Keeping Genene Jones in Prison: KSAT 12 on the New Indictments, the Bible Dispute and the 2020 Plea

Name: Keeping Genene Jones in Prison: KSAT 12 on the New Indictments, the Bible Dispute and the 2020 Plea
Uploaded: 2020-03-17T00:00:00Z
Duration: 12 min 11 s
Description: Part 5 of KSAT 12's 2020 series on Genene Jones: how a prosecutor reopened the old files before her scheduled release, the new murder indictments, the fight over her Bible, and the families' statements at her 2020 guilty plea.

Part 5 of KSAT 12's 2020 series on Genene Jones: how a prosecutor reopened the old files before her scheduled release, the new murder indictments, the fight over her Bible, and the families' statements at her 2020 guilty plea.

Subject: Genene Jones
Recorded: January 16, 2020
Runtime: 12:11

Content warning: Concerns the killing of babies and infants in a hospital pediatric unit; victim impact statements by bereaved mothers; no graphic detail.

The Interview

This is not an interview with Genene Jones, and she is not heard in it. It is Part 5 of "In A Killer's Care", a six-part KSAT 12 news series from San Antonio, published in March 2020. The segment follows the effort to keep Jones in prison after she became due for mandatory release in 2018: a Bexar County prosecutor describes reopening decades-old case files, KSAT's earlier news clips report the new murder indictments of 2017, interviewees discuss why she might have killed, and reporter RJ Marquez covers the dispute over her Bible and her guilty plea of January 2020. It ends with courtroom footage from that plea hearing: a few words from the judge, the victim impact statements of two mothers, and the statement of Chelsea McClellan's late mother, read by Chelsea's sister.

Historical Context

Genene Jones worked as a licensed vocational nurse in the pediatric intensive care unit of Bexar County Hospital in San Antonio in the early 1980s, at a time when an unusual number of children died there. In 1984 she was convicted in Georgetown of the murder of 15-month-old Chelsea McClellan, who died after an injection at a Kerrville pediatric clinic, and was sentenced to 99 years; a second conviction, for injury to a child, brought a concurrent 60-year term. She was suspected in many more deaths. Under a Texas law of the time, passed to relieve prison overcrowding, credit for good behavior made her due for mandatory release in 2018.

Circumstances of the Recording

KSAT produced the series after Jones's guilty plea of January 16, 2020, drawing on its own coverage of the case since the 1980s. In 2017 the Bexar County District Attorney's Office, under District Attorney Nico LaHood, obtained five new murder indictments against her for deaths of infants in the Bexar County Hospital unit. In January 2020 she pleaded guilty to the murder of 11-month-old Joshua Earl Sawyer, who died in December 1981, and was sentenced to life in prison; the other four charges were dismissed.

What the Interview Covers

A legal commentator explains the mandatory release law. A prosecutor, probably Jason Goss, describes how an investigator urged him to look at the Jones cases, how 27 dusty boxes of records were brought out, and how he worked through them every evening for about a year and a half and found five cases he believed could be proved. KSAT's 2017 news clips report the indictments, including the fifth, for the death of Paul Villarreal. Interviewees consider her motive, including the theory of Munchausen syndrome by proxy, and say that no clear reason has emerged. RJ Marquez's report covers her failed attempt to have the cases dismissed; a prosecutor's 2018 testimony about a prison inmate's letter that claimed Jones had blamed "the voices" in her head (a secondhand claim, and clipped in the video's audio); a journalist, probably Peter Elkind, on Jones's 2011 letter to the state nursing board, which he calls "a semi-confession", and on a parole officer's account of an admission; the seizure of her Bible and a prosecutor's reading of notes she had written in it; and the plea. Judge Frank J. Castro tells her she took "God's most precious gift." Connie Weeks, Joshua Sawyer's mother, and Rosemary Vega Cantu, mother of Rosemary Vega, address her in court, and Chelsea McClellan's sister reads the statement of their late mother, Petti McClellan Wiese.

What Makes the Recording Significant

The segment records how the case was reopened decades after the original trials, in the prosecutor's own account, and preserves the moment at which the families of her victims addressed Jones in court after nearly forty years.

Archival Importance

KSAT has covered the Jones case since the 1980s, and one of the reporters heard here covered the 1984 trial. The series gathers that coverage, and this part documents the 2017 to 2020 prosecution that kept Jones in prison.

