America's longest held wrongly-incarcerated female prisoner, Sandra Hemme, is finally released from Chillicothe Correctional Center in Missouri after spending 43 years in jail for a murder she didn't commit.
A Missouri woman who spent 43 years in prison for a murder she didn't commit has finally been released.
Sandra Hemme, 64, pleaded guilty to a 1980 murder after cops wrongfully accused her days after she was released from a psychiatric hospital where she had spent most of her life since she was 12.
There was no evidence directly tying Hemme to the murder of library worker Patricia Jeschke, 31 - although investigators did later find earrings believed to belong to the victim in the home of former police officer Michael Holman in 2015.
Just hours before her release, Attorney General Andrew Bailey was threatened with contempt by Judge Ryan Horsman for his repeat efforts to keep Hemme behind bars.
The 64-year-old left prison in Chillicothe this week and beamed with happiness as she was greeted by her sister, daughter and granddaughter.
Speaking to her granddaughter, Hemme told her: 'You were just a baby when your mom sent me a picture of you... You looked just like your mamma when you were little and you still look like her.'
'I get that a lot,' her granddaughter responded.
According to her legal team at the Innocence Project, Hemme had been the longest-held wrongly incarcerated woman known in the US.
Her innocence was originally ruled by a judge on June 14, finding that Hemme's attorneys had established 'clear and convincing evidence' that she did not murder Jeschke over 40 years ago.
'No evidence whatsoever outside of Ms. Hemme's unreliable statements connects her to the crime,' the judge wrote at the time.
But her release was quickly fought by Attorney General Bailey, with Hemme’s immediate freedom was complicated by sentences she received for crimes committed while behind bars.
She 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.' Bailey had argued that Hemme represents a safety risk to herself and others and that she should start serving those sentences now.
This led to a back-and-forth battle in court that ended when Judge Horsman threatened Bailey with contempt over his efforts.
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 in her own recognizance.
'I would suggest you never do that,' Horsman said, adding: 'To call someone and tell them to disregard a court order is wrong.'
Courts noted that evidence 'directly tied' Jeschke's grisly murder to Holman, with a search on his home after he died in 2015 finding gold horseshoe-shaped earrings that Jeschke's father said he had given his daughter.
Jeschke's murder in November 1980 was discovered by her mother when she didn't show up for work.
She was found naked inside her apartment in a pool of blood, with her limbs bound by a telephone cord, a knife under her head, and a pair of pantyhose around her throat.
Hemme had been released from psychiatric hospital in the area just one day before Jeschke's body was discovered, and detectives brought her in for questioning after finding the timing dubious.
Police described Hemme as 'mentally confused' under interrogation, and she went on to accuse another man of being the murderer.
After it was found that man was in an alcohol treatment center at the time Jeschke was murdered, Hemme came under mounting suspicion.
She pleaded guilty to the murder in exchange for the death penalty being removed.
Following her release, Hemme's attorney Sean O'Brien condemned the legal turmoil she had been stuck in for decades.
'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,' he said.
'It shouldn't be this hard to free an innocent person.'
