True Crime Campfire - People You May Know: The Murder of Sheila Hachmeister

Episode Date: September 10, 2021

In the fall of 2011, Jason Hachmeister came home to find his 58 year old mother, Sheila, brutally murdered on her bedroom floor. Detectives quickly discovered that Sheila had been living something of a double life over the past few months, chatting with a much-younger online boyfriend who seemed almost too good to be true. She had also been seeing another boyfriend in real life--one her family much preferred to the mysterious Mr. Perfect from the internet. But Sheila couldn't seem to tear herself away from her online love. As they began to unravel Sheila's personal life, investigators would have to determine which part of her life had turned deadly: her internet romance, or the "real" people around her. Sources:Investigation Discovery's "Web of Lies," episode "Divorced and In Danger"https://www.kscourts.org/KSCourts/media/KsCourts/Advance%20Sheets/SupremeCourtVol311No3.pdfcjonline.com/article/20150721/NEWS/307219789https://www.kake.com/story/34846002/kansas-supreme-court-hears-convicted-killers-child-porn-appealFollow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfireFacebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]: https://shop.spreadshirt.com/true-crime-campfire/Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers, grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. It's an old story by now. Be careful who you meet on the internet. Because behind a keyboard, it's so easy to pretend to be something you're not. rich, gorgeous, successful. You can pretend to be harmless, even if you're anything but.

What we can sometimes forget in all this hand-wringing about the dangers of the web is that people we meet in real life can do the same thing. They might just have a little more work to do to convince you. This is People You May Know, the murder of Sheila Hackmeister. So, campers, for this one, we're in Topeka, Kansas, September 10th, 2011. 40-year-old Jason Hackmeister came home from running errands and called out for his mom, Sheila. He'd been staying with her for a while now, ever since he heard his arm at work. She was supposed to be home now, but she wasn't answering him as he called out her name,

and her dog Harley was barking. Jason could hear his mom's radio playing. He dropped his bags and keys on the kitchen counter. and called again. Hey, mom? Maybe she couldn't hear him over the radio. So he headed back to her bedroom and he found her. Sheila was lying face down on her bedroom floor in a pool of blood. She was wearing a t-shirt and a pair of panties and the t-shirt had been pulled up slightly. Her hair was soaked in blood and there was bloody twine wrapped tightly around her neck. She wasn't moving. Jason sprinted for the phone. He needed help, he told the 911 dispatcher. His mom wasn't

breathing. She had something around her neck. Jason sounds kind of stunned on the 911 call. It's really sad. At one point, the operator asks him if he can remove the cord from around her neck, and he doesn't even seem to understand what she's saying. He just keeps saying she's not breathing in this sort of robotic voice. Just total shock. And I can't even imagine finding my mom like that. It's the kind of thing you could never get out of your head for the rest of your life. Police quickly realized that Sheila was dead, unrevivable. When lead detective Scott Dickie arrived on the scene, he was struck by the brutality her killer had inflicted on her.

She'd been stabbed in the head over 20 times the Emmy would eventually find. She'd been bludgeoned, and after all that, the killer had finished the job by strangling her with a length of twine. This was no quick utilitarian murder. Sheila Hackmeister had suffered

horribly. We've seen it before. Overkill. What happens when a killer unleashes pure, white-hot rage? That raw emotion, plus the lack of forced entry at the scene, told Detective Dickie he was probably not looking at a robbery gone off the rails. Whatever this was, it was probably personal. Sheila may have even invited her killer in. After spraying luminal in the bathroom, CSIs would later find evidence that the killer had washed

up in there before leaving the scene. Detective Dickie had his fair share of experience as a homicide detective, and this case was already making his stomach lurch. All that rage, that unstoppable violence, this was the kind of guy who'd do it again, if you didn't catch him. Not long after the police arrived and began cordoning off the crime scene, a man pulled up out front, apparently just happening to come by the house for some reason. Startled by all the police activity, the guy ran up to one of the officers. This is my ex-wife's house. What is going on? It was Bill Hackmeister, Sheila's ex-husband and Jason's dad.

When they told him Sheila was dead, it seemed to hit him like a semi-truck. He was so shocked that he didn't even realize it when his cell phone started ringing. He just let it ring until finally one of the kids. officers pointed it out to him. Soon after that, the lead detective placed a call to Sheila's other son, Aaron. Aaron was a police officer himself in a neighboring county.

When he got the call, he was in the locker room, suiting up for his shift. There's always a little bit of extra motivation for a detective when the victim is another cop's loved one. It's not right, really. They ought to prioritize everybody the same, but I guess it's human. And Detective Dickie was determined to figure out who did this.

