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Speaker 5: You are now listening to True Murder, The most shocking
Speaker 5: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 5: written about them. Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK Every
Speaker 5: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 5: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your
Speaker 5: host journalist and author.
Speaker 6: Dan Zufanski, Good Evening. The case of San Antonio nurse
Speaker 6: Janine Jones, convicted in nineteen eighty four murdering children in
Speaker 6: her care and now suspect of having killed as many
Speaker 6: as sixteen infants, made national headlines A horrifying true life
Speaker 6: medical thriller. This report, by an editor of Texas Monthly,
Speaker 6: is written in an understated style that adds to its impact.
Speaker 6: Despite her dismissal from a hospital post weird medical obsessions,
Speaker 6: a history of lying in major on the job errors,
Speaker 6: Jones breezed from one nursing job to the next. The
Speaker 6: case is intriguing elements a young, ambitious prosecuting da, a
Speaker 6: naive support of close associate of the Qu' serial killer,
Speaker 6: a public hospital administration that suspected criminal wrongdoing but failed
Speaker 6: to notify the police and was later accused of cover up. Elkind,
Speaker 6: who spares no one, notes with dismay that Jones could
Speaker 6: be eligible for parole as early as next year. The
Speaker 6: book that we're featuring this evening is The Death Shift,
Speaker 6: with my special guest, journalist and author Peter Elkine. Welcome
Speaker 6: to the program, and thank you for greenness interview. Peter Elkind.
Speaker 4: Very good to be with you, Dan, Thank you very much.
Speaker 6: Let's get right into this incredible, incredible tale. I think
Speaker 6: some people know the bigger story, I would say, but
Speaker 6: not any of the incredible details that you have had
Speaker 6: incredible access to and bring the reader this which is
Speaker 6: now a true crime classic. So the question I want
Speaker 6: to ask you is when did this first come out? Peter,
Speaker 6: And tell us a little bit about the diversion reissue,
Speaker 6: tell us a little bit about Death Shift, and sure,
Speaker 6: what's happening with this classic through crime book?
Speaker 4: Now? Sure? Sure? Well, this is going back a few
Speaker 4: years when I was actually not even a magazine writer.
Speaker 4: I was thinking about going to law school. I took
Speaker 4: a freelance assignment for Texas Monthly magazine about a case
Speaker 4: that had broken on the I'm the wires, making front
Speaker 4: page news across the country and the New York Times
Speaker 4: and elsewhere about a nurse who was suspective of kids
Speaker 4: under her care. This is in nineteen eighty three, and
Speaker 4: she was suspected but not indicted or prosecuted at that stage.
Speaker 4: And I wrote a long magazine article for Texas Monthly
Speaker 4: and got offered a job and went to work as
Speaker 4: a journalist and never went to law school, and I
Speaker 4: now work at Fortune Magazine, going on to other stuff,
Speaker 4: but I went back as the case proceeded, as she
Speaker 4: was indicted, convicted, and covered her trials and wrote This
Speaker 4: book was published in nineteen eighty eight eighty nine, and
Speaker 4: first hardcover and then paperback, and it was in print
Speaker 4: for a number of years and then finally out of print,
Speaker 4: and we've just recently republished it with Diversion Books as
Speaker 4: an ebook.
Speaker 6: Fantastic. Now, before we introduce the characters in this incredible tragedy,
Speaker 6: let's talk about important places. The location, so as you
Speaker 6: talk about in your book, this is a ninth the
Speaker 6: largest city in the US, San Antonio and one of
Speaker 6: the poorest cities, as you say, and home to some
Speaker 6: famous stuff like the Alamo, which is yes, incredible. So
Speaker 6: tell us a little bit about the rise in population
Speaker 6: and the importance or the rise in importance of San Antonio,
Speaker 6: what it ended up being and what it is today.
Speaker 6: Tell us a little sure, Santonio.
Speaker 4: I mean, Santao is one of the one of America's
Speaker 4: oldest cities and in a very colorful place, Alamo history
Speaker 4: being just a piece of it, but for a long
Speaker 4: time had a pretty rough and tumble legacy, which I
Speaker 4: talk about in the book. And as I talk about
Speaker 4: Janine Jones' father, who was a gambler, owned a wild
Speaker 4: night club, had a really interesting, larger than life story himself,
Speaker 4: and and I try to tell the story of the
Speaker 4: city as well as the story of her family. And
Speaker 4: San Antonio's had a very were in a large poor population,
Speaker 4: largely Hispanic population, which relied extremely heavily on the charity
Speaker 4: hospital in town, which was first called Bear County Hospital
Speaker 4: and then renamed Medical Center Hospital. It was moved from
Speaker 4: downtown where most of the impoverished population of the city
Speaker 4: lived near there, and then moved to the affluent suburbs
Speaker 4: to the north of towntown because the city was eager
Speaker 4: to see it become a more prestigious institution and attract
Speaker 4: paying patients. But nonetheless it remained the hospital of last
Speaker 4: resort where poor, poor residents in San Antonio went for
Speaker 4: their emergency care and for hospitalization.
Speaker 6: Now, tell us a little bit about Janine Jones and
Speaker 6: how she came to be with the Jones family. She
Speaker 6: would tell us about the adoption and her life in
Speaker 6: this family.
Speaker 4: Sure well, her parents couldn't have kids. Her father's Dick Jones,
Speaker 4: as I mentioned, it's sort of larger than life, very
Speaker 4: colorful character in town, ran nightclubs and was a gambler
Speaker 4: himself once upon a time, and they he and his
Speaker 4: wife Gladys, adopted three kids, and there was a tragic
Speaker 4: history there. Janine's younger brother blew himself up with a
Speaker 4: homemade pipe bomb, her other brother died of cancer, and
Speaker 4: she even this all contributed to her sense of being
Speaker 4: a victim and also seeking attention throughout her life. But
Speaker 4: her dad was a very flamboyant man and sort of
Speaker 4: in and out of trouble himself over his lifetime, and
Speaker 4: then passed away and she was left with her mother,
Speaker 4: with whom she had a very contentious relationship.
