CHARLESTON, W.Va.— After jury selection went all day, a jury has finally been selected for the trial of a Sissonville couple accused of locking two of their adoptive children in a shed.
Jeanne Whitefeather and Donald Lantz were accused in an October 2023 indictment after two of their adoptive children were found locked in a shed on their property.
The indictment alleges charges of child abuse, human trafficking, and forced child labor with civil rights violations.
The two, whose trial started Monday with jury selection, had a pre-trial hearing last Friday to go over last-minute details of the case.
At that pre-trial hearing, the defense made a motion to sever the trial of Whitefeather and Lantz, in which Judge Maryclaire Akers denied.
And details were revealed at that pre-trial hearing, that there was a previous investigation into the couple’s treatment of their five adopted children in Washington before moving to Sissonville.
Another motion was filed by Madison Tuck Kanawha County Assistant Prosecuting Attorney to include the investigation from Washington. The motion also claimed that Whitefeather and Lantz kept the children on a ranch, where they denied bedrooms in the house, forcing the children to sleep in tents until Lantz built a “detached building.”
The prosecutors said that the children were force into “inappropriate farm labor” while in Washington. And also endured physical and mental abuse at the hands of Whitefeather and Lantz, who supposedly used cattle whips and bear spray on them.
In that same motion, while living in Washington, two of the five children attempted to run away from Whitefeather and Lantz’s property. One of the children that attempted to escape told investigators they heard Whitefeather discharge a gun that was kept on her hip in a holster.
During the trial, Whitefeather is expected to take the stand, and four of the five children are expected to testify.
The trial will start Tuesday at 9 a.m. in front of Judge Maryclaire Akers and is expected to last two weeks.