Janeen Snyder is a woman from California who was sentenced to death for the kidnap, sexual assault and murder of a teenage girl
Janeen Snyder and her much older boyfriend Michael Thornton would kidnap sixteen year old Michelle Curran from Las Vegas. The young woman would be brought back to California where she was sexually assaulted and murdered.
Janeen Snyder and Michael Thornton would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death. Janeen Snyder would later confess to another murder
- Update – Michael Thornton would die of natural causes behind bars on October 14 2024
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Where is Janeen Snyder Now
Janeen Snyder is currently incarcerated at the Central California Women’s Facility
Janeen Snyder Charged With Murder
A California couple were charged Thursday with the torture and slaying of a 16-year-old Las Vegas girl, a crime that prosecutors called “eligible for the death penalty.”
Michael Thornton, 45, and Janeen Snyder, 21, both of Rialto, Calif., were charged with first-degree murder with special circumstances in the rape and torture slaying of Western High School student Michelle Curran, who was reported missing earlier this month.
“We believe the facts are sufficient to support that this murder occurred while she was being tortured and raped,” said Michael Rushton, a deputy Riverside County (Calif.) district attorney. “Although a formal decision has not been reached, the special circumstances makes this case eligible for the death penalty.”
Michelle Curran was found dead Sunday, shot in the head and hidden in a horse trailer on a ranch in Rubidoux, a rural area of Riverside County, said Sgt. Mark Lohman, a Riverside County Sheriff’s Office spokesman.
Thornton and Janeen Snyder have been in the Riverside County jail since April 17 on burglary charges after a property owner came home and saw two people running from her land. Deputies arrested the pair on the property and found a large amount of blood in a stable’s tack room, Lohman said.
Deputies knew a more serious crime than burglary occurred because of the blood, but no victim was found. Police also found Curran’s identification inside the pair’s GMC Suburban.
California authorities ran a computer check on Curran and found that she was listed as missing/runaway from Las Vegas. On Sunday, the property owner found Curran’s body inside the horse trailer, Lohman said.
Curran was last seen April 4 walking to school and was reported missing to Metro Police the next day.
Riverside County and Metro Police are still trying to determine if Curran was a runaway or kidnapped and taken to California. Police don’t know where Curran met Thornton and Janeen Snyder, but all three were seen in a Riverside County park campground.
“People saw them together and there wasn’t anything that alerted them that there was a problem,” Lohman said.
Candy Curran, the victim’s mother, said her daughter wasn’t a runaway. She didn’t leave the house with money or clothing. Curran said she believes her daughter was snatched off the street.
“She didn’t know who they were,” she said. “She threw her ID in their truck because she knew what was going on. Do you think they would keep that in there?”
Metro Police don’t have any indication at this point she was kidnapped, said Sgt. Dan McGrath of the missing persons unit.
“Can I say 100 percent she wasn’t kidnapped? No.” McGrath said. “At any point we determine a crime (kidnapping) was committed here, we will go forward with charges against these suspects.”
Michael Thornton Death
A man who, along with his young girlfriend, sexually assaulted and killed a high school sophomore more than 20 years ago, has died in state prison.
Michael Forest Thornton, 68, died Monday at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville. He had been in a hospice facility and his death was deemed natural, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said.
Thornton had been sentenced to death in the 2001 killing of Michelle Curran, a 16-year-old Las Vegas girl whom he drugged, sexually assaulted, tortured and murdered with his girlfriend and co-conspirator, Janeen Snyder.
Curran was reported missing out of Nevada in April 2001 after she disappeared while walking to school, according to the Las Vegas Sun.
She was found days later dead from a bullet to the head, her naked body left in a horse trailer in the town of Rubidoux — now a neighborhood of Jurupa Valley.
According to various reports from the time, Thornton, a successful businessman who operated multiple beauty salons, and his then-wife took Snyder, a friend of their daughter’s, into their home after she ran away from her own.
An abusive sexual relationship eventually developed between Snyder and Thornton, who was more than 23 years older than the 14-year-old girl.
That affair eventually evolved into something even more sinister and culminated with the two allegedly committing several violent acts on other young girls.
“Snyder would lure girls back to hotel rooms where the duo would rape and molest the teens after loading them up with meth,” the Toronto Sun reported.
Curran was the last of their known victims. She had been abducted and “used as a sex slave before being tortured and killed,” according to the Desert Sun, a local paper in the Inland Empire.
Thornton and Snyder were arrested in Rubidoux after they were found trespassing on private property near a bloody scene. They were also found to be in possession of an ID card belonging to Curran, whose body was located by the property owner days later.
The details of their arrest made national headlines and has since been chronicled in books, true crime podcasts and television investigation series.
In September 2006, both Thornton and Snyder were found guilty of first-degree murder of Michelle Curran. Thornton was also convicted of burglary and attempted penetration with a foreign object.
Thornton and Snyder were both sentenced to death; Snyder was one of the few women in California to be put on death row to await execution. The state, however, has not executed a condemned inmate since 2006, and Gavin Newsom placed a formal moratorium on the practice as one of his very first acts as the state’s governor.
After being sentenced, Snyder later admitted to killing a 15-year-old girl who had been missing for several years, according to the Los Angeles Times, although she has not been formally charged.
Jessie Kay Peters disappeared in Glendora in 1996 and her body has never been found and may have been dismembered and discarded into the Pacific Ocean, according to the Charley Project. Thornton is believed to have employed Peters’ mother.
Thornton and Snyder were also never charged for any of the reported sexual assaults and abductions that happened prior to their arrests, although two of their alleged victims testified during their murder trial.
Snyder, now 45 years old, remains incarcerated at the Central California Women’s Facility in Madera County. She is one of 618 condemned inmates in CDCR care.
