Tequila with Tina: Victim’s children talk about trial, their last words with Mom, what they would say to Yohn and how they can finally mourn

QUINCY — The first order of business after arriving at Chicks on the River Monday afternoon was to raise a glass to Mom.

Nineteen months after Christine “Tina” Lohman Schmitt, was heinously attacked in her home on Nov. 9, 2021, her four adult children gathered to celebrate the end of the nightmare and a chance to finally begin to mourn. 

They called it “Tequila with Tina.”

Hours after an Adams County jury found Bradley Yohn guilty on all six counts in his criminal sexual assault trial, siblings Heidi Young, Chip Lohman, Derek Lohman and Ilsa Terrell were joined by Carley Hiland, one of Lohman Schmitt’s granddaughters, and Louis Degonia, Terrell’s fiancé, to talk to the media for the first time — about the verdict, Yohn, their mother and the future. 

DA: Was there any doubt as you waited for the verdict? 

CL: No. We heard they were getting lunch.

HY: You know, there’s a lot of people who would ask for lunch. I get that. We weren’t too concerned.

DA: What were you doing as you were waiting? What did you talk about?

HY: We had lunch and read comments on YouTube.

DA: Is there something that sticks out to you that, no matter what happens from this point going forward, you’re never going to forget about this whole ordeal?

IT: That there’s actually pure evil out in the world. I pretty much always saw the good in everyone, and now I’m a little bit more hesitant. One hundred percent.

CH: I agree with that. It’s so easy to just think that you’d be fine, pulled over on a road, waiting for help. Yeah, there is evil in this world. But there’s also good in this world. Like (Ilsa) said, we’re definitely all more cautious about who we’re going to let in our lives, going out at night. I’ve just been so much more aware of my surroundings, especially at night. It’s definitely changed.

DA: How has it been for you guys (Chip and Derek)? Your sisters were here for every hearing. You both live out of town. You hadn’t gone through this.

CL: We followed the news as best we could have, but yeah, it’s difficult. I didn’t want to be here when the pictures (of Tina) came out. The other stuff, I can handle. But I don’t need to see that. I go back to where he said they were going to tell a narrative, but in the end, they were given all the facts, and he was the one making the narrative. It played itself out the way it should have.

DL: (Tina) hid a lot of details from us that she didn’t tell everybody. I was in the courtroom on Tuesday. I heard those for the first time, even those that were not in the reports. I didn’t know about it until I actually heard it. That was pretty horrible. And I don’t think there’s anything that can prepare you, no matter how much you go through the things. You start to get numb. It seems to be routine, but it’s just really horrible. Yeah, it’s really hard.

DA: What would you like for people to know about your mom that didn’t come out through the trial?

HY: That she was a true woman of class, that she was a woman of honor. She had traveled all over the world. It sickens me that (Yohn) has put her to this level in the public, talking about things that were embarrassing for her, embarrassing for anybody. That wasn’t my mom. My mom was very high class at all times. She always had poise, and she taught us to do that. She said no matter how poor you are, you always show class. It makes me sad that the embarrassing details will come out about her that she wouldn’t have wanted out. One more thing. They kept calling her the elderly woman, the old woman. She was really a beautiful woman and very young for her age. She wasn’t that typical 77-year-old woman.

IT: She wore makeup every day. She did her hair every day. She loved shopping and red wine. We know that. She always had herself together, very classy. She was strong. There’s been multiple times I’ve seen her in situations when I would have been just mean and horrible to someone, and she showed me how to do it with poise and strength. I wanted to say a few things to Bradley Yohn when I was on the stand, but I kept her in my head. I can’t be that way. You saw me smirk a few times where something was going to come out, but I brought it back in. She taught me that, and I’m glad.

DA: A question I received a couple of times in the past weeks was: What was the official cause of your mother’s death?

IT: We’re in a position that we’d like to have it looked at a little bit closer before we say what we think it was.

DA: Do you know what the coroner officially ruled?

IT: I do, but I don’t think at this point we’re going to put that out on record or anything.

DA: Your mother lived for 33 days after the attack. What were those days like?

IT: She was very excited. We all got together, most of us, for Thanksgiving. She was very grateful for that. She had already shopped for Christmas. She had everybody’s list. I took over the Christmas list after she passed away. She had it down. What I couldn’t get, I did my best with what I had. Yeah, she was just ready for the holidays. That was really her holiday.

DL: For the first time in a very long time, we took a picture with all of us the week after the attack. We hadn’t all been together for a very long time. It made her happy.

DA: Did she tell you that?

