 Sandra Hemme (Photo: HG Biggs/The Kansas City Star)
On the morning of November 13, 1980, Helen McGlothlin discovered the body of her daughter, Patricia Jeschke, in the bedroom of her apartment on the east side of St. Joseph, Missouri. Jeschke, who was 31 years old, was a secretary at the St. Joseph Public Library, and her mother had become concerned after a co-worker called and said Jeschke hadn’t shown up for work.
Jeschke had been beaten and stabbed in the head, strangled with pantyhose, her hands bound behind her back with a telephone cord.
The violent crime was front-page news, and the two newspapers in St. Joseph provided extensive coverage, with intimate details of the crime. One newspaper published a photograph of a detective with the St. Joseph Police Department in Jeschke’s bedroom. Police found two black hairs in the bedroom and two lengths of cut antenna wire in the apartment next to the body.
Jeschke had left work on November 12 just before 5 p.m., and told coworkers she was going to a church function at 7. These co-workers told police that Jeschke was wearing a white-and-gray outfit. An acquaintance saw Jeschke driving alone through downtown St. Joseph in her two-seated white sports car at about 5 p.m. She had also gone to Melmed Pharmacy at about 11:30 a.m. on November 12.
Several witnesses also told police they saw a white pickup truck parked near Jeschke’s apartment in the early evening of November 12.
On November 25, nurse Ellie McBane called police and said that a former patient was in her house with a knife and wouldn’t leave. The police arrived and found 20-year-old Sandra Hemme in a closet. She was taken to St. Joseph State Hospital, a psychiatric facility, and placed on a 96-hour police hold.
Hemme had an extensive history of mental illness. Most recently, she had been admitted to the hospital on November 7, seeking help for her abuse of amphetamines, and had been discharged against medical advice on November 12 at 1:05 p.m. She returned to the hospital on November 14 before being discharged, again against medical advice, on November 24.
Detective Steven Fueston’s first interview with Hemme took place on November 28. The interview was not recorded, but in his notes, Fueston said he showed Hemme a photo of Jeschke and that Hemme said that she might have gotten high with Jeschke and caught a ride with her in a small brown car after Hemme left the hospital on November 12.
A nurse’s notes said that Hemme “vaguely remembers getting a ride … [and] thinks a man may have been in the back seat of the small car with the woman who picked her up but ‘I was pretty spacey … and I don’t really remember much of anything.’”
In an interview with Fueston on December 1, Hemme said she got picked up by a man and a woman driving a late-model, light blue two-door car. She described the man as knock-kneed and double-jointed with a thick black mustache. She said they dropped her off near Dearborn, Missouri, about 25 miles south of St. Joseph, and she then hitchhiked the rest of the way to her parents’ home in Concordia, about 100 miles southeast. (Her parents would tell police that Hemme arrived there at about 9:30 p.m.)
Fueston would write that Hemme’s statement was “not consistent with other witness statements and reports, i.e. times and locations.”
Hemme gave a third statement on December 2. She said that after leaving the hospital on November 12, she had been picked up by a man and the woman in the photograph Fueston had shown her on November 28. She said the driver was a man named Joseph Wabski, and his passenger introduced herself as “Pat.” They drove to Skaggs Pharmacy, then to a two-story brick house, and then to Jeschke’s apartment. Hemme said she waited outside. Wabski returned, with blood on his shirt, and said he had killed Jeschke. Wabski then dropped her off near Dearborn.
On December 3, Fueston took Hemme from the psychiatric hospital to the crime scene. Fueston would say in his report that Hemme was able to lead him to the apartments. She also said she “knew about this incident because of ESP.”
Inside the apartment, according to Fueston, Hemme described how Wabski committed the murder. Fueston also showed Hemme several photographs, including: Jeschke’s nude body; her hands bound with the telephone wire; the pantyhose around her throat; the bedroom décor; and the antenna wire.
At the police station, Hemme gave a written statement. Now, she said that Wabski had picked her up and driven her to Jeschke’s apartment. She said she watched Wabski sexually assault and then kill Jeschke. Her statement also included descriptions of Jeschke’s home, including a graduation photo on the wall. She also said she saw a white cat inside the house.
