‘Targeted Because of Their Race’: White West Virginia Couple Kept Black Adopted Children Locked In Barn and Used Them ‘Basically as Slaves,' Prosecutor Says

Awhite 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 ordered 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.

The abused children were identified only as a 14-year-old boy and a 16-year-old girl. A third child, identified as a 9-year-old girl, was confined to a loft inside the main house, away from the presence of the adults and isolated from her other siblings, police said, according to reports.