Midwest
Missouri woman Sandra Hemme who spent 43 years in prison freed after murder conviction overturned
A Missouri woman who spent 43 years in prison after incriminating herself in a 1980 murder while she was a psychiatric patient has been freed from prison despite attempts in the last month by Missouri’s attorney general to keep her behind bars.
Sandra Hemme, 64, was the longest held wrongly incarcerated woman known in the U.S., according to her legal team at the Innocence Project, after she was found guilty of killing 31-year-old library worker Patricia Jeschke more than 40 years ago.
But a judge overturned the conviction last month, agreeing that her lawyers had established evidence of her innocence and that a former police officer was the likely killer.
JUDGE OVERTURNS MURDER CONVICTION OF MISSOURI WOMAN WHO SPENT MORE THAN 40 YEARS IN PRISON
Missouri woman Sandra Hemme, who spent 43 years in prison after incriminating herself in a 1980 murder while she was a psychiatric patient, has been freed from prison. (Main image, HG Biggs/The Kansas City Star via AP, inset via Missouri Department of Corrections/AP )
Hemme left a prison in Chillicothe on Friday and was embraced by family and supporters at a nearby park. She hugged her sister, daughter and granddaughter.
“You were just a baby when your mom sent me a picture of you,” a smiling Hemme said to her granddaughter. “You looked just like your mamma when you were little and you still look like her.”
Her granddaughter laughed and said, “I get that a lot.”
Hemme declined to speak to reporters immediately after her release, which came despite Attorney General Andrew Bailey, a Republican, fighting her release in the courts. Bailey had argued that Hemme represents a safety risk to herself and others.
Hemme received a 10-year sentence in 1996 for attacking a prison worker with a razor blade, and a two-year sentence in 1984 for “offering to commit violence”, with Bailey arguing that Hemme should start serving those sentences now.
During a court hearing Friday, Judge Ryan Horsman threatened to hold the attorney general’s office in contempt and said that if Hemme wasn’t released within hours, Bailey himself would have to appear in court Tuesday morning.
The judge also scolded Bailey’s office for calling the warden and telling prison officials not to release Hemme after he ordered her to be freed on her own recognizance.
Hemme’s attorney, Sean O’Brien, criticized the delay of her release.
The Chillicothe Correctional Center in Chillicothe, Mo., is seen on Thursday, July 18, 2024. Missouri woman Sandra Hemme was released from the facility Friday. (Heather Hollingsworth)
“It was too easy to convict an innocent person and way harder than it should have been to get her out, even to the point of court orders being ignored,” O’Brien said. “It shouldn’t be this hard to free an innocent person.”
When Hemme was initially questioned about Jeschke’s death, her lawyers say she was shackled in wrist restraints and so heavily sedated to the point that she “could not hold her head up straight” or “articulate anything beyond monosyllabic responses.”
The lawyers said in a petition seeking Hemme’s exoneration previously that authorities ignored her “wildly contradictory” statements and suppressed evidence implicating then-police officer Michael Holman, who attempted to use Jeschke’s card. Holman died in 2015.
CONDEMNED MISSOURI INMATE IS ‘ACCEPTING HIS FATE,’ HIS SPIRITUAL ADVISER SAYS
The judge wrote that “no evidence whatsoever outside of Ms. Hemme’s unreliable statements connects her to the crime.”
“In contrast, this Court finds that the evidence directly ties Holman to this crime and murder scene,” the judge wrote.
On Nov. 13, 1980, Jeschke missed work and her concerned mother climbed through a window in her apartment and discovered her nude body on the floor in a pool of blood. Jeschke’s hands were tied behind her back with a telephone cord, a pair of pantyhose was wrapped around her throat and a knife was under her head.
Hemme was not being investigated in connection with the killing until she showed up nearly two weeks later carrying a knife at the home of a nurse who once treated her and refused to leave.
Police located Hemme in a closet and transported her back to St. Joseph’s Hospital. She had been hospitalized several times starting when she began hearing voices at the age of 12.