Hemme gave another statement on December 5. She described cutting an antenna wire for Wabski to use to bind Jeschke. She also said she had taken several items from Jeschke’s home. This included a jacket, a bandana, a pair of gloves, and a Playgirl magazine.
Police arrested Hemme that day and charged her with concealing an offense. They also arrested Wabski and charged him with capital murder. Wabski’s charges were dismissed on December 10, after police learned he was in a locked detox facility at the time of Jeschke’s death.
Fueston had confronted Hemme with Wabski’s alibi on December 9, prior to the dismissal of his charges. She accused Fueston of lying to her and said she was going crazy. She became agitated and upset during the interview and said she did not know whether she killed Jeschke. After this interview, Fueston asked to relinquish his role as lead investigator. He would later say he had reached his limit and knew he was “not getting the truth.”
On December 10, Hemme was questioned by Detectives Mike Hirter and Terry Boyer, and this time she gave a statement that she killed Jeschke by herself. She said that Jeschke, whom she knew from the library, picked her up in a small brown car and they went to Jeschke’s apartment. She said Jeschke offered to drive her to Concordia but first wanted to go home and clean up. She said she sat on the couch while Jeschke took a shower. “I confronted her in the hall. I don’t know. I lost it. I’m standing on the outside looking in,” she said.
Hemme said she had planned to bind Jeschke’s hands with the antenna wire but the material was not flexible enough. She said she strangled Jeschke with pantyhose. In the statement, Hemme described Jeschke’s apartment, said she had taken some items, including the jacket, the bandana, and the Playgirl magazine, and also again mentioned seeing a white cat.
Hemme was charged with capital murder that day.
Two days earlier, the police had learned that Jeschke’s credit card had been used on November 13 at a camera store in Kansas City, Missouri. A Black man with a badge in his wallet had said the card was his.
On December 19, a clerk at the store identified that man as Michael Holman, an officer with the St. Joseph Police Department. Holman had been arrested the day before on suspicion of insurance fraud, involving the reported theft in July of his pickup truck, a white Ford that matched the witness descriptions of the vehicle seen near Jeschke’s apartment.
Holman was interviewed on December 19. He said that on the day of Jeschke’s murder, he had gone to a motel across the street from her apartment to have sex with a woman he called “Mary.” When he was leaving, at around 6:30 p.m., he found Jeschke’s purse in a nearby ditch. He said he threw the purse away and altered the credit card before trying to use it the next day in Kansas City.
Holman denied any involvement in Jeschke’s death, but he gave detectives little information, including details about “Mary,” to corroborate his story. A manager at the motel would later say he didn’t recognize Holman, and there was no entry on the hotel registry that could have been Holman.
Holman consented to a search of his house. They found two jewelry boxes; Holman’s wife said she had never seen them. On December 22, Jeschke’s parents came to the police station to look at the jewelry. According to a report prepared by Fueston, Jeschke’s father recognized a pair of wishbone-shaped earrings that he had bought for his daughter in Montana several years earlier.
Despite these leads, the investigation into Holman as an alternate suspect did not advance.
On January 23, 1981, Bobby Cummings wrote Hemme at the Buchanan County Jail. “Dear Sandy,” he wrote. “Do you remember me. I gave you the ride to the Dearborn exit on [November 12, 1980.] Would it be possible to see you?”
Cummings had dark hair and a physical disability similar to cerebral palsy. Hemme would then tell police that Cummings and another man killed Jeschke. The police interviewed Cummings, and he said he had picked up Hemme. He said she had walked on his back to relieve his chronic pain, and he left her at the Dearborn exit.
On April 10, 1981, Hemme, represented by Dale Sullivan, pled guilty to capital murder in Buchanan County Circuit Court, with the state recommending she receive a sentence of life in prison rather than the death penalty. Initially, Judge Fred Schoenlaub refused to accept Hemme’s plea and ordered the case to trial. He said Hemme had “not given sufficient testimony to satisfy all elements of the charge.”
