Genene Jones, age 66, is accused of killing 11-month-old Joshua Sawyers with a lethal dose of the anti-seizure medication Dilantin. He died in 1981. Jones was indicted May 25 by a grand jury and prosecutors, in Bexar County, TX, filed charges the same day.
In 1984, she was sentenced 99 years for killing Chelsea McClelland, who was 15-months old when Jones was Kerrville administered her with a fatal injection of succinylcholine, which causes short-term paralysis. It stopped the toddler’s heart – permanently.
Jones is scheduled for potential release from a Gatesville prison next year, although was also sentenced 60 years for harming 4-week-old Rolando Santos.
She overdosed him with the blood thinner heparin. He survived.
Jones work as a nurse increased children's risk of dying during her shift
Jones was sentenced to concurrent prison terms. When it was evident to prosecutors a few years ago that Jones would be released in 2018 under Texas’ mandatory release laws to ease overcrowding in prisons, they quietly initiated an investigation into her years as a pediatric nurse. Their task was challenging: medical records, where she worked, were destroyed, some potential witnesses have since died, and people’s memories fade.
She is believed to have killed 40 to 60 children from 1997 to 1982. Media in the United States dubbed her the Angel of Death. Jones has consistently refuted killing children.
She was working in an eight-bed intensive care unit as a pediatric nurse at a hospital in San Antonio when 42 children died at Bexar County Hospital, which was its name at the time what was, at the time.
Jones provided direct care for 20 of the 34 children who died. Other nurses expressed their suspicions, yet hospital supervisors were hesitant to believe that Jones, a nurse who appeared dedicated, would harm her patients.
During Jones’ shift children were over 25 times more likely to have a medical emergency and over 10 times more likely to die, according to an investigation and a pattern documented by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Jones’ co-workers called her shift the “Death Shift.”
Hospital didn't alert police during its image makeover
When officials at the hospital started taking the other nurses’ suspicions seriously, they still did not alert police.
The hospital’s reasoning was that they were already immersed in an image makeover for the hospital. Rather than fire Jones, all of the nurses in the pediatric ICU were replaced by the hospital.
After her job in the pediatric ICU, five months later, she went to work at a medical clinic in Kerrville for Dr. Kathleen Holland. In a one-month period, six of the doctor’s patients stopped breathing. They were rushed to a hospital. Chelsea McClelland was one of those patients. She died on September 17, 1982.
After Jones had injected the 15-month-old with succinylcholine, though the nurse was only supposed to give her immunizations. Jones was charged with and convicted of murdering the toddler.
Charges stemming from Joshua Sawyer’s death are partially possible because his mother, Connie Weeks, retained her son’s medical records for over three decades. It was all she had left of her son, she said.
If Jones is convicted killing the 11-month-old boy, she faces life in prison.
