The Eyedrop Killer - The Death of Lynn Hernan

April 7, 2025

On this episode, Payton and Garrett dive into the mysterious case of Lynn Hernan. A woman found dead in her home under suspicious and confusing circumstances. Was it an accident or something far more sinister?

Listen on Apple Podcasts

Listen on spotify

No items found.

Case Sources

AUDIO TRANSCRIPT

You're listening to an Oh No Media podcast.

Hey everybody, welcome back to the podcast. This is Murder with My Husband.

I'm Payton Moreland.

And I'm Garrett Moreland.

And he's the husband.

I'm the husband.

Another Monday, another episode, and we hope everyone is having a great Monday.

I am jumping into my 10 seconds here—honestly, I don't have much. Sorry. I know it sounds kind of sad, but I don't have much for my 10 seconds. We are adding some new trees to our backyard, so I guess I'm... I don't know. I guess I'm excited about that. Payton wanted to add them. They're like these Japanese pink trees—I don't really know how else to explain them. We need some happiness around here, so we're adding those to our backyard.

Other than that, honestly just been hanging out. So I'm sorry I don't have anything amazing for you guys, but I promise next week I will have something amazing. Maybe I'll go skydiving or something this week so that I can have a good story.

Payton doesn't want me to go skydiving though. So either she's going to have to go with me, or when I'm 90 years old and she dies first, then I can go.

I don't—

I think that would be a liability.

I don't think they'd let a 90-year-old go skydiving.

They probably wouldn't. It's like... what if you had heart failure?

No, there's probably a 99% chance you would have a heart attack if you were 90 years old skydiving. Just that adrenaline—not good for you.

Anyways, this has kind of gotten way off topic. Hope everyone's doing great. We're jumping into today's episode.

Once again, if you're new to the podcast, I have no idea what Payton is going to be saying. I have no idea what this case is, and I'm hearing it for the first time.

So let's get into it.

Our sources for this episode are:

cbsnews.com

fox6now.com

oxygen.com

basementforproductions.com

wbay.com

apnews.com

legacy.com

mamameia.com

courttv.com

wisn.com

nypost.com

and jsonline.com.

So I think it's safe to say that family is something we talk about a lot on this show. But I also understand that not all of us have parents, or children, or a partner that we can rely on in times of need. In those situations, many of us turn to the chosen family we've found throughout our lives to help us through the hard times—whether that's colleagues, or friends, or our friends' kids. There should always be at least one person out there you can trust. Someone you can turn to when you're feeling depressed, or lonely, or sick.

And just because they don't have the same blood coursing through their veins doesn't mean they're any less deserving of your love or your trust. But it doesn't mean that their betrayal hurts any less either.

So while we expect that chosen family to always return the sentiment—to always have our best interest at heart, just like real family—things can slip through the cracks. And today's story is proof that letting your guard down to the wrong person, regardless of how close they are to you, could be a matter of life or death.

The year is 2018, and we are in Pewaukee, Wisconsin. This is where 61-year-old Lynn Hernan has spent a lot of her adult life. After graduating high school in Madison—about an hour's drive from where she lives—Lynn became a hairstylist who eventually went on to open her own salon.

So it's safe to say that there were a lot of people in the Pewaukee area who knew Lynn—or at least knew of her. And from what everyone said about her, she was just the kindest, most warm-hearted person they had come across in their lives.

But she also loved her quaint and modest life. Her greatest joys were being at the beach and caring for her animals. She had several of her own and was involved with local shelters. In the evenings, she loved cooking herself a meal and unwinding to old black-and-white movies.

Things at home were mostly quiet for Lynn over the years. She never had any kids, she never got married—and that didn't seem to bother her. She still dated quite a few people over the years, including Jim Kellaher, who she'd met at a music festival back in 1983 when she was just 27. Remember, she’s 61 now.

Lynn and Jim were together for close to 10 years, but things tapered off before they ever walked down the aisle. Even after they broke up, Lynn and Jim remained really good friends—friends who saw each other often and were always there for one another in a time of need. Even when Jim met someone new, he and his partner stayed close with Lynn, his ex-girlfriend from a long time ago, up until 2018.