Important Caveats

Jones does not speak in this video. The "voices in her head" in the title comes from a prison inmate's letter as described by a prosecutor in a 2018 hearing; it is a secondhand claim, not a statement Jones made on the record. "Re-indicted" in the title is loose: the 2017 indictments were new charges concerning different children, not the old charges. The figure of "60 babies" heard in the video is an estimate of suspected deaths, not a count proved in court; Jones stands convicted of two murders. The discussion of motive is the interviewees' opinion. Jones's reported admissions in the segment (to an inmate, to a parole officer, in a letter to the nursing board) are accounts by others or her own written words read out, not recordings of her. About 25 seconds of the narration (08:00 to 08:28) is clipped in the video itself, so the inmate-letter passage is heard only in fragments.

Anchor: Genene Jones was convicted more than 30 years ago of killing at least one of the babies and is set to be released from prison next year.

Legal Commentator: People need to understand that when someone receives a sentence of life in prison, it doesn't mean life in prison. It always means that there will be a possibility of parole. And in some cases, there will be a required parole release date. At the time, 99 years didn't mean 99 years, didn't mean a life sentence because of the overcrowding situation. That law is sometimes referred to as mandatory release law. What it says, in effect, is that a person who has served a certain portion of a sentence is entitled to be released if they have been on good behavior during the time that they were in prison. Now, that law came about because of severe prison overcrowding in Texas. It operated in the early '80s, particularly during the time of the Genene Jones conviction, in a way that required the release of prisoners, even people committed for murder. They had served a certain amount of a sentence plus had credit for good behavior.

Narrator: This seemed like a story from long ago, and then, lo and behold, Genene Jones, [unclear: "have suspected serial killer since the 99 years" / "a suspected serial killer sentenced to 99 years"] in one case and 60 years in another, was about to go free after 35 years, which is not a short amount of time, but certainly not what people expected.

Prosecutor: I used to be the court chief in the 437th District Court, and I had an investigator there named Larry DeHaven who talked to me early on, after he had seen me try a few cases, and said, you know, I'd really like somebody to look at these Genene Jones cases. He said, look, you know, this nurse had killed 60 babies and she's gonna be released if somebody doesn't do something about it. It was about a year and a half later, or a year later, that I was actually, I was watching Forensic Files. On one of those shows, and the show was about Genene Jones. Was at that time is I kind of, it renewed my interest and I was able, I really had some time that I could work on it, that I went to Nico and I talked to him about it. And I said, look, I'd really like an opportunity to look into this and to see what we can do, because her release date's coming up pretty quick.

Prosecutor: They dug up about 27 boxes that had dust on them and hadn't seen the light of day for about 30 years. And we just opened them up, and then I started working from about 5 p.m. to midnight for about a year and a half. Every day after work, I would just go through those boxes, categorize them, figure it out, see what cases there were. And there were, you know, just medical records and grand jury testimonies and all kinds of things. So once we got a good handle on that, we ended up finding five cases that I believed that we could prove beyond a reasonable doubt at trial that Genene Jones murdered those babies.

Interviewer: Five p.m. to midnight every day after serving as the chief prosecutor for a felony court.

Prosecutor: That's right.

Interviewer: That's extreme dedication. Why is it so important to you?

Prosecutor: The first mother I talked to, when we were still kind of getting it going, was Petti McClellan, who was just an incredibly strong, inspiring person. After talking to Petti, I realized that it's not theoretical. It's real people that have a real stake in it, and there was a lot of stakeholders.

Anchor: Today, a new murder indictment.

Prosecutor: She was indicted on two cases during the summer of 2017, and then a couple of months later she was indicted in more cases.

Anchor: A new charge against a convicted murderer known as the Angel of Death. As Dillon Collier reports, it's the first charge against Jones in more than 30 years, but it may not be the last.

Anchor: In other news, she's suspected of killing up to 60 babies but could be a free woman in less than a year. The Bexar County district attorney appears to be bound and determined to not let that happen, Nico LaHood announcing two more murder indictments against Genene Jones, the so-called Angel of Death, months from her projected release date from prison.

Anchor: So-called killer nurse Genene Jones facing a new fifth murder indictment. Jones now charged with the 1981 death of infant Paul Villarreal.

Narrator: Prosecutors worked tirelessly to keep Jones in prison. They succeeded. But throughout this entire ordeal, one question has lingered: why? Why did Jones kill innocent babies? It is a question that everyone connected to this case, from prosecutors to the victims' families to reporters who've covered this story to our entire community, have asked, and decades later are still asking.

Interviewee: There's no apparent motive. Even after all of these years, there's no obvious reason why she would have done this, other than to exercise power and control over these helpless patients who were in her care.

