A licensed vocational nurse named Genene Jones is suspected of using extremely potent drugs to cause medical emergencies in order to murder up to 60 infants and children while they were in her care. Genene was routinely investigated and even fired by two separate medical facilities due to the unusually high mortality rate of the kids in her care, but she persisted in giving the kids chemicals that caused heart attacks and life-threatening bleeding. After being sentenced to 99 years in prison for killing a four-week-old baby receiving a routine checkup and injuring several other people, she later attempted to murder another child and was given a second 60-year sentence. Due to vehement opposition from the victims’ relatives, her parole was denied. Despite the fact that she qualifies for early release under a Texas law designed to open up prison space, she will stay behind bars while five new child murder charges are investigated and tried. In order to avoid further embarrassing litigation, the Texas hospital authorities first misplaced and then destroyed her employment and duty records, so it is still unclear how many children “The Angel of Death,” as she was dubbed by the media, actually killed.
Genene Jones’s Career
Genene Jones began her career as a beautician in a hospital and had a strong attraction to medical professionals. She trained as a vocational nurse at the San Antonio Independent School District’s School of Vocational Nursing for a year with the goal of being closer to them.
Her first position at the Methodist Hospital in San Antonio came to an end when she was let go after only eight months of employment because she not only attempted to make decisions in areas over which she lacked authority but also because she was rude to a patient.
After a second brief employment, she was hired on October 30, 1978, in the pediatric intensive care section of the Bexar County Medical Center Hospital. She demonstrated a lack of discipline in the workplace by working longer hours than necessary, defying orders to act in the child’s best interests, skipping required classes, and committing up to eight nursing errors, including giving the incorrect medication.
If not for Pat Belko, the chief nurse’s affection for her, she would have been fired. Her attitude caused her coworkers to request transfers out of the ward. The protection only made her more obstinate and her increasing confidence made her crass and aggressive. She had a volatile temperament, frequently believed she was sick and visited the outpatient clinics more than 30 times in two years without receiving a diagnosis.
She requested to be given responsibility for the patients who were in critical condition, and James Robotham, who took over as the director of Bexar Hospital in 1981, agreed because he admired her nursing enthusiasm. Dr. Robotham was so impressed by her selflessness in caring for the dead children’s bodies that he wasn’t concerned when kids began passing away from non-fatal ailments. Belko and Dr. Robotham gave no attention when Genene’s coworkers began referring to her shift as “The Death Shift”.
The hospital management was alarmed when three infants died consecutively from drug overdoses, but Dr. Robotham’s request for a formal investigation into nurse Jones’ behavior was denied out of concern for bad press. In response to being moved from the pediatric unit, Genene left Bexar.
Genene was recruited in 1982 by Dr. Kathleen Holland, who was opening a pediatrics clinic in Kerrville, Texas. Dr. Holland, who completed her three-year residency at Bexar, decided to hire Genene despite Dr. Robotham’s advice and knowledge of the Bexar probe. As many as seven kids experienced unexplained seizures in the clinic’s first few months of operation, but they all recovered after getting care at the nearby Sid Peterson Hospital.
Dr. Holland presumed that because she was a specialist and had been sent the worst cases even though there were raised eyebrows at the hospital. Everything altered when Chelsea McClellan passed away while being transferred from the hospital to another facility, and the distraught Dr. Holland immediately began an investigation.
Dr. Holland was questioned by a medical commission regarding her use of succinylcholine, a muscle relaxant that can be fatal if used improperly. During a stock check on September 27, 1982, it was discovered that one bottle had pinprick holes in the stopper, while the other bottle contained only saline. One bottle was also entirely missing.
The Inquiry and Sentence
The cases of the eight kids who had medical issues at Holland’s clinic and the death of fifteen-month-old Chelsea McClellan were heard by a Kerr County grand jury on October 12, 1982. The child’s corpse was exhumed, and it was discovered that a succinylcholine overdose was what killed him. A second grand jury was called in San Antonio in February 1983 to look into the suspicious fatalities of 47 children at Bexar Hospital over the course of Genene’s four years of employment there.
On February 15, 1984, Genene Jones was found guilty of killing Chelsea McClellan and seriously hurting seven other people. She was given the maximum punishment of 99 years. She was found guilty in a second hearing of attempting to kill four-week-old Rolando Jones, and on October 24, 1984, she was given a concurrent 60-year sentence.
In 1984, Bexar hospital administrators destroyed hospital records, including several papers that had been subpoenaed by the grand jury, out of severe embarrassment over the bad press, saving Jones from further prosecution. In 2017, after completing only a third of her sentence and in accordance with a Texas rule intended to lessen prison overcrowding, her request for parole was rejected in response to protests from the families of the murdered children.
Due to the fact that she was charged on May 25, 2017, for the deaths of five additional children in 1981, she was unable to be released as planned in March 2018. A $1 million bail has been established in each case. Genene Jones is currently awaiting trial in the Bexar County jail, where she will stay until all of the cases are decided by Judge Frank Castro’s 399th State District Court. She has turned down a plea deal and is adamant that she didn’t murder the kids.
Genene’s Individual Existence
Genene Anne Jones was adopted by Dick and Gladys Jones, a San Antonio couple who had previously adopted three children, one of whom was younger than Genene, as soon as she was born on July 13, 1950. Dick was a skilled gambler and a serial business owner. First, a nightclub, then a restaurant, then a billboard company all failed as a result of his extravagant spending, which had a negative impact on the family.
She frequently pretended to be ill in order to get attention because she felt excluded and her parents’ approval was missing. She developed a reputation for being violent and for lying, manipulating, and betraying people in addition to being short and overweight, which made her loneliness worse. She was saddened by the sudden accidental death of her younger brother Travis when he was only 14 and the subsequent cancer-related death of her father a year later.
She wanted to get married in an effort to find security, but her mother Gladys objected on the basis that it was too soon since she hadn’t even graduated from high school. After finishing from John Marshall High School, she wed a high school dropout, but after seven months, James “Jimmy” Harvey DeLany Jr. enlisted in the Navy and left the couple.
Genene was a promiscuous woman who engaged in numerous affairs and boasted about her sexual escapades. After being encouraged by her mother to think about a career, she enrolled in Mim’s Beauty School and even gave birth to a son, Richard Michael DeLany, after Jimmy returned.
However, four years into their marriage, on June 3, 1974, she filed for divorce from him even though they later made up and went their separate ways. Heather, her second child, was conceived while she was reconciling with Jimmy and was delivered on July 17, 1977. Despite loving kids, she abandoned her own two kids in her mother’s care.
Estimated Net Worth
One of the wealthiest and most well-known criminals is Genene Jones. Genene Jones has a net worth of $5 million, according to our study of data from sources like Wikipedia, Forbes, and Business Insider.