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You know, you don't see too many poisoning homicides, so it stands out for that reason. But just who the defendant is and who she made herself out to be and who she continued to show herself to be, I think she is perhaps the most dedicated person I have ever come across to the motto, lie till you die. I think at the end of the day, she's just a con woman who finds her marks. I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff.
I'm Anasiga Nicolazzi, former New York City homicide prosecutor and host of Investigation Discovery's True Conviction. And this is Anatomy of Murder. Many homicides are carried out with traditional weapons like a gun or a knife.
Today's case has neither. In fact, it was originally thought not to be a murder at all. The victim was found surrounded by pill bottles and with remnants of pills still around her mouth. The scene had all the markings of a potential overdose, perhaps even self-inflicted. But things aren't always as they appear.
There were crushed up pills and medication bottles all around the victim. There was no sign of forced entry or anything like that. She appeared to be, you know, comfortable seated in a chair, no sign of distress to her.
That's the voice of Waukesha County Prosecutor Randy Sitzberger. His family goes back generations in the Wisconsin County, just west of Milwaukee. My grandpa was the captain of the Waukesha Police Department when I was growing up. And my uncle, who I was really close to, was a sheriff's deputy here in Waukesha.
Randy worked as a prosecutor in Milwaukee for a decade, handling a variety of big city crimes. When he moved back home, his caseload looked very different.
I guess the biggest majority of homicides that we do see are drunk driving homicides or reckless driving homicides, traffic accidents or drug overdose homicides. So rarely do we see, you know, what you typically think of as the intentional murder kind of things.
But that changed when the case of Lynn Hernan landed on his desk. Lynn was a 62-year-old former hairdresser who lived alone in Pewaukee, Wisconsin. While she had no children or immediate family, she did have close friends. Maybe not somebody with a huge social circle, but those that were in it were really beloved by her and really treated, I think, special is how they would put it. That, you know, they each felt special to her based on the kind of unique things she would do for them.
Friends described Lynn as both devoted and caring. She was someone who always remembered birthdays and anniversaries. She was a woman that would hand write out birthday cards, kind of a lost art these days, but would hand write out a nice message in a birthday card and either deliver it to her friend or mail it out. Around 2016, Lynn began suffering from stomach issues. They became so intense that she was admitted to the hospital on more than one occasion.
All of her, what I'll call her true friend group, sort of noticed that she was getting sicker all of a sudden, like noticeably sicker, like having stomach and GI issues and going to, if not urgent care, then the hospital. And, you know, no doctor could really figure it out. It got so bad that Lynn needed a caretaker to help her with things like groceries and the bills. On October 3rd of 2018, it was her caretaker who found her dead.
She really reported coming back to this house where she said she was a caregiver of this family friend and pretty shocked and devastated of finding this family friend deceased when she came in the door. The woman's name was Jessie Krzyzewski. She was Lynn's junior by about 30 years, but had known her for most of her life. Jessie Krzyzewski's mother and Lynn Hernan lived in the same apartment building, I think, back in the 1980s.
And so they got to know each other pretty well. But it all went back to living in the same apartment building and then just kind of maintaining those friendships over years and years. After finding Lynn, Jesse was interviewed. She told police about the health issues that Lynn had been having for the past year. Lynn had become somewhat reclusive as a result, stopped seeing friends and even expressed thoughts of taking her own life.
So let me step back for a moment and just detail the crime scene. What first responders observed when they walked into the home, Lynn was found sitting in a recliner in the living room surrounded by multiple pill bottles. And the deputy also observed a large amount of crushed medication on her chest and a plate directly to her left. Fire personnel responded and confirmed that she was deceased. And based on initial observations, all signs pointed towards a drug overdose.
Now, according to the CDC, factors that contribute to death by suicide in particularly older adults are things like a decline in physical health, loneliness, and a lack of social connection. And based on Jesse's description, it seemed like Lynn was affected by several of those factors.
Victimology would also play a role in trying to determine her state of mind at the time of her death. Was she depressed? And on the initial canvas, neighbors did support Jesse's story that Lynn had been depressed. She had multiple health issues and she was tired of being sick.
The circumstances of her death, the pills around her mouth, and the empty bottle surrounding her also supported that theory. But before an official cause of death was concluded, the medical examiner wanted to do a blood toxicology screening, which is a test that determines the presence and amount of drugs in someone's body. Those results could potentially help the medical examiner see exactly which substance, if any, had caused Lynn's death.
So our medical examiner did a great job of not rushing anything. And she didn't make an initial determination. She wanted to see the tox results. It took four months for those results to come back. And when they did, they took even the medical examiner by surprise. The reports show that Lynn had died from a fatal dose, but it was not from what anyone suspected or the pills surrounding her. The substance was tetrahydrozoline, which is the main ingredient in eye drops.
