US Couple Who Adopted Black Children To Enslave Them Jailed For 365 Years

Last Updated:March 27, 2025, 20:53 IST

Jeanne Kay Whitefeather and Donald Lantz, a West Virginia couple, were sentenced to 375 years for human trafficking, child neglect, and forced labour of five adopted Black children.

Donald Ray Lantz and Jeanne Kay Whitefeather in the Kanawha County Circuit Court on the first day of their trial in multiple charges. (AP Photo)

A US couple, known for their generousity in adopting children, were sentenced to a staggering 375 years in prison after a horrifying truth emerged about their motives. Belonging to West Virginia, Jeanne Kay Whitefeather (63) and her husband, Donald Lantz (64), had built a reputation among their acquaintances as benevolent adoptive parents, having adopted five children over the years. However, their actions concealed a harrowing reality – one that shocked both the local community and authorities.

The couple, both white, exclusively adopted five Black children, a pattern that initially raised little suspicion. But when investigators uncovered the true reason behind their adoptions, it sent shockwaves through West Virginia’s legal system. Whitefeather and Lantz were found guilty of multiple counts of human trafficking, child neglect, and forced labour after it was revealed that they had turned their adopted children into slaves, forcing them to perform grueling household chores under inhumane conditions.

The police first became aware of the situation in 2023 when officers from the Kanawha County Sheriff’s Department conducted a welfare check at the couple’s residence. What they found inside was nothing short of a nightmare. The children were confined in a small, cage-like room with no proper sanitation – just a single bucket for waste. There was no running water, and the air reeked of filth. The children, malnourished and weak, were forced to sleep on a cold cement floor, often left locked inside for hours on end.

The investigation revealed a disturbing motive behind the couple’s actions. Witness testimony and evidence suggested that Whitefeather and Lantz harbored deep-seated racial animosity toward Black individuals. Their pattern of adopting only Black children was not out of kindness but rooted in prejudice – they systematically turned their adoptive children into unpaid labourers, stripping them of basic human dignity while denying them food, education, and medical care.

During sentencing at the Circuit Court of West Virginia, the presiding judge delivered a scathing rebuke to the defendants. “You brought these children to West Virginia, a place that I know as ‘Almost Heaven,’ and you put them in hell. This court will now put you in yours," Circuit Judge Maryclaire Akers told the defendants. “And may God have mercy on your souls. Because this court will not," the judge said before handing down the longest sentence in history.

Whitefeather and Lantz had initially lived in Minnesota before relocating to Washington, eventually settling in West Virginia with the children they had adopted from an orphanage. Investigators are now working to determine whether additional victims may have been subjected to similar treatment during their time in other states.

United States of America (USA)

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