Which—I think—says a lot of great things about someone. If you can be friends with your ex and their new partner for that long, that's impressive.

However, that year, Jim noticed that Lynn was starting to kind of drift away a bit.

Lynn had been suffering from several health issues for at least the last two years—things like high blood pressure, lung disease, and really bad gastrointestinal issues. Despite being in and out of the hospital a lot and seeing a bunch of different doctors and specialists, none of them were able to get to the root cause or even diagnose her condition.

According to some friends, Lynn even started to get a bit self-conscious about how her health was taking a toll on her body. The once-social butterfly stopped wanting to do as much or have as many visitors as she did before.

So, her life had been pretty consistent, pretty stable—and now she was starting to act a little different.

And though Lynn's health was definitely on the decline, no one expected what was about to happen to her on the night of October 3rd, 2018.

That evening, a 911 call was made from Lynn Hernan's home in Wisconsin. The person on the line said they had found their friend Lynn unresponsive in her recliner in the living room. That she had pill bottles scattered around her, and there was crushed medication covering her chest, plus a white substance on a plate next to her.

When first responders arrived at Lynn’s house, though, they found it was too late to try and resuscitate her. Unfortunately, the 61-year-old Lynn was pronounced dead in her home at the scene.

The investigators’ first instinct—after learning that she had been battling several health issues—was that Lynn may have died by an accidental overdose or perhaps even suicide. A suspicion that was supported by the person who made the 911 call: Lynn's caretaker and basically adopted daughter, Jessie Kurczewski.

Now 32-year-old Jessie was the biological daughter of one of Lynn's oldest and closest friends—a woman named Jennifer. So Lynn had known Jessie since she was a little girl. And while it seems Lynn and Jennifer might have kind of drifted apart—their friendship wasn’t as close by the end of Lynn’s life—Jessie and Lynn, her friend’s daughter, were thick as thieves.

Jessie had been going to Lynn’s house regularly for the last two years, ever since her health started to decline. And when things really took a turn for the worse, Jessie was practically living there with Lynn on a day-to-day basis—kind of like a built-in caretaker.

Jessie was also the one who supposedly did all of Lynn’s grocery shopping, ran her errands, even helped her pay bills toward the end. Anything Lynn couldn’t do, Jessie said she helped her take care of. And again, this is Lynn’s old friend’s daughter—so when investigators speak to Jessie, she says she’s really not totally surprised that this is how things ended for Lynn.

She says, “I’ve been with her for the last two years. She was in so much pain by the end, with no cure or treatment in sight.”

According to Jessie, Lynn often spoke to her about dying by suicide as a way to end the suffering that had been happening for two years. And police take Jessie’s word for a lot of this—mainly because it does kind of add up with what they found at the scene.

But it doesn’t add up to a lot of Lynn’s other friends when they hear the news.

So remember, Jessie is the one who found her. This is the first kind of look into Lynn’s life investigators get—through Jessie’s point of view.

But just to be sure, they start talking to other people in Lynn’s life—and this is what they find out.

Police learn pretty quickly that Lynn was still really good friends with Jim—her ex—and his new partner. And as they talk to him, this is what they learn: Jim tells police that he got a strange call from Jessie right after Lynn died.

Apparently, Jessie told him—practically in the same sentence—that number one: Lynn was dead, and number two: she was throwing a memorial dinner for her on October 13th, and she wanted him to come.

Okay, wait—this was before the cops came?

Yeah—basically right after Jessie found Lynn, she calls Jim because she knows they were very close—kind of like chosen family—and says, “I’m throwing a memorial, yada yada yada. She’s dead, and I’m throwing a memorial. You should come.”

Now, this phone call rubs Jim the wrong way for a couple of reasons.

One: Jessie doesn’t sound very upset. Like, when she calls and says Lynn’s dead—for someone who has basically lived with her for the last little bit—she has no tears.

Number two: He also knows of Jessie, but he’s not actually ever met her before. Not in all the years that he was friends with Lynn.

