Background: The Sissonville, West Virginia, shed where couple Donald Lantz and Jeanne Whitefeather, pictured inset, allegedly locked up their adoptive children in 2023. Inset bottom left: An interior photo of the shed take by Whitefeather’s brother after arrest. (Images of shed via YouTube/WCHS; booking photos of Lantz and Whitefeather via West Virginia Regional Jail and Correctional Facility Authority.)
In a case invoking images and allegations of modern day slavery, a judge has decided to revoke the bail of a West Virginia couple recently accused of locking their adopted children inside of a filthy shed on their property, hiding another child in a separate room inside the main house and forcing them all to do farm labor.
As Law&Crime previously reported, Donald Lantz and Jeanne Whitefeather of Sissonville, West Virginia, were arrested in October 2023 with an initial cash bond set at $200,00 per person. Both faced felony charges of gross child neglect. They were bailed out in February as they awaited trial. Both pleaded not guilty.
They were indicted again on several new charges in May, however, including human trafficking of a minor, civil rights violations based on color, race, and/or ancestry, use of a minor child in forced labor, child neglect creating substantial risk of serious bodily injury or death and false swearing, local CBS affiliate WOWK reported.
As a result of the new charges, during a circuit hearing in Kanawha County on June 11, the couples’ previous bails were revoked and upped to $500,000 per person when a county prosecutor, Christopher Krivonyak, raised concerns that the money the couple used to bail themselves out the first time had been reaped from their alleged child trafficking activities.
Police in West Virginia were forced to conduct a search of the couple’s property in Sissonville after a report to 911 was made about children being trapped inside of the couple’s outdoor shed or unable to enter the main house where the couple lived.
When authorities got onto Lantz and Whitefeather’s property, they broke into the shed — measuring 20 feet by 14 feet — in the backyard and found two children inside of it: a boy, 14, and a girl, 16. Another girl, 9, was found shortly afterward inside of the home left alone and crying as she sat near a railing in a loft allegedly 15 feet off the ground.
The shed had no running water or running lights and was in bad condition overall. There was no bedding or mattress and the floor was hard concrete. The heat in the shed was cloying. 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 of the shed for 12 hours. Police said the children reeked of body odor and appeared unbathed and dirty. One of the children said they had made and 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.
When Lantz and Whitefeather appeared in court in May for their second bond hearing and pleaded not guilty to the new human trafficking charges, Whitefeather claimed the shed was a “teenage clubhouse,” the WCHS reported.
She also said the children “liked it.”
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, local Fox and ABC affiliate WCHS reported after the second bond hearing.
The couple claimed that their bail money was obtained by a family member after they sold the Tonasket home worth roughly $725,000. Attorneys for the couple said in March that they also sold the home where the children were found for just under $300,000. At their first bail hearing, they told prosecutors they had no income or assets.
Both remain in detention after the new bail was set.
A defense attorney for Whitefeather could not be reached immediately on Wednesday but he has repeatedly said the charges are overblown. WCHS reported that Whitefeather’s brother Mark Hughes appeared in court in West Virginia to testify about the ordeal. He said that there was a key three feet from the door and provided pictures to the court of the shed’s interior and even a picture of the key on a table.
The key on a rope that Jeanne Whitefeather’s brother told prosecutors was found inside of the shed in Sissonville (Photo via YouTube screengrab/WCHS).
But prosecutors argued that the key was found a week and a half after the arrest and the presiding judge found the claim equally unbelievable before raising the bail amount.
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