Speaker 6: One of the things that I thought was very profuned
Speaker 6: on and eerily important is that when you say his
Speaker 6: brother Travis, where her brother Travis uh uh died with
Speaker 6: the pipe bomb, was her reaction at the grave site.
Speaker 6: So tell us a little bit about the reaction at
Speaker 6: the grave site, and which will be important when we
Speaker 6: talk about this case as it at all.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, she she reacted. She reacted as she did
Speaker 4: h later as a nurse with great drama, you know,
Speaker 4: uh burst into tears uh and and later on with
Speaker 4: kids who died under her care, she would wail and
Speaker 4: moan and cradle the bodies of kids she cared for
Speaker 4: and who she may well have contributed to their deaths
Speaker 4: in a very dramatic fashion. She she cared about She
Speaker 4: made it appear us that she cared about them more
Speaker 4: than anybody, even their parents.
Speaker 6: Now, you talk quite a bit about the character of
Speaker 6: Jannine Jones through all these tragedies that happened, and her
Speaker 6: father dies at a fairly early age as well, But
Speaker 6: she had inherited a lot of the characteristics you talk about.
Speaker 6: Some of the things she inherited was refusal to mince words,
Speaker 6: very much like her father, and affection for the spotlight.
Speaker 6: And you talk about the gamblers comfort with risk. So
Speaker 6: tell us a little bit more about the characteristics of Janine.
Speaker 6: And and while you're at it too, you also talk
Speaker 6: describe her her appearance, which is important I think in
Speaker 6: two and to her her self esteem and and basically
Speaker 6: some of the behavior that she has when she's young.
Speaker 6: So tell us a little bit about some of the
Speaker 6: characteristics behavior.
Speaker 4: Sure, she was. She was a very plain girl. She
Speaker 4: was unattractive, and she was very conscious of that. And
Speaker 4: and you know, throughout her life as a child and older,
Speaker 4: was clamoring for attention and did all sorts of dramatic
Speaker 4: things to gain attention, including tell elaborate lies about relative
Speaker 4: who she claimed it relative was a member of a band,
Speaker 4: and remember the monkeys. As I recall, she told all
Speaker 4: kinds of tall tales which people were very persuaded of
Speaker 4: because she was very convincing, but was sort of desperate
Speaker 4: to get attention. And she did all sorts of things
Speaker 4: to put herself on the spotlight. And that was true
Speaker 4: of her as a child.
Speaker 6: Now you talk about her school and that really basically
Speaker 6: all the reports were that she wasn't a horrible student,
Speaker 6: but she was uninspired. But there was one area where
Speaker 6: she really excelled, especially, and so tell us a little
Speaker 6: bit where she did excel and seemed to come into
Speaker 6: her own It seemed you.
Speaker 4: Mean in nursing school. Yes, well, I mean, well, initially
Speaker 4: she actually got involved in her first kind of hospitals
Speaker 4: as a beautician, and she worked actually as a hospital beautician,
Speaker 4: and then went back to become a licensed vocational nurse
Speaker 4: and her special skill as a as an LVN, even
Speaker 4: though she's less trained than registered nurses, and she was very,
Speaker 4: very talented at starting ivs, at starting intravenous lines, and
Speaker 4: particularly when you're a pediatric nurse, starting an IVY is
Speaker 4: a tricky thing because little kid's veins are so tiny
Speaker 4: and it takes a lot of skill to uh to
Speaker 4: start the IVY without sticking the kid three and four
Speaker 4: and five times, which obviously is difficult with a whiggling
Speaker 4: child and crying child as well as especially kid who's
Speaker 4: very sick. So that became, you know, sort of her
Speaker 4: stocking trade a little bit early on in her nursing
Speaker 4: career that she could start an iv and and and
Speaker 4: stick a nurse, stick an ivy and a fly, as
Speaker 4: one person put it.
Speaker 6: Now, for the people that don't know as well, we
Speaker 6: kind of skipped the head there, but we do have
Speaker 6: a lot to cover anyway, we were talking about the LVN.
Speaker 6: So for those people that don't know the difference between
Speaker 6: an arien and an lv and why did Janine seem
Speaker 6: to gravitate towards this one year only course the LVN
Speaker 6: tell us the sculstances why she wanted to do that?
Speaker 4: Sure, well, she was she was tight on money, and
Speaker 4: and she wasn't really in a position to go to
Speaker 4: nursing school for to get a registered nursing degree, which
Speaker 4: takes a good bit longer of schooling. So she basically
Speaker 4: wanted to get in and get out. And I don't
Speaker 4: recall the exact length of the time of the training program,
Speaker 4: but it's it's much less difficult than much less time
Speaker 4: consuming than being a registered nurse, but you also have
Speaker 4: less training. And there's a kind of a bright line
Speaker 4: in the nursing world between the licensed nurses, the licensed
Speaker 4: vocational nurses, and the registered nurses. The registered nurses are
Speaker 4: typically regarded as a cut above because they've had more training,
Speaker 4: and they rank higher on the totem pole. And she
Speaker 4: had a chip on her shoulder for all sorts of reasons,
Speaker 4: and that was just one of them.
Speaker 6: Now let's go back too, because it's important what her
Speaker 6: behavior is in terms of relationships. She's married right after
Speaker 6: high school, and then we talk about the children, and
Speaker 6: then we talk about the stormy relationship that she had
Speaker 6: with her mother, Gladys, but Gladys ends up being the
Speaker 6: person that basically rears her kids. So let's go back
Speaker 6: and talk about her personality and how was she with
Speaker 6: her own children basically, and while she's becoming this nurse
Speaker 6: and seems to have found her little niche with this
Speaker 6: one year course this l VN. Before we start talking
Speaker 6: about her behavior at work, what was what was it
Speaker 6: like at home?
