White couple accused of locking adopted Black kids in shed

By Merdies Hayes
Across Black America
A White couple from rural West Virginia is back behind bars after a judge revoked the initial bond and raised it to $500,000 apiece — more than double the amount they faced last year when police arrested the pair on charges of locking their adopted Black children in a barn and forcing them to work as “slaves.”
Donald Ray Lantz, 63, and Jeanne Kay Whitefeather, 62, both of Sissonville, were scheduled to reappear in Kahanwha County Court on June 11, more than eight months after each posted a $200,000 bond following their arrests in October.
At the time, police conducting a wellness check at the Cheyanne Lane home were shocked to discover two of the couple’s five adopted children living in deplorable conditions, padlocked inside a ramshackle storage shed on the back of the property, which had no working lights or running water.
At the initial court hearing in October, Lantz and Whitefeather pleaded not guilty, and Kanawha County Circuit Judge Maryclaire Akers set bond at $200,000 each.
The couple made bail in February, and they were released to await trial.
They remained free for several months, but in May, a grand jury indicted the couple on more than a dozen new charges, the most serious being human trafficking of a minor child, which prompted the judge to revoke the lower bond, ordering the couple held in lieu of a million dollars.
“Along with human trafficking and neglect with serious risk of bodily injuries or death, I don’t find the bond to be sufficient,” Akers told defense attorneys during the second bond hearing.
The upgraded charges include alleged use of a minor child in forced labor, child neglect creating a substantial risk of serious bodily injury or death, as well as false swearing and potential civil rights violations based on color, race, or ancestry, according to court documents.
The indictment suggests that three of the five adopted children were Black and that the human rights charges stemmed from those children being specifically targeted and forced to work because of their race.