The fibers were only found on her neck and hair near the scrape marks. The porn bag was in a pile of discarded items, and the transfer could have occurred there. It seems likely that if the bag had anything to do with the crime it was planted by the killer as a false clue—either to send LE looking for the wrong offender, or to frame someone else.

Possible connections to DeAngelo and Placer and other Placer victims:

•DeAngelo lived off Auburn-Folsom Road from 1963-1971, and traveled past the Wanner kidnapping location when he attended Folsom High from 1963-65, and Sierra College from 1968-70. DeAngelo’s home during those years was 9 miles north of the Wanner kidnapping, and 3 miles south of the home where Janet Kovacich disappeared.

•At the time that Cindy Wanner’s ATM card was used at the corner of Auburn Blvd and Greenback Lane in Citrus Heights, DeAngelo lived 5 miles directly north, off Auburn Blvd. 

•Rosemary Norris was kidnapped less than a mile from the ATM, just off Auburn Blvd.

•The ATM location was 1 mile west of the Huddle home, 1.5 miles west of the “Nancy” kidnapping, and 2.5 miles west of the Pay N Save where DeAngelo was arrested—all right off Greenback Lane. 

•The ATM was also located 6 blocks from the field where DeAngelo attacked the November 10, 1976, EAR victim after a kidnapping that was identical to the MO used to take Cindy Wanner.

•There were four EAR attacks within a mile of the ATM, and a dozen in the general area.