In Anastasia, as you know, poisonings and homicides are nothing new. But it's super interesting when you hear another method, or in this case, a weapon in a sense, if it's that, that a readily available household non-prescription eye drop works.
would be at the center of it. Yeah, I have seen this before in homicide cases, not often, nor have I ever handled it myself, but definitely the first time I heard it, it was an eye-opening, even as a possibility that now has to be explored. And it's a substance that while readily available, it's something that should not be present at all in a typical blood screening. The amount in Lynn's blood would not have been achieved through the normal use of eye drops.
It was actually the first time the medical examiner had ever seen this substance show up in a blood test, which raised some big red flags. And that was when our ME saw this very high level of tetrahydrozoline and said, okay, now we got to start looking into this a lot more because I don't think this was a suicide from pills anymore because this is way too much. No person should have this amount of tetrahydrozoline in their system.
The medical examiner determined that Lynn's cause of death was homicide by poisoning. The medical examiner kind of gets the detectives, you know, on board and says, there's a lot more to look at here. And so that's kind of when the investigation really begun into a homicide is when that initial talk screen came back.
The investigation began where many do, looking for possible motives someone might have had for wanting Lynn dead. We often talk about motive here on AOM, and while every case is different, the typical categories? Love or lust, revenge, or money.
You know, all three of those involve a crime connecting the victim with the suspect, a term that we always use like it's personal. And when it's thought to be a random crime, we ask, what was the reason the victim and the suspect's paths crossed? And what was the impetus of that? You know, when it's personal, we always ask who benefits the victim being deceased. And when you know that answer, it tells a lot.
And while perhaps isolated, Lynn seemed to be well-liked. There was no evidence of a scorned lover in her past or a fight of any kind with the people in her life. So that left her money. And that's really when the look into the financials, you know, just assuming that money is sort of the age-old motive. They start looking and getting subpoenas for all of the victims' financial records.
The records went back to 2016, two years before Lynn's death. And at that time, she had about $250,000 in her account, which was mostly money she inherited after her mother's death in 2014. But by the time Lynn died, she only had around $80 to her name and a mountain of debt.
It was really starting to look into these financial accounts and realizing through the estate case in the probate court that we started to look and say, wow, this is odd that a woman in her young 60s has tens of thousands of credit card debt upon her passing.
Investigators began to look at Lynn's spending habits to see if they could figure out where all that money had gone. What was Lynn Hernan spending her money on? Was she spending a lot of money? What were the places she was going to? Certainly at first glance, Lynn appeared to have a frugal lifestyle. What we learned was she was a person who stayed close to home. She would go grocery shopping near her home, which I think is pretty common.
She would really use the same gas station in Waukesha. If she went out to eat, it wasn't, you know, going out downtown Milwaukee to fancier restaurants. It was maybe going, you know, to some cities really close to Waukesha, maybe into Milwaukee County, but nothing extravagant.
She also avoided many things that to her seemed high tech. And that was the other thing about Lynn Herning is she was not a person who liked technology at all. She had a cell phone, but it was like a flip phone that she would use to make calls only. She was not a person sending text messages or getting photos on her phone. She didn't have a computer. She didn't use ATMs. If she needed money, she was walking into the bank and writing out a withdrawal slip to get some cash from the teller.
But in the year leading up to her death, it seemed like Lin's spending habits and her use of technology were changing.
And so what we realized in sometime in 2016, but really 2017 into 2018 is all of a sudden now we're getting these ATM withdrawals for, you know, like $300 a pop with the service fees at West Allis bars, which West Allis is a little city in Milwaukee County, but kind of between Waukesha and Milwaukee. You know, there's gas station purchases at all these gas stations that Lynn never went to herself.
Several of those withdrawals happened while Lynn was in the hospital. But the vast majority of her wealth had been drained through a series of checks. I think we counted 20 checks, I mean, ranging from $2,000 to, I think there was one for somewhere around $16,000. But I mean, checks for tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars while Lynn was alive.
While it appeared that many of the checks were for things like bills, they just didn't line up with Lynn's lifestyle. That's when we start to see the victim who, again, loved thrift shopping, not going to buy huge gaudy things, not spending chunks and chunks of money, was now writing checks for thousands of dollars over the course of two years, really until she had nothing but $80 left in her account.
There was something, however, that these large money transfers and checks had in common. They were all made out to the same person: Lynn's caretaker, Jesse Kruszewski. Want to connect with more family and friends and their native language is in English?
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Lynn Hernan's financial records showed that Jesse Krzyzewski had received well over $100,000 over the course of a year. In addition to that, Krzyzewski had also been named the executor of Lynn's estate.
