Missouri woman in prison for murder since 1980 gets chance to prove innocence next year

Lawyers for Sandra Hemme, who has spent four decades in prison for a murder her attorneys say was more likely committed by a disgraced St. Joseph police officer, will present evidence of her innocence at a hearing early next year.

The evidentiary hearing was set for Jan. 16 to 19. If her attorneys with the New York-based Innocence Project prove their case, the hearing could lead to Hemme’s exoneration and release from prison.

Now 63, Hemme has been behind bars for more than 42 years for the Nov. 12, 1980, killing of Patricia Jeschke, whose nude body was found on the floor of her apartment along North Riverside Road in eastern St. Joseph.

The only evidence connecting Hemme, a psychiatric patient at the time, to the murder were her “wildly contradictory” and “factually impossible” statements extracted from detectives, her attorneys say. No physical evidence or witnesses tied her to the crime.

The Innocence Project contends more evidence implicated Michael Holman, a 22-year-old cop who was investigated for insurance fraud and burglaries, and later went to prison. He died in 2015.

Shortly after Jeschke was found dead, Holman tried to use the victim’s credit card to buy $630 worth of photography equipment at a store in Kansas City, Kansas. A hair found on Jeschke’s bed sheet exhibited “microscopic characteristics” similar to that of Holman’s. And Jeschke’s earrings were found at Holman’s apartment — a fact that was hidden from Hemme’s lawyers at trial.

The Missouri Attorney General’s Office did not oppose setting an evidentiary hearing. It was an unusual move for the AG’s office, which has historically fought to keep innocence claims out of court and uphold convictions, regardless of new evidence that might prove a person was wrongly convicted.

At a hearing Monday at the Livingston County courthouse in Chillicothe, a short drive from where Hemme is incarcerated at the Chillicothe Correctional Center, Hemme’s lawyers said they expect to call seven or eight witnesses at the evidence hearing. The AG’s office plans to put about three witnesses on the stand.

Hemme — who has been in prison for about two-thirds of her life — appeared at the hearing in a beige jail uniform. She was handcuffed at her hands and feet, with a locked chain around her stomach.

If Hemme is ultimately exonerated at the January hearing, her prison term would mark the longest known wrongful conviction of a woman in U.S. history.

Joyce Kays, Hemme’s sister, said their family “can’t wait to bring” her home. That includes grandchildren Hemme has never had the chance to meet. Hemme’s spirits were lifted Monday when she saw nine of her relatives in the courtroom to support her, they said.

Hemme has been imprisoned for so long that some members of her legal team were not yet alive when she went to prison.

Jane Pucher, one of Hemme’s attorneys with the Innocence Project, said they are grateful for the opportunity to show in January what her family has “always known”: that Hemme is innocent.

“She should never have been questioned in the first place,” Pucher said. “And she deserves to be home.”

Hemme’s innocence claim

Then 20, Hemme was a patient at the St. Joseph State Hospital’s psychiatric ward when she was first questioned by detectives about the murder of Jeschke, a 31-year-old library worker. Hemme, who goes by Sandy, had a history of mental health issues and was medicated with drugs so potent that she was “unable to hold her head up straight,” her attorneys say.

Detectives who pursued dozens of leads during the investigation kept coming back to take statements from Hemme, whose story evolved dramatically over the course of nearly two weeks.

At first, Hemme said she left the hospital on the day that Jeschke was killed and hitched a ride to Dearborn, between St. Joe and Kansas City, before heading to her parents’ house in Lafayette County. She made no mention of a homicide.

In a later statement, Hemme claimed to have watched a man named Joseph Wabski kill Jeschke. He was charged with capital murder — until prosecutors, days later, declared him innocent when they realized he was at a halfway house in Topeka at the time.

Hemme pleaded guilty to capital murder in April 1981, but she told her mother in a letter from jail that she “didn’t kill that lady.”

The judge initially rejected her guilty plea, saying she could not provide enough information about the crime. After a short recess, during which Hemme talked to her attorney, she provided more information and the judge allowed the plea.

Hemme would later say her defense attorney told her she would be sentenced to die if she did not plead guilty.

A survivor of physical and sexual assault, Hemme’s psychological vulnerabilities increased the likelihood she falsely confessed, a forensic psychiatrist recently determined. Her youth also may have played a role, research shows.

“Nearly 70% of people under 25 who have falsely confessed have diagnosed mental illness,” Hemme’s lawyers wrote in court filings.

Across the country, false confessions have contributed to the wrongful convictions of more than 400 people, according to the National Registry of Exonerations, which has logged the some 3,300 known wrongful convictions since 1989.

Because Hemme’s original attorney did not seek to have her mental health evaluated, her guilty plea was thrown out on appeal. She was then convicted in 1985 at a one-day trial, during which her statements were read to the jury.

Holman, the discredited officer, was considered a suspect late in the murder investigation. His colleagues looked into his alibi — a story of him having sex with a woman named “Mary” at a motel next to Jeschke’s apartment — but it could not be verified.

Lloyd Pasley, who twice served as the St. Joseph Police Department’s interim chief, is among those who believes Hemme is innocent and that Holman was Jeschke’s lone killer. Pasley previously told The Star that a lieutenant who has since died was also “convinced” that Holman — rumored within his own police department to be a burglar — was the killer.

Hemme’s attorneys argue that she was also not the first mentally ill person targeted by St. Joe detectives. Around the same time, Melvin Lee Reynolds falsely confessed to murdering a boy in 1978 following hours of police interrogation.