And right away, pretty much everybody and Sheila's family offered up the same lead, internet dating. Sheila had been talking to men online, and there was one guy in particular they were all side-eyeing in a big way, Will Johnstrom. At least, that's who he said he was. Sheila had been talking to Will online for the past several months, and just about everybody in her life had major concerns about him. He was just too perfect. Sheila was 58 years old, perfectly lovely, but, you know, an average middle-aged lady. Will Johnstrom looked like a Calvin Klein ad.

Yeah, and like an ad for underpants. I mean, dude had an eight pack of abs with all the fixings. Plus, he lived in a mansion, owned his own plane. I mean, come on. Can we say catfish? But Sheila had fallen for the guy, and she was spending an in an order amount of time online chatting with him. She'd even talked about moving down to Florida to be with him.

Everybody had been trying to tell her he probably wasn't who he said he was, but she didn't want to hear it. Yeah, she was a smitten kitten, and she had those love goggles on big time. But we're getting a little ahead of ourselves. Let's put a pin in that for a few minutes and get a little background. Sheila started her fray into online dating after her marriage of 30-some years broke up in 2007. And like, broke up suddenly. One day, her ex-husband just announced he wasn't happy and he wanted a divorce.

And the next thing Sheila knew, he was backing up his stuff. Yowch. Yeah. According to her sisters, she didn't see it. it coming at all, and she was devastated. She'd been with Bill since she was in her teens, so she'd never really been alone. She told her sisters, I don't know if I know who I am. That's really sad.

Sheila's ex-husband Bill told the ID show Web of Lies that their life together had started out of necessity, not out of love. Yeah, it was kind of like a shotgun wedding, right? Yeah, Sheila got pregnant at 19, and they did what people generally did in that situation back then. They got married and tried to make it work. had two sons, Aaron and Jason. Sheila thought they had a happy marriage,

but obviously Bill didn't agree. God, it's so sad to think of one person just being miserable all those years and sort of just going through the motions and the other person having no idea. It's just, it's sad for both of them. So communicate with your partners, people, for the love of God.

Don't just suffer in silence for years. Yeah. Apparently Bill traveled a lot for work, and I guess it just put a lot of distance between them. Their son Jason was furious said his dad about the divorce, and he took his mom's side 100%. It put a big strain on their relationship. It didn't help that Bill had tried to take Harley, the dog.

Jason put the kibosh on that. Like, hell no, you're not taking the dog. It was all pretty nasty. Yeah, you got to love Jason for that. It's like, you may leave me, fine, sir, but you will take my cats over my cold dead corpse. Yep. That is not happening. Absolutely.

Jason and Sheila had always had a pretty tight bond, but the divorce brought them closer together. They're both talented painters, and they had this little ritual where they'd paint together. Oh, man, that's so sweet. After Jason had his accident at work, he was a manager at a restaurant, he'd hurt his arm pretty badly. He decided to try and sell his artwork online, and Sheila was totally supporting him. It helped her a lot to have him around the house after Bill left. Their other son lived in another city, so he couldn't be around as much. Eventually, Bill remarried, and Sheila kind of got her feet under her again. She decided to be. excited she was ready to start dating for the first time since her teens.

Oh my God, I can't even imagine. Like, I've been with my husband for almost 20 years, which is just bananas. Jesus, Murphy. I'm old. And I can't imagine trying to, like, date now, like, especially with Tinder and everything. Just, oh, screw that so much. I would feel like such a huge dork. Like, what the hell would I even say in my profile?

And, I mean, I'm, like, quite a bit younger than Sheila was when she decided to dive back in. So I can imagine what a big deal this was for her. Right. But one of her sisters had met her second husband online, and she suggested Sheila give online dating a try. She helped her set up a profile, you know, divorced into painting and photography, loves dogs and cheesecake. She sounds awesome to me, right?

And on to Match.com, she went, or whatever service she used, but didn't take long for potential dates to start checking her out. And right away, her sisters noticed a problem. See, Sheila had been out of the dating pool since the 70s, so she hadn't really honed her red flag detection skills, meaning she took everything these dudes said at face value. Whitney. Mm-hmm.

You're not suggesting that someone would go onto the internet and tell lies? Perish the thought, right? Yeah, a little bit more chlorine in the dating pool now that we've got Tinder and Grindr and Match and all. You've got to stay extra for. Frosty, your next thing you know, you're sending your life savings off to a romance scammer, and your family are booking your ass on the Dr. Phil show. Or worse, just you go missing one day.

But Sheila, you know, she didn't get that. She didn't know what to watch for. And a few months into her online dating adventures, she got a message from a guy named Will Johnstrom. And y'all, who, boy. Lifetime movie Leading Man. Hot, blonde, 38 years old, and judging from the pictures on his profile, rich. I mean, can we say catnip?