That news took several of Lynn's friends by surprise. A cousin of hers who happened to be a former prosecutor found it so strange that he ran a background check. And what he uncovered raised major concerns. Before Krzyzewski worked for Lynn, she had been a receptionist at a medical clinic. But that had quickly gone south. The patients there started being alerted that there were these loans being applied for in their name with their information. And
Once police kind of connected the common thread that they all were going to this clinic, they narrowed it down to Krzyzewski, who ultimately would admit that, yeah, she was stealing and using these people's social security numbers and other personal information to open these loans. Around the same time, Krzyzewski was caught by police at a payday loan shop trying to take out money in her mother's name.
And so when the police got there, Krzyzewski tries to lie, you know, right to the officers' faces and say she is her mom. They point out that she in no way looks 20 years older than she is. They don't believe her. And, you know, her story changes, of course, to her mom said this was OK to do. It apparently wasn't OK because Krzyzewski was kicked out of her house. But old habits can die hard.
She went to live with a friend and her friend's mom, and this was a few months later, and she ended up stealing that friend's mom's Social Security card, a utility bill, to again try to obtain bank loans and get herself added to the woman's checking account. When she was caught once again, Krzyzewski moved to a hotel where her crimes continued.
And she's forging cashier's checks to try and pay her rent there at that extended stay hotel. So not just, you know, forging checks anymore, but actually printing up a document to look like a cashier's check, really starting to sort of, I would say, fine tune her document forgery type of thing.
Kershevsky's past eventually caught up with her. In 2010, she was convicted for identity theft and check forgery and sentenced to eight years in prison. After two years, she was released on probation, but her time back on the street didn't last for long.
After she was released from prison, she had another forgery case that I don't believe was ever charged in a court, but her probation agent decided that the allegations were enough that she revoked her and she was sent back to prison. In 2016, she was once again granted a supervised release. That was the same year she became Lynn's caretaker.
And then of course, we started to see in spring or summer of 2016 is when Lynn starts to get sick and some bigger checks are being written out to Jesse Kruszewski. Once Lynn's cousin pieced all this together, he alerted authorities. The biggest reason he called was because he had a nervous feeling because he looked into Jesse Kruszewski after learning that she was the personal representative of the estate.
And he saw all the fraud charges in her background. And he had a red flag go up. And he just wanted to make sure law enforcement was sort of looking into this from every angle.
The cousins' concern was shared by several of Lynn's friends and other family members. As a beneficiary of Lynn's estate, her nephew had received copies of her financial documents after she died. He was surprised by the large amount of debts Lynn had accrued and told detectives it was totally contrary to the person he knew her to be. A friend of Lynn's approached detectives and said that before she died, Lynn had expressed concerns about her money.
She felt like it was disappearing and she just had no idea where it was going. The friend was certain it was all going to Krzyzewski. After Lynn's death, he saw her selling Lynn's property and using her car, which was supposed to go to Lynn's nephew. Police examined Lynn's credit card charges and ATM withdrawals to see if they could tie them back to Krzyzewski. That task turned out to be easier than expected.
It didn't take long before they found that a significant amount of money had been spent at a local bar near where Koshefsky lived with her boyfriend. When police went to investigate, people at the bar knew her by name. Went to this one particular bar and they started talking to people and, you know, figured somebody has to know her if she's spending this much money there and...
Sure enough, quite a few people knew her and would talk all the time about how she would buy drinks for everyone. And when I asked somebody, "Do you mean everybody in her group of friends?" They said, "No, everybody in the bar."
You know, Scott, when I was hearing this, like all I can picture is almost like this, like woohoo, you know, like someone who won the lottery, like the dollars mean nothing more than like monopoly money, you know, because who else spends money like that over and over for anything that someone else wants, especially if it's not someone from incredibly wealthy means. Yeah. Boasting their personal image in a bar on someone else's dime. And there was also thousands of dollars at charges Anastasia at a casino. This was an important link.
because Krzyzewski had blamed an earlier conviction on her gambling. She was using that as her excuse. But look what she's doing here. We knew from her 2010 crimes, she admitted to police back then that a big motive for her in stealing people's money was because of a gambling addiction she had. Perhaps the most glaring piece of evidence against Krzyzewski came in the form of a credit card that was opened in Lynn's name. The day after she died, it had been sent to Krzyzewski's home.
We probably could have issued a complaint once we saw all this money being stolen over the years. But they didn't need to. Krzyzewski was still on supervised release from her previous conviction. The investigation led to her rearrest on evidence that she had violated the terms of her release. That gave investigators the time they needed to investigate Krzyzewski for the larger fraud or possibly murder.