After a short recess, the parties tried again. Hemme said she had first met Jeschke at Platt College in St. Joseph but didn’t know how they had met up on the day of the murder. The judge asked her if at any time during the attack, she stopped. Hemme said, “I don’t think I stopped.”
“You have expressed doubts,” he said.
“I didn’t realize I’d done until I read about it in the paper,” Hemme said.
Two months later, on June 8, 1981, Holman pled guilty to insurance fraud on his truck. He received this promise from the state: “The state prosecutor has agreed to dismiss all pending charges against me with the exception of the offense to which I am pleading guilty and otherwise not prosecute me for any other criminal matters now under investigation.”
In 1982, Hemme moved to withdraw her plea. Her new attorney, Larry Harman, said that Sullivan had been ineffective for failing to fully investigate Hemme’s mental health, including whether she was competent to stand trial and voluntarily enter a plea or suffering from psychiatric illness at the time of the crime.
The trial judge denied the motion, but the Western District of the Missouri Court of Appeals reversed the trial court on September 4, 1984, and ordered a new trial.
Sullivan had “said appellant's history and condition raised a doubt in his mind as to appellant's competency to proceed and doubt as to her mental capacity at the time the crime was committed,” the court said. “Despite this doubt, the attorney filed no motion for a mental examination, gave no information to the court as to appellant's history of hospitalization and treatment and he gave no notice of intention to rely on the defense of mental disease or defect.”
Hemme remained in custody. After winning Hemme’s appeal, Harman was appointed the prosecuting attorney in Clay County, Missouri, and withdrew as Hemme’s attorney. He was replaced by Robert Duncan.
Hemme’s one-day trial took place on June 4, 1985. Other than Hemme’s statements to police, which were read to the jury, there was no evidence connecting her to the crime. Patrick Robb, the assistant district attorney, and Duncan had agreed to stipulate that Holman had attempted to use Jeschke’s credit card and that an FBI analysis reported that the hair found on Jeschke’s bed had “microscopic similarities” to Holman’s hair. “The possibility that this head hair originated from Michael Holman cannot be eliminated but neither can it be conclusively said it came from Holman,” the stipulation said.
The jury did not hear about Holman’s statements to the police, the sightings of his truck near the crime scene, Jeschke’s earrings, or the holes in Holman’s account of where he was that night.
In his closing argument, Duncan told the jury, “This is a drugged-out girl in a detox center and they kept questioning her and questioning her. I submit to you, she was very suggestible.”
He said there was far more evidence against Holman. “The very day the body was found, he was in Kansas City with her credit card,” he said. “It stretches credulity to believe that Jeschke gave him the credit card. He left his hair in exchange for her credit card. There is far more evidence to convict Holman than the defendant on these lying confessions.”
Robb told jurors that nobody knew how Holman got Jeschke’s credit card and that Hemme was the only person on trial. He said that Hemme’s final statement was “the truth,” and that her previous statements were part of a “cat and mouse game” as she “tried to feel out the police.” He said the hairs found at the crime scene could have been left by the first responding officer, V.B., who, like Holman, was also Black. Robb also downplayed the lack of physical evidence, including the magazine, because Hemme had “disposed of everything else we could use to trace.”
Robb also said that Hemme’s statement tracked the crime scene, including the discarded TV antenna. “It didn’t make any sense in the police investigation or in looking at photographs at all in the case until she, the defendant, explained its significance,” he said.
The jury convicted Hemme of capital murder on June 5, 1985. She was again sentenced to life in prison, without the possibility of parole for 50 years.
Hemme appealed, and the Western District appellate court affirmed the conviction on March 25, 1986.
Hemme languished in prison. Her attorneys say her mental illness was left untreated or poorly treated. She was convicted of two offenses involving prison guards. Around 2006, Hemme started a new medication that effectively managed her illness, and she began reaching out for assistance, contacting the Innocence Project in New York. The organization sought to test the physical evidence for DNA, but it learned these items had been destroyed. The investigation stalled but didn’t stop, as Hemme’s legal team continued to gather evidence and interview the participants in the case.
