Trigger warning: contains graphic details of murder that may be distressing to some
A Missouri woman who spent more than 43 years behind bars for a murder she never committed could soon be released and reunited with her family.
Sandra Hemme is believed to have wrongly been convicted of the murder of 31-year-old library worker Patricia Jeschke, who was discovered in a pool of blood in 1980.
Judge Ryan Horsman ruled late Friday that the 64-year-old convicted woman had to live more than four decades in jail because she was the “victim of a manifest injustice.” He also noted that a problematic and now-deceased local police officer, with significant evidence linking him to Patricia’s murder, was never properly investigated.
If released, Sandra would be the longest-known wrongly incarcerated woman in U.S. history.
“We just can’t wait to get her home,” said her sister, Joyce Ann Kays.
A Missouri woman spent more than four decades in prison for a murder she did not commit in the year 1980
Image credits: Courtesy of the Hemme family
The turbulent series of events began in November 1980 when Patricia’s mother decided to check up on her after she missed work.
The concerned mother climbed through a window at her daughter’s apartment and peered inside to lay eyes on the gruesome crime scene. Her slain daughter was surrounded by blood as she lay nude and lifeless on the floor with a knife under her head. A telephone cord had her hands tied behind her back, and her neck had a pair of pantyhose wrapped around it.
A murder investigation soon began, with cops working a dozen hours a day to find the killer.
Two weeks after the victim’s body was found, Sandra became a suspect in the case after she showed up at her former nurse’s house with a knife. She refused to leave, leading to police officers arriving at the scene and finding her inside a closet.
Sandra Hemme would be the longest-known wrongly incarcerated woman in U.S. history if exonerated
Image credits: Courtesy of the Hemme family
Image credits: David von Diemar
Sandra, who suffers from mental illness, was taken to St. Joseph’s Hospital, where she had been admitted several times before. Her stays at the hospital began ever since she started hearing voices at age 12.
Investigators learned that she was discharged from the same hospital the day before Patricia’s body was found and suspected her involvement in the killing.
The case was fraught with inconsistencies and a lack of credible evidence, as there were no witnesses connecting Sandra to the victim or the crime scene, and no motive for the crime was ever established.
Jane Pucher, Sandra’s lawyer from the Innocence Project (which took her case up decades after she confessed), said it is likely that the two women had never even met while the victim was alive.
Moreover, there was also no physical or forensic evidence from the crime scene that connected her with the crime scene.
“In fact, everything that was forensically tested excluded her,” said the judge’s 118-page order.
There was no evidence tying the wrongly convicted woman to the crime scene, and her lawyer said it was likely that Sandra hadn't even met the murdered victim, Patricia Jeschke
Image credits: KATRIN BOLOVTSOVA
Image credits: IIPPIorg
Sandra's conviction rested solely on unreliable confessions obtained from her while she was “so heavily medicated that she was unable to even hold her head up and was restrained and strapped to a chair,” the Innocence Project said, according to People.
The unjustly imprisoned woman made inconsistent statements as she was interrogated at the St. Joseph State Hospital. Detectives even noted that she appeared “mentally confused” and couldn’t fully understand their questions completely.
"Each time the police extracted a statement from Ms. Hemme it changed dramatically from the last, often incorporating explanations of facts the police had just recently uncovered," her attorneys wrote.
Last week, Judge Ryan ruled that she made the “inconsistent, disproven” confession when “she was in psychiatric crisis and physical pain,” and this was “the only evidence linking Ms. Hemme to the crime.”
As Sandra became the primary suspect, she grew tired of trying to prove that she did not have blood on her hands.
“Even though I'm innocent, they want to put someone away, so they can say the case is solved,” she said in a message to her parents on Christmas Day in 1980.
She said she was thinking of changing her plea to guilty to “just let it end.”
“I’m tired,” she said.
The next spring, she agreed to plead guilty in exchange for the death penalty being taken off the cards for her sentencing.
Judge Ryan Horsman said there was enough evidence connecting Officer Michael Holman to the victim and the crime scene, but he was not properly investigated and eventually died in 2015
Image credits: Ron Lach
Image credits: Pawel Czerwinski
Meanwhile, the police failed to investigate an officer named Michael Holman despite having “substantial and objective” evidence against him, the judge noted.
The officer was found in possession of Patricia’s very distinctive pair of earrings and her credit card, with which he tried to make a $630.43 charge at a camera store on the same day her body was found.
Michael claimed he found her credit card in a discarded purse in a ditch.
Additionally, there were strands of hair at the crime scene that were “consistent with his own,” Judge Ryan said. There were also a number of witnesses who reported seeing the then-young cop’s pickup truck near the victim’s home on the very evening she was murdered.
The judge said the unjustly imprisoned woman should be released within 30 days unless prosecutors go to trial
Image credits: IIPPIorg
Image credits: Pixabay
Furthermore, the officer was known for his “extensive” criminal behavior, including “repeated home burglaries, crimes of dishonesty, and stalking offences,” the judge added.
The law enforcement official was eventually fired, and he passed away in 2015.
In his order, the judge wrote that there was “no evidence whatsoever outside of Ms. Hemme's unreliable statements [that] connects her to the crime."
"In contrast, this Court finds that the evidence directly ties Holman to this crime and murder scene," he added.
In the Friday ruling, the judge said there was enough evidence to prove Sandra’s innocence and that she must be freed within 30 days unless prosecutors put forward a move to have her retried.
Netizens agree that "the system failed her big time" and that it's "frightening" how this could happen to an innocent person