Speaker 4: Well, she had a very stormy marriage. She married a
Speaker 4: fellow named Jim Delaney, and her husband at one point
Speaker 4: went off to become a sailor, and she while she
Speaker 4: while he was gone, and she engaged and affairs. She
Speaker 4: engaged in affairs with friends actually family friends, her husband's friends,
Speaker 4: and it would boast about her sexual exploits to people
Speaker 4: she knew and eventually the colleagues at the hospital. So
Speaker 4: it was a difficult marriage. Her husband wasn't didn't hear
Speaker 4: much of a living, so she was she was helping
Speaker 4: bring home the bacon and they had a very stormy
Speaker 4: relationship and it didn't end very well.
Speaker 6: Now, Dick Jones had done well for himself at one time,
Speaker 6: and enough to the point where he had made plans
Speaker 6: that his offspring, his adopted children could live with him,
Speaker 6: so her and her husband lived on the Jones estates,
Speaker 6: so which again he didn't work much. So did this helped?
Speaker 6: And again, what was the role of the mother really
Speaker 6: early on? And what was the relationship with Janine and
Speaker 6: her children? How close was she with her daughter and
Speaker 6: her son? And tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, Gladys Gladys. Gladys had her own issues. She
Speaker 4: had a drinking problem at one point and then stopped drinking.
Speaker 4: Dick Jones, as I said, had a had a history
Speaker 4: of being a gambler, was kind of a famous San
Speaker 4: Antonio gambler, and then insisted that he hadn't gambled for
Speaker 4: many years, and he was he then had had He
Speaker 4: was what we'd call now call an entrepreneur, he had
Speaker 4: a outdoor billboard company. He had a lot of different businesses.
Speaker 4: He's kind of a wheeler dealer, and Janine loved to
Speaker 4: hang out with him, and she was she was really
Speaker 4: he was really the parent who she attached herself to.
Speaker 4: He loved his sense of drama, his bluntness amid sort
Speaker 4: of high profile, his h He's a very colorful character,
Speaker 4: and I think she really tried to model herself after
Speaker 4: him in a lot of ways. Her mother, who was
Speaker 4: left at home to take care of the kids, she
Speaker 4: was less close to, and after her father died, she
Speaker 4: had a very on again, off again stormy relationship with her,
Speaker 4: even while her mother took care of Jeanne's two children
Speaker 4: while Jeanine was working very very long hours in the hospital.
Speaker 4: After she became a nurse.
Speaker 6: Well, let's talk about her first assignment at the hospital
Speaker 6: that she first works at. And you can tell us
Speaker 6: what hospital she works at, and what are these again?
Speaker 6: What is her characteristics of her behavior there? She's only
Speaker 6: in LVN and there are registered nurses there, so how
Speaker 6: does she act despite her lack of training?
Speaker 4: Yeah, Well, she started out at excuse me, her first
Speaker 4: job was at Methodist Hospital, private hospital in San Antonio,
Speaker 4: and she began on her shift that became her favorite,
Speaker 4: which was a three to eleven shift, and she worked
Speaker 4: in the cardiac intensive carry unit where she was dealing
Speaker 4: with a lot of patients with life threatening problems adults
Speaker 4: but serious medical problems. And she was fired. She was
Speaker 4: fired after about eight months on the job. There was
Speaker 4: a performance review that said missus Jones tends to make
Speaker 4: judgments that she has neither the experience nor authority to make.
Speaker 4: So she was dismissed, and she later insisted that it
Speaker 4: was and this was sort of a pattern that you'd
Speaker 4: see that that developed. One that she would have trouble
Speaker 4: with her supervisors and her early jobs got fired, and
Speaker 4: two that she would blame it on everyone else. It
Speaker 4: was never her fault. She said she had a conflict
Speaker 4: with a doctor. She said it was a lack of
Speaker 4: feeling on the physician's part toward a patient and I
Speaker 4: stood up for the patient and he didn't like it.
Speaker 4: They asked me to resign. In fact, the hospital records,
Speaker 4: personnel records which i'd seen, show that it was complaints
Speaker 4: by a patient that led to her firing. And this
Speaker 4: again was the pattern that took place time and time
Speaker 4: again before she got to the County Hospital Medical Center
Speaker 4: hospital where all these terrible incidents occurred, that she would
Speaker 4: have problem, She would be insubordinate, and she would blame
Speaker 4: all her difficulties and someone else, saying that she was
Speaker 4: just sticking up for the doctors, or sticking up for
Speaker 4: the patient's excuse me, or that she was pointing out
Speaker 4: that the doctors were incompetent or had made mistakes. She
Speaker 4: was always right, they were always wrong. There was never
Speaker 4: any questioned about it. She also had a very dramatic
Speaker 4: manner about her. There was another episode that she was
Speaker 4: written up in the hospital report which described that and
Speaker 4: this is reading from this, that miss Jones began crying
Speaker 4: in front of patient as she was reviewing the previous
Speaker 4: evening's incident. This is an incident involving a patient and
Speaker 4: after Miss Jones left, patient noticed the nurse notified the
Speaker 4: nurse complaining of chest pain, nervousness, and high blood pressure.
Speaker 4: The doctor was notified drugs had to be ordered. Anyway,
Speaker 4: They conclude that she was insubordinate on professional and ushered
Speaker 4: her out and again she blamed it on others.
Speaker 6: Now, the most I guess horrifying and surprising thing is
Speaker 6: is that you talk about the dramatic nursing shortage and
Speaker 6: just because of administration and lots of the I guess ego,
Speaker 6: that's evident, but there are other important factors evidence here
Speaker 6: that would make that when she applies for another job,
Speaker 6: what is the procedure and what in practicality happens in
Speaker 6: terms of recommendation or not recommendation from a hospital where
Speaker 6: she has had a problem, like she's just had well.
