In her complaint, Hemme—who spent 43 years in prison before being exonerated—accuses St. Joseph police of framing her to cover up a murder possibly committed by one of their fellow officers.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — In the winter of 1980, as the St. Joseph Police Department investigated the November 12 murder of local librarian Patricia Jeschke, one suspect clearly stood out. A man named Michael Holman attempted to use Jeschke’s credit card the day after her murder, and a pair of gold earrings belonging to the victim were discovered in Holman’s closet. Holman’s truck was also seen parked outside Jeschke’s home on the day she died, and his hair was a possible match to hairs found near Jeschke’s body.
But Michael Holman was also an officer of the St. Joseph Police Department, a friend and colleague of the very men who were investigating Jeschke’s murder. And so—according to a new lawsuit filed today—the investigation into Holman was suspended and suppressed, while police fabricated a phony case against a vulnerable young woman named Sandra Hemme.
Sandra Hemme, around the time of her arrest, and after her release. [Photos courtesy of the Hemme Family.]
“It’s heartbreaking and infuriating that Sandy spent a single day in prison for a murder she so clearly didn’t commit,” says attorney Justin Hill of Loevy + Loevy, who represents Ms. Hemme. “The fact that she was incarcerated for more than four decades—the irretrievable prime of her life—is an injustice of unimaginable proportions.”
On the day Jeschke was murdered, Sandra Hemme had been discharged against medical advice from the psychiatric ward of St. Joseph’s State Hospital. She was 20 years old, and had spent most of her teen-age years in various psychiatric hospitals or youth treatment centers, receiving treatment for thought disorders, mood disorders, and substance-abuse issues. Her mental health issues—combined with the antipsychotics and sedatives she was prescribed, and the extreme treatment measures (like electroconvulsive therapy) she had received—caused her to suffer severe memory problems and a powerful susceptibility to suggestion. (In fact, it would come out later that Ms. Hemme was not even in St. Joseph at the time of the murder, but she was unable to remember this when interrogated almost two weeks later.)
Thus, the complaint filed today alleges, she was extremely vulnerable to the deliberate fabrications of the St. Joseph Police Department. On November 28, despite having no evidence linking her to the crime, the police in charge of the investigation conducted the first in a series of interrogations of Sandra Hemme.
In all, the officers interrogated Ms. Hemme on eight separate occasions, over the span of nearly two weeks, effectively teaching her the story they wanted her to tell. One interrogation was even held at the crime scene, allowing them to implant details in Ms. Hemme’s mind she’d otherwise have no way of knowing. Finally, on December 10, they succeeded in getting a false confession out of her, though her story still had glaring inconsistencies that were disproven by objective evidence and testimony from other witnesses.
In 1985, with her false confession being the only evidence against her, Ms. Hemme was convicted by a jury and sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for at least 50 years.
Ms. Hemme and her family never stopped trying to prove her innocence. In June 2024, Judge Ryan Horsman ruled that exculpatory evidence had been illegally kept from Ms. Hemme’s defense team, and overruled her conviction, stating that “the totality of the evidence supports a finding of actual innocence.” Hemme, he determined, was heavily sedated and in a “malleable mental state” when St. Joseph investigators coerced her into confessing. She was, he concluded, “the victim of a manifest injustice.”
Despite last minute efforts by the Missouri Attorney General to keep her locked up, Sandra Hemme walked out of prison in July 2024, a free woman for the first time in 43 years.
The lawsuit filed today names as defendants the City of St. Joseph and eight individual employees of the St. Joseph Police Department. It asks a jury to rule on ten counts of violating Ms. Hemme’s civil rights under state and federal law, including coercing a false confession, malicious prosecution, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and conspiracy.
Ms. Hemme is represented by Michael Manners, Mark Emison, and Kent Emison of Langdon & Emison, and Justin Hill and Locke Bowman of Loevy + Loevy.
“Sandra was barely out of her teens when she was arrested, and now she’s approaching retirement age,” says attorney Mark Emison of Langdon & Emison. “Everything in between was taken from her, due to police who preyed on a highly vulnerable young woman. The police must be held accountable.”
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For a copy of the complaint in this case, click here.