DL: She was very happy that we got all together and were able to set some things aside.

CL: November 18, 2021 (shows photo on his cellphone).

IT: How do I look in that picture?

DL: You look skinny.

IT: I was skinnier then. I will say the cortisol (the body’s main stress hormone) from all this going in my body from all the stress and everything … oh, that weight just went poof!

DA: What was it like listening to Bradley Yohn?

IT: So disturbing, just him wanting to relive it or just him trying to make him the victim. The multiple times he came out and said he was beaten in jail, or they didn’t give him this or that. He didn’t get his way. 

CL: He felt it was everyone’s fault but his. Yeah. To him, it was “They didn’t do their job, but it’s not my fault.” I had nothing to do with it. In the end, they proved he did.

DA: If you had a chance to sit across from him, and he couldn’t touch you, what would you say?

DL: Josh said that this was random. We don’t know him. He’s nothing. He was just a random chance meeting. I don’t think they were even looking necessarily for a victim. If the sergeants in St. Charles (Mo.) County would not have let him out by mistake, that chance meeting wouldn’t have even happened. That’s the thing. I have nothing to say to him. He’s nothing. He’s a career criminal.

DA: Is that how you all generally feel? You have nothing to say to him?

IT: Not a thing. He’s nothing to us. He’s nothing.

HY: I just don’t understand why they had to hurt her. She was giving them everything. Here, take my money. Take everything. I don’t know why they had to hurt her the way they did.

DA: How did you learn about what happened in St. Charles County? 

IT: I don’t think we can say anything, because that might be something we’re going to be looking into a little bit more. Karen (Blackledge, Yohn’s accomplice) was in court four times with three different judges on the day she attacked my mom. Nobody looked into that. 

DA: This case has consumed your lives for the better part of two years. How do you go forward?

IT: It’s really hard because she really was our matriarch. Everything that we did was kind of around her. For me, it was like, “Hey, we’re going out to dinner. You want to meet us?” Something like that. My second oldest daughter went to her house every morning with her kids. She was a part of our family. We went and saw her. These last few years have already been such a blur. I don’t know, now that this is over, how you go ahead. I’m sure that we’re going to start mourning now.

DA: Have you had a chance to mourn?

DL: No. It’s been weird and incomplete.

DA: Do you get to go to the grave site? 

HY: We just decorated it up the day that we got kicked out.

DA: The day you got kicked out?

HY: The day me and Ilsa got kicked out of the courtroom because we were witnesses. So yes, we decorated it for the holidays.

IT: Christmas has begun.

DA: When Josh made the comment about how your mom was the kind of grandma who drove people crazy because she would play Christmas music in November, he’s not lying, is he?

CH: She was ready for the holidays in November.

HY: That was my last conversation with her. She called me and asked what I wanted for Christmas. I had COVID, and I said, “Oh, mom, I’m so sick right now. I’ll think about it and let you know.” Our last words were “I love you” and “I love you too.”

DA: Do you remember your last words with your mom?

IT: It was funny, because I was doing her hair Friday before she left to go to her farm (in Monroe City, Mo.). It was just our normal time for me to do her hair. She was just fine. She was like, “I just want to get you the right gift for Christmas. You need to tell me what you want.” And I always said, “Well, it’s got to be good.” That’s how I joked with her. Then when Tim (Schmitt, Tina’s husband) called me and said … I don’t even know. I can’t even remember. It was such a blur when he called me on Sunday. He’s like, “Your mom’s going to the hospital.” I’m like, “What? What do you mean?” He says, “Well, they’re here working on her.” He really wasn’t saying anything. I asked, “What hospital?” He said, “Well, I’m over here in Missouri.” I said, “Like Hannibal? I would think so.” Then he said somebody’s working on her. I said, “Working on her?” That’s when I started calling everybody. I didn’t know what was going on.

HY: Tim called me first because I live right there in Missouri. He said, “Your mother went down.”  I thought she just fell. I said, “Went down?” He said, “Yes, she went down, and I couldn’t get her up.” Ilsa was on her way, and she was keeping me updated. I had COVID. I couldn’t go.

IT: I got a chance to see her in the hospital, but I didn’t talk to her.

DA: Did you remember the last conversation with her.

CL: She compartmentalized. She didn’t want to tell Derek and I a lot.

DA: Why do you think she did that?

CL: It was her class thing. She could tell girls things. She could talk to Deanna (Chip’s wife) because she’s a nurse or my daughter because she’s a doctor. But with guys, she was a classy lady. We just talked about general stuff and how she was feeling. She said she was kind of remembering a few things, and she said, “I don’t like it.” And then she changed (the topic) real quick. She would say, “I need to know what the kids want for Christmas.” She was always really worried about getting the right gifts and everything.

