A slain Bay Area boy, a bizarre confession and now a new suspect

After 36 painful years, two mistrials and one stranger-than-fiction police interrogation, the long-cold case of a slain Bay Area boy may be on the brink of being solved. 

One of Solano County’s most bizarre and tragic crimes began on Feb. 21, 1987. That Saturday, six-year-old Jeremy Stoner and his older brothers, ages nine and 11, were being watched by a relative while their parents were at work. The boys were at their home on the 200 block of Westwood Street in Vallejo when their relative had to leave suddenly to take her sick daughter to the emergency room. The boys were told to stay home until their parents returned.

Instead, they headed over to a neighbor’s house. While there, the Sacramento Bee reported a neighbor “scolded” Jeremy for spilling ketchup. Soon after that, around 3:30 p.m., Jeremy disappeared.

The boys’ mother returned home at 4 p.m. to find the house empty, and she assumed the boys were playing at a neighbor’s, as they often did. But when the two older boys returned without Jeremy two hours later, the family launched a search effort. With Jeremy nowhere to be seen, they called the police.

Vallejo police quickly determined Jeremy had been kidnapped. His last sighting was believed to be at a Dairy Queen on Springs Road, about a 5-minute walk from the family home. A worker there told investigators they saw Jeremy with an adult man around 7:30 that evening.

“He has lived here most of his life and knew his way around,” his mother Karen Stoner told the Bee. “And he knew never to cross Springs Road unless he was with someone older.”

Police were still running down leads when a few days later, the investigation went from a kidnapping to a homicide. Four people driving down Sherman Island Road in the Delta found themselves stuck in the mud. The driver got out to look for something to wedge under the tires; instead, she discovered the naked body of a little boy. He had been sexually assaulted, stabbed and strangled.

It wasn’t long until a suspect walked right into the Vallejo police department. About a week after Jeremy was killed, an unemployed security guard named Shawn Melton told police he may have information about the boy’s murder. By his own admission, Melton said he wanted to impress detectives with his amateur investigation. He wanted, in his own words, to be a “big shot.”

Video of his interrogation, though, showed the “slow transformation of Melton from a swaggering sleuth to a bewildered crime suspect,” the Bee would later write. Suspecting Melton of being more than just an overly interested amateur, police honed in on him as their prime suspect. When Melton passed a polygraph, however, detectives had to switch tactics. And they settled on one of the strangest ever deployed: multiple personalities.

Interrogation footage showed detectives convincing Melton, over the course of a long night, that he had an alternate persona named “John Wolf” or “Wolfin” who actually did the crime. According to police, Melton had passed the polygraph because “Wolfin” was the one who had actually killed Jeremy. 

“The police refused to talk to Melton, demanding to hear from ‘John,’” the Bee reported. Eventually, Melton broke down, speaking in an artificially deep voice and recounting a nonsensical tale of a drug deal gone bad that ended in Jeremy’s death. In the story, Melton said a man named “The Terminator” killed Jeremy as Melton watched. 

Despite the fact detectives had no physical evidence against Melton, they announced to the media that they were “100 percent certain” he was Jeremy’s killer. Two separate juries did not agree. Twice, proceedings ended in mistrials. After 19 months in jail, Melton was freed. 

“I’m not what the police portray me,” he told reporters after the second mistrial. “I’m not this ‘Wolfin.’ I’m not this crazy psycho that they’ve painted. I’m a human being.”

For decades, a cloud of suspicion remained over him, but on Friday, the Solano County District Attorney’s Office cleared Melton once and for all. “Advances in DNA technology have since exonerated Mr. Melton,” the district attorney’s office said in a statement, “and has implicated another person responsible for the young child’s death.”

Now, investigators believe Jeremy was killed by Fred Marion Cain III. On Monday, officers from the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office arrested Cain, 69, at his home in Central Point, Ore. 

Media reports from 1984 show Cain, then 30, was suspected of the rape of a 17-year-old in San Bernardino County. According to local newspapers, Cain and his roommate were arrested on suspicion of raping the teen at knifepoint. Cain was charged with forcible rape and use of a deadly weapon, with enhancements for four previous prison terms, but was found not guilty by a jury later that year. 

The Solano County DA’s office said it is not releasing further information due to the ongoing nature of the investigation, but Cain’s arrest has likely drawn the attention of police in Martinez. 

Since the beginning, Jeremy’s killing was often mentioned in the same breath as the death of Eric Coy. In late Jan. 1987, just a month before Jeremy’s disappearance, nine-year-old Eric went for a bike ride between his Martinez home and that of a relative’s. Eric knew the route well and rode it often. He left home around 11 a.m., with the expectation he would call, as he always did, once he reached his relative’s home a few blocks away. When he didn’t call home, a search was undertaken. His body was found by Martinez Junior High School; he had been stabbed nearly a dozen times and killed. To this day, Eric’s killing remains unsolved.

Cain faces a murder charge when he is extradited to Solano County. Anyone with information regarding the case is asked to call the district attorney’s cold case unit at 707-784-8477.

“I am so thankful to have such dedicated cold case investigators that no matter how much time goes by they remain steadfast in their commitment to solving these horrific cases,” Solano County district attorney Krishna Abrams said in a statement.