Speaker 4: By the time she applied to Medical Center Hospital, which
Speaker 4: was previously know a Bear Well was Bear County Hospital
Speaker 4: when she first applied there later became known as Medical
Speaker 4: Center Hospital, she had already been fired from a couple
Speaker 4: of jobs in the period of less than a year,
Speaker 4: but nonetheless they did very little due diligence she applied
Speaker 4: to She applied to the coronary cure unit at the
Speaker 4: County Hospital and there wasn't an opening, And then they
Speaker 4: raised the question of whether she'd be interested in working
Speaker 4: at pediatrics, and she said yeah, and she went to
Speaker 4: work and they really didn't check her background at all.
Speaker 4: And given the nursing shortage, they were eager to hire
Speaker 4: nurses even if they've had some problems elsewhere, but it
Speaker 4: doesn't look like they really even investigated what had happened
Speaker 4: at the other places and why she'd been ushered out.
Speaker 6: Now, to sort of round out her character, she's divorced
Speaker 6: when she's twenty three, but you include story, an interesting
Speaker 6: story about when she is pregnant. She claims that it's
Speaker 6: this person named Keith Martin. So tell us a little
Speaker 6: bit about a couple of these stories where you're demonstrating
Speaker 6: something very dramatic about her character.
Speaker 4: Well, there's there is an ambiguity about something which typically
Speaker 4: isn't very ambiguous, which is who was the father of
Speaker 4: her child, And it was a mystery to family, and
Speaker 4: she made claims to her parents, to her mother rather
Speaker 4: that it was his fellow Keith Martin, who was a
Speaker 4: friend of hers. Well, Keith Martin later acknowledged to me
Speaker 4: that he was gay and that he had never been
Speaker 4: romantically or sexually involved with Jeanne Jones. There were friends,
Speaker 4: and nonetheless she identified him as the father in order
Speaker 4: to provide kind of a respectable cover for what was
Speaker 4: going on. It appears it's my understanding that in fact
Speaker 4: the father of her child was was her former husband
Speaker 4: that they'd gotten together and she gotten pregnant, but her
Speaker 4: mother didn't like the ex husband, so she Janine told
Speaker 4: a different story, told a lie about who the real
Speaker 4: father was.
Speaker 6: Now, in nineteen seventy eight, she's at the pediatric Intensive
Speaker 6: care unit at Bexter County Hospital. You talk about it
Speaker 6: being a charity hospital near the city's barrio and slum,
Speaker 6: so tell us a little bit more about what kind
Speaker 6: of hospital it was and where it really was and
Speaker 6: the kind of people that really did in practical terms, serve.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's actually called Bear County Hospital. It's a tricky pronunciation,
Speaker 4: but it's it's San Antonio's charity hospital at San Antonio's
Speaker 4: County Hospital, which is where poor patients go for treatment
Speaker 4: who can't afford private medical care. And the County Hospital
Speaker 4: is a hospital where where people go for emergencies typically
Speaker 4: and for people who again who don't have insurance. So
Speaker 4: it's it's the folks that are really don't have a
Speaker 4: choice about where they go for their their medical treatment.
Speaker 4: San Antonio had a big poor population. It was largely Hispanic.
Speaker 4: It's a very sort of economically diverse city. It's got
Speaker 4: an affluent group and it's got a very large impoverished community,
Speaker 4: and they relied very heavily with the.
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Speaker 4: Medical care for the County Hospital. At the same time,
Speaker 4: the County Hospital had ambitions. They wanted to transform its
Speaker 4: image from the old County Hospital image to that of
Speaker 4: a sleek, modern medical center, and so it sort of
Speaker 4: launched a pr campaign and we named itself from Bear
Speaker 4: County Hospital to Medical Center Hospital. And it also and
Speaker 4: this is along with a move that it made to
Speaker 4: the affluent part of town, which was an fortunately far
Speaker 4: from the population that it was really serving. But it
Speaker 4: was all part of the effort to change the image
Speaker 4: of the place. And this place apart is in the
Speaker 4: hotale because they're so desperate to change the image of
Speaker 4: the image of the hospital in the community and have
Speaker 4: avoided any sort of hint of scandal.
Speaker 6: Now, before we get into I just talked about it
Speaker 6: a little bit, but it's interesting that you have the
Speaker 6: County Hospital's personnel department routinely sent Janine's former employees employers
Speaker 6: a written form seeking information about her job performance and
Speaker 6: her suitability for employment, and apparently the Methodists to a
Speaker 6: Methodist hospital returned the form. It never did answer any
Speaker 6: of those questions. Nothing in those records ever indicated she
Speaker 6: was fired.
Speaker 4: I believe that's correctly. You're stretching my own memory because
Speaker 4: you on this, but it's clear that the proper tention
Speaker 4: wasn't paid to the issues that she had at her
Speaker 4: previous jobs. Again, when she got to when she finally
Speaker 4: got to Bear County Hospital, which became Medicals Center Hospital,
Speaker 4: it was john number three for her as a nurse
Speaker 4: in a period of just about thirteen fourteen months. So
Speaker 4: that should be a red flag that this is a troublesome,
Speaker 4: difficult employee who bears extremely close observation. Well, when Janine
Speaker 4: got to the Bar County Hospital, none of that seemed
Speaker 4: they seem to pay no attention to that. And even
Speaker 4: though she did all sorts of things that should have
Speaker 4: gotten her fired there before any suspicion of her actually
Speaker 4: harming kids, they weren't paying that kind of attention to her.
Speaker 4: They didn't get rid of her.
Speaker 6: Now she meets a person that's very, very helpful throughout
Speaker 6: her next bit of her nursing career, and that's a
Speaker 6: head nurse named Pat Belco. So tell us about why
Speaker 6: how she can be sort of abrasive to a lot
Speaker 6: of people, and then you chronicle that in the book,
Speaker 6: but with other people, she's just seems to be endearing.