We were in the good position of not having to rush though because of her revocation when she was ultimately arrested. And so we knew she was going to be in custody until June of 2021. Certainly my colleagues took their time and really wanted to get a good understanding through our medical examiner's office and through the lab in Philadelphia.
to try and understand what was at play here, you know, really locking things down. While she, of course, had the right to remain silent, Krzyzewski was anything but quiet. She approached detectives who were open, of course, to interviewing her about her relationship with Lynn. She claimed that Lynn would occasionally give her checks or credit cards because there was no formal caretaking arrangement. She went on to say that Lynn was extremely generous and believed in spending all of her money before her imminent death.
But detectives questioned that version of the story. The detectives were very good not to give her too much information and really try to let her tell a story. And whenever they would confront her with something that didn't make sense, she would kind of end the interview. Somehow Krzyzewski always came back and with an answer. It was really her reaching out to detectives to say, I'd like to talk to you again.
And so they would bring her down and she would now have an answer for whatever that thing they confronted her with the day before was. But then they would say, OK, but now this doesn't make sense. And she'd say, OK, OK, I think I'm going to talk in today. And then the next day, the same thing. As this pattern carried on over the course of six interviews, something emerged.
So, you know, when you watch them all together, it becomes clear this is a person that needs a little time to think about what her story is going to be or what her excuse is going to be this time. And so, you know, she basically took it, went to sleep with that information, came up with some of their lie that she thought was going to work and then would be met with.
another problem. And she would go back to try and solve that one. What Krzyzewski had to say stood in sharp contrast to what Lynn's friends shared with detectives. One friend mentioned feeling uncomfortable whenever Lynn would even bring up the estate. Lynn would sometimes bring up, you know, if something happens to me, you know, this is what I want you to have. And he was
Always quick to point out that he didn't want to talk about things like that. He didn't want to think about her dying. He didn't want to think about getting her property. He just wanted to talk to her and enjoy her company. Meanwhile, Krzyzewski seemed focused on one thing alone, Lynn's money.
And then you had Jesse, on the other hand, who really was just talking about Lynn was always talking about she wanted me to have this. And I knew somebody was supposed to get this. And I knew who this piece of property was supposed to go to. And I know she kept $50,000 in her lockbox and she didn't trust the government. So she was trying to scam the government. And that's why she wanted to write me all these checks, because
She couldn't enjoy her money, so she wanted me to. And it was really just very centered on Lynn's property.
But there was one piece of the story that Krzyzewski struggled to explain, which was how it was that Lynn had died. In the months after her death, Krzyzewski called the medical examiner multiple times asking for the results from Lynn's autopsy. I mean, very cooperative to the point where she was calling the medical examiner's office almost weekly, I would say, to try and, hey, have you figured out the cause of death yet? What happened? And Anastasia, when I heard this story,
what a flag this really is, right? To try to determine where's the investigation and when are they going to formally announce how she died officially? Yeah, it's definitely like one of those odd things, right? If it's a
A loved one, a spouse, a child, something like that. And there's something just unknown. That makes sense. But here, whether it's friend, caretaker, whatever exactly she was, it just seems like one step to remove to be that person who should have such an interest in actually finding out cause of death.
So, of course, once it was apparent that Lynn had been poisoned, that information was sealed. We learned later that once our medical examiner gets the toxicology screen back and realizes there's a lot more here, she directs her staff to not give out any more information. With the cause of death now clear, Krzyzewski's phone call stood out as odd.
Looking back with hindsight, you're thinking she's just gathering information. How much do they know? What have they figured out yet? Am I in the clear? Things like that. Even without new charges, Koshevsky would be staying in prison for the next two years. Knowing that she wasn't going anywhere soon, detectives told her Lynn's cause of death.
Krzyzewski said she had never heard of someone being poisoned through eyedrops. But on this point, detectives knew she was lying. Because on the day Krzyzewski was arrested, they had interviewed her live-in boyfriend, and he told them an interesting story. A few months after Lynn's death, Krzyzewski went to a concert with a group of friends. She returned home. He thought she appeared drunk.
Krzyzewski told her boyfriend she didn't feel well. He thought she was exaggerating. But at 6 a.m., she drove herself to the hospital. When she returned home, she said that doctors had decided to test to see if she had been drugged. The tests came back positive. And according to Krzyzewski, the substance she had been drugged with was Vizine.
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Whether or not Jesse Krzyzewski's story about being poisoned with Vizine was true, one thing was clear. She knew what it was. When detectives confronted her, her story once again changed. This time around, she said that Lynn used eye drops all the time and even bought them by the box full. A few days later, Krzyzewski's story evolved yet again. Now she said that Lynn used to drink the Vizine mixed with vodka because it gave her a buzz.
The only thing that was clear to investigators was that Kershefsky was digging herself into a hole. And, you know, Anastasia, it is really clear here that she's trying to fill in the narrative. She knows what the murder weapon is, and she's trying to put the murder weapon in the victim's hand.