I'm not even sure that Jim was aware Jessie was Lynn’s caretaker and was living with her. That’s kind of strange, right? Considering how close they were?

Jim says in the times he spoke to Lynn before her death, she might not have been feeling well, but she never gave any indication to him of taking her own life.

And it’s not just Jim who’s saying this.

Lynn's friend Anthony Posa hears the news and he's like, "This is shocking." He says he saw Lynn about a month before she passed away, and she seemed to be improving—that her illnesses were subsiding, she was looking better, she was feeling better, and she was starting to get out of the house again and resume life.

But for now, Lynn's friends are being forced to just kind of sort of accept this unknown, even five months later, as they're still waiting for the medical examiner to rule on Lynn's cause of death.

Which may be why, around February of 2019, Jessie goes to the police station. She shows up and says, "I am looking for an update on my friend Lynn's case." Basically, she says, "I'm the one who found her. I was really close to her. I want to know, once and for all, if her cause of death is being ruled a suicide or if it's something medical."

Now, they tell her they haven't got the final ruling yet. But they also get Jessie to tell them a little bit more about how things were with Lynn before she died. Since she came in, they take the chance to talk to her.

Yeah, I don't know. I'm just confused. Not saying she shouldn't care, but why does she need to know? I don't know—she's just pressing, and red flags are raising, basically. That's what I'm trying to say.

I also can't think of—okay, so if she did kill her, why? Like, what benefit does she get from this? Is she on the will? Does she get all the stuff? Right? Like, what benefit does she get from killing her? I don't know.

So when they start talking to Jessie the second time around, Jessie mentions that Lynn had been pushing a lot of people away in the weeks before she died, and that Jessie was really the only one she still kept around. She said that when people called, Lynn was refusing to answer and was having Jessie take messages for them. She basically tells police, "Listen, Lynn was in a really dark place."

But when police spoke with Jim—remember, he said that wasn't the case. He called the house a few weeks before Lynn died, and Jessie did answer, but she was rude and curt to Jim. She told him to never call the number again and not to worry about Lynn. Then she practically hung up on him.

So now you kind of know why Jim is not so sure about Jessie. Jim then said Lynn called him from the hospital a few days later and actually made plans to see him once she got discharged. So something's not adding up here.

But that wasn’t the only thing that the math wasn’t mathing on. Apparently, Anthony Posa—Lynn’s other friend, who was practically like a nephew to her—was a beneficiary in her will. In fact, he and Jessie were the only two listed there. Again, it's kind of like, this is her built-in daughter, her built-in nephew, so it makes sense. Now she's on the will—basically, she's leaving it to her friends' kids, who she was very close with.

But Jessie was named the personal representative, which in the state of Wisconsin pretty much means that she's the executor.

So in the months after Lynn died, Anthony checked in with Jessie a few times, seeing if she needed any help handling Lynn's affairs. And surprisingly, Jessie said yes—but she sent Anthony a bunch of credit card bills that were unpaid. Apparently, Lynn was in a lot of debt, which was shocking considering Lynn had lived most of her life paycheck to paycheck. Like, she was pretty frugal.

But in 2014—four years before she passed—she actually inherited a quarter of a million dollars after her mother died. Oh, and yet that money seemed to be gone now.

In just four years, Anthony learned, according to Jessie, there was only $87 left.

Holy crap.

And only some of it was used to buy things for Lynn—a new car, a little bit of jewelry. Anthony was actually shocked to find that most of that money had been wired to Jessie.

Okay, so as this is starting to unravel, the chief medical examiner is finalizing his report on Lynn—and you're never going to believe what they find in there.

They do discover about eight different prescriptions in Lynn's blood at the time. Some had been prescribed by her doctors, but a few of them her doctors had supposedly taken her off a long time before she died. Though it’s possible Lynn, who was desperate to feel better, wanted to finish out the medication, so it’s not totally alarming.

It’s also not alarming to the medical examiner because they were all at therapeutic levels. There was nothing far over the prescribed dosages.

