Spokane man gets 20 years for stabbing death of girlfriend

A Spokane man received more than 20 years in prison Thursday after he previously pleaded guilty to stabbing to death a woman who was trying to help him clean up his life.

Joseph W.K. Scheel, 28, had been charged with first-degree murder but agreed to plead guilty to second-degree murder for killing 47-year-old Edna “Patty” P. Hernandez, who also went by Edna Patricia Rodriguez Gomez.

“I came to hear these words because I needed to hear them,” Scheel told Spokane County Superior Court Judge Annette Plese. “I know I not only stole a life, but I stole an amazing woman from her family. I stand prepared for judgment.”

Plese noted that Hernandez had reported to her co-workers at Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center that she had been abused by Scheel prior to the killing. In late March, Hernandez checked herself into the hospital after she said she was thrown from a vehicle. She later said she had jumped from the vehicle.

“Not only did she have a family who loved her,” we heard “about her happy demeanor and how she made the people she worked with feel,” Plese said. Hernandez “was trying to help you get clean.”

Plese then sentenced Scheel to the high end of the standard range, and added 24 months for a deadly weapon enhancement. In all, Plese sentenced Scheel to 244 months or just more than 20 years.

“You were five days on meth, and police had to break in,” Plese said. “Those are aggravating factors.”

According to court records, Hernandez’s co-workers called Spokane County Sheriff’s deputies on April 3 asking for them to check on her welfare. They responded to 4909 E. Upriver Drive.

Scheel had barricaded himself in the apartment and yelled, “What are you doing? Get out of my apartment!” court records state. Deputies then forced in the door as Scheel tried to hold it shut.

“As they entered, Joseph (Scheel) resisted police trying to control and detain him for their safety,” Detective Kirk Keyser wrote. “After Scheel was detained, he learned Edna had been found inside the apartment deceased.”

Hernandez died from a stab wound to the neck and had other stab wounds to her hands and body. The apartment was covered with blood and deputies found an area in the bathroom where it appeared someone attempted to use chemicals to clean up other bloodstains. Within a foot of Hernandez’s body, deputies found a pair of scissors and a knife.

Maria Esthela Gomez Lugo, who is the mother of the victim, said she was “a mother with a shattered heart. My daughter recently came to Mexico and she spent time with us,” Lugo wrote in a letter to the judge. “She was happy, her positivism was always contagious, which is the one of the best qualities.”

Some 22 days after she returned from Mexico, “her life was abruptly taken by this man, whose name I want to forget,” Lugo wrote. She finished by asking for a “maximum sentence for this murderer.”

Karen Scheel, who is the convicted killer’s grandmother, wrote the judge and expressed remorse for the Hernandez family.

“Patty was more than my grandson’s girlfriend, she was a part of our family,” Karen Scheel wrote. “We loved her with all of our heart and we are all saddened by her loss and I can’t even imagine what her family is going through right now.”

Yet the grandmother asked for leniency. “This was a horrible, but isolated act done under the unfortunate influence of drugs, and that it would have never happened if Joey had been in his right frame of mind.”

Sonja Massie, one of Hernandez’s co-workers, wrote that Hernandez worked with her at Sacred Heart’s intensive care unit.

“I mourn her absence every day,” Massie wrote. “Her warmth made the difficulty of working in a high-stress and frequently tragic area more bearable. She was an inspiration to us all. My co-workers and I are simply heartbroken to lose our ray of sunshine.”