Here, I'll read you his full bio. My name is Will Johnstrom. I own my own company working in the energy industry. From Florida, love motorcycles and living life to the full, looking for a mature woman who knows her own mind. Mm-mm-mm. Sheila didn't love the Florida part. I mean, she wasn't really interested in a long-distance thing,

but she couldn't resist messaging him back. I mean, the dude was gorgeous. And, I mean, he owned his own plane, so the distance wouldn't necessarily be a problem because he can just jet on over to Kansas whenever he felt like it. Yeah, I know, I'm right there with you. It seems a little bit too good to be true, right? And if it seems too good to be true, say it with me now, campers, it usually is.

But Sheila was over the moon about Will Johnstrom, and the people who loved her were starting to get a sick feeling in the pit of their stomachs. Her police officer's son, Aaron, was especially worried about his mom's adventures and online dating. He knew she had no savvy about privacy. She was pretty much an open book. And he tried to warn her that, look, there are people out there who go trawling for vulnerable women to hurt or take advantage of. But Sheila was the type of person who gave everybody the benefit of the doubt. And the siren song of Will Johnstrom was just too strong.

Before long, they were texting each other all day, every day. And Will seemed like everything Sheila could possibly hope for in a man. Sweet, considerate, always asking about her day and how she was feeling. And he loved dogs. He was interested in her artwork. And what more could you possibly want? They were several weeks into a pretty intense flirtation before Will dropped his first little bomb on Sheila. Send me a sexy pick.

Oof. Sexy picks were not exactly Sheila's wheelhouse. She was kind of intrigued, I mean, obviously flattered, but she couldn't send a guy a naughty picture, no way in hell. But Will kept after her. Come on, I want to see you. I bet you're so sexy. Show me yours and I'll show you mine. And finally, Sheila Cave. One something she could have ever, seen herself doing in a million years, but she sent the picture. And once she had, Will started showing her a whole new side of his personality. He was kinky. Specifically, Mr. Johnstrom was into BDSM, also known as, if you don't know what that is, Google it. Just don't do it at work. In a nutshell, Will was a fan of anything leatherclad and armed with whips and handcuffs and those

sorts of things. To shelter churchgoing Sheila, this was a whole new world and not a very comfortable one. She had no interest in any of this stuff, but Will was insistent. It's time campers. Back to the kinkshaming corner. Coercing someone like that into sending a photo or doing stuff they're not interested in is absolutely fucking shameful. Acting like a pouting child because someone won't show their bits is pathetic, and you deserve to have your genitals stolen by a witch. Yeah. Absolutely. That is messed up.

It's gross. Somebody saying, no, no, I don't want to. And, oh, come on. Yeah, that's pretty gross. You just ruined the vibe, man. Mm-hmm. Exactly. Mood ruined.

And, you know, maybe this is a combination king-shaming corner relationship advice because... Yeah, I think so. Because, you know, if somebody's pressuring you to send a photo and you don't want to, they don't they don't they haven't earned your nudes they don't deserve them yeah I mean they haven't even met in person yet and I mean I know that probably makes me sound like Methuselah but like that just blows my mind

that you would send a nude before you like laid eyes on each other in real life for somebody like Sheila I guarantee you that would be a problem right right well and she wasn't comfortable with any of this but she also really didn't want to lose will

so she was conflicted And that's the threat. That's the implicit threat in that, when he's pressuring her. She started backing away from Will a little bit to give herself time to think. And it was right about then that she met a new online prospect. The guy used the screen name Jayhawker, but his real name was Matt. Unlike Will, Matt lived nearby. He was Sheila's age, loved dogs, worked as an accountant. Not nearly as sexy and exciting as Mr. Will Johnstrom, but he seemed nice. Jason disapproved on the whole idea of his mom online dating.

It was just too weird, and he was still worried about her safety. He wanted her to drop the whole thing, but Sheila's sisters were all for new Guy Matt. His profile didn't set off any alarm bells, and he seemed like a good fit for their sis. Go out with them, her sister Rhonda told her, see what happens. So she and Matt made a coffee date and had a really lovely time. No mega fireworks or anything, but it was nice. They talked about seeing each other again, and she kept talking to him online. Meanwhile, Will must have started feeling a chill from Sheila's direction,

and he stepped up his game, love bombing by text, and slowly he sucked her back in. And once he had her back on the hook, it didn't take long for the BDSM talk to start up again. Send me a video, he texted one night. He wanted her in a submissive pose. He wanted her to call him master. Shella didn't want to do it, but she compromised. She texted him, let's video chat instead.

Sure, Will said, great idea, just give me a minute to set up my webcam. Sheila fixed her hair, checked her makeup, maybe unbuttoned the top button of her blouse, and turned on her camera. After a few moments, she heard Will's voice, but all she could see on the screen was a blurry, dark image. Then even the image blipped off. A moment later, Will texted, sorry, my camera. is not working. Anybody else feel like calling

Neve and Max right now? Yeah, that's the oldest trick in the book. My webcam's not working. When the video chatting plan went to hell, Will kept pressuring for a sexy video. Please, love, I want to see you, and blah, blah, blah. And finally, Sheila gave in and sent it. Will seemed thrilled.