Here’s the thing, though: the medications that were crushed up on Lynn's side table and found scattered around at the scene of the crime were not even in her body. None of those prescriptions were found in her toxicology report.

Yeah, put me on CSI, man.

Which means those were most likely planted—and someone was trying to make it look like a suicide or an overdose.

Insane to think that they wouldn't figure that out, right? Like, if you're going to make someone look like they overdosed, at least have them overdose! That’s so insane to think they wouldn’t figure that out—especially because the one thing that was in her system was something no one should ingest.

It’s called bleach. Nice.

Tetrahydrozoline.

Is that... is that long for bleach?

It’s the main ingredient in eye drops.

Wait—but I want to clarify—this is not just like trace amounts in her blood. This wasn’t something she got from putting in eye drops all day.

I didn’t know that was poisonous.

The toxicology report finds so much that they feel confident Lynn ingested eye drop medication orally. And tetrahydrozoline can be very lethal if you have enough of it.

Here’s the problem, though—they're like, "Okay, we think this is actually what killed her. It wasn’t any of those drugs."

Okay, but that doesn’t totally rule out the idea of suicide. I mean, a toxicology report can’t tell you whether someone drank eye drops willingly or not.

Only that there was a scary amount in her system that caused her death.

I mean, I feel like it’s pretty obvious at this point—when there are crushed-up drugs not even ingested in her—that something fishy is obviously going on.

So when this report comes out in 2019, police have already had some suspicions about the person who found Lynn dead that October day—as you know, mainly because everyone else is kind of pointing the finger at her.

And that’s Jessie.

So they start heavily looking into Jessie once they begin to think that this might be a murder.

Right. And here’s what they find—

Let’s just say, after looking into Jessie, they do not think Lynn took those eye drops on her own.

So it turns out Jessie wasn’t some selfless friend of Lynn who was dedicating her life to trying to nurse her back to health to thank her for the years of friendship. Jessie actually had a bit of a criminal background. In fact, up until February 2016—about two and a half years before Lynn died—Jessie was in prison for forgery and identity theft charges.

Shortly after that, when Lynn started to feel ill and perhaps wanted to help Jessie get back on her feet, Lynn asked Jessie if she would be her caretaker.

Okay—and Lynn would pay her in return. At least, that’s what Jessie said, right?

So she gets out of prison, and Lynn, who really cares about her, says, "I haven’t been feeling well... you can come take care of me, and I’ll take care of you." So that’s Jessie’s story.

And in June 2016, just a few months after Jessie was released from prison, large chunks of cash started leaving Lynn’s account. Then Jessie starts taking out credit cards in Lynn’s name. She begins writing checks to herself from Lynn’s accounts.

Now—it’s very possible Lynn knew about this. Maybe she even wanted to help Jessie out, especially if she felt like she wouldn’t get the chance to spend her inheritance herself. And I say that because Lynn seemingly made Jessie, along with her chosen nephew Anthony, a beneficiary on her will in 2018.

But—it’s also possible that Lynn just trusted Jessie to help her manage her finances, and instead of using that money to, say, I don’t know—pay off Lynn’s mortgage—Jessie transferred that money directly into her own account.

I can tell you for a fact—that’s what happened.

During Lynn’s last hospital stay, this was in October of 2018, the month she died—while Lynn was being cared for by doctors—her caretaker, Jessie, was treating it like a little vacation. She was transferring money from Lynn’s account and dropping it directly into hers, only to withdraw that money from an ATM at a nearby casino.

And even shadier—on the day Lynn died, a JC Penney credit card was opened in Lynn’s name.

Gosh.

And then, a day or so later, $3,000 worth of furniture was charged to another card in Lynn’s name.

But she’s dead.

Furniture that was then delivered to Jessie’s apartment.

I mean, yeah—duh. Obviously. It’s just funny to me that, I don’t know—like, when you’re trying to hide things... But you’re not hiding them. And also—if Lynn is dead, how are her credit cards being used? Like... they didn’t—I don’t know. You know what I mean?

People are stupid.

Obviously, we know it wasn’t Lynn who made that purchase.

