Background: The Sissonville, West Virginia shed locked up their adopted children in 2023 (WCHS). Left inset: Donald Lantz (West Virginia Regional Jail and Correctional Facility Authority). Right inset: Jeanne Whitefeather (West Virginia Regional Jail and Correctional Facility Authority). Bottom inset: An interior photo of the shed taken by Whitefeather’s brother after arrest (WCHS).
A judge in West Virginia threw the book at a white couple who were convicted of using their five adopted Black children as “slaves,” forcing them to perform heavy labor and locking them in a filthy shed where they used buckets as toilets.
Kanawha County Circuit Judge Maryclaire Akers on Wednesday handed down the maximum sentences to Jeanne Kay Whitefeather and her husband, Donald Lantz, ordering each to serve more than 150 years in a state correctional facility after they were convicted on multiple counts of child neglect and forced labor.
Whitefeather, who was convicted on all 19 counts charged against her, was ordered to serve up to 215 years and will be eligible for parole after 40 years. Lantz, who was convicted on 12 of 16 counts, will serve a maximum of 160 years and will be eligible for parole after serving 30 years.
The couple were also ordered to pay $280,000 each in restitution.
The judge did not mince words when addressing the defendants during the sentencing hearing.
“You brought these children to West Virginia, a place that I know as ‘Almost Heaven,’ and you put them in hell. This court will now put you in yours,” Akers said, according to a report about The Associated Press. “And may God have mercy on your souls because this court will not.”
Several of the couple’s adopted children penned victim impact statements that were read aloud by the court’s victim advocate while the eldest child, who is now 18, read her own statement.
“I’ll never understand how you can sleep at night,” she reportedly said to Whitefeather. “I want you to know that you are a monster.”
As Law&Crime previously reported, the case came to light when police in October 2023 searched the couple’s property in Sissonville, 15 miles north of Charleston, after a report to 911 was made about children being trapped inside the couple’s outdoor shed. When authorities got onto Lantz and Whitefeather’s property, they used a crowbar to break into the shed — which measured 20 feet by 14 feet — in the backyard and found two children inside — a boy, 14, and a girl, 16. Another girl, 9, was found inside the home, alone and crying as she sat near a railing in a loft 15 feet off the ground.
The shed had no running water or lights. There was no bedding or mattress, and the floor was hard concrete. According to police, the 14-year-old boy had open sores on his bare feet. The children told police during initial interviews that they had been locked inside the shed for 12 hours. Police said the children reeked of body odor and appeared unbathed and dirty. They shared a makeshift toilet by crafting one from a toilet seat ripped out of an RV.
Police waited at the property with the children for three hours before Lantz showed up with an 11-year-old boy in tow. Whitefeather arrived an hour after that and reportedly led police to the location of a 6-year-old girl who was visiting them with another couple from their local church.
Akers, the judge, said after the couple was indicted that she hadn’t seen a case like this one, saying the children were “targeted because of their race” to be used “as basically slaves.”
Whitefeather claimed in court the shed was a “teenage clubhouse,” local Fox and ABC affiliate WCHS reported. She also said the children “liked it.”
The Associated Press reported that Brenda Bailey, a neighbor, testified she watched the children carry heavy items, including propane tanks and buckets of water at the property. She filmed some of it, and it was shown in court. She said one carried a propane tank and could “could barely walk. He acted like his feet were so sore. He was dragging them.”
“Mr. Lantz was just standing there. He never said anything, not helping him,” Bailey said.
Prosecutors say the couple sought out Black children from a shelter and likely trafficked them from an 80-acre ranch the couple once owned in Tonasket, Washington, to the home in Sissonville, West Virginia, WCHS reported.
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