And again, there's nothing ever fun about homicide, obviously, but there is something in the, you know, puzzle, putting together the pieces and just kind of watching in this case what seems like a lot of bobbing and weaving on her part, like filling in the blanks, as you just said, Scott. And whenever one thing doesn't line up, she now comes up. It's like almost like, OK, what is she going to create next? And she does every time.
In what would be the last interview she would give, Krzyzewski told detectives that before she died, Lynn poured six Visine bottles into a bottle of water. Krzyzewski had begged her not to drink it, but Lynn went ahead and drank it down. And, you know, there's this, I can almost picture being like, wait, what? You know, if this is true, you're going to just watch this happen. You know, first of all, you know, just from a legal standpoint, you know,
If this was true, well, there is no crime in watching someone do self-harm. We might say, well, that's awful as a friend or morally reprehensible, but just on the legal side, there's really...
nothing there. But it's just, I don't know, Scott, it's just not tracking. Yeah. I mean, I think there's so many holes in that story. And just the fact that now she didn't say this at the beginning, why not tell officers on the scene that's what happened? Why continue to call the investigator to try to determine what the ME's report was when she knew she drank this Visine and she knew that it could be lethal if it was taken on certain doses. So all of that information precludes this statement.
So it doesn't really make sense. According to Krzyzewski, Lynn had talked about taking her own life. The proof that she claimed was in the form of a farewell audio tape. She tried to kind of always maintain that there was rock solid evidence that Lynn Hernan did die by suicide in
You know, one of those things she always mentioned was there was this audio recording on a cassette tape. As I understand it, this was supposedly her suicide farewell audio tape saying goodbye to everybody. Krzyzewski told detectives that this tape was in a lockbox at Lynn's bank. At the bank, police learned that the box had been cleared out shortly after Lynn's death. Krzyzewski once again pivoted.
So then she tried to say that it was all in a storage locker. And when the detective quickly showed he was willing to go to whatever unit, you know, or whatever place the storage unit was at, then it quickly became where she said, no, there was never a storage unit. Next, she said the tape was buried in a park. And detectives gave her the benefit of doubt and sent an officer to search.
But for me, the more twists to her story and inconsistencies in her story just points out potentially to a jury down the road, she's not likely being truthful and she's really burying herself.
They follow up on everything she says, which it's the right thing, right? First of all, just to make sure that their hunch is correct. But if not, again, the goal is to get to the truth. And I almost just picture it like if you're going fishing and you let the line out, you let it go as far as it could possibly go. And then it's almost slowly reeling in the fish. And she's doing it to herself if that's where this is going to end up.
And even then, the detective sent some poor detective out there on a 100-degree July day to dig up where she was saying. They had a video feed set up so she could see generally where in the park he was. And she was trying to direct him, and he was digging and not finding anything. As it was becoming routine, Krzyzewski had an excuse. She was coming up with all kinds of things. Oh, I must not be thinking of the right spot exactly.
The tape was never recovered, if it even existed at all. After six interviews, detectives chose to stop speaking with Krzyzewski. It was clear that she was not going to give them a straight story, which was incriminating here in and of itself. Instead, they focused their efforts on building the rest of their case. One person who continued to provide important information was Krzyzewski's boyfriend. She had talked to him about Lynn a lot.
She would talk often about how she had to go visit Lynn and she didn't really admit to being a caretaker so much as she would say, oh, Lynn's sick. I'm going to go sit with her or, you know, she's all alone. I'm going to go keep her company.
The boyfriend had never actually met Lynn, although he had tried. He would talk about times where he would say, oh, well, I can come with you. You know, that's kind of what boyfriends and girlfriends do. I should come with you. Jesse always had an excuse. You know, Lynn doesn't want you to see her like that. Or no, it's not a big deal. I'll just go or whatever it was, just excuse after excuse to kind of keep those worlds apart.
He knew that Krzyzewski was the executor of Lynn's estate, and he said that she had brought back furniture from Lynn's home. He knew she was sort of taking care of Lynn's estate, but didn't really get involved. Certainly knew that she was going to clean out Lynn's condo, for example, or that she would come home with smaller pieces of furniture and things like that. Didn't really ever question where Jesse was getting this money from. He also told detectives something they didn't know —
that Krzyzewski had apparently been made Lynn's power of attorney. And a power of attorney, just for those who might not know, it's a legal document that really gives someone the right to act on another's behalf. It's usually if someone is
According to the boyfriend, that was what Krzyzewski had been dealing with for Lynn. Krzyzewski told him that before she died, Lynn was in a coma.
He tells them that he was told Lynn was in a coma for five months and that she died at Fradard Hospital, one of our larger hospitals in the Milwaukee area. And it's these detectives who have to look at him and say, none of that is true. Detectives left Krzyzewski's boyfriend to process all of the misinformation he had been told.