Though—the biggest transaction actually came a few weeks after that, when a fraudulent check made out to Jessie from Lynn’s checkbook was cashed for $130,000.

So, between February 2016—when she was released from prison—and October of 2018—when Lynn died—Jessie had taken $144,000 of Lynn’s... now in her name.

So no wonder Anthony was in shock when he followed up on his portion of the inheritance and was like, "There’s nothing left."

And that’s because slowly, as Lynn was still alive, Jessie had been draining it to herself. And Lynn was left with just a bunch of unpaid credit card debt in her name—because Jessie had taken all of it out.

And then some.

But you're probably wondering, why would Jessie want Lynn dead, especially if she had already stolen everything from her? Like, she already had the money. Well, guess what? If you're a beneficiary on someone's will, there's a lot more you can cash in on—mortgages, cars, jewelry, other stuff you can liquidate, and Jessie knew this: life insurance, everything. So did the police. Once they untangle Jessie's entire scheme, they have more than enough to arrest her on identity theft and wire fraud charges, especially because this is definitely a violation of her parole, considering that Lynn's dead, so she couldn’t consent to any of this.

Remember, she was initially in prison for these same exact charges. So, in July of 2019, Jessie is placed in handcuffs and brought in for questioning. Now, police interview Jessie six times over the next few days because they have a sneaking suspicion that Jessie wasn't just stealing from Lynn; she was probably poisoning her as well and keeping her sick. As they get deeper into questioning her, the deeper Jessie seems to dig herself into a hole.

The first day, they admittedly didn’t get a whole lot out of her. She mostly tries to convince them Lynn was giving her that money as a gift for taking care of her. She says Lynn had been looking for ways to die by suicide for a while; she'd been taking a bunch of medications and was looking for ways to spend her money before she died, which is why she was giving Jessie control over it.

But then the police give her a little something to see if she'll take the bait. They tell Jessie, "Well, you know, the medical examiner found something called tetrahydrosene in her system." They also tell her that's the main ingredient in eye drops, and Jessie's quick to respond. She says, "Oh, well, Lynn used eye drops all the time."

And the police are like, "Nope. She didn’t overdose from putting these in her eyes. She drank these eye drops. In fact, we think someone gave her these eye drops via poisoning." Now Jessie’s catching on. She says to the police, "Do you think I killed her?" And she’s swearing up and down, "I didn’t."

The police send her back to her cell for the night, but they have some information from Jessie’s boyfriend, Scott, that indicates she had experience with ingesting eye drops herself. No way.

So, apparently, eye drops—who would have thought? Did you know this before?

I think so. I think I've heard of this before. I didn’t know eye drops were that poisonous in lethal amounts. I think a lot of things are. I mean, I guess everything is in a certain amount.

But so apparently Scott shared some text messages they exchanged three months after Lynn died. He turns them over to the police. Jessie went to a bar one night and messaged Scott some hours later saying she was in the hospital. She claimed she hadn't been feeling good and that her blood pressure had dropped. The text from Jessie also said that after having some blood work done, doctors found trace amounts of tetrahydrosene in her system and that the doctor told her she might have been drugged by someone at the bar. People slip eye drops into drinks all the time. She also tells Scott she could have died from it.

Now, there's a lot about this exchange that's confusing and alarming. Remember, this is three months after Lynn died. So, I don’t know if Jessie was trying to plant seeds that this could happen to anyone—that there's some mystery poisoner out there trying to kill someone with eye drops. First Lynn, now her.

I don't even know if she actually went to the hospital. It's possible she did this whole thing to get attention. But what's more important is Jessie clearly knew that ingesting eye drops could kill someone before police told her about the toxicology report, and yet she played dumb to the police in the last interview, saying, "Oh, Lynn used eye drops in her eyes all the time."

Jessie knows she messed up in that interview because after spending another night behind bars, she reaches out to detectives and says, "Can we talk again?" This time, she gives them a little bit more. She says, "Okay, Lynn used to mix eye drops with her vodka sometimes." She says she'd actually known of at least three different times when Lynn did this—maybe more.