On February 21, 2023, Hemme filed a state petition for a writ of habeas corpus. Now represented by Jane Pucher and Andrew Lee of the Innocence Project and Sean O’Brien, a law professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, Hemme asserted that the state had failed to disclose exculpatory evidence and that Duncan had failed, as Sullivan had, to adequately investigate how Hemme’s mental illness and its treatment might have led to a false confession.
According to the petition, the state failed to disclose a police report showing that Jeschke’s father had identified the earrings found at Holman’s house as belonging to his daughter. The state also didn’t disclose the limited investigation into Holman as an alternate suspect and the extent of his criminal conduct, which continued after Hemme’s arrest and included two burglaries and a peeping Tom incident in 1981, a few months after Hemme’s plea.
The petition included a report by Dr. Judith Edersheim, the co-founder and co-director of the Center for Law, Brain and Behavior, and an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, which said, in part: “The undisputed circumstances of the police interrogations, combined with Ms. Hemme’s chronic mental illness and impaired functioning prior to and during the interrogations, all provide evidence that supports her consistent claim that any self-incriminating statements she might have made during her interrogations and plea colloquy were false.”
Without the confession, the petition said, there was no evidence connecting Hemme to the crime, which supported her claim of actual innocence.
Hemme also said in the petition that Duncan had provided ineffective representation by failing to introduce evidence about Hemme’s mental state at the time she made her statements to police. Duncan had told the trial judge that he knew Hemme had “significant mental problems” but was not going to enter any evidence on this issue because she had been ruled competent to stand trial.
As part of the discovery process and in response to public-records requests by Hemme’s legal team, the state released other records from the St. Joseph Police Department. These included:
- A report the police department received from the FBI that Hemme and Jeschke were eliminated as possible sources of a partial palm print found on the antenna wire. The FBI examiner could not eliminate Holman as the source of the print, and requested better inked prints from Holman, which the police never provided.
- Another FBI report said the agency had found more than 70 prints and palm prints on a Playgirl magazine found at the Hemme home in Concordia. Seventy-one prints were matched to Hemme, and none to Jeschke. The FBI also examined a jacket, gloves, and a bandana found at the house. No hair or fibers on the items linked them to Jeschke or the crime scene.
- The FBI had compared the bedsheet hairs to V.B. and excluded him as a possible source. This screening was done at the request of the St. Joseph Police Department. The FBI initially reported that the hairs were “consistent with” Holman.
Judge Ryan Horsman held an evidentiary hearing in January 2024.
At the hearing, Robb, now a circuit court judge in Buchanan County, testified that the police had not shared with him the FBI reports on the antenna wire, the hair comparison, or the magazine fingerprints. They weren’t in his file, so the documents were not provided to the defense. Robb testified he would have refrained from many of the arguments that he made to the jury had he known they were rebutted by laboratory findings, and he agreed that Holman had not been cleared of the murder.
Robb also testified that he was aware of the earrings report and said that although it would have been included in his file and should have been disclosed, he did not know if the report had been disclosed. (Duncan was now dead, and Harman said he never received the report.) Robb also testified that he believed Jeschke’s father hadn’t actually identified the jewelry. (Judge Horsman would later say the father’s identification was “unequivocal.”)
Also at the evidentiary hearing, Nancy Bauman, a close friend of Jeschke’s, testified about Jeschke’s habits and cautious approach to strangers. Bauman said that Jeschke steered clear of drug users, would not have picked up a hitchhiker, and would not have allowed a stranger into her home while she showered.
James Trainum, a retired homicide detective and nationally known expert on false confessions, testified that Hemme’s confession was contaminated by the large amount of published information about the crime. “I’ve never seen this much information to be put out publicly by the police officials this early in an investigation,” he said. In addition, Hemme’s confession had other hallmarks of falsity, including her unfounded accusations against Wabski.
Edersheim testified about Hemme’s long and painful history of mental illness, which began when she was 12 years old. Hemme was placed in institutions and given electro-convulsive therapy multiple times. Her clinicians said Hemme heard voices and saw things. She suffered suicidal ideations and engaged in chronic self-mutilation.