DA: What about the last time you talked to her?

DL: I think we argued about her damn magnifying glasses. She wore cheaters. She lost a pair, and I was trying to get her a pair. Every one I brought back, she thought it was ugly. “No, those are ugly. Get something else.” Then there was the cellphone deal. Yohn threw her cellphone out (of the car on the night of the attack), so she didn’t have one. She needed a new cellphone. The last thing I ever said to her was, “Hey, I love you.” I gave her a hug and had to go back.

DA: It’s remarkable that we’ve talked about your mom now for 20 minutes, and there have been no tears. Instead, you talk about her glasses, the fact you fixed her hair every Friday … 

IT: The first Friday after she was gone, it was super hard. I didn’t even want to be here. I wanted to vomit. I mean, it was hard. Fridays were hard for a while.

DA: You have all chosen to take the high road and move along.

DL: She was a bright, shiny person. That’s just who she was. She was really strong. She would have faced against him in that courtroom. There’s no doubt. She probably would have been kicked out several times.

IT: She had $20 in her pocket to give to somebody to help her to turn on her lights. She was ready to give (Yohn) the money.

DA: What problems was she having with her car? 

DL: She was not mechanically inclined.

IT: She just couldn’t figure out how get her lights turned back on. Normally they were on auto. She drove basically from American Building Supply at 5 p.m. on Nov. 9, right after Daylight Savings Time started. She hadn’t been driving because Tim had been driving her. This was her first time driving in the afternoon, and it’s now a lot darker. She was like, “Screw it. I’m going to drive on home.” But then when she got down to the Bottom Road, she’s like, “I’m going to get myself killed.” Then she decided to pull over.

DL: There are no lights on Bottom Road.

IT: That’s when she realized, I better turn them on. People were flashing their lights at her and honking at her.

HY: Mom was super smart, but she couldn’t figure that.

DL: Super smart, but not technically inclined.

DA: Throughout the trial, there seemed to be a lot of people cheering for you. They understood what you were going through. They wanted you to come out of this OK in the end.

IT: It really is a community problem. This is something that happened to our mom, but it could have happened to anyone’s mom, anyone’s daughter, anyone’s grandmother. We want the community to be more aware to watch out for other people. It was 5 p.m. on a Tuesday night. How many people drove by them and didn’t stop? That’s what sad. No one stopped to help. It’s not that you always think that there’s a problem when you see a car pulled over. Maybe just pull over, one more car, just to see if there is anything else I can do. Maybe it would have happened. Who knows? I’ve never had to deal with anything like this before in my life.

HY: As far as like the judicial system in our community, if someone breaks probation, they need to be held accountable. If they go before a judge four times, they owe all that money and all those charges, something should have been done.

DA: It sounds like it really bothers you that this wouldn’t have happened had (Yohn and Blackledge) been where you believe they were supposed to be.

CH: I think we’re still all in shock. It feels like I’m waiting for a call, and someone says, “Wait, they made a mistake. You have to go back.” 

IT: Or we found out there’s a new law., and we now can’t charge them for three or four of those felonies. He shouldn’t have been out. Neither should she have been.

DA: It’s interesting that you’re still waiting for something bad to happen.

HY: Even during this process in our personal lives alone, things have gone bad. So, yeah, we’re just waiting. No kidding, I totaled my car on Tuesday.

IT: (Yohn) made threats to us in during the different motions. He said, “Was it worth it for the money, girls?”

HY: Or when he gets out on appeal, our family better watch out.

IT: What do we do with that?

CL: With him being pro se, he got to interview these two (sisters). He’s got all our information, all our home addresses, our phone numbers.

HY: He’s tried to call me twice.

DA: What was it like being interviewed by him? You talked a lot about maintaining your mom’s class and not reacting to him.

IT: I was worrying about what if I say that one thing that changes this whole thing, it’s my mom. I will do anything for her, I did everything I could for her whenever I could. For me to say one word or one thing wrong, this could all be over for me. Just to disappoint my whole family or disappoint her. It was very scary. I had a lot of pressure on me.

HY: Same. I was worried I would say the wrong thing and cause them to lose the case. It was scary. There was so much anger going through me. You can see it on the video. The mere fact that he was allowed to ask us questions as a witness, it just set wrong with me.

