Woman freed from prison after serving 43 years for murder she did not commit

She was just 20-years-old when given a life sentence.

64-year-old Sandra 'Sandy' Hemme had her conviction overturned in Ohio Circuit Court on 14 June, when Judge Ryan Horsman ruled that Ms Hemme’s lawyers had clear proof of her innocence, including evidence that was not given to her defence team at the time.

Ms Hemme originally pleaded guilty to the 1980 murder of 31-year-old library worker Patricia Jeschke in St Joseph, Missouri.

Library director Dorothy Elliott went to Jeschke's one-story duplex home after unsuccessfully trying to call her after she failed to turn up for her secretarial job on November 13, 1980.

She was unable to enter the house due to it being locked and called Jeschke's mother, Helen F. McGlothlin.

McGlothlin broke a window to enter the house and discovered Jeschke dead with a laceration in the back of her head and a telephone cord around her neck at 1 p.m. on November 13, 1980.

Jeschke was naked and had been sexually molested. She was killed via strangulation and suffered multiple head wounds.

She had been dead for twelve to sixteen hours before her body was discovered.

Ms Hemme had just recently been released from a psychiatric hospital where she had spent most of her life since she was 12 when police wrongfully accused her of the brutal murder.

There was no evidence directly tying Hemme to the murder, and the review of the case found that investigating officers at the time ignored evidence that directly pointed to one of their own officers - Michael Holman – who later went to prison for another crime and died in 2015.

A pair of distinctive gold earrings confirmed to have belonged to the victim by her father were found in the home of the former officer.

Holman’s truck was also seen in the area the day of the murder, his alibi could not be corroborated, and he used Patricia Jeschke’s credit card after claiming he found it in a ditch.

The 64-year-old left prison in Chillicothe, Ohio 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.

A statement from Hemme's legal team was published to the Innocence Project website.

It reads: "We are grateful that Ms. Hemme is now, finally, reunited with her family after 43 years.

"She has spent more than four decades wrongfully incarcerated for a crime she had nothing to do with. 

"Tonight, she is surrounded by her loved ones, where she should have been all along. We will continue to fight until her name is cleared."