She Killed the Man Who Almost Killed Her: The Jema Heffernan Story, Part 1

About this episode

Lloyd Lockridge: Journalist Justine van der Leun set out to find the untold stories of women serving murder sentences after surviving years of abuse — women whose only official record reads "guilty," with no mention of what came before. She mailed 10,000 letters to incarcerated women across the country and got back more than a thousand replies. One came from Jema Heffernan, a mother of three serving 10 years for killing her husband, Javon Donahue. Jema's childhood in a military family took a dark turn after she was raped at 13 — and her small Missouri town turned on her, not her attacker. Years later, she took in a man freshly out of prison as a favor to a friend, never imagining he'd become a father figure to her daughter, and then the man who nearly strangled her to death in her own living room. In Part One of this two-part episode, Jema tells us how a "roommate situation" spiraled into a relationship she never chose. Subscribe to our newsletter: ⁠https://jedlipinski.substack.com/⁠ Connect with Jed Lipinski: ⁠ https://www.instagram.com/gonesouthpodcast/ ⁠ https://www.facebook.com/groups/gonesouthpodcast/ ⁠ ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jed-lipinski/