CL: That being said, they did great. The easiest thing to remember, and when you keep saying it over and over again, is the truth. I’ve been a union rep. I’ve been in with investigations, and the easiest thing to remember is the truth. That’s what they did.

DA: What was it like when the trial was supposed to start last June and he said, “I can’t do this”? 

CH: I felt bad for Derek. He drove here from Colorado.

DL: Yeah, it got a little ridiculous the first time. After him saying he’s going to be pro se and that he can handle it. Then we get right to jury, and he’s like, “I need help. I can’t do it.” And he did it, what, three times back and forth? There’s got to be a better way to do this, I swear. I just don’t feel like somebody as evil as him should be interviewing the family members who have already suffered. I felt so sorry for these guys.

IT: Tried and true heroes (laughs).

DA: Oh, I’m using that.

HY: We’ve been waiting for comments on YouTube.

IT: Yeah, like, “Look at those daughters go.”

HY: We just want to thank everybody who helped us. 

IT: Ruth. Definitely Ruth (Boden, a deputy with the Adams County Sheriff’s Department).

HY: She’s our girl. We want to party with her.

IT: We want to party with Ruth.

CL: Kelsey Miller (an investigator with the sheriff’s department) was amazing. She did the interviews. She was very tactful. Got the information but was considerate of our feelings.

DL: (Joe) Lohmeyer, (Jake) McMahon, (John) Schone (with the sheriff’s department).

CL: They all did an amazing job.

DA: What was it like working with Josh Jones and Laura Keck (from the Adams County State’s Attorney’s Office)?

IT: They fight like brother and sister. They’re like a married couple. They did show care and concern. I don’t think at the beginning, I understood what direction they were going. I didn’t feel they were very informative in giving me stuff. But I also get it, now that we’re at the end, why they couldn’t. It was just a lot of confusion of “I don’t know what’s going on.” I would find out we’d have court this day, and I was like, oh, gosh, OK, I need to move my clients. That was kind of irritating. But I get it now considering where we are today and why they had to do it that way. 

CL: And Trisha (Hubbard, victim witness coordinator for Adams County). Trisha was great.

HY: And Kendall (Cottrell) with QUANADA, one of our advocates. She was there to help filter any questions or any comments that we had that we didn’t feel like we were getting an answer for.

IT: To be honest, when (Yohn) was going to trial for the USB drive, no one informed us that was happening. No one told us about it. Maybe they felt that (crime) had nothing to do with this (crime), but it was information about my mom. So I believe it had everything to do with us. That’s when I got irritated, so I went to QUANADA. Someone had told me you can get an advocate through QUANADA who will make sure to be watching things. The (Tim) Bliefnick case was going on during that time, so I felt like we were kind of on the backburner during that. I decided to go to QUANADA and talk to somebody, and that’s where Kendall came in.

CL: Me sitting back, Josh and Laura gave (Yohn) enough leniency to let him do his motions, because I felt it would limit the appeals. I also thought the judge (Roger Thomson) gave a great amount of leniency to let him get his point across for a guy who not technically an attorney.

DA: That had to be hard for you guys to just sit there and listen to him make all those motions and say some of the things that he said.

DL: The worst part was these two (Heidi and Ilsa) going through all of that and not even getting to sit through the trial.

DA: What was that like for you, to not be in the courtroom?

HY: Well, I guess we had FOMO (fear of missing out), but that’s not the right way to say that, because it wasn’t something fun. Everybody was in there, including Tim’s girlfriend, and me and my sister couldn’t be in there. We wanted to know what was going on, but then we just made the best of it. We went and decorated her grave. We did a day of relaxing and a spa day, just to clear our minds up, but then I had a car accident.

DA: Is there anybody you hadn’t heard from in forever, and they reached out to you because of this? 

CL: I was keeping up with people. Sheldon (Robinson, a childhood friend) and I still talk from time to time. I called him when he had his heart attack. When his grandma passed away, my mom and her, they were really tight when we were growing up. It was tough.

HY: There were friends and people that you haven’t seen forever. They were all like, I’m so sorry. There were lots. Last year, there was a lady I worked with in the psych ward of the hospital. I barely talked to her since then, and she’s been messaging me every day. You’ve got people like that. There were old friends from grade school I heard from.

CL: I get a lot. I didn’t want to go to (his 40-year Quincy High School graduating class) reunion in June and be the talk of that. You knew there was potential that might happen. I told Deanna, “You know, if it happens, I’m just going to walk away.” I didn’t want to ruin it for her. I did talk to several people, like all the guys I was on the wrestling team with back then. It was OK. I’m still protective about all of this.