Speaker 1: Have you heard about the story of Sandra Jimmy. If
Speaker 1: you haven't, you're not alone. Sandra was a twenty year
Speaker 1: old psychiatric patient when she was interrogated and convicted for
Speaker 1: the murder of Patricia Jeshki, despite no solid evidence linking
Speaker 1: her to the crime, Sandra didn't know the victim, there
Speaker 1: were no witnesses, and no DNA evidence ever connected to her.
Speaker 1: Despite this, Sandra has been incarcerated for over forty years.
Speaker 1: In January twenty twenty four, shocking new evidence connecting the
Speaker 1: crime to a Saint Joseph police officer was brought to light,
Speaker 1: evidence which could lead to Sandy's exoneration and would consequently
Speaker 1: make her the longest known wrongfully incarcerated woman in United
Speaker 1: States history. Join Ozark's True Crime host Anne Roderick Jones
Speaker 1: as she returns to her home state of Missouri to
Speaker 1: cover this little known story. Through live courtroom reporting and
Speaker 1: in depth interviews with medical experts, journalists, local residents, and lawyers,
Speaker 1: Anne and her team unravel the complicated web of police, judicial,
Speaker 1: and medical influences that led to Sandy's imprisonment. Subscribe to
Speaker 1: Ozark's True Crime The Sandra Himmy Story Wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts edit audio.
Speaker 2: This episode mentions violence and suicide. Take care while listening.
Speaker 2: It's January sixteenth, twenty twenty four, the first day of
Speaker 2: the evident chary hearing for sixty three year old Sandra Hemi.
Speaker 2: I'm here in Chillicothee, Missouri to attend the hearing alongside
Speaker 2: our producers. From edit audio, We're all a little nervous
Speaker 2: feeling this morning to attend a court hearing and to
Speaker 2: be so invested in this case.
Speaker 3: People are probably the lawyers. Oh that might be changing definitely.
Speaker 3: Well on the right, isn't that Sean o'briot. That's what lollifi.
Speaker 2: The kitchen where we made our morning coffee had intense
Speaker 2: energy about it. This morning's air was so crisp and cold.
Speaker 2: I could see my breath as we walk up to
Speaker 2: the courthouse. I remember seeing it as a kid, the
Speaker 2: building it was historic and pretty. It feels different now, smaller.
Speaker 3: Let's just go in and see and if they're like,
Speaker 3: you can't come in yet, we'll come back out.
Speaker 2: We've been through the security checkpoints, asked to show our identification,
Speaker 2: and we're sitting in the courtrooms would and pews not
Speaker 2: a whole lot different from those of my childhood churches.
Speaker 2: We weren't allowed to bring recording devices into the courthouse,
Speaker 2: so we've each got a pin and a notepad on
Speaker 2: our lap, and I forget that my handwriting is nearly
Speaker 2: impossible to read.
Speaker 3: Step for pink your notebook.
Speaker 2: Sandra or Sandy as everyone calls her, is here too.
Speaker 2: She's being represented by the Innocence Project and hopes that
Speaker 2: she can be set free. I'm looking at her lawyers,
Speaker 2: who have come from New York City and beyond to
Speaker 2: advocate on Sandy's behalf, and know that I can soon
Speaker 2: talk with.
Speaker 1: Him on the record.