Speaker 6: And also, what are some of the kinds of things
Speaker 6: that we're talking about in fractions before we get to
Speaker 6: you know, way beyond infractions murder. But what are the
Speaker 6: kind of infractions that that Janine Jones is known for.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
Speaker 4: Well, first, let me let me tell you about her,
Speaker 4: you know, kind of her personality and her relationship with
Speaker 4: Pat Belco. Janine had a real ability. Janie was a
Speaker 4: very polarizing force. There were some people that found her
Speaker 4: compelling and magnetic and I thought she was a fabulous nurse.
Speaker 4: And she basically who she basically who went for her
Speaker 4: sales job in terms of, uh, you know, how passionately
Speaker 4: she cared for the kids who were impressed with her,
Speaker 4: a sort of technical skill at starting an IV who
Speaker 4: didn't mind that she was you know, coarse, talked about
Speaker 4: sex the job, bad mouthed doctors, offered opinions about everything
Speaker 4: they found that kind of you know, fascinating and compelling,
Speaker 4: and and and and went for it. And and pet Belco,
Speaker 4: the head nurse in the i c U, who's a
Speaker 4: critical figure kind of a bureaucratic administrator in the in
Speaker 4: the unit, became a Jeanine Jones fan. Thought she was
Speaker 4: a really good nurse and was very very protective of
Speaker 4: her and defended her time and time again, even when
Speaker 4: she she was insubordinate or engaged in incidents and was
Speaker 4: reported for doing all kinds of things that she shouldn't
Speaker 4: have done. And one of the the reasons that Belco was,
Speaker 4: uh was protective of her was that Belco had an
Speaker 4: incident in her own earlier nursing career when she had
Speaker 4: been accused of of things and felt like she had
Speaker 4: been she had made a mistake, and she felt like
Speaker 4: she was wrongly maligned, wrongly blamed for the death of
Speaker 4: a child. So she would become very protective of her
Speaker 4: because she identified with her and had this experience herself.
Speaker 4: So anyway, that's uh, that's a big factor as things
Speaker 4: moved forward, that she had hovering over her, protecting her.
Speaker 4: The head nurse in the unit, who was very dismissive
Speaker 4: of the growing suspicions about Jeanine Jones.
Speaker 6: Now there's a myriad of incidents that happened slowly but surely,
Speaker 6: and you you chronicle them in the book. There's a
Speaker 6: doctor Debbie Rash, but incidents like she's found Jones with
Speaker 6: a syringe and then Jones starts as Janine starts making
Speaker 6: predictions of imminent death to people. And you cite an
Speaker 6: example where she tells the parents that the child is dead.
Speaker 6: The parents rushed to the hospital and the child's alive.
Speaker 6: Maybe you can explain a story like that.
Speaker 4: Sure, well, this is this The child involves a child
Speaker 4: named Chris Ogaida and he was very sick. And by
Speaker 4: the way, Gene Jones is working in the pediatrical intensive
Speaker 4: crying it. So this is a closed area areas about
Speaker 4: the size of a garage where there's just a handful
Speaker 4: of kids eight or ten or twelve. I'm that's what
Speaker 4: the exact census was. It varied from time to time.
Speaker 4: But these kids are all sick. They're not newborns, but
Speaker 4: they're kids who have left the hospital after being born
Speaker 4: and come back and they've got serious medical problems and
Speaker 4: require intensive care. So there's the pediac and pediatric intensive
Speaker 4: currying it. And this little boy, Chris Ogada, was barely
Speaker 4: a year old, had been in the hospital a lot
Speaker 4: after his birth. He had a bad heart defect, and
Speaker 4: then he came into the hospital with pneumonia and diarrhea,
Speaker 4: developed hepatitis. He had a bad infection. And the parents
Speaker 4: who lived fairly far away, and San Antonio served indigen patients,
Speaker 4: families lived from quite a distance. They covered a big territory.
Speaker 4: The hogate Is in fact lived in a town called
Speaker 4: Saint Angel which was two hundred miles away, and they'd
Speaker 4: taken their son to Bear County Hospital because it was
Speaker 4: the best hospital within that anywhere around which they could afford,
Speaker 4: which they could send their kid to because it was
Speaker 4: the county hospital anyway. So the Gates had gone home
Speaker 4: because they couldn't stay there while their child was in
Speaker 4: the hospital for a long time, mister, they had to
Speaker 4: work and earn a living. And one day, Jeanine Jones
Speaker 4: calls Jeanine Jones, who was Christopher's nurse, and says he's gone.
Speaker 4: Credit by Christopher. He said he's gone to play with
Speaker 4: the angels and the family, which, of course heartbroke, and
Speaker 4: the parents gathered the clothes they wanted to bury their
Speaker 4: baby in. The mom had crocheted a special blanket. They
Speaker 4: get in their car, they drive two hundred miles to
Speaker 4: San Antonio. They walk into the ICU to claim their
Speaker 4: child's body. And and they walked through the ICU and
Speaker 4: and Christopher is alive. He's sitting in the ICU bed.
Speaker 4: He's hooked up to machines. Everything was just as it
Speaker 4: had been for months. And after they've been told they've
Speaker 4: gone to play with the angel, says Jeanine put it so,
Speaker 4: you know, they were shocked, and they asked for Jeanine,
Speaker 4: and Jeanine had gone home by then, so, uh, you know,
Speaker 4: this very strange episode took place. And and then Janine
Speaker 4: continues to uh time and time again as the nurses
Speaker 4: gather for their you know, nightly meetings between shifts, predicts
Speaker 4: that Christopher Hogate is going to die, says tonight's the night.