By June of 2021, those lies finally caught up with Krzyzewski as well. The day before she was supposed to be released from prison for identity theft and forgery, Krzyzewski was charged with first-degree intentional homicide of Lynn Herning. To be told the day before, you think you're getting out, that probably was a shock to her system. I have no doubt she would have...
going out to find some other victim in the community. I mean, she's shown since 2010 that she really does not care whose life she ruins, quite literally, or life she takes as long as she can keep getting money out of it. It took another two years for the case to get to trial. During that time, Randy regularly spoke to Lynn's close circle of friends. Our office does a very good job of keeping people informed along the way of where we're at or, you know, why there might be a delay or
what we're waiting for, or in this case, you know, just wanting to make sure we do all of our homework on this pretty novel method of murdering somebody so that we don't have any surprises when we do get to trial. Years had passed since her murder, and at times, her friends felt like they were no closer to getting justice for Lynn. You know, it's hard enough to talk with a homicide victim's family and friends when it's all very fresh and they're reeling from it. It's a different kind of hard experience
Despite the years of waiting, Lynn's friends remain supportive of Randy and the prosecution.
So they were all on board right away. And to take a second to talk about how impressive that group of people is, I mean, they certainly became frustrated along the way with numerous delays and how long this took. But, you know, they were always with us and they never got frustrated with us. Krzyzewski's boyfriend continued to work with Randy in the lead up to trial. It was clear that her lies had upended his life as well.
When I would talk to him in our prep sessions for trial, you could still feel years later that this guy's whole world starts to fall apart in a way that he was never prepared for. You know, in my wildest imaginations, I can't think of going home and finding out my whole family life has been this sort of lie. The boyfriend and Lynn's close friends were all prepared to testify for the prosecution at trial. But Randy had his own concerns.
Lynn's murder wasn't a clear-cut story where the perpetrator was found with a weapon in hand. He would need to walk the jury through the evidence carefully step by step, explaining each lie that Krzyzewski had told, as well as putting that together with the mountain of circumstantial evidence pointing to her guilt. We wanted to make sure we walked the jury through all the steps of the investigation so they could kind of walk with the investigators almost to say, okay, we thought this was a suicide case.
But now this has popped up and that caused us to look at this. And once we saw these hundreds of thousands of dollars going to the defendant, we looked at what she was spending it on. And then we talked to the defendant and her story kept changing.
There were also a lot of complex financial documents that would take a significant amount of time to present. And because of that, the trial was scheduled to last three weeks. And up until that point, it would be the longest of Randy's career. And Anastasia, I know you've worked some really long, complicated cases, especially involving financial documents. Is that true?
sort of normal. It's long, but when you're on trial, everything feels long. You know, I've seen them in as fast as two days, which is rare. I've seen them, I guess I've done them in two months and that's really long and painful in lots of ways and you're exhausted, but it is, it's whatever it takes, whatever the evidence requires. And here, three weeks, it's definitely long, but I think it really goes to the thoroughness of the investigation. Like you said, Scott, when you have complicated evidence here, like financial records,
You have to go through that slowly to make sure that there is no room left for interpretation other than what each piece of evidence suggests. But the biggest hurdle that hung over Randy was how to disprove the theory that Lynn had taken her own life. If the first people on scene thought this was a suicide, and we do have evidence
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After opening statements, the prosecution started from the beginning of the investigation in the home where Lynn had been found. We really did get lucky that there was a very good detective who was first on the scene that decided, who knows what will come of this, but I'm going to take a lot of photographs of paperwork and where it was and how it was positioned in addition to all the pill bottles and where they were, not just around the victim, but also in the kitchen when they found some.
The photos showed that several of the pill bottles still contained pills inside. According to the medical examiner and detectives, this was different than what you would see with a typical intentional overdose.
What I think became telling, and what our medical examiner and some of the detectives testified to, is that at a true overdose scene, you're really not going to find any remnants of anything. Because if you're truly trying to end your life by taking pills, you really don't know the amount it's going to take. And so you take as many as possible. In addition to leftover pills, Lynn had crumbs of pills still around her mouth. According to the medical examiner, it looked staged.
She pointed out at trial that, you know, some of these pill fragments in the corner of Ms. Hernan's mouth were still dry. They hadn't touched her, the inside of her mouth. They weren't wet in the least bit. Same with the powder on her chest. It wasn't as if she took everything she could and some came back up or out or somehow else got on her chest. Our medical examiner, who's been doing this for 30 years,
During the autopsy, undigested pills were found in Lynn's stomach. And so...