Speaker 2: Forty three years ago, in November of nineteen eighty, Sandra
Speaker 2: was twenty years old and struggling with mental illness. She
Speaker 2: was found guilty for the murder of Patricia Jetchki, a
Speaker 2: thirty one year old Missouri woman and library bookkeeper. There
Speaker 2: was no solid evidence tying her to the case, though
Speaker 2: Sandra didn't know Patricia, and no witnesses or DNA evidence
Speaker 2: ever connected her to the crime. When I started to research,
Speaker 2: I became more and more intrigued by this story, and
Speaker 2: then I started digging, pouring over court documents, some of
Speaker 2: them over two hundred and fifty pages long, and the
Speaker 2: more I would dig, the more frustrated I felt, and frankly,
Speaker 2: the more dumbfounded. At the time of her arrest, Sandra
Speaker 2: was a patient at the Saint Joseph State Hospital's psychiatric Ward,
Speaker 2: receiving treatment for hallucinations, derealization, and drug misuse. In fact,
Speaker 2: Sandy spent her entire life moving in and out of
Speaker 2: institutionalized care. During the court proceedings, she was given false
Speaker 2: information from her legal counsel, and she had undergone multiple
Speaker 2: police interrogations, one of which she was so heavily medicated
Speaker 2: that she was unable to even hold her head up
Speaker 2: and was restrained and strapped to a chair. Picturing this
Speaker 2: made me feel sick and just so sad. And the
Speaker 2: more I learned about the case, I realized that this
Speaker 2: is just the tip of the iceberg.
Speaker 3: Something just never sat right. And again I told you
Speaker 3: about how meaning horrible murders we had. I've seen a
Speaker 3: a hell of a lot of dead bodies, a lot
Speaker 3: of horrible murders, a lot of murder cases. I don't
Speaker 3: have this feeling about any of the others, but for
Speaker 3: forty years I've wondered about this.
Speaker 2: How did this woman, while under the care of medical professionals,
Speaker 2: get dragged into a murder investigation and sentenced for fifty
Speaker 2: years without a single piece of evidence tying her to
Speaker 2: the crime. How did our justice system allow it? This
Speaker 2: is a story about Sandra hemy, a woman who has
Speaker 2: been in prison for over four decades and who now
Speaker 2: has the chance to finally get out. This season, we'll
Speaker 2: be bringing new details from Sandy's trial at the Livingston
Speaker 2: County Courthouse. But before we get into what's happening today,
Speaker 2: we need to lay out how we got here. On
Speaker 2: November twelfth of nineteen eighty, Patricia Jevski was found dead
Speaker 2: in her apartment. She was just thirty one years old.
Speaker 2: Her obituary shows a photo of her in a press
Speaker 2: shirt and vest a pair of slacks. Her thick, dark
Speaker 2: brown hair hung straight below her shoulders. Her face looked
Speaker 2: full and smiling, and her arms were placed demurely on
Speaker 2: her crossed legs. Patricia hadn't shown up for work at
Speaker 2: the library that morning, and her boss, Dorothy Elliott, became concerned.
Speaker 2: It wasn't like Patricia to be late. Dorothy tried to
Speaker 2: call Patricia's home multiple times. Remember this was before everyone
Speaker 2: had a cell phone, and there was no answer. She
Speaker 2: went to her duplex shortly before noon. Patricia's car was there,
Speaker 2: but the door was locked, so Dorothy then called Patricia's mother,
Speaker 2: who broke a window to enter and found her daughter inside,
Speaker 2: no longer alive. According to the police report, law enforcement
Speaker 2: received a call to Patricia's address at fifty two oh
Speaker 2: one North Riverside Drive, Apartment one, around one pm in
Speaker 2: the afternoon. It was Patricia's mom reporting that her daughter
Speaker 2: was dead. Patricia's body was found on the bedroom floor
Speaker 2: beside the bed. She had an object around her neck,
Speaker 2: a pillow over her face, and her hands were behind
Speaker 2: her back. According to the autopsy, Patricia died from strangulation,
Speaker 2: and according to a report written by the Chief of
Speaker 2: Police of Saint Joseph, a hair that was not Patricia's
Speaker 2: was found at the scene. An article from a nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty newspaper said that there were no signs of forced
Speaker 2: entry into Patricia's home. The article also said that police
Speaker 2: were working twenty four hours a day, that there were
Speaker 2: no suspects at this time. A week goes by and
Speaker 2: no one is charged. Would you like a cup of coffee.