Their relationship was shifting into high gear now. Love talk and sex. talk. On Labor Day weekend, Sheila and her sisters got together for a barbecue. They'd heard her talk a lot about Will Johnstrom, but this was the first time she'd actually shown them his profile, you know, with all the abs and whatnot. And her sisters were immediately like, Sheila, honey, come on. Yeah. Sheila was testy. She was like, well, what's that supposed to mean? A hot guy can't be interested in me? Yeah, I get this. I mean, you know, we all like to think we've still got it, right? But when a guy sends you picks and they're all like professional

looking male model portfolio shots, you've got to ask yourself a couple hard questions, unless you're, you know, Kim Kardashian or some shit. Like, I think I'm pretty reasonably good looking in the right light. But if Will Johnstrom started sniffing around my DMs, I'd know it was bogus immediately. That said, though, I mean, I can see how tempting it would be to buy into the fantasy. And people are just so good at believing the things they want to be true, no matter how far-fetched, thing might be. It's not about intellect. It's about emotion and that is where we're always the most vulnerable. Literally the other day some catfish was filling out his friends list and added me along with a bunch of friends. I think Whitney was one of the ones that got a friend request.

Yeah, I know the guy you're talking about. I kept him in my friend request folder and something weird slash hilarious happened. His first photos were of a reasonably handsome silver fox in England. But over the next couple of days, he changed the man in the photos. He changed them to, I kid you not, Paul Hollywood. Yes. You heard that right. The Paul Hollywood that terrifies quaint British home bakers every week during the Great British baking show. It was wild.

It's like the catfish Googled, handsome gray-haired man and used whatever popped up. I guarantee you that's what he did. That's what they do. They just go trawling for likely looking pictures. And the first guy looked actually, you've got to admit a lot like Paul Hollywood. But it was not the same dude at all. Well, because like when the first profile picture changed, I was like, hang on. Is that Paul Hollywood?

Oh, that's freaking Paul Hollywood from the Great British Bay Golf. Yeah, he sent me a friend request too. I mean, I get them all the time and they're so obviously romance scammers. and one of these days I'm going to actually accept one and just mess with the guy, but I haven't had the timer energy yet. But it'll be fun. And when I do it, I will tell you all about it. Just waste his time.

Waste their time. Sheila, though, wasn't having any of her sister's skepticism. She was into Will and he was into her, and she was seriously thinking about leaving her whole life in Kansas and heading down to Florida and straightened his arms. Her sisters could see she was obsessed. They couldn't believe she'd even think. think about leaving her boys behind. That same weekend, one of them went downstairs in the

middle of the night for a glass of water and found Sheila still hunched over her keyboard chatting with Will. She was disturbed. This was also out of character for her sister. Yeah, and the sisters didn't even know about the sex stuff. In one message Sheila tells Will that her sisters, quote, would not approve of talking about sex with you, certainly not alternative lifestyle. Well, he said it was none of their business anyway, which is true enough, I guess. and later on in that conversation, Will said he'd come to a decision. It had been four months. It was time they met in person. Didn't Sheila agree? She did. She couldn't wait.

A whole new life was calling her and she was running towards it, full speed. Just five days later, September 10th, Jason came home and found her body, half-dressed and bloody. Detectives at the scene quickly found evidence of Sheila's online dating history. She'd made handwritten notes to herself about all the men she'd been in touch with, including Will and Matt. There was no indication that she'd been sexually assaulted, but the fact that she was wearing only panties and a pulled-up t-shirt certainly seemed to lend a sexual bent to the crime scene. And when the investigators dug into Sheila's online life, they found a whole lot of evidence that Sheila had been stepping way out of her sexual comfort zone lately. The messages she'd sent to Will Johnstrom were pretty X-rated at times, nothing like the Sheila her family knew, which of course is not. not unusual. I mean, plenty of people have secret lives, especially where sex is concerned.

But the detectives were starting to wonder if Sheila's online sex life had suddenly reached out from behind the screen and grabbed her by the throat. Literally. After stabbing and bludgeoning her, her killer had left her face down on the floor to retrieve a piece of twine. And it was the ligature strangulation that finally ended her life. And when the investigators started going through the messages on Sheila's computer, they found this one from Will. Have you ever done the choky to the point of passing out. Flag on the play. Gross terminology by the offense.

Tell him to go fuck himself immediately. The choky. I know that made my skin crawl. He brought up choking in other messages, too. The detective's antennae started to twitch. They twitched even harder as they began looking into Sheila's online Mr. Wonderful. Didn't take him long to figure out that none of what Will Johnstrom had told her was true. The house he said he owned, he didn't.