That would seem to suggest she's able to swallow pills or capsules, and yet now we have some of these things crushed up. And despite being surrounded by pill bottles, Lynn's toxicology report showed no signs of overdose by any of them. And I just want to step back to the crime scene just for a moment. Remember all of that crushed medication dust that was found on her and around her? Turns out that none of that medication, which was tested, was even found during her autopsy.
So she had not ingested any of that dust. If that doesn't spell stage, I don't know what does. I think we spent a great deal of time really going through all the substances in her system and how the pills, the pharmaceuticals that were found, were really all within an acceptable level. There wasn't any sign from the tox that she had overdosed on any one substance, let alone all of them together.
That left one drug, tetrahydrozoline, the ingredient found in eye drops that killed Lynn. When Lynn's friends took the stand, they unanimously said that none of them had ever heard Lynn speak about self-harm. It would have been completely uncharacteristic of her. They also spoke about their friendship and the things that Lynn liked to do. For example, relive old memories or go thrift shopping.
Their testimony stood in sharp contrast to Krzyzewski's interviews, where she single-handedly focused on Lynn's money and property. I had two columns set up, and I wanted to physically demonstrate that for the jury, that there are two really diametrically opposed groups of people here. One really loved and cared about Lynn, never really wanted to talk about her money and things like that. And then the other side, who...
Seemed to, at every turn, know exactly who was supposed to get what property of Lynn's and kept her isolated. As for Lynn's property, after years spent gathering and analyzing financial records, the prosecution presented the total amount they believed Krzyzewski had stolen. It totaled right around $300,000. In the end, the strongest piece of evidence was Krzyzewski herself.
The most important aspect was the defendant's story constantly changing. I think it's very easy for a jury to see, look, if this was a suicide, if this woman really did want to take her own life, then there was no reason for you to lie about anything.
And so I think that ultimately is what became our biggest circumstantial evidence. Rather than trying to explain Krzyzewski's version of events, the defense turned their focus on Lynn. I think we saw a trial, straight character assassination. Nothing more than trying to paint Lynn Hernan as an alcoholic or a pill addict. This came from the woman who had previously described Lynn as a mother figure. You think about childbirth.
Jesse talking about how this was supposedly a real loved family member, yet she has no problem just absolutely ripping down a dead woman who can't speak up for herself anymore. Jesse really showed who she was more than convincing anybody that's who Lynn Hernan was, if that makes sense.
But did the jury see it the same way? Randy was left to ponder this question as they deliberated. I always joke about that Tom Petty song is so true. The waiting is the hardest part. You get done with this trial and you sort of want a verdict instantly. You just want the jury to think it's so plain and clear that they're just ready to give you a verdict in 10 minutes. And obviously that's not realistic.
When I heard Randy describe it this way to you, Scott, like all I could think was how perfect, you know, those are the most difficult moments for the prosecutor because like every moment feels like hours and you're just reliving, like, what did I do? What did I say? What did I forget? Does the jury understand what I was trying to convey? Every moment is exactly that. Like the waiting is the hardest part. Yeah, for sure. And in this case, the waiting took 13 hours. The jury would come back with their verdict and
And Krzyzewski was found guilty of first-degree intentional homicide and two counts of felony theft. Krzyzewski would finally be held accountable for her actions. I think she is perhaps the most
person I have ever come across to the motto, lie till you die. I mean, she is really committed to all of her lies to the point where I think she honestly believes them to be true. I think in her mind, these things might be true, which are so obviously not true to the rest of us. And I think she has lived her life finding people that will buy into her lies and that she can convince. I think at the end of the day, she's just a con woman who finds her marks.
A date for the sentencing hearing was set, but then something completely unexpected happened.
So we were supposed to do sentencing on December 12th, but in between the verdict and sentencing, the sheriff's department here was contacted by a woman who received a packet of letters from the defendant. This was the most bizarre thing I've ever experienced in my 15 years. Following the trial, a woman who had served time in county jail with Koshefsky received a stack of papers, allegedly from Koshefsky.
The papers had handwritten instructions for the woman to record a farewell audio tape, just like the one Krzyzewski had claimed existed during her interviews. And she had a very specific way that she wanted it done, right down to the music that should be playing in the background. Have some old movie playing in the background, like Wizard of Oz or Mrs. Doubtfire, she specifies, so that the timing of it seems legit. She says definitely don't have anything modern playing in the background.
It also included instructions for drafting a new will and how to fake a notary stamp. And these instructions, all 30 plus pages of them, were written on the back of Krzyzewski's trial notes. She literally took the pieces of paper,
she had been writing on during trial in the courtroom just flipped them over and started scrambling yet again to cook up new evidence and false evidence and forged documents and you know she says wear gloves buy things at different places use cash all these kind of crazy things and it amounted to about a 30-page packet of instructions that she sends out
In a letter, Krzyzewski allegedly wrote that all of this was her attorney's idea. When the woman read what she was being asked to do, she went straight to the police. She really got freaked out and wanted no part of it and brought it over to the sheriff's department. I think when she got off work of a second shift job, so it might have been 11 or midnight or something when she walked it into the sheriff's department to say, I really don't want to hang on to this and I really think you guys should see this.