Why is it? Does it get you hot? Does it make you sleepy? I'm finding out way too many things about substances right now. But Jessie tells them, "I promise I never gave it to her. This was her decision. I had nothing to do with it."

Cut to the next day. Jessie requests to be back in front of investigators again, and this time she's like, "So, Lynn, she actually used to drink it because it gave her a buzz, it made her sleepy. She didn't think she was going to die from it." So now Jessie's saying maybe Lynn wasn't suicidal. Maybe this just helped her sleep better, and she hadn't done it just three times. Maybe she had been drinking it for at least the last two months of her life. So her story is just everywhere.

She also tells them that on the day Lynn died, Jessie stopped over there in the morning and learned that Lynn had mixed six bottles of Visine with a bottle of water and told her she was drinking it. Holy crap. Jessie says she spent 10 minutes that morning trying to talk her out of it, but when she realized she couldn't win the argument, she left. Till she went back that night and found her friend dead in the recliner.

So now the police are just completely speechless because the woman has been lying to them for the last several days. Why should they believe her now? And number two, if your friend, someone you care about like your own mother, someone you've been taking care of, is mixing eye drops with water and chugging it, why would you just leave? Well, when you call the police, call an ambulance? No. Instead, she went to JCPenney and opened up a credit card.

And let's say for a second she left because she didn't actually think Lynn was going to drink it, but then shows up and is truly surprised to find her friend dead later. Why would she tell the medics—hey, like when she called 911, "Hey, I think this is why?" If you knew exactly what killed her and you just didn’t mention it. The whole thing's ridiculous. The police know it, but for some reason, the justice system takes a really long time putting these murder charges together.

From what I can tell, Jessie still remains behind bars for breaking her parole, but it's not until June of 2021, two years after she's arrested and questioned, that Jessie is finally charged with first-degree homicide. Why did it take so long? That's crazy. And it takes another two years for Jessie to finally go to trial. She doesn't get her day in court until October 2023. This is five years after Lynn's death.

But here's the thing—trial starts. She's claiming she's innocent. Lynn took her own life. She had nothing to do with it. Here's what's wild: at her trial, there's someone else who speaks in her defense. A man named Gary Verden says he had been to Lynn's house twice in his life. The second time was about a year before she passed away, and he claims the day he was there, he saw a bottle of Visine sitting out with Lynn's vodka and her cigarettes.

He also said that on another occasion, he was with Jessie's mom, Jennifer, when Jessie called. Jennifer put her on speaker so he could hear the entire conversation, and he claimed Jessie was with Lynn, and Lynn was talking about how she was considering suicide that day.

Interesting. Okay, so the thing about Gary is, not only is his testimony circumstantial—like he's like, "Oh, I just saw it and heard it"—he’s also best friends with Jessie. He's Jessie's mom's friend, not Lynn's friend, so he's definitely biased. But he's not the only one suggesting Jessie may be telling the truth. The defense calls another witness named Sarah Trump, who was treating Lynn for her back pain back in 2017. Sarah said on the stand that nothing seemed to work for Lynn, that by the time 2018 rolled around, the pain was only getting worse and suggested she might have been looking for other remedies.

Even Lynn's former doctor, Lindsay Thomas, spoke out for the defense. She pointed to the fact that Lynn had a long list of medical conditions but also psychiatric disorders like depression, anxiety, and insomnia. She also said that she thought Lynn's mystery condition was what likely led to her death, not the poisoning—something that was also mentioned by a forensic pathologist hired to take a second look at the autopsy report from the medical examiner. They claimed that they believed a mix of drugs in Lynn's system, along with the tetrahydrosene and her condition, was what caused her death, and that just the eye drops alone couldn’t have done it.

I'm a little frustrated because detectives and police go to the house, they find fake crushed-up pills all around—none of those are in her system, and she's dead from eye drops. Like, what more do we need?