Hemme had been discharged from that same hospital the day before Jeschke’s body was found, and arrived at her parents’ house later that night after hitchhiking more than 100 miles across the state. The timing seemed suspicious to law enforcement, and Hemme was subsequently questioned.
Hemme was being treated with antipsychotic drugs that had triggered involuntary muscle spasms when she was first questioned. She complained that her eyes were rolling back in her head, according to her lawyers’ petition.
Detectives said Hemme appeared “mentally confused” and not fully able to understand their questions.
“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 in the petition.
Hemme eventually purported that she witnessed a man named Joseph Wabski kill Jeschke.
Wabski, whom Hemme met when they both stayed in the state hospital’s detoxification unit, was initially charged with capital murder before prosecutors quickly learned he was at an alcohol treatment center in Topeka, Kansas, at the time and dropped the charges against him.
After learning Wabski was not the killer, Hemme cried and claimed she was the killer.
Police were also starting to look at Holman as a suspect. About a month after the killing, Holman was arrested for falsely reporting his pickup truck was stolen and collecting an insurance payout. The same truck was seen near the crime scene and Holman’s alibi, in which he claimed to have spent the night with a woman at a nearby motel, could not be confirmed.
Holman, who was ultimately fired and has since died, had also attempted to use Jeschke’s credit card at a camera store in Kansas City, Missouri, on the same day her body was discovered. Holman claimed he found the credit card in a purse that had been left in a ditch.
Sandra Remme meets her granddaughter after her release
During a search of Holman’s home, police found a pair of gold horseshoe-shaped earrings in a closet, which Jeschke’s father said he recognized as a pair he bought for her. Police also found jewelry stolen from another woman during a burglary earlier that year.
The four-day investigation into Holman then ended abruptly, and Hemme’s attorneys said they were never provided many of the details uncovered.
Hemme wrote to her parents on Christmas Day in 1980, saying she might as well change her plea to guilty.
“Even though I’m innocent, they want to put someone away, so they can say the case is solved,” Hemme wrote.
“Just let it end,” she added. “I’m tired.”
The following spring, Hemme agreed to plead guilty to capital murder in exchange for the death penalty being taken out of consideration.
But the judge initially rejected her guilty plea because she failed to share enough details about the incident.
Her attorney told her that her chance to avoid being sentenced to death relied on having the judge to accept her guilty plea. Following a recess and some coaching, she gave the judge more details.
The plea was later thrown out on appeal, but she was convicted again in 1985 after a one-day trial in which jurors were not provided details of what her current attorneys say were “grotesquely coercive” interrogations.
The system “failed her at every opportunity,” Larry Harman said in her lawyers’ petition. Harman, now a judge, previously helped Hemme have her initial guilty plea thrown out.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Illegal dumping at former grocery store near 35th and North, Milwaukee
MILWAUKEE – Milwaukee leaders on Monday, May 4, will unveil new plans to help stop illegal dumping in the city.
Mayor Cavalier Johnson and the Department of Neighborhood Services are expected to announce the expansion of a citywide program that uses hidden cameras in the monitoring of illegal dumping.
This annoucement will be made at City Hall at 10 a.m.
Illegal dumping
Dig deeper:
Illegal dumping continues to impact Milwaukee neighborhoods, especially on the north side.
Boats, mattresses and even small vehicles are among the items dumped along streets and vacant areas on the city’s north side.
Alderwoman Andrea Pratt said she monitors more than 40 illegal dumping sites weekly. One recurring trouble spot, she said, is along the Beerline Trail.
Additionally, since closing in July 2025, the former Pick ‘n Save parking lot at 35th and North has also become a major site for trash, furniture, and tires.
In March, FOX6 News first showed viewers piles of garbage around the building after a viewer reported concerns. The city then issued an order to the property owner to clean up the property.
Weeks later, neighbors say the major trash piles are gone, but graffiti now covers parts of the building and new trash has appeared behind it. They say the closure created additional problems for the neighborhood.