The plane? Well, the ID number on the side was fake, photoshopped on over the actual number. The phone number he'd given her attached to a burner phone, prepaid and untraceable to any specific person. When they called it, nobody answered. And despite an exhaustive record search, they couldn't find a single solitary soul by the name of Will Johnstrom in the entire US of A. Mr. Johnstrom seemed to be a fake, just a manufactured persona with God knows who behind it, for God knows what reason. It was obvious he was scamming her, but what was his endgame? Money? He'd never asked her for any. Was he planning to? Some romance scammers kind of play the long game. They've been known to talk their marks into sending compromising pictures and videos, just like Will had with Sheila,

only to blackmail them later. Will had been asking to meet? Had the real man behind the profile shown up at Sheila's door and demanded payment? Like, if you don't want all your church friends to see those videos, you'll give me X amount of dollars? Did that happen? Did the argument go bad? Or was he just a sexual predator? Did he manage to con Sheila into giving him her address for their first meeting and show up with Twine and a knife? And of course, Will Johnstrom wasn't Sheila's only online boyfriend. Jayhawker, aka Matt Stone, was who he said he was. They'd actually met up for a date, spent the night together at a hotel.

Had Matt found out he wasn't Sheila's one and only and killed her out of jealousy? They called him up and asked for an interview. Matt seemed horrified when they told him about Sheila's murder, and he quickly provided an alibi. He wasn't even in Kansas at the moment. He was in Fort Worth, Texas. on business. That was easy to check, and lo and behold, it seemed like he was telling the truth. Unless he could teleport, Matt Stone couldn't have gone to Topeka, killed Sheila, and made it back

to his hotel in Fort Worth on time. He wasn't their guy. The investigation was starting to hit a wall, but then, one day, a package arrived with the afternoon mail addressed to the Topeka homicide detectives. Killers just can't help themselves, can they campers? Nope, they can never resist a chance to get all artsy. Inside was a sheaf of torn out pages from the Bible with words underlined in blue pen. Oh boy, here we fucking go. So what in the criminal minds plot line is going on here? Right.

Once they put all the underlined words together, the message read, I hid on her at the local bar and she disrespected me. So I followed her home at that night to see what? she lived. I waited for days. September 10th, I parked up the street. The silver car left. I used a bump key. She screamed when she saw me, so I hit her with my weapon. She went down, but was not dead. I choked her to make her show up. He must mean shut up. So I strangled her. I want credit for my murder. This was not the first time and will not be my last. So good luck. Bye-bye. Bye-bye is creepy. It's very zodiac killer, except the code is way easy.

through to crack. By the way, in case you all are not familiar, a bump key is sort of like a skeleton key. It forces all the little tumblers open inside the lock so it can open pretty much any door, which would explain the lack of forced entry. And I don't know, it just kind of seems to me like those probably shouldn't exist

or like shouldn't at least be easy to come by. That's terrifying. Like somebody can just acquire one of those on like probably flip an eBay where you can get every other illegal thing on the planet and just walk right into your house. It makes me grateful we've, got this ear-bleedingly loud alarm system. Like, a killer would not stand a snowballs chance

in shit. Like, that noise will make brain matter leak out of your ears. It is just the screechiest sound on earth. And I know this, because our cats are fond of setting it off at 3 a.m., which is always fun. Yeah. You just straight up out of bed, you know, mm-hmm. Not fun. My apartment installed these, like, smart locks, so I don't have a key anymore. And I can't decide. Yeah. I, Well, I can't decide if it's like, because I'm like, what if it gets hacked? Yeah, see, that I actually, the word hack floated through my mind just then, but I don't really understand what hacking is. The password is always swordfish, so don't worry about it. After this, the letters kept coming and kept coming.

Some of them were in different code than the first. They all signed off with bye-bye. You got to give them credit, though. I mean, writing in code is murder on the wrists, so our guy is committed, whoever he is. Now, normally investigators would take a thing like this with a big grain of salt, but the letter writer knew details about the murder that had never been made public, so they knew he had to be the real killer, or at least someone intimately connected with him. Every letter ended with a line about wanting credit for the murder,

but for a guy who wanted credit, he sure was taking a lot of pains to hide who he was. The investigators dutifully sent every envelope and every letter to the lab, but there were no fingerprints or DNA or on any of it. At the end of November, though, there was a break, and it was a doozy. The DNA results from the crime scene came back. On a ligature around Sheila's neck was the DNA of some male member of Sheila's family. This could mean either her ex-husband Bill or one of her sons, Aaron or Jason. Whoa.