Speaker 4: And then there's another episode, uh, when Jeanine had left
Speaker 4: Christopher Hoogate's bedrails down, and this baby who's who's got
Speaker 4: respirator tubing down his road and he's got arm restraints
Speaker 4: in a hard condition, rolls out of his bed and
Speaker 4: is hanging by these restraints because she left the bedrails down. Anyway,
Speaker 4: it's sort of time and time again. There were these
Speaker 4: nightmarish episodes and and finally Chris Agated dies of cardiac
Speaker 4: arrest a week later, once again under Jeene Jones's care. Anyway,
Speaker 4: Uh I, if that weren't bad enough, you know Janine Jones,
Speaker 4: then is you know, mourning his body, wraps his wraps
Speaker 4: mourning his death, wraps the baby in a blanket, and
Speaker 4: holds the dead child, the corpse to her chest for
Speaker 4: an hour, rocking back and forth and wailing, waiting for
Speaker 4: the parents to write. So that's just one episode of
Speaker 4: many involving Jeanine Jones and the care of kids. Bizarre
Speaker 4: and troubling to the least, But yet the parents thought
Speaker 4: Janine Jones was was a carry nurse and invect invited
Speaker 4: invited Jane Jones to tendest funeral.
Speaker 6: He also very profound part of the book is that
Speaker 6: you say that there are for the bigger children, they
Speaker 6: put them again. They had a name for it, a
Speaker 6: cold plate by the metal table. But if the child
Speaker 6: was small, they could carry the child right down to
Speaker 6: the morgue. Now there was a lot of people that
Speaker 6: could do this, but tell us about Janine's obsession with
Speaker 6: doing this and the scene that you set in the
Speaker 6: book of her walking to the morgue with a child.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I mean the typical procedure for doing this
Speaker 4: after a child died was to wheel the child down
Speaker 4: to the morgue in a stretcher, but that wasn't what
Speaker 4: Jane was John trying to do. Instead, she typically wanted
Speaker 4: to show her compassion and anguish over the child's death,
Speaker 4: even though she was the one treating the child, and
Speaker 4: hindsight uh played played a part in some of these deaths,
Speaker 4: in a frightening number of deaths, and she would take
Speaker 4: the baby, the baby's body and personally carry down to
Speaker 4: the morgue. And there was one point one episode where
Speaker 4: family wanted to cradle the baby after the child had
Speaker 4: died and say goodbye, and she insisted the child had
Speaker 4: to go down to the bard immediately. And she basically
Speaker 4: grabbed the grabbed the child's body and ran down the hospital,
Speaker 4: ran down the hospital corder with the baby with a
Speaker 4: hospital with a family in pursuit, and and took the
Speaker 4: baby down to the morgue in this incredibly bizarre scene.
Speaker 6: Now she lived with her mother, even though again there
Speaker 6: was a stormy relationship Uh, and then there was times
Speaker 6: when she did have custody of her children. But what
Speaker 6: was at this very time, what was the relationship with
Speaker 6: her children and what was the relationship their mother, this
Speaker 6: very caring person that was overly emotional over other people's children,
Speaker 6: what was the situation with their own children and their
Speaker 6: own mother.
Speaker 4: Well, she was very cold with her mother. She was
Speaker 4: kind of an ingrate, even though her mother was uh
Speaker 4: a full time babysitter for for her kids. Her mother
Speaker 4: also had a very difficult time with her. With Jeanine's
Speaker 4: son who's rebelling, she favored Jeanine's daughter and Uh, but
Speaker 4: the boy had a had a very difficult relationship with
Speaker 4: with his grandmother and Janine. Janine also had started to
Speaker 4: display a pattern where she was bringing her kids in
Speaker 4: for for medical treatment for problems, for an array of
Speaker 4: problems that when they were examined UH doctors couldn't couldn't identify,
Speaker 4: they didn't see what was wrong with the kids. But
Speaker 4: she seemed to relish having her children being treated in
Speaker 4: in UH by doctors and in hospital situations.
Speaker 6: Didn't she at some point, if not around this time,
Speaker 6: to be struck apparently with illnesses that were again not
Speaker 6: found by doctors once they exist.
Speaker 4: Yes, she did, indeed, and and this is this is
Speaker 4: part of a phenomenon which, you know, the pattern unfolded
Speaker 4: very dramatically of something called and it applied both to
Speaker 4: her children, herself and her patients in different ways. That's
Speaker 4: something called Munchausen syndrome and then Munchausen syndrome by proxy.
Speaker 4: Munchausen syndrome is a situation where people enjoy being the
Speaker 4: center of attention in a medical situation and get excitement
Speaker 4: or attracted to having medical procedures done on them UH
Speaker 4: performed in them, and they appear at the hospital regularly
Speaker 4: with complaints of serious medical problems that doctors, after examining
Speaker 4: them can't can't identify, can't find so they come in
Speaker 4: with compliance, I have high fever. The doctors take their
Speaker 4: temperature and they can't find any fever. And they actually
Speaker 4: sometimes induce high fever by you know, putting hot compresses
Speaker 4: on their bodies or or cause medical problems, induce medical
Speaker 4: symptoms artificially so that they'll be admitted to hospitals and
Speaker 4: have procedures done on them. That's that's Munchhausen syndrome. There's
Speaker 4: also a sort of uh second aspect of this called
Speaker 4: Munchausen syndrome by proxy, where you uh cause medical problems
Speaker 4: on people that you're caring for, either your own children
Speaker 4: or or in the case of Jeanine Jones, patience and
Speaker 4: again makes you the center of attention. Genie Jones herself
Speaker 4: presented in the hospital repeatedly with all sorts of medical
Speaker 4: problems that also to medical complaints that prompted the doctors
Speaker 4: who work with her in the hospital to send her
Speaker 4: for a psychiatric consult and a psychiatric console came back
Speaker 4: and said, you know, I see no evidence of this.