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The City of Milwaukee Department of Neighborhood Services has now issued another order, requiring the property owner to remove the graffiti or face fines.
Illegal dumping at former grocery store near 35th and North, Milwaukee
Report illegal dumping
What you can do:
If you are caught dumping garbage illegally in Milwaukee, you can face a fine of up to $25,000.
Anyone can report illegal dumping by calling 414-286-2489.
The Source: The information in this post was provided by the City of Milwaukee and the Milwaukee Department of Neighborhood Services.
New roofs and better insulation. Updated appliances, new paint and security improvements. And a sense that it’s all transformative — and overdue.
More than 50 years after the nation’s only Native-preference Section 8 housing project was established, Little Earth in south Minneapolis is undergoing a $50 million remodel that will last two years and cover all of its 212 units.
The work, which started early this year, will be so extensive that some of Little Earth’s more than 1,000 residents will have to move to hotels in phases while it goes on. But most residents are looking forward to the updates.
“It’s about damn time,” said Contessa Ortley, who has lived at Little Earth all her life. “[The units] are so old that it’s good to see them coming over and having some people get in there and actually fix them properly.”
It’s the first remodel of this scale since the housing complex was founded in 1973.
“It’s just such a big deal that [it] is being invested in this way,” Joe Beaulieu, executive director of Little Earth Residents Association, said of the scale of the investment. “It shows that our people are cared for, they’re cared about, that their safety is important to us, that we want to make sure that our people have better than decent living conditions.”
The complex has a mix of units ranging from studio to four-bedroom units. Funding for the remodel is coming from multiple levels of government — federal, state, county and city — as well as private foundations.
Minneapolis is kicking in almost $23 million, making it the city’s sixth-most-expensive development project last year, when the money was invested. “[It] really is a precious resource and something that we wanted to preserve,” said Linnea Graffunder-Bartels, senior project manager of Community Planning and Economic Development for the city. “Some of the rehab work that’s going to happen now is replacing systems that have been in place since original construction.”
Little Earth was founded in response to the Indian Relocation Act of 1956, which encouraged Native people to leave their reservations and move to cities to assimilate. That left many Native Americans disconnected from their reservations, their families, cultures, traditions and languages.
Little Earth was founded to provide temporary housing to Native Americans who faced housing discrimination, while also providing them with a culturally connected community.
“It was so new that it was loved and cherished,” said Cathee Vick, director of housing advocacy at Little Earth Residents Association. “I don’t think it was built to last as long as it has, and I do think people planted their roots because of the fight to get what they got.”
Graffunder-Bartels said the remodel became a priority after a federal Housing and Urban Development (HUD) inspection in 2021 that identified urgently needed repairs and improvements. “That inspection result put Little Earth’s rental assistance funding at risk. At that point, HUD said, ‘These things need to be reinvested in, or else,’” she said.
All Little Earth rental units are eligible for rental assistance. The funding commitments from different levels of the government come with the requirement that that affordability will be maintained till 2057. The new funding will also allow the Little Earth Residents Association to continue its work with those experiencing homelessness and people with disabilities by reserving 22 units for each type of need; these units will also come with supportive services.
The remodel will take place in a phased manner, Vick said. Residents of some units will be temporarily moved to hotel units while their apartments undergo work.
The remodeling will include better insulation, new windows, repairs, new paint, new roofs, stucco, updated appliances, windows and walls, as well as energy efficiency improvements for water and insulation. It will even provide space for growing food and wildflowers.
“[It’s] amazing we got it done,” said Tom LaSalle of LaSalle Development Group. “And we have to guard it carefully, especially with what’s going on right now,” he added, pointing to funding cuts in DEI-related projects under the Trump administration. LaSalle’s organization is leading the remodeling work and has also helped put together project funding. LaSalle has been involved in the development of Little Earth housing since its inception.
LaSalle said that in addition to changing the landscaping of the project, the remodel will include culturally appropriate details such as colors, artwork, and access to more trees and wildflowers.
