A white couple from West Virginia has been sentenced to a combined 375 years in prison for enslaving their five adopted Black children, forcing them into grueling labor while subjecting them to racial slurs.
Jeanne Kay Whitefeather received up to 215 years, while her husband, Donald Lantz, was handed a 160-year sentence—the maximum allowed—after being convicted in January of forced labor, human trafficking, and child abuse.
“You brought these children to West Virginia, a place I know as ‘Almost Heaven,’ and you put them in hell. This court will now put you in yours,” Circuit Judge Maryclaire Akers declared Wednesday.
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“And may God have mercy on your souls. Because this court will not.”
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In emotional letters read aloud in court, the four oldest children described the lasting trauma they endured, including trust issues and recurring nightmares.
“I’ll never understand how you can sleep at night. I want you to know that you are a monster,” the eldest daughter, now 18, said.
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Last month, she filed a lawsuit against the couple, citing severe physical and emotional abuse that left permanent scars.
Whitefeather and Lantz had adopted the five siblings in Minnesota before relocating to a farm in Washington state in 2018. In May 2023, they moved to Sissonville, West Virginia, with the children, then between the ages of 5 and 16.
Their crimes came to light in October 2023 when authorities, responding to a child welfare call, found two of the older children—a teenage boy and the eldest daughter—locked inside a shed at the couple’s home, NY Post reported.
Using a crowbar, officers pried open the barn door, revealing a porta-potty but no lights or running water. One of the teens reported they had been locked inside for 12 hours without food.
Investigators found that the children were forced to sleep on a concrete floor without mattresses. They wore filthy clothes, reeked of body odor, and had been deprived of basic hygiene, according to police reports.
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Inside the house, a 9-year-old girl was found crying alone in a loft. Hours later, Lantz returned with an 11-year-old boy, and Whitefeather arrived with a 5-year-old girl.
Following the couple’s arrests, all five children were placed in the custody of Child Protective Services.
“These children were targeted because of their race and used essentially as slaves,” Judge Akers previously stated after the indictment.
During the trial, neighbors testified that they rarely saw the children playing but often saw them working in the yard or standing in line, as if waiting for orders. Once Lantz became aware of their observations, he kept the children mostly indoors, prosecutors said.
The eldest daughter recounted that most of the forced labor occurred at their Washington farm, where they were made to dig with their bare hands. She testified that verbal abuse was constant, and Whitefeather frequently used racial slurs.
The children’s meals consisted mainly of peanut butter sandwiches, given at strict times. Some were ordered to stand in place for hours with their hands on their heads as punishment.
The two oldest children were forced to sleep on the floor in their shared room, using a single bucket as a toilet while the other held up a sheet for privacy from the home’s security cameras.
The couple’s defense attorneys argued that they were simply overwhelmed by the demands of raising children who had already suffered abuse from their biological parents.
Whitefeather’s lawyer, Mark Plants, claimed in his closing argument that the couple’s only fault was poor parenting.
“These are farm people who do farm chores,” he said. “It wasn’t about race. It wasn’t about forced labor.”
