America’s longest wrongly-incarcerated female prisoner finally released after spending 43 years

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.

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