Speaker 4: I can't come to any other conclusion but that this
Speaker 4: is a psychosomatic that it's made up.
Speaker 6: Now let's get to some of the very very disturbing behavior.
Speaker 6: And because it goes on for quite a while, as
Speaker 6: we alluded to, Rosemary Vega a couple of years old,
Speaker 6: Placida Yubara is four months. It seems like there's malfunctioning
Speaker 6: equipment sited. But everybody concludes that there's just too many
Speaker 6: babies dying and nine CPR, as you say, in August
Speaker 6: nineteen eighty one, thirteen in September, and they're all dying
Speaker 6: on this three to eleven on one nurse's shift. Now
Speaker 6: there are even people in this hospital stuff calling Janine's
Speaker 6: hours on duty the death shift. Isn't that correct?
Speaker 4: Yes, no, that's right. I mean this pattern grew over
Speaker 4: time in the in the PAS contentsive care unit where
Speaker 4: kids under her tear. Well, let me back up a step.
Speaker 4: Kids are in the hospital would do fine, you know,
Speaker 4: they came in sick, but they were making progress, and
Speaker 4: they would improve on the day shift, they'd improve on
Speaker 4: the overnight shift. But when Jeanine Jones came on duty,
Speaker 4: they'd suddenly have a reversal, They have some sudden medical emergency,
Speaker 4: and then in too many cases, in a trumbling number
Speaker 4: of cases, they would suffer an arrest, which is an
Speaker 4: incredibly dramatic event when they require a crash card and
Speaker 4: where their heart stop beating, or where they're suffering a
Speaker 4: life threatening episode where everyone has to they call a
Speaker 4: code and they and they have to resuscitate them. And
Speaker 4: this pattern was was quite significant in fact, later on,
Speaker 4: when this was eventually belatedly investigated by experts in the
Speaker 4: Centers for Disease Control who investigate epidemics, they basically explored
Speaker 4: this as a possible epidemic of what was going on
Speaker 4: in the ICU, and they found statistically that kids under
Speaker 4: Jeanine Jones's care were twenty five times as likely to
Speaker 4: suffer an arrest as they were under any other nurse,
Speaker 4: and under her care there were ten times as likely
Speaker 4: to die on a shift when she worked. So there
Speaker 4: was a very dramatic pattern, and nobody had the statistics
Speaker 4: at that point, but there were nurses that noted the pattern,
Speaker 4: and they actually went to Pat Delco, went to the
Speaker 4: supervisors of the hospital and said, too many kids are
Speaker 4: dying under her. Something is going on. You need to investigate.
Speaker 6: Yes, you talk about some brave souls like Susannah mauld
Speaker 6: and I though she came forward, and Belco was a
Speaker 6: real supporter of Janine and said, either you know, you
Speaker 6: bring some real dramatic events or shut up. But Maldonado
Speaker 6: was looking. She was pouring over all the notes and
Speaker 6: making a death list, and tell us what happens with
Speaker 6: the first there's a first discovery of a drug overdose
Speaker 6: or too much drug administered, and that drug is heparine,
Speaker 6: So tell us what happening is and why? Tell us
Speaker 6: about the significance of this discovery and what exactly happened.
Speaker 4: Sure, this is a case. There were a number of
Speaker 4: cases where Jeanine's patients had problems. They would have emergencies
Speaker 4: of various kinds. They would stop breathing, but one of
Speaker 4: the patterns that existed was that they would suddenly have
Speaker 4: bleeding episodes. They would bleed out of their mouths, they
Speaker 4: would bleed out of their rectums, they would bleed uncontrollably
Speaker 4: from all the poorest and tissues in their body. And
Speaker 4: there's a there's a medical condition for a really sick
Speaker 4: infected kid which can cause this, and Jane would always
Speaker 4: blame it on that, but these kids didn't have those kinds.
Speaker 4: It's called disseminated dravasca coagulation or d i C. But
Speaker 4: these kids didn't didn't seem to have that kind of
Speaker 4: infection and they didn't show the signs of that really
Speaker 4: being the case, but they they'd have these bleeding episodes.
Speaker 4: So there's one child named Orlando Santos who was sick
Speaker 4: and in the i c U. And Orlando Santos had
Speaker 4: this recurrence whenever Jeanine Jones was on duty of bleeding problems.
Speaker 4: And he wouldn't have these problems when other nurses were
Speaker 4: taking care of taking care of him, but he just
Speaker 4: had them when Jeanine was on duty and and he
Speaker 4: had come in with pneumonia to the hospital. U uh,
Speaker 4: he had been improving for a couple of days.
Speaker 3: And uh.
Speaker 4: This pattern was so troubling that one of the doctors,
Speaker 4: one of the attending doctors of the faculty at the
Speaker 4: medical school who was treating kids in the i c U,
Speaker 4: began to wonder if somebody was giving Rolando Santo's drugs
Speaker 4: and he uh so time and time again this happened.
Speaker 4: So finally the doctor suspected that there was that the
Speaker 4: child is getting an overdose of heprin. Heprin is a
Speaker 4: is a blood thinner and it's used medically to deal
Speaker 4: with blood clots and you put a little bit of
Speaker 4: an I V to avoid clotting. But in this case,
Speaker 4: there was no reason for Rolando to have any substantial
Speaker 4: amotter of hepron. And and ultimately what UH doctors doctor
Speaker 4: Copeland did was because he suspected that that the baby
Speaker 4: was getting an excessive out of hepron, he ordered all
Speaker 4: hepron discontinued from Milando Santos. In fact, I ordered all
Speaker 4: the hepron removed from the room where the child is
Speaker 4: being treated. Anyway, despite all this, despite all this, Rolando
Speaker 4: Santos starts bleeding again. And this happens when Jeanine Jones
Speaker 4: is on duty and she identifies the problem, which gets
Speaker 4: worse into the evening and he's having blood leaking out
Speaker 4: of his body. I described as being like a water
Speaker 4: balloon filled with needle holes. That blood is pouring out.
