A Florida man murdered his father and then used his money to purchase a freezer he stored the victim's body in.
Jake Hemmert , 32, spent $23,000 of his father's money and one of his purchases was a large chest freezer that was found plugged in and running with the older man's body inside. On Monday, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison for killing his 60-year-old father, Brian Hemmert.
He 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, said the State Attorney's Office in a press release. The alarm was raised when Brian Hemmert was reported missing by his father, Paul Hemmert, in August 2023.
Nobody had seen the man or spoken to him, but banking activity had continued with money being spent from his account. Hemmert's father asked Lee County Sheriff's deputies to visit his home for a welfare check but once at the residence, officers initially found nobody there, nor any vehicles in the driveway.
However, while deputies were at the scene, the defendant, who lived with his father at the time, arrived driving his father's vehicle, according to a probable cause statement. He spoke to deputies and told them that his father was on a hunting trip somewhere in the western United States.
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He also claimed he had recently spoken to his father on the phone and he was fine. He also provided his father's phone number to deputies, the statement says. He allowed deputies to look through the house but declined to open a locked single bedroom, claiming that was where his father kept his guns.
The statement adds that during the interaction, deputies "observed Jake to appear to be very nervous." Authorities then pinged the victim's cellphone and found the device was inside the home. Deputies also learned that Hemmert had an outstanding warrant for larceny out of Maricopa County, Arizona, and placed him under arrest while continuing to investigate his father's disappearance.
Detective Patton then arrived at the scene and interviewed Hemmer, who claimed the last time he had seen his father was when he dropped him off at the airport in Punta Gorda for a trip to Utah. He also told the detective he had spoken to his father on his cellphone but refused to provide or show his call logs to confirm it.
After obtaining a search warrant, the detective found Brian Hemmert's phone and credit card in a drawer in his son's bedroom. The detective also found blood in the bathroom of the master bedroom, according to the statement. In a follow-up interview with the detective, Hemmert claimed his father had "fled the country to fight human trafficking", the statement adds.
During the investigation, the detective learned a large chest freezer was delivered to the residence on June 22, 2023, which coincided with a change in the man's credit card use and cellular activity. Other clues linking the son to the crime emerged when the detective learned he had started selling his father's tools through Facebook Marketplace following his disappearance.
A second search of the home was carried out on September 7, 2023, during which detectives found the freezer concealed from view and hidden under a large amount of supplies. After removing the items, detectives saw the freezer was still running and had been closed with duct tape.
Once they opened the freezer, detectives found Brian's body in it. The victim was immediately pronounced dead. A post-mortem examination confirmed he had suffered gunshot wounds and the death was ruled as a homicide.
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Throughout the investigation, it was estimated that Hemmert had spent $23,560 with his father's credit card since his disappearance, and he was captured using the card at ATMs on multiple occasions. On September 13, 2023, Hemmert admitted to shooting his father in bed, but claimed it was a suicide request.
He also confessed to cleaning up the scene and destroying the mattress which was found in trash bags in the attic, according to the probable cause statement. He admitted to spending as much as possibly $30,000 of his father's money with the credit card.
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