Yeah. They knew from the medical examiner that Sheila had been killed sometime between 4 a.m. and 4 p.m. on September 10th. So they set about quietly checking the alibis of the hackmeister men. Aaron had been at work in Lawrence. Bill was also in Lawrence with his new wife celebrating their anniversary. That left Jason, Sheila's oldest son, her housemate, her painting, and dog-walking buddy. Jason had told the detectives he'd been off to a coffee shop that morning. Then he'd run a few errands and visited his granddad in the nursing home. They were able to pull camera footage from Starbucks, Dillards, lens crafters, Walmart,

and other shops he'd been to that day, and they all checked out. He was on the security footage at every place. He was captured on the nursing home CCTV too. In fact, he was real easy to spot because he was wearing this loud traffic cone orange shirt that day, so he stood out like a neon sign. And can we just take a moment, campers, to appreciate the fact that here, finally, is one case where the cops were actually able to use security footage. It wasn't overwritten, it wasn't too grainy, it was just,

perfect. So satisfying. Finally. So Jason had had a busy day, and they were able to verify all of it. But there was one time frame when they couldn't account for him. From 4 a.m. to 11.30 a.m., he'd been home with his mom. That left a seven and a half hour period where he could have committed the crime. So they brought Jason in for another interview. The main thing they needed to know was whether he touched the twine around Sheila's neck on the afternoon he found her body. On the 911 call, the dispatcher asks him if he can loosen or remove the twine from around his mom's neck,

so this was a very plausible explanation for the DNA findings, the most likely explanation, really. So when they asked Jason if he could have touched the twine while he was checking on his mother, they were surprised by his answer. No, I never touched the twine. Was he sure? Didn't try to loosen it or remove it, maybe while giving CPR? Jason said he was sure, definitely. He never touched it. At this, the whole atmosphere in the interrogation room changed.

The detectives glanced at each other. Their spidey senses were tingling. Detective Dickie pushed Jason. Did you kill your mother? Jason was cool and collected. Of course not. And he stuck to that, no matter how hard the detectives pressed. At one point, Jason said, look, I know you guys want to find the answer, I'm not it. I'm not the answer. I'm not a cold-blooded killer. And they had nothing to hold him on. I mean, they had the DNA, but the fact that Jason was the one who found the body made that a lot less useful. He could have touched the twine without realizing it, and what the hell motive could he have had to murder his mom? By all accounts, he and Sheila were thick as thieves. So without a

confession, they were pretty much back to square one. But despite all that, Detective Dickie was getting the distinct feeling that he was on to something now. There was something about Jason hackmeister that made his hackles stand up. So they let Jason walk out of the station for the time being, but decided to dig in a little bit and see what they could find. One thing that stood out right away was a statement Jason had made on the day of the murder. One of the responding officers had apparently asked him what items of value there were in the house, trying to figure out if the murder was a burglary gone wrong.

Jason had listed his mom's jewelry, $6,000 in cash that he kept in a box in his room, his computer and a statue of Buddha from his bedroom. The police later found that those were the only items missing from the house. Hmm, interesting. Yeah. They also noted that the crime scene showed signs of staging. Sheila had bled everywhere, but there were only three bloody footprints near the scene. Very odd, almost like somebody had put their hands inside a pair of shoes and just stamped the floor with blood and then put the shoes away. They noted that the shoes were considerably smaller than Jason's shoe size.

And typically, only people close to a victim would need to stage a crime scene. And when they spoke to Bill Hackmeister, Sheila's ex and Jason's dad, he gave them an interesting little tidbit. When Bill had arrived at the scene on the day of the murder, Jason had run up to hug him. And he told his dad, they said there was a pair of footprints in there. That's why they wanted my shoes. Apparently, my feet were too big for them, though. Of course, the police hadn't said anything about that to him at the time. Hmm. The plot thickens.

Digging deeper, the investigators discovered that Sheila had been confiding in her therapist about Jason. Tensions had been rising in the house. For one thing, Jason hadn't had a job since 2007, and he didn't seem to be in a hurry to get one. Sheila loved her kid, obviously, but the man was almost 40 years old. He was never supposed to move in with her and stay there forever. The agreement was that he'd stay there for a while and recover from his injuries, then he'd, you know, behave like a grown adult and go back to work, get his own place again, like you do.

But Jason seemed content to just stay there and mooch off his mom indefinitely. And this was a bit of a bombshell. According to Sheila's therapist, just a few days before the murder, Sheila discovered her wedding ring was missing. And she immediately suspected that Jason had took it to sell. Yeah, I'm throwing some major side-eyed. That six grand he allegedly had an... his bedroom, too. Like, where does an unemployed guy get that? From hawk and his mom's jewelry,

maybe? Maybe. And according to the therapist, Sheila had confronted him about it. She didn't say much about how that conversation went, but the last time the therapist had seen Sheila, she told her that she wanted to discuss her son at the next session. Add to that, the fact that Sheila was talking more and more about pulling up stakes and moving to Florida to be with her new online boyfriend, Will. alone, Sands Jason. And if she did that, he'd have to move out and stand on his own two feet again.

