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KTVU obtained police interviews with Loren Herzog as he gives his account of several of the so-called Speed Freak killings.

A KTVU reporter spent the past two weeks in San Joaquin County learning about the crimes of Herzog and Wesley Shermantine.

KTVU has the transcripts and more than 10 hours of videotapes containing the law enforcement interviews with Herzog -- documents and tapes that reveal Herzog's chilling account of the murders.

On March 17, 1999, the day he was arrested, Herzog described for investigators in detail how his boyhood friend, Wesley Shermantine, raped and killed Cyndi Vanderheiden.

"I heard a click.  I knew what it was," Herzog told police. "Man, I started getting out of the car.  Then it was too late. He was already... he was a slashing and hacking, man."

Herzog admits to helping Shermantine place the body of the 25-year-old Vanderheiden into Shermantine's vehicle.

He told investigators he was scared of his friend and ashamed of his fear for not helping Vanderheiden.

A source told KTVU, Herzog was considered Shermantine's "road dog." 

Herzog told investigators he stopped being friends with Shermantine eight years before his arrest.

"He ain't the same person no more," Herzog said.  "Wes was my friend." The investigator then asked if Shermantine threatened to kill him. "Pretty much," Herzog answered. 

Herzog also told investigators that Shermantine killed 16-year-old Chevy Wheeler of Stockton in 1985 and buried her on Shermantine's parent's property in Calaveras County.
 
Investigators recently unearthed and identified both Vanderheiden and Wheeler's remains on that property.

But that wasn't all.

"He told me one time, he killed 24 people or some'n," Herzog said to police.  "I thought he was just being full of (it)."

In an interview four days later, Herzog further revealed that he was with Shermantine when Shermantine killed two men who were pulled over in a car on the side of a deserted dead-end road.

"He got out and charged the car and started shooting," Herzog said.
   
Throughout the interrogations, Herzog admitted to using methamphetamine and said that he was dazed during some of the attacks.

He also expressed regret.

"I wish I could turn the clock backwards, turn the time back," Herzog told police.

KTVU has been told that Herzog was married with three children when Cyndi Vanderheiden was killed.