Anne Roderique-Jones planned on keeping her true crime podcast focused on her native Ozarks, but Sandra Hemme’s case was just too compelling.
“Luke Nozicka had covered it for the Kansas City Star and wrote about an upcoming evidentiary hearing, so I just started going into a wormhole of research and felt like I couldn’t not cover it,” Roderique-Jones said in a phone interview with the Daily Citizen. She’s currently in Chillicothe, Missouri, for that hearing.
“The whole team felt really passionate about it because it’s likely a wrongful conviction and Sandy’s been in prison for over 40 years. Just looking at all the evidence and poring over literally hundreds and hundreds of case documents, we felt so compelled to cover it that we were willing to move outside the Ozarks for this one. And it doesn’t get a lot of media attention. We hadn’t heard of it until then, so we just felt like it was really deserving of a full season devoted to it.”
If exonerated, Hemme’s case would become the longest-known wrongful conviction of a woman in United States history. The third season of “Ozarks True Crime” is scheduled to launch on Jan. 25.
“Right now we’re looking at seven episodes, but that could change depending on what we find out,” Roderique-Jones said. “One thing that’s interesting about this case is it’s all kind of happening in real-time. You have something that happened in the past and then you get to see something new play out in real-time, so everything kind of gets shifted around for that reason.”
Hemme convicted after one-day trial in 1985
Library worker Patricia Jeschke was found dead via strangulation in her St. Joseph, Missouri, apartment on Nov. 12, 1980. Police arrested Hemme, then a 20-year-old patient at the St. Joseph State Hospital’s psychiatric ward, in connection to Jeschke's death.
Hemme was receiving treatment for auditory hallucinations, derealization and drug misuse at the time. She had reportedly spent the majority of her life, starting at age 12, in inpatient psychiatric treatment.
The Innocence Project, which provides the attorneys representing Hemme, claims police conducted hours-long interviews with Hemme while she was in the hospital. At some points, Hemme was reportedly so heavily medicated that she couldn’t hold her head up and was restrained and strapped to a chair. During those interrogation sessions, Hemme is said to have given inconsistent statements that conflicted with the known facts of the case.
Hemme, now in her 60s, was convicted of murder in 1985 after a one-day trial. During that trial, according to the Innocence Project, Hemme’s lawyer presented no witnesses and the jury was not told about the circumstances under which the police obtained statements from Hemme. Those statements were the only evidence against her at trial. The jury was also never told about crime scene evidence that supported Hemme’s claim of innocence.
Court documents, newspaper archives have been vital
All of that caught Roderique-Jones’ attention. She and her team of four have spent nearly a year researching and learning about the case. Roderique-Jones said they’ve gotten access to more court documents than they have in any of the other cases they’ve covered, including one that was 246 pages long.
“We were listening to the testimony today and immediately recognized it from the court reports,” Roderique-Jones said. “Someone who was called up was asked to read from the court document and it was something that we’d all read multiple times and studied, which is great, because you have all the facts and figures there. It’s not hearsay. This was 1980, so it was a really long time ago and we’re so lucky to have all that information in front of us.”
Newspaper archives have also been helpful for the team, giving them access to images that will help them paint a picture for podcast listeners. All of that research and the testimony from the evidentiary hearing will be woven together with interviews of doctors, psychologists, lawyers and more.
“One thing that’s been really important for us is to understand wrongful convictions and how those things happen, and mental illness plays a big role in that,” Roderique-Jones said. “We’ve been speaking with people that can help us understand how those things happen.”
Issues of mental illness hit close to home for Roderique-Jones
The mental illness aspect of Hemme’s case also spoke to Roderique-Jones, for personal reasons. Her brother lives with mental illness. She calls him a “remarkable person.
“He’s so kind and loving and incredibly intelligent,” Roderique-Jones said. “Seeing how he’s really tried to navigate that for his entire life, from when he was a young person to an adult, made me feel, I think, more compassion for this case because some of the symptoms Sandy has exhibited are similar to my brother’s. And while my brother has never had any trouble with the law or anything like that, it makes me think about how someone in that position is different than someone who doesn’t live with mental illness.”
Roderique-Jones, a Springfield native and graduate of Parkview High School, is also working to take care of her own mental health as she tackles these crime stories, though she admits it is mostly at the urging of her team.
“They are heavily invested in self-care,” she said. “They’re great about that, whether we all try to exercise if there’s time, or go for a walk or just have a discussion about how we’re doing and being vulnerable in those circumstances.”
Podcast has surpassed 3 million downloads
“Ozarks True Crime” is published by editaudio, an award-winning women and non-binary-led independent podcast production company. Previous seasons have focused on the Springfield Three and the Feeney family murders. The podcast recently hit a major milestone, surpassing 3 million downloads. Roderique-Jones said she couldn’t have imagined that when she started.
“I think I remember telling my husband that I hoped that, like, 100 people would listen to this when I first started,” she said. “That’s definitely an attribution to the team as well. I have a really great team that I work with.”
That team will be hard at work over the next few weeks following Hemme’s case and conducting interviews. The evidentiary hearing wrapped up Thursday, Jan. 18.
“It’s interesting that this woman is having an evidentiary hearing for a possible wrongful conviction,” Roderique-Jones said, “but I think one of the most surprising things that will come of this is who’s presented as an alternative suspect. It’s pretty interesting.”
Roderique-Jones declined to elaborate on who the suspect is. Some things, she says, you have to save for the podcast listeners.