And there was one more tantalizing little detail. Sheila had a life insurance policy, and she'd named both her sons as beneficiaries. Upon her death, Aaron and Jason would get about 80 grand each. Detective Dickie was starting to wonder if this all added up to motive. Yeah, very possible.

But, of course, what it didn't add up to was proof. Without something more substantial than this, they had to leave Jason alone. But then, one evening, they got a call from a nervous-sounding woman who said her name was Egypt. Well, it was her stage name. Anyway, Egypt was an exotic dancer, at a club that catered to fans of BDSM, and she said she knew who killed Sheila Hathmeister. The detectives rushed over to the baby doll strip club and sat down with her new informant. She said there was a guy who used to come in and throw money around like it was nothing. He'd buy people drinks, make it rain, left and right.

And one night, she'd given this guy a lap dance. And while she was doing her thing, grinding all over his lap and all, he suddenly looked right into her eyes and said, What's it like to dance for a cold-blooded killer? Wow, I wouldn't have thought this possible, but that is both creepy as hell and also kind of hilarious. It's like it would be incredibly creepy if you'd be. were Egypt, but from our perspective, it's like, oh, check out our sly criminal mastermind,

everyone. Watch him work as magic as he confesses to a stranger in a strip club. And Egypt didn't even believe him at first. She thought he was a drunk just run in his mouth. Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm sure the dancers hear weird or shit than that on a weekly basis. Exactly, yeah. But the guy was so intense, so insistent, kept physically grabbing her and pulling her closer, saying stuff like, you know that lady in Topeka? I hacked that fucking bitch up. Yikes. By the time she finished dancing for him, Egypt believed he was telling the truth, and she couldn't get away from him fast enough. When the detectives interviewed the other dancers at the club, they found that Egypt wasn't the only one who'd encountered our guy. He was

irregular, and apparently killing was his favorite topic of discussion. Oh yeah, he'd been flapping his mouth all over the place about it. saying stuff like, what's it like to be talking to a serial killer? Just kidding. Hilarious, right? And I tied her to a chair. The dancer said he always seemed all jazzed up when the subject came up, just excited and happy, especially when he described how brutal he'd been to his victim. So who was his victim? Did he ever say who she was to him other than that lady in Topeka? Yeah, he sure had. She was his mom. And without hesitation, every dancer they spoke to picked Jason Hackmeister out of a photo lineup.

Well, well, well. Nothing gives in-cell energy quite like confessing your mother's murder to an exotic dancer. Also, I don't know who needs to hear this, but dancers do not care about you. Whatever is going on in your alcohol and dopamine-soaked brain to make you think you need to impress the person that's dancing for you. Just remember, just remember, this is the transaction. You've purchased her time, but that doesn't mean she's going to want to bang you. Right. Strip clubs are fun. Dancers are fun and they're great conversationalists, but they're also doing a job and you don't got to make it weird by trying to give them your number or confessing to mattresside, fucking weirdos. Especially the latter.

Yeah, but really, they probably don't want to hear either of those things. Your phone number or your murder confession. So, the detective started to wonder if Jason had run his mouth at any other clubs, too. So they found out where he liked to party, and lo and behold, at yet another strip club, the bartender said Jason had been in earlier that week, bragging about the murder, and showing off his new tattoo. I swear to God, I am not making this up. This man had gone out and gotten Ichlebe dechmuti inked on his arm, which is German for

I love you, mother. What in the Oedipus complex? Yeah. And when the bartender asked why the hell he would do that, if he was so thrilled about having just murdered her a couple months ago, Jason said, to get sympathy from the jury. Oh, well, duh, silly of me to ask, right? And that bartender had gotten even more of an earful than that.

He would later testify in court that, quote, he was telling me about his carpeting, that he still wanted to live in the home, but that fucking bitch bled so much all over the carpets. He had to rip the carpeting out and replace the carpeting. He had to paint the walls. He had to, something about the drapes or blinds. I can't remember

it was drapes or blinds he had to replace, because there was so much blood all over them. It was time, campers. Time to put the habeas gravis on Jason. Stop for a second and imagine what that must have been like for Aaron and their dad, Bill. Just

I can't. I can't. Unbelievable. Yeah. I know by the time the story reached the investigation discovery show, Web of Lies, Bill had come to terms with the fact that his oldest son was guilty. But I could imagine it being a rough road. Aaron must have accepted it right away because while all the trial preparations were going on, Aaron moved to have Jason blocked as a beneficiary of their mom's life insurance.

I'm sure he hated the idea of Jason using that money to help pay for his defense, and I don't blame him. Oh, hell yeah. And of course, Jason still maintained his innocence, and he was very passionate about it, insisting he could never, ever have hurt his, quote, Mama. But fortunately for us, campers, he is as brick-ass dumb as he is passionate. And in prison, that dumbassery was given plenty of room to spread its wings and fly. In February of 2012, Jason wrote a letter to his friend Brandon Wallace. Inside that letter was another sealed letter that Jason wanted Brandon to send.

