Genene Jones

Suspected criminal activity First cases (1978–1981)

Jones initially worked the 11p.m.–7a.m. shift during her first three months at Bexar County Hospital. She later switched to the slot of 3p.m.–11p.m., where she was under the mentorship of registered nurse (RN) Cherlyn Pendergraft. At Jones's trial in 1984, Pendergraft testified that during the time she worked with Genene Jones, a six-day-old boy died from complications of necrotizing enterocolitis. Pendergraft, who was used to dealing with such situations, recalled that Jones "went berserk" over the boy's death, sobbing and staring at his body until hospital workers took the baby's corpse away to the facility's morgue.

By late 1981, the hospital registered an unusual death rate at the PICU. The facility's authorities had suspicions that Genene Jones could be harming babies, but their investigation proved inconclusive. The report alleged that even though ten baby deaths had occurred under Jones's watch, they could have been the product of a coincidence, while not fully discarding the possibility of negligence or wrongdoings by Jones. Despite the concerns, Jones continued to work at Bexar's PICU as more children suffered unexplained and abrupt health crises. Rumors began to spread among the nursing staff; Jones's colleagues began calling her shift the "Death Shift", though most – except for a nurse named Suzanna Maldonado – believed that it was "bad luck" instead of deliberate acts of harming children. On October 10, 1981, six-month-old Jose Antonio Flores died after suffering from an uncontrollable bleeding. Despite a 52-minute attempt to resuscitate him and the unusually violent nature of the baby's death, no autopsy was conducted on Flores's body. A handwritten record from the day of the boy's death highlighted that Genene Jones was present during the emergency brain scans immediately after the child decompensated, and that his health worsened even further shortly afterwards.

On September 23, 1982, Jones injected a five-month-old baby girl, Rolinda Ruff, with succinylcholine, a medication unprescribed to the girl, causing a severe health crisis and paralysis. The doctors who received Rolinda at the hospital, aware of previous incidents coming from Holland's private practice, decided to hold an emergency meeting and placed the baby under watch. An anaesthesiologist who helped stabilize the girl detected traits of poisoning compatible with succinylcholine and alerted the facility's board.

Jones kept a low profile as detectives investigated her past; different physicians and medical school deans presented evidence to a grand jury in San Antonio accusing Jones of deliberate wrongdoings. Jones was briefly arrested in November 1982 and later released on bail awaiting indictment into more cases. In April 1983, while awaiting trial, Jones married a 19-year-old nursing aide named Garron Ray Turk, who initially believed in her innocence.

Arrest, trial and incarceration Jones was arrested for a final time at her home in San Angelo on May 24, 1983, formally charged with the murder of Chelsea McClellan, and taken to a county jail in Williamson County, where she awaited her first court appearance. Jones pleaded not guilty on a May 27 arraignment and was remanded in custody on a $225,000 bond in Williamson County custody. The judge presiding over Jones's murder case was John Carter (who served since 2013 in the U.S. House of Representatives), granting Jones with a change of venue to Georgetown after defense counsels requested the trial to be taken away from Kerrville.

After the McClellan conviction, prosecutors brought new charges against Jones, indicting her in the attempted murder of six children by deliberately injecting them with harmful doses of medications. Subsequent investigations showed that during Jones's shifts, patients had ten times more probability of dying or suffering a decompensation, an algorithm that was not made while she was employed at Bexar County Hospital. She was convicted in June 1984 on one of the counts – the attempted murder of Rolando Santos – to whom she gave an injection of the blood thinner medication heparin on at least three occasions between December 1981 and January 1982. For that count of attempted murder, Jones was sentenced to a concurrent term of 60 years in prison, In a 1998 parole hearing and after denying any criminal action for years, Jones confessed to injecting babies with harmful intent and admitted guilt in the McClellan murder case. Author Peter Elkind, who spoke with her on several occasions about the writing of a book, said in 2011, that Jones not only denied the crimes when he visited her in prison in 1987, but that she also adamantly denied suffering from a mental health disorder and that at the time she had conflicting religious beliefs, switching a Cross for a Star of David on her chest and that she reported to be converting to Judaism. Patti and Reid McClellan personally campaigned against Jones's release, with Patti telling Anderson Cooper during an interview on CNN in August 2013 that Jones would "do it again" and urging families whose babies died or suffered unusual crises at San Antonio's PICU to testify and help build cases against Jones. Patti died in June 2019, before Jones's guilty plea.

Jones was moved from prison in Gatesville to a San Antonio facility in December 2017

Mental health professionals concluded in February 2019 that Jones was competent to stand trial and that she understood reality despite alleging diminished capacity due to having suffered from recent strokes; however, Judge Carruthers granted the defense's motion to have Jones evaluated again by different doctors.

On January 16, 2020, an elderly and frail Jones was taken into court in a wheelchair and moved assisted by a walker to stand before Judge Castro, who allowed relatives of the children, including the mother of Rosemary Vega and a sister of Paul Villareal, to give victim impact statements. Both women labelled Jones as "evil" and "cold-blooded", while Connie Weeks, mother of victim Joshua Sawyer, read a statement in court, wishing that Jones "live a long and miserable life behind bars". He also compares Jones with other nonmedical serial killers like Dorothea Puente and Aileen Wuornos, who killed for financial gain and claiming self-defense, respectively, contrasting it to Jones's to "insatiable need for control and recognition".

In her 2011 letter to the state's board of paroles and pardons, Jones admitted that her actions were heinous, but assumed no moral responsibility, alleging that she was mentally ill at the time of her crimes. She had strongly denied being mentally ill on several prior occasions, including in a 1987 interview with author Peter Elkind, to whom she claimed she had never harmed anyone and that she had no psychological problems.

In popular culture Horror writer Stephen King reportedly based Annie Wilkes, the antagonist of his novel Misery, on Jones, with many fans finding similarities between Wilkes and Jones.

In a 1991 made-for-TV movie adaptation of the 1988 book Deadly Medicine, Jones is portrayed by actress Susan Ruttan, while Veronica Hamel and Scott Paulin portray Kathleen Holland and her husband, respectively. 3 Joshua Sawyer Murder December 12, 1981 Injection of heparin January 16, 2020 (pled guilty under a plea deal) Life in prison with a minimum of 20 years before parole eligibility.

Dismissed under guilty plea Jones did not face trial for the other four counts of murder brought against her in 2017 under the terms of her plea deal, which dismissed four counts in exchange for a guilty plea on one of the five original counts. The charges are not acquitted.

Suspected killings +Suspected deathsBaby/ChildDate of deathCause of deathNotesChristopher James HogedaMay 21, 1981Cardiac arrest Hogeda had several health problems and his death was not initially suspected as foul play. Jose Antonio FloresOctober 10, 1981Bleeding The boy abruptly decompensated during Jones' shift under symptoms compatible with heparin poisoning. Doraelia RiosDecember 22, 1981Cardiac arrestThe girl was recovering from a successful gastrointestinal surgery when she suddenly decompensated and died on Jones' shift. Jimmy PearsonOctober 21, 1982Complications from seizuresPearson was a 7-year-old boy who suffered from severe intellectual disabilities and was unable to talk. He decompensated several times in August 1982, while under Jones' care. The boy ultimately succumbed to complications of these crises on October 21, 1982. District Attorney Sutton said that Pearson was injected with succinylcholine.