Interviewee: I buy into what's now called the Munchausen syndrome, a hero complex, if you will. You get somebody real close to death, and then you magically, through your skills, bring them back to life, revive them again.

Interviewee: I think she is an example of a syndrome that's been described by experts as Munchausen syndrome by proxy.

Interviewee: I think the problem is much, was much deeper and is much deeper than some hero complex. I think she had no emotion. I mean, she understood that other people were upset, she understood somebody else lost a child. Other than that, did it affect her? [unclear: "as far as I could tell her" / "Not as far as I could tell"]

Interviewee: When you hear of something like this happening, any kind of serial killing, you immediately think, well, it must be the product of some kind of mental illness. And I guess that probably is one of the things that piques everybody's interest, is the fact that we all want to know why, and I don't know if we ever will.

Anchor: Genene Jones's path from nurse to convicted child killer to the present day took another turn in January of this year, when she pleaded guilty to the murder of 11-month-old Joshua Earl Sawyer. RJ Marquez walks us through the events that led up to that plea agreement that finally gave some of the families of the Bexar County babies a sense of closure.

Rj Marquez: Jones initially pleaded not guilty to baby deaths in Bexar County and wanted to have those cases dismissed. That request was denied in April of 2018. Prosecutor Jason Goss testified during a hearing in April of 2018 that a letter written by a prison inmate had claimed that [cut off in the video's audio] to the crimes. Goss said t [cut off in the video's audio] the prison inmate wrote that [cut off in the video's audio] Jones to get parole. The inmate [cut off in the video's audio] that Jones had told her that s [cut off in the video's audio] the babies. The voices i [cut off in the video's audio]

Rj Marquez: Last September, a battle over Jones's Bible loomed over the case. The Bible was seized during a sweep of Jones's cell. Jones wanted the Bible back, but prosecutors at the time said that it had value to their case.

Prosecutor: There are some, some handwriting of Genene Jones in her Bible, some references to children, to sin, to sort of a variety of things. "I did the worst thing," in quotes. "Gave it all away to Satan today," underlined. "I take it back," underlined. Well, what is, what is that referencing? You know, I don't know.

Rj Marquez: Months later, Jones would make a plea deal with prosecutors. She pleaded guilty to Joshua Sawyer's death in 1981.

Interviewee: Petti would say she's never going to admit her guilt. She wants everybody to know that she's the smartest person in the room. So the fact that she was able to admit that she killed Joshua Sawyer was huge for them. It was something that they never thought.

Judge: You took God's most precious gift: babies, defenseless, innocent.

Rj Marquez: That's what they wanted from the outset, and that is to make sure that Jones never again takes a breath outside prison.

Ksat Reporter Who Covered The 1984 Trial: She's a chilling, chilling person to this day to look at. Quite frankly, aside from what the passage of time has done to her physical appearance, she doesn't appear any different than she did over 30 years ago, covering the trial. She's just got almost a blank look about her.

Rj Marquez: As part of the plea agreement, the charges in the deaths of four other babies were dismissed. But the victims' families found some peace knowing that Jones will likely spend her very last days in prison. They had a chance to address her in what's called a victim impact statement.

Connie Weeks , Victim Impact Statement: My sister (name withheld) and I, as well as the rest of our family, are glad today that you will never see daylight as a free woman, and your life will end in captivity for killing my son, Joshua Earl Sawyer. So I will leave you with this: I hope for you to live a long and miserable life behind bars. Goodbye.

Rosemary Vega Cantu , Victim Impact Statement: I trusted you with my daughter, and you would tell me it's because [unclear: "the real K was married"]. My baby girl was [unclear: "married" / "murdered"]. Never had a chance in life to go to school, to get married, and to have my grandbaby. I pray to God you never [unclear: "come up to her"; KSAT's article quotes "come out to hurt"] no more babies in the world. **[about 11:40] CHELSEA McCLELLAN'S SISTER (name withheld), reading the statement of their late mother, Petti McClellan Wiese, victim impact statement (speaker uncertain):** [unclear: "Three years"; KSAT's article quotes "Forty years"] have gone by since [unclear: "she took" / "you took"] my baby's life, and I hate you for that. And I often wonder how a person can think that [unclear: "might ever take"] so many helpless babies' lives. You must have a very large black heart. At this point, I'm not saying I forgive you. There is only one person we must answer to, and that is God. [About 12:03 to 12:11: no machine text; video ends.] ---