(AP Photo/The Record, Craig Sanders)

SAN FRANCISCO - The childhood friends killed for the first time less than three months after their graduation in 1984. Then they seemingly killed with impunity for the next 15 years, with one man making barroom boasts about their ability to make people disappear.

By the time the hunting buddies were finally arrested in 1999, investigators say the notorious "Speed Freak Killers" had killed as many as 20 people during a 15-year methamphetamine-fueled spree that terrorized rural California. Some victims were left at the scene. Most were never seen again, especially the female ones.

Even after their convictions in 2001, Wesley Shermantine and Loren Herzog steadfastly refused to divulge any burial sites.

Now, motivated by a bounty hunter's promise to pay $33,000 for the location of the missing, Shermantine is breaking a long silence. Family members of the missing hope the new details will lead to the discovery of their loved ones' remains and closure after years of torment. Two victims have already been identified, and hundreds of human remains have been recovered over the last several days. More are expected to be found.

"It is a happy occasion," said Paula Wheeler, mother of 16-year-old Chevelle "Chevy" Wheeler, whose remains were tentatively identified Friday after the girl disappeared in 1985.

Shermantine told bounty hunter Leonard Padilla that he plans to use the $33,000 to pay $15,000 in court-ordered restitution to victims' families. The rest will buy headstones for his deceased parents and small luxuries in prison like candy bars and a private television set. Padilla hopes to claim rewards offered by the state of California for information about missing persons thought to be the victims of Shermantine and Herzog.

Using crude maps Shermantine hand-drew in his Death Row cell, investigators have dug up three sites since Thursday that have yielded human remains.

The site of the biggest find is an abandoned well outside the city of Stockton that produced hundreds of human bones, purses, shoes, jewelry and other evidence over the weekend. That raised Joan Shelley's hopes that her 16-year-old daughter, JoAnn Hobson, will be found.

"I feel they are going to find her," a tearful Shelley told The Associated Press in a phone interview. JoAnn disappeared in 1985, and investigators have long suspected Shermantine and Herzog in the girl's abduction and murder. But they never had enough evidence to charge them.

Padilla said Shermantine calls the well "Herzog's boneyard" and pins all the bodies that will be found there on Herzog. That's nothing new. Beyond steadfastly refusing to disclose the location of bodies, the childhood friends have also maintained that the other single-handedly did all the killing.

Herzog hanged himself on Jan. 16 outside the trailer he was paroled to after an appeals court tossed out his confession as illegally coerced. He committed suicide hours after Padilla told him Shermantine was prepared to tell authorities about the missing.

"I could hear him catch his breath when I mentioned the well," Padilla said of his conversation with Herzog on Jan. 16. "He thanked me, and didn't say anything more, but I could hear him catch his breath."

On Thursday, at a site in Calaveras County near property Shermantine's parents once owned, searchers found a skull identified as Cyndi Vanderheiden, who disappeared in 1998. The next day, close by, searchers found a blanket containing a partial skull and other remains believed to belong to Wheeler.

Shermantine was convicted of both women's murders in 2001. He was arrested in 1999 after his car was re-possessed and investigators found Vanderheiden's blood in the trunk. Using a new collection technique not available in 1985, they also found Wheeler's DNA in a remote Calaveras County cabin owned by Shermantine. The cabin was near where Wheeler's body was found.

Shermantine was also convicted of robbing and killing two drifters. Tire tracks left at the scene matched those of a red pickup Shermantine drove at the time.

During his trial, prosecutor Thomas Testa told the jury that Shermantine was suspected of killing 20 people. Testa told the jury that Shermantine boasted publicly - and threateningly __ on several occasions about his ability to make people disappear.

"There are no fingerprints, no eyewitnesses, no smoking gun," Testa said in his opening statement. "Wes told several individuals that he had hunted the ultimate kill: humans."

John Vanderheiden, Cyndi's father, owns a bar the deadly duo frequented. Vanderheiden said Shermantine boasted loudly on several occasions that he was a killer.

Vanderheiden said he chalked it up to drunken nonsense - until his daughter disappeared.

Shermantine was convicted of four murders and sentenced to death.