The project, like any housing complex, is not without its complications. LaSalle said that density is a challenge because of the number of bedrooms packed in relatively small acreage. Members of multiple tribes represented at Little Earth have cultural differences as well, making for a “difficult social project.”
Talaya Hughes, a resident of Little Earth and an undergrad student at Augsburg University in Minneapolis, is a teen recovery coach who said she wants to help “bring culture back to our community and reconnect our youth to our roots.” She is excited by the idea of better sound insulation and improvements in heating and energy efficiency. But as a young woman, she said, she has safety at top of mind. “Before remodeling, what could have been worked on was the violence here,” she said.
Drug use and homelessness plague the neighborhood. Little Earth housing is near a large encampment under Hwy. 55, the site of homeless encampments.
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“I don’t think it was built to last as long as it has, and I do think people planted their roots because of the fight to get what they got,” said
Cathee Vick, director of housing advocacy for the Little Earth Residents Association seen on April 21, 2026. Credit: Dymanh Chhoun | Sahan Journal
“It’s difficult,” Vick said. “We don’t want our kids to see this. You can’t go underneath the bridges. You got to walk in the middle of the road.” That’s a big inconvenience for Little Earth residents with family members living in the Red Lake building nearby, or for those going to employment classes at the American Indian Opportunities Industrialization Center.
Vick added that conversations are going on about how to address “this very sensitive but needed subject” and come up with possible solutions. “Because we do need help,” she said.
LaSalle said that the remodel aims to address some of the security issues with AI-driven security that monitors cameras and alerts security personnel to any suspicious activity.
“We need to give everyone an equal opportunity, and a new renovation is good for the community, to give them a safer environment,” Ortley said of safety issues around her home. ‘“We shouldn’t be discriminated against or less valued than others.”
What’s going on at Washington Square Mall?
A development study is underway at the east-side mall, which has changed hands and lost dozens of retail stores since its heyday.
It’s May, which means it’s destined to be a busy month at the racetrack. But if you’re looking for other ways to spend your time, look no further than some of the newest shops in the Circle City.
A specialty snack shop opened last month in Carmel, and a new Fountain Square spot is selling vintage and alternative clothes.
Here are four new places to go around the metro area.
What’s opened recently around Indianapolis
Retrograde
1114 Prospect St., retrogradeindy.com, opened April 4
Retrograde, a retail and consignment shop, opened last month on Fountain Square’s main commercial strip. According to the store’s website, Retrograde features punk, rock, emo, alternative and vintage styles with an emphasis on sustainable clothing.
Open Thursday noon to 8 p.m.; Friday noon to 10 p.m.; Saturday noon to 8 p.m.; and Sunday noon to 6 p.m.
Flavor Bridge
846 S Rangeline Rd, Carmel, opened mid-April
Flavor Bridge, a specialty, build-your-own-bag snack shop, opened in Carmel last month at the City Center. Customers can fill a bag up and pay based on weight or can choose from a gift box with a flat rate. The store will also host monthly events, special holiday themes and limited-edition snack drops.
Open Monday to Thursday 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Friday and Saturday 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.; and Sunday noon to 8 p.m.
Nutopia
9538 126th St, Fishers, 317-288-4468, opened mid-March
A nut store recently opened in Fishers on 126th Street. Despite its name, Nutopia offers more than a wide selection of salty snacks. The cafe also serves coffee, matcha drinks and sweets, along with imported treats from the Middle East.
Open Sunday to Thursday 10 a.m. to 11 p.m.; Friday and Saturday 10 a.m. to 1 a.m.
Avelure Med Spa
8487 Union Chapel Rd Suite 620, aveluremedspa.com, opened earlier this year
Avelure, a medical spa, opened at Keystone at the Crossing. It’s the second Avelure location in the Indianapolis area, joining a store in Greenwood. The spa offers Botox treatments, laser hair removal, facials and other services.
Appointments available. Open Monday to Friday 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
See a store opening or closing in your neighborhood? Contact IndyStar reporter Alysa Guffey at alysa.guffey@indystar.com.
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