While this package could have amounted to new charges, a judge ultimately decided that there just wasn't enough there. It's a transcript for a desperate woman who wanted to pull any tricks out of the book that she can. I mean, it's just a desperate attempt.
And while, yes, I think it is chargeable, she's about to be sentenced for homicide, you know, for many, many years in prison at minimum. So, again, I also think that sometimes you have to make those decisions about judicial resources and things like that. And that does sound like what happened here. But, you know, Krzyzewski's attorney, no surprise, did end up withdrawing from her case, which did cause a further delay in sentencing.
And so from there, a new attorney had to come on, which obviously delayed the case quite a bit for that attorney to get even kind of up to speed on everything that had happened in a long trial and a long investigation to be ready for sentencing. So we finally got to sentencing and kind of closed the book on this one on April 5th. At sentencing, a defendant is legally entitled to speak on their own behalf. And while Koshefsky could have taken the time to express remorse or even ask for forgiveness,
She did neither. Krzyzewski spent nearly two hours defaming Lynn, blaming her for her own death and refusing that whole time to take any responsibility. Of course, I'm shaking my head as you even say that. And for many that were in the courtroom, it was seen as a last ditch effort to continue the string of lies that Krzyzewski was unwilling or unable to stop telling.
I don't think Jesse swayed anybody's opinion. You know, I think it just made Jesse look worse than she already did if that was possible. So I was really happy that the victims all, regardless of how they were feeling inside, maintained their composure inside the courtroom. Because to do anything else gives fire to what the defendant is talking about and gives more attention to it.
And during their victim impact statements, Lynn's inner circle honored their late friend. One statement in particular stood out to Randy. It was from Lynn's nephew. Even in his pain over losing Lynn, he still showed compassion for her killer. To be able to live through the frustrations of this case and having a mother figure of his, too, taken from you wrongly and be able to still live
wish compassion on the defendant and wish her to have understanding and reflection of what she did and you know maybe somehow out of all this become a better person i was not expecting that and i thought it was very impressive of him and to have that kind of insight i didn't have that level of insight i don't know if i have it now but i certainly didn't have it at 26. krisheski was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 30 years
But because of her two theft convictions, parole only even comes into play after 40 years. Even though she's now in prison, Randy still reflects and remains puzzled about Krzyzewski. I've even seen killers at least be able to come to terms with what they've done and acknowledge it. And, you know, on some level, however genuine it is or isn't, they at least give some kind of apology, whether to save themselves or if they actually feel remorse.
And she might be the first person who's taken a life that just doesn't seem to care, doesn't seem to regret it, doesn't seem to show any remorse, have any remorse. She just seems to be concerned about how she gets herself out of trouble. And that seems to be what she's dedicated herself to. Though she tried, Krzyzewski was ultimately never able to fully dim Lynn's light.
That lives on in the lives of her close friends, who won't soon forget her kindness, her spirit, and love. Lynn Hernan was being victimized by Krzyzewski while she thought she was being helped by her friend. While not an expert by any means, Krzyzewski strikes me as a pathological liar at best, who can no longer even distinguish the truth from all the made-up scenarios she has created for her own self-serving gain. She didn't just take Lynn Hernan's money, she took her life.
Those close to Lynn no longer receive those handwritten notes of care, the birthday well wishes, or other expressions of love from their dear friend. But those tucked away cards and all the memories of Lynn they hold in their hearts, those can never be taken away.
In her last few years of life, Lynn Hernan was having a difficult time with health issues and having Jesse Krzyzewski as her caretaker at the time seemed to bring her some comfort. Instead, the defendant was methodically stealing her money, plotting to get away with murder, staging what she thought would be the perfect crime.
But it was far from it. It would be all undone by a well-documented crime scene and a studious forensic pathologist who would upend that ruse and help bring Lynn Hernan final justice. I've heard a few great sayings over the years when it comes to murder and deceit. Let me just leave you with two. To deceive the gullible, the murderer dons the cloak of sincerity.
and the killer's creed promises innocence, delivers death, and vanishes before dawn.
Tune in next week for another new episode of Anatomy of Murder. Anatomy of Murder is an AudioChuck original produced and created by Weinberger Media and Frasetti Media. Ashley Flowers is executive producer. This episode was written and produced by Tracy Levy, researched by Kate Cooper, edited by Ali Sirwa, Megan Hayward, and Philjean Grande. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?
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