A West Virginia couple charged with locking their adopted children in a shed and forcing them to do farm labor saw their bond more than doubled last week after they were indicted on new charges in May.
Donald Lantz and Jeanne Whitefeather were initially arrested in October 2023 after deputies were called to check on the children’s welfare, as CrimeOnline reported. They found two teenagers locked in the shed and a third, younger child locked inside the main home in a loft 15 feet off the the ground.
Lantz and Whitefeather were not home when deputies arrived, but they were charged with child neglect when they returned.
In May, Lantz and Whitefeather were indicted charges of human trafficking of a minor child; civil rights violations based on color, race and/or ancestry; use of minor child in forced labor; child neglect creating a substantial risk of serious bodily injury or death; and false swearing, WOWK reported. That led to the bond hearing last week, when a judge revoked their initial $200,000 bonds and raised both to $500,000.
The two entered not guilty pleas at the hearing.
Lantz and Whitefeather had bonded out in February on the lower amount, but they have been returned to jail. At the new hearing, county prosecutor Christopher Krivonyak raised concerns that the money the couple used for bail in February had come from their alleged child trafficking activities, WCHS reported.
The 16-count indictment charges that the couple purposefully sought Black children from a shelter and adopted them for the purpose of forcing them to perform labor on their farm, first at an 80-acre ranch in Washington state and then at their new home in Sissonville, West Virginia.
Deputies found the 16-year-old girl and 14-year-old boy inside the shed in the back yard after forcing their way inside. The girl told them that she and her brother were not allowed in the main house and were locked in the 20 x 14 shed — which had no windows, beds, or running water — for long periods of time.
The deputies found a table and chair inside and a portable RV toilet on a tarp. The floors were concrete and the walls were plywood, and the deputies noted a camera in an upper corner.
The two children wore dirty clothes, and the boy had sores on his feet.
They found the third child, who appeared to be 5 or 6 years old, when they looked through a window at the house.
“I observed the child crying and close to the railing of an approximately 15 foot drop from the loft, the complaint says. “Due to the distressed condition of the child and risk of the child falling, forced entry was made to secure the child.”
Lantz and Whitefeather arrived about three hours after the deputies, with an 11-year-old child in tow.
Whitefeather told deputies at the time of her arrest that the children liked living in the shed, a claim she repeated in May, when she told the court it was “like a clubhouse.”
The couple are due in court again in September.
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[Featured image: Jeanne Kay Whitefeather and Donald Ray Lantz/Kanawha County Sheriff’s Office]