In the hours before her first interview with Fueston, Edersheim testified, Hemme received an injection of Haldol, an antipsychotic drug, and then was placed in leather restraints. She was given chloral hydrate, a sleeping medication that Edersheim said is no longer considered safe because it is so powerful. Hemme also continued to experience spasms from an earlier reaction to another drug.
“While Dr. Edersheim was clear that there is no evidence that anyone intentionally harmed Ms. Hemme during the course of police questioning, the record is equally clear that Ms. Hemme was coerced by her physical and mental conditions,” Hemme’s attorneys said in a later court filing. “Her mental condition provided the most fertile ground for a false statement: a young woman who did not trust her own memory; whose memories and thoughts were malleable; and whose psychiatric condition primed her both to seek and try to hold attention by any means necessary.”
After the hearing, in a filing, Hemme re-asserted her claim of actual innocence. Her statements didn’t match up with the known facts of the case. The pharmacy she mentioned was not the one Jeschke used. Hemme had referred to items in Jeschke’s apartment that weren’t there, including a graduation photo and a cat. Hemme’s statements made no mention that Jeschke’s apartment was filled with tropical plants, which Jeschke had been growing and selling to supplement her income. Equally important, the timeline was off. The police had believed Cummings’s account of November 12, which meant that Hemme had left St. Joseph several hours before Jeschke left work.
The post-hearing petition also noted the similarities between Hemme’s case and the case of Melvin Lee Reynolds, who had been exonerated in 1983 after being convicted of murder in the death of a 4-year-old boy in 1978. Like Hemme, Reynolds had been a patient at St. Joseph State Hospital and falsely confessed to the crime after a series of interrogations by the St. Joseph police. Boyer and Hirter had played critical roles in that investigation, and Wabski had been an early suspect in the case.
On June 14, 2024, Judge Horsman granted Hemme’s habeas petition and ordered a new trial. He said the state had failed to turn over critical evidence which either excluded Hemme or pointed to Holman as the likely perpetrator.
He also said that Duncan had been ineffective at trial. Although the state had failed to disclose significant evidence regarding Holman, Duncan had enough at his disposal to have pressed the state’s witnesses further on this part of their investigation. He also said Duncan should have introduced evidence regarding Hemme’s mental condition.
Judge Horsman’s ruling said the case against Hemme was slim. No physical or forensic evidence connected her to the crime, and much of the evidence was actually exculpatory. There were no witnesses, and the state’s claim at trial that she knew things only the killer would know didn’t hold up to scrutiny.
“The only evidence linking Ms. Hemme to the crime was that of her own inconsistent, disproven statements, statements that were taken while she was in psychiatric crisis and physical pain,” he wrote. “A new, longitudinal analysis of Ms. Hemme’s psychiatric condition and the factors that make a person more likely to falsely confess—all of which Ms. Hemme had—is powerful proof the jury never heard.”
The state appealed, and Attorney General Andrew Bailey sought to block Hemme’s release from prison. The courts rejected his efforts, and after Horsman threatened Bailey with contempt of court, Hemme was released from prison on July 19, 2024, after serving more than 43 years in prison.
On October 22, 2024, the Missouri Court of Appeals for the Western District affirmed Horsman’s habeas ruling. The state had argued, in part, that Hemme’s habeas petition was flawed because it contained evidence that her attorneys only obtained in discovery after filing the initial petition. The appellate court rejected that reasoning.
“The irony of the Attorney General's contention is not lost on this Court,” the ruling said. “The Attorney General's assertion that the state was ambushed by exculpatory evidence Hemme did not know about until discovery was conducted after her habeas petition was filed borders on the absurd.”
The court said it did not know why the St. Joseph Police Department ignored and suppressed evidence regarding Holman, whether out of embarrassment or because its officers had already secured a confession from Hemme. “But, there is no doubt from the habeas record that the suppressed evidence was material, as in its absence, Hemme did not receive a fair trial resulting in a verdict worthy of confidence,” the court said. The ruling also gave prosecutors 10 days to give notice of their intent to retry Hemme.
Buchanan County Prosecutor Michelle Davidson let the court’s deadline pass. Hemme’s attorneys then moved for her unconditional release, which Horsman signed on December 3, 2024.
– Ken Otterbourg
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