Well, you have to keep in mind all these people testifying are hired by the defense. So, they came in to testify in support—basically in support of the defense. I mean, whether they actually support it or not, they’re supposedly telling the truth. I just can't with— I mean, okay, take out all this, like, who could it be? She was stealing money from her, opening up credit cards, she has a proven track record of doing this. A ton of motive. Like, to me, put me on the jury. Open and shut. Life in prison. Good night. Like, I’ll save all of your guys' tax dollars. I won’t drag things on. Put me in trial for, like, a day. That’s all I need. I will save so much money.

Well, the prosecution made a slam-dunk statement that I think helped in this trial. They stated that if Lynn had died by suicide that day, then the timing of all of it happened perfectly for Jessie. Because Jessie had just sucked the last drop out of Lynn’s bank account, and just when there was nothing else to steal from her, Lynn died, leaving her with all of her belongings to sell off and nothing to give the other person in the inheritance.

Which sounds like a pretty serendipitous and completely unlikely scenario, especially when you're also presented with an overwhelming amount of evidence, like financial records, toxicology reports, and witness testimony that wasn’t in defense of Jessie.

Someone even suggested that Jessie might have poisoned Lynn's pets over the years. Oh my gosh, I do have to say that’s diabolical. This didn’t seem like an easy decision for the jury. They left the first day to deliberate, and after 7 hours, they hadn’t come back. Their conversations poured into the following day, where finally, after 10 hours, they had a verdict.

I swear, I swear—go ahead.

They concluded that Jessie was guilty of all charges, including first-degree homicide.

Okay, there we go.

Jessie was returned to prison to await her sentencing, but meanwhile, some weird stuff happened. During that time, while she was waiting sentencing, a friend of Jessie's came forward to say they had received an envelope with 37 pages worth of documents and letters. This friend did the right thing by turning it over to police because those letters were from Jessie in prison, asking her friend for help—help with faking evidence, including making a fake voice recording pretending to be Lynn. Basically, she wanted her friend to record herself talking like it was Lynn, validating a lot of Jessie's initial claims. There were even directions in Jessie’s handwriting instructing the friend on how to talk and sound like Lynn, saying she has an older voice, like a raspier sound.

This is insane. She even told her to say—Gosh—like, on this recording as Lynn, that she couldn’t go on anymore and was going to drink Visine to end her life. Now, I don’t know if the friend received this before or after the trial—I mean, she comes forward during the time period before or after—but it's clear Jessie was hoping that this would be her saving grace. Instead, it just sealed her fate because the friend turned it over to police.

Jessie was back in court on April 5th, 2024, for her sentencing, and the judge knew all about the little package that she had given her friend. Jessie denied she had made and sent those. She still denied killing Lynn. In fact, she told the judge the only thing she was guilty of was, quote, “being a loyal friend.” I can tell you one thing—the judge did not agree.

Jessie was sentenced to life in prison, with an additional 10 years for her theft charges. The earliest she’ll be available for parole is in 40 years. She was also ordered to pay back $386,000 in restitution, with an account that would collect and distribute the money if she ever did any interviews, documentaries, or book deals. So, if she tries to profit off it, all that money will go back.

Because in the end, Jessie took Lynn’s money, her time, and her life, but she also stripped her of one thing Lynn seemed to value above all else—that was a trusting friendship with someone she had invested years in. She had known her since she was a little girl, someone she considered her own adopted daughter.

And that is the case of Lynn Hearnen.

It’s kind of scary—you don’t really know. I guess you never really know somebody. Two, extremely sad that she died because someone killed her, obviously. Three, all this for like $150,000? I mean, I get that. I mean, look, yeah, that’s a lot of money, but like, if someone were to say, “How much do you think your head’s worth?” I would hope you would say more than $150.

I would say at least a million, trillion, billion dollars. Like, I don’t know. Frustrating. It’s sad. Honestly, it’s sad, especially because unless Jessie somehow forced the will, Lynn already left her as the beneficiary. She was already going to get money from her. She was already going to die too—who knows? She could have died in a couple of years.

Yeah, so it’s just like, it doesn’t make any sense. She wanted her cake and to eat it too. Yeah.

Yeah. Alright, you guys, that was our case for this week, and we will see you next time with another episode. I love it.

I hate it.

Goodbye.

‍

Sorry, no sources available yet.