John Jefferson
Inset: Jake Hemmert (Lee County Sheriff’s Office). Background: The home where Jake Hemmert killed his father and stored his body in a freezer (WFTX/YouTube).
A Florida man learned his fate for shooting and killing his father in the home they shared in a retirement community and spending $23,000 of his money, which included the purchase of a large chest freezer found plugged in and running with the older man’s body inside.
Jake Hemmert, 32, was sentenced on Monday to 30 years in prison for killing his father, Brian Hemmert, 60. The defendant pleaded no contest to charges of second-degree murder with a firearm, tampering with evidence, abuse of a human body and fraudulent use of a credit card, prosecutors announced in a news release.
Local Fox affiliate WFTX reported a prosecutor reading a victim impact statement from Jake Hemmert’s sister, Jessica Hemmert, that said, “Every day for the last 354 days, I’ve had the same thought: I can’t forgive. I’ve been tormented for the last 354 days, and after our father’s death, I planned his funeral and plan to celebrate his life because the years to come he will never be a part of.”
The case came to light when Brian Hemmert’s father reported him missing to police on Aug. 28, 2023, after he hadn’t spoken to him since June of that year. He requested Lee County Sheriff’s deputies go to his home for a welfare check, according to a probable cause statement.
Once there, deputies found nobody home and no vehicles in the driveway. But while deputies were there, Jake Hemmert arrived in his father’s vehicle. He told deputies his father was on a hunting trip in the western U.S. and said he had recently spoken to him on the phone, and he was fine, the statement said.
Jake Hemmert allowed deputies to look through the house but declined to open one bedroom, claiming that is where his father kept his guns.
“During the interaction, deputies observed Jake to appear to be very nervous,” the document said.
Deputies pinged the victim’s cellphone and found the device was inside the home, the statement said.
At one point, deputies learned Jake Hemmert had an outstanding warrant for larceny out of Maricopa County, Arizona, and placed him under arrest while they continued to investigate his father’s disappearance.
A detective arrived and interviewed Jake Hemmert. He told the investigator he last saw his father when he dropped him off at the airport in Punta Gorda for a trip to Utah, the document said. He told the detective he had recently spoken to him on his cellphone but refused to provide or show his call logs to confirm the information, the affidavit said.
A search warrant was secured for the home, and the detective found Brian Hemmert’s cellphone and credit card in a drawer in Jake Hemmert’s bedroom. In the master bathroom, the detective found blood. Jake Hemmert told the detective in a follow-up interview that his father “fled the country to fight human trafficking,” the document said.
The detective learned a large chest freezer was delivered to the residence on June 22, 2023, but the freezer was not found in the home at the time, the probable cause statement said. The purchase of the freezer “coincided with an abrupt change in the usage of the credit card as well as cellular activity” of the victim, the affidavit said. WFTX reported that Jake Hemmert had purchased the freezer with his father’s credit card.
Further clues linked the son to the crime when the detective learned that Jake Hemmert started selling his father’s tools through Facebook Marketplace following his disappearance, the document said.
During a second search of the home on Sept. 7, 2023, detectives found a large chest freezer concealed from view and hidden under a large amount of supplies, according to the probable cause statement. Once the items were removed, detectives noted the freezer had been running and had been duct-taped closed. Authorities found Brian Hemmert’s body in that freezer, shot to death, court documents said.
Jake Hemmert used his father’s credit card daily — racking up $23,560 in charges — and was seen in video using the card at ATMs in the months after he disappeared, the document said. Jake Hemmert admitted to having the card, claiming that his father allowed him to use the card to pay homeowners association fees, the document said.
On Sept. 13, 2023, Jake Hemmert confessed, the document said. He admitted to shooting his father in bed, saying his father had asked him to do it in a suicide request. He also admitted to cleaning up the scene and destroying the mattress found in trash bags in the attic, the probable cause statement said.
He also told investigators he possibly spent as much as $30,000 of his father’s money with the credit card, the document said.
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