Speaker 2: In nineteen eighty, Rick Hartigan was a journalist at a
Speaker 2: TV station in Saint Joseph called KQTV. He covered Patricia's
Speaker 2: case when it first happened. He visited us one morning
Speaker 2: before the trial for a cup of coffee and to
Speaker 2: tell us about one of his first times reporting on
Speaker 2: a homicide. Rick, how did you first get involved in
Speaker 2: the case?
Speaker 3: Well, murder cases were kind of new to me at
Speaker 3: the time. I had been a sports editor, so this
Speaker 3: was something a little bit different. It was a grizzly scene.
Speaker 3: It was again, it was new to me back in
Speaker 3: the day. It's kind of hard to imagine now when
Speaker 3: you watch the NCIS shows and things. But a reporter
Speaker 3: like myself went into the crime scene and talked to
Speaker 3: the detectives as they worked the scenes, and so we
Speaker 3: were very hands on. It was a pretty unique new experience,
Speaker 3: and I was able to watch firsthand how scenes were
Speaker 3: processed and things like that with this case.
Speaker 2: What was that like walking into that scene when it
Speaker 2: was something you hadn't done before.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm glad that I was about twenty four years old,
Speaker 3: you know, I think that timbered things a little bit.
Speaker 3: Probably would be more emotional now, but it took some
Speaker 3: getting used to.
Speaker 2: Can you kind of describe what Saint Joe was like
Speaker 2: during that time and maybe how it was different than
Speaker 2: it is today.
Speaker 3: In nineteen eighty, Saint Joseph was transitioning out of a
Speaker 3: large meat processing centers and more blue collar factory type jobs.
Speaker 3: A lot of those were leaving business as a consolidated
Speaker 3: Unemployment was relatively high. The community has never been a
Speaker 3: wealthy or affluent community. The population really began to stagnate,
Speaker 3: and then through the earth the mid eighties, the population
Speaker 3: started to decline as those industries and manufacturing would shut down.
Speaker 3: We had a made paper mill that closed and you know,
Speaker 3: there's seven hundred jobs here. Quaker Oats closed another five
Speaker 3: hundred jobs, So the economy was pretty depressed. Nineteen seventy
Speaker 3: eight kind of kicked off about a maybe six to
Speaker 3: eight year period of some of the most horrendous, vicious
Speaker 3: murders in the history of the city. They were just
Speaker 3: unbelievably violent crimes and there's not been a repeat like
Speaker 3: that since. So we were seeing just some horrific crimes.
Speaker 3: You hear a lot of things where you say community
Speaker 3: lost its innocence. That might have been something that happened
Speaker 3: to Saint Joseph back then. You've got a sleepy Midwestern community.
Speaker 3: Nobody locks the doors all that, Mom and apple Pie,
Speaker 3: and I think the really opened some eyes and people
Speaker 3: began to look at the world made a little differently
Speaker 3: in Saint Joseph.
Speaker 2: Now let's get back to Sandra Hem or Sandy as
Speaker 2: she's known. You'll hear us use both names for her.
Speaker 2: At the time of Patricia's murder, Sandra was twenty years old,
Speaker 2: eleven years younger than Patricia. She was under psychiatric care
Speaker 2: at the Saint Joseph State Hospital after experiencing hallucinations. On
Speaker 2: November twenty eighth, nineteen eighty, about two weeks after Patricia's
Speaker 2: body was found, law enforcement visited Sandy at Saint Joseph
Speaker 2: State Hospital. According to court documents, one of the officers,
Speaker 2: Stephen Fuston, found that Sandra was mentioned in a report
Speaker 2: about an unrelated disturbance. She was being taken in on
Speaker 2: a felony charge for attempting to use a knife on
Speaker 2: an officer. To listen to the full episode, subscribe to
Speaker 2: Ozerk's True Crime I'm the santra Hem Story. Wherever you
Speaker 2: get your podcast