You know, just as a favor for one of the other inmates, he said, a guy he'd befriended on the inside. It turned out to be yet another coded letter from The Killer, trying to point the finger away from Jason. Dumbass. Dumbass. Oh, it gets better. Another time he had his buddy Brandon. Send a letter claiming one of the prison guards was the killer. Huh? Enclosed in this little missive was a printout of all the guards' work schedules.

when the administrators at the jail checked their surveillance footage because a fucking course they had surveillance footage they caught jason red-handed stealing the schedule out of a trash can that just freaking killed me like that he thought that that would persuade anyone like oh okay i know when the jailers work so that proves one of them killed my mom like what in the name of sweet fuck are you talking about he's such an odd duck he is an odd duck our jason I think we can all agree on that. So anywho, so obviously the investigators now knew for sure that Jason was the one behind all those coded letters

that they'd gotten months before. An attempt, and a pitiful one at throwing them off the trail. Yeah, listen, just a little advice, if you are going to insist on killing somebody, which obviously you shouldn't do, we are not... No, no. True Crime Camp Fire is not recommending that you kill someone. God, no, because then we'll have to make...

vicious fun of you on the show. And it's hard work, y'all. But if you must kill someone, know this. The more you try and throw them off your trail, the bigger trail you're going to leave. You're just giving them more evidence when you do shit like this. Yeah, it's a Kansas killer thing, though, being brought down by a letter to the cops, right? Yep, just like dumbass extraordinaire, BTK. And of course, by bragging about it in strip clubs all over the Tri-County area,

we can't forget that little stroke of genius, can we? I have to say, I've seen a lot of boneheaded moves from the killers we've covered, but this one might actually take the biscuit. Like, what's it like to dance for a cold-blooded killer? I don't know, Jason, but I can tell you what it's like to grind on a dumbass. I'm just, that particular statement of his is so bizarre, because did he think it was titillating or... I can't imagine what he was thinking.

Which more likely to me, I think he was trying to scare her because he's the type of creep that gets off on fear. But, like, she's a dancer. She's probably heard worse. She probably heard worse that day. Probably. And one thing I thought was kind of interesting is you remember when the detectives were interrogating him?

And they said, did you kill your mother? He said, I'm not a cold-blooded killer. And then that's the same thing he said to the exotic dancer. What's it like to? dance for a cold-blooded killer. Yep. creepy. To nobody surprise, Jason's defense focused on the mysterious Will Johnstrom, Sheila's

phantom boyfriend. They try to make a connection between the twine around her neck and Will's interest in bondage, and they pointed to the fact that Sheila had been found dressed in only a t-shirt and panties. But of course, there was no sexual assault, and the fact that she was kind of scantily clad was probably either an accident or part of Jason's attempt at staging the scene to make it look like something it wasn't. along with those three bloody footprints made with shoes a size too small for Jason's feet.

Despite a fairly flimsy grasp of the motive, the prosecution put on a strong circumstantial case, and that, plus the DNA on the twine around Sheila's neck, was enough. The jury convicted Jason Hackmeister of the first-degree murder of his mom. He was sentenced to 50 years to life in prison. He'll most likely be there for the rest of his life. So what do we think the motive was, Camper's? Was it just pure greed? Did he realize his mom wasn't going to let him preload off her much longer and decide to kill her for the $80 grand in life insurance money? He may have also assumed he'd be allowed to keep living in the house. Or was he caught up in some kind of disturbing edible thing, where seeing his mom start dating again triggered his rage? We know he and his mom spent a lot of time together. Maybe the murder was as much about jealousy as it was about greed. Yeah, and not sexual jealousy. We're not saying that at all. Just jealousy in general.

I'm not the center of your world anymore, and that makes me angry. I also think it's very possible that he was just afraid Sheila would call the cops on him for stealing her wedding ring. Might have just been as simple as that. Or it could have been just a little bit of all three. But we would love to hear your theory, so tell us what you think on our social media. The detectives never found the real person behind the dating profile, Will Johnstrom. We suspect he was a love scammer. probably planning on getting Sheila to send a bunch of racy picks and videos and blackmailing her with them later. But of course we can't be sure. Yeah, he could just also have been a purve.

Right. And speaking of that, we will leave you with one final disgusting detail. Shortly after they arrested him, they searched Jason Hackmeister's computer, and as if he wasn't already a loathsome enough little scrap-a-use Kleenex, they found child pornography on it. So, this guy was really going for the gold and the piece of shit Olympics, and we are damn glad they got him when they did. Rod in hell, man, stay in there forever. So that was a wild one, right campers? You know, we'll have another one for you next week. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again around the true crime campfire.

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