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