Patty Prewitt began writing letters soon after arriving in prison in 1986. The 36-year-old mother of five had been convicted of murdering her husband. Her first letter, dated May 6, was a kind of confession.
"This is the first time I've ever started a letter with no idea who to send it to," she wrote. "I can't tell any of my loved ones the truth. And the truth is that I'm not doing well. My family always thinks I'm strong, but it's an illusion."
The account of Prewitt's first week in prison is one of thousands of letters she wrote through the next 38 years. By the time Missouri Gov. Mike Parson commuted her sentence in 2024 — paving the way for her release on probation — she was 75 years old. At the time of her release, she was the longest-serving female inmate in the state's prison system.
But in 1986, Prewitt was completely unprepared for prison. She now admits that she made no plan for how she would parent her kids or who would take care of them.
"I was living in denial," Prewitt said in an interview during a recent visit to St. Louis. "Somehow, in my head, I didn't think I'd ever leave my children. So I was worthless. We lost the appeal, and I went to prison [and] left my children with my folks."
Even in prison, Prewitt was determined to be a parent. On this episode of "St. Louis on the Air," Prewitt reflected on her journey alongside her daughter Jane Prewitt Watkins, who was 16 when her mother began serving a prison sentence of 50 years without the possibility of parole.
As a teenager, with her mother in prison and her father killed, "It was terrifying, honestly," said Prewitt Watkins. She described having to take charge of her siblings, the youngest 8 years old, as the family reorganized around the new reality.
"There was quite a bit of peeling potatoes," she added, "and quite a bit of brushing teeth and washing faces."
Prewitt was eventually allowed to see her children regularly. She set up a system of one-on-one visits — but the goodbyes were emotionally devastating. In another letter from 1986, she wrote that her children "howled like wounded animals" as they were separated from her and led away.
It wasn't an uncommon experience in prison.
"Almost every woman in prison that I met was a mother or mothered someone," Prewitt noted. "Most of our conversations, we were worried about our kids."
Over the next four decades, Prewitt and her children built a bond that sustained them through the long separation.
"I was a 'hands-on' mama," she explained. "When I was home and I'm doing dishes, I could have a kid next to me. We could talk one-on-one. That's not happening in prison. So at that prison, they had a park bench off to the side. I could tell one of the kids would be looking at me like, 'My turn.' So we go over to the park bench and have a little conversation, and sometimes they rat on each other … but it was important to have that time. I could fix some problems, but I couldn't fix all of the problems — but every kid needs some one-on-one."
Prewitt was also a prolific letter-writer. She estimated that she averaged at least one letter per day. Over 38 years, that would mean more than 14,000 messages. Many of them were sent to lawmakers, governors and other public officials, making her case for innocence.
Prewitt's most precious letters, however, were addressed to her family and children, who treated them like treasures.
"We would pass them around," recalled Jane Prewitt Watkins. "We would read them to each other … and we've also raised our own children with these letters. As my sons were growing up, there would always be a letter on the kitchen island that anybody could read if they wanted to feel more connected to their granny."
A collection of 96 of Prewitt's letters were published last year in the first volume of her memoir, "Trying to Catch Lightning in a Jar," which covers the first 18 years of her incarceration. Prewitt used her access to a prison computer lab to type copies of her letters, which she later sent to a friend for preservation. The letters eventually came to the attention of publisher Some People Press.
The book's title was inspired by one of Prewitt's earliest letters, which described her attorney's disheartening forecast of her chances in appealing her conviction.
"He lectured that winning an appeal is much like trying to catch lightning in a jar," she wrote in the September 1986 letter. "I pictured myself standing on a hill during a wild electrical storm with the wind and rain whipping and thunder rolling over me — while I hold a mason jar high in the air, hoping lightning will strike so I can capture a bolt and thus go home."
Today, though her sentence has been commuted, Prewitt is still trying to capture something elusive — an official pardon and declaration of her innocence. She has always maintained that police ignored evidence involving a man she claims broke into her home in 1984, assaulted her and killed her husband. According to reporting by the Marshall Project, Prewitt's attempts to prove her innocence have been thwarted by a state court system that makes it difficult for people to challenge their convictions through DNA testing. In 2018, a court denied Prewitt's motions to test DNA in her case.
What remains undeniable is that Prewitt inspired an army of supporters who believed she deserved to be free. The group included George Lombardi, former director of the Missouri Department of Corrections, who wrote in 2019 that "Patty has accomplished more, given more and touched the lives of more individuals than many of us outside prison will ever achieve."
Prewitt is not fully free. Five months before her release, she watched as a Missouri judge overturned the 1980 murder conviction of Sanda Hemme, who had spent 43 years in prison. Hemme was exonerated — meanwhile, Prewitt remains, in the eyes of the law, a convicted murderer serving the remainder of her original sentence on probation.
She is still hoping that a Missouri governor will issue her a full pardon, allowing her to travel freely without checking in with a probation officer. Today, she lives with Prewitt Watkins near Kansas City. The two have spent the past year reconnecting with family. It's an ongoing family reunion more than 40 years in the making.
But it isn't the end of that journey.
"We would love to know who killed our father," said Prewitt Watkins. "To have justice for him, for all of us — to have her exonerated and have an answer to what happened … but at this point, I think we just need to focus on the pardon."
To hear the full conversation with Patty Prewitt and her daughter Jane Prewitt Watkins — including excerpts from Prewitt's letters, and a discussion of her children's book "A Little Person Like You Whose Mommy Goes to Prison" — listen to "St. Louis on the Air" on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube, or click the play button below.
"St. Louis on the Air" brings you the stories of St. Louis and the people who live, work and create in our region. The show is produced by Miya Norfleet, Emily Woodbury, Danny Wicentowski, Elaine Cha and Alex Heuer. Layla Halilbasic is our production assistant. The audio engineer is Aaron Doerr.
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