Speaker 4: And the doctor, who is desperate because this kid's about
Speaker 4: to die, he's going to he fell into a calma.
Speaker 4: They were about to lose him. His blood pressure was dropping.
Speaker 4: So the doctor does something really dramatic. He gives Rolando
Speaker 4: Santos a drug called protamine sulfate, which is a drug
Speaker 4: he used to reverse the effects of hepron and protamine.
Speaker 4: This drug can harm a kid who hadn't gotten hepron.
Speaker 4: But you know, this doctor was pretty convinced that something
Speaker 4: was going on, couldn't think of anything else to do,
Speaker 4: so he gives Lewando hantas a big, big dose of
Speaker 4: protamine through an IV and three actually three doses, and
Speaker 4: finally it stops the bleeding very abruptly, which was proof,
Speaker 4: absolute proof that he had gotten an overdose of hebron.
Speaker 4: So at that point, doctor Coplan, believing that you know,
Speaker 4: somebody's deliberately giving Rolando Santos hepron, namely Jeanine Jones, he
Speaker 4: orders the baby transferred out of the ICU, even though
Speaker 4: he's really sick still, but just doesn't want him anywhere
Speaker 4: near Jeanine Jones and basically plays guards at the baby's
Speaker 4: at the baby's room so nothing further can happen. And
Speaker 4: you know, lo and and behold, five days later, this
Speaker 4: baby is well enough to go home.
Speaker 6: Now we've got to get through to the incredible that
Speaker 6: conclusion here that there are enough people that are suspicious here,
Speaker 6: so an investigation is called and you have various characters.
Speaker 6: There's a Patricia ALBERTI, uh really thinks Janine is a
Speaker 6: killer and uh, and but.
Speaker 4: You also have some actually actually yeah and actually actually
Speaker 4: confides to her psychiatrist that Jane tells her psychiatrists, I
Speaker 4: think Janine Jones is killing babies.
Speaker 6: Exactly. And you have Jim Robathum and Jim Robotham Robotham,
Speaker 6: he's concerned. And you have other people, uh, you know,
Speaker 6: upper officials. There's Korum, John Guest, There's a nurse, Virginia Musseau.
Speaker 6: So there's a lot of people and they have this.
Speaker 6: They get together and and and uh, they're looking at this,
Speaker 6: they're investigating this. So in a nutshell, what happens from
Speaker 6: that investigation, in.
Speaker 4: A nutshell not enough. What happens is they have direct
Speaker 4: accusations from nurses, from doctors, and and plenty of anecdotal
Speaker 4: evidence that Janine Jones has harmed me kids. In the
Speaker 4: faith of that, but in the absence of absolute proof,
Speaker 4: they decide to tell no one. They decide that they
Speaker 4: refuse to call the DA, they refuse to call in
Speaker 4: investigators outside investigators. They want to keep it all quiet instead. Ultimately,
Speaker 4: after several rounds of discussions, they bring in an outside
Speaker 4: committee of experts secretly, and they say that the outside
Speaker 4: committee of medical experts is there to investigate the level
Speaker 4: of care in the ICU. These are doctors from hospital,
Speaker 4: very very esteemed hospital in Philadelphia, in Toronto and another
Speaker 4: hospital to investigate the matter. And those doctors recognize that
Speaker 4: something is going on, but again don't feel like they
Speaker 4: have absolute proof. So what ends up happening is the
Speaker 4: hospital administrators, the medical school administrators decide they've got to
Speaker 4: get rid of Jeanine Jones. But they don't want to
Speaker 4: tell the police. They don't want to tell prosecutors, they
Speaker 4: don't want to scandal or lawsuits. So what they do
Speaker 4: is they recommend and decide to upgrade the intensive curry
Speaker 4: in it to all registered nurses and get rid of
Speaker 4: all the licensed vocational nurses, including Jeanine Jones, under that pretext,
Speaker 4: So four or five nurses lose their jobs for no reason.
Speaker 4: Janine Jones is going to be removed, but all of
Speaker 4: them are sent off. Jeanine Jones isn't sent off with
Speaker 4: warning to anybody who might hire. All of them are
Speaker 4: sent off, including Jeanine Jones, with good recommendations and explain
Speaker 4: that they that they're removed only because the ICU is
Speaker 4: being upgraded to a higher level of medical care with
Speaker 4: only registered nurses. So they've kept the whole thing secret,
Speaker 4: even though they the committee itself, as part of a
Speaker 4: confidential part of its report, identified Jeanine Jones.
Speaker 2: As the problem.
Speaker 6: Now all of this too, we mentioned in the opening.
Speaker 6: There was never any consultation with police at all. There
Speaker 6: was never even any talk at that point at all
Speaker 6: of any consultation with police or any law officials whatsoever.
Speaker 4: Was there. Well, they discussed it, I mean, they overtly
Speaker 4: discussed the possibility of doing that, but they actually conferred
Speaker 4: with the hospital's lawyer, and his recommendation was, in the
Speaker 4: absence of proof, you should say nothing, and they accepted
Speaker 4: that recommendation. By the way, that's only Laurier's recommendation. It's
Speaker 4: not the right thing to do, obviously, it was very
Speaker 4: much the wrong thing to do, but that's the course
Speaker 4: they followed, despite repeated examples of kids being harmed, despite
Speaker 4: specific accusations. You know, they're not in the business of
Speaker 4: investigating crime, and yet they refused to turn it over
Speaker 4: to those who were to look into whether something terrible
Speaker 4: was happening. Instead, they get rid of Jeane Jones, They
Speaker 4: wash their hands of her, and they send her off
Speaker 4: with a good recommendation where she and the tragedy is.
Speaker 4: She then goes off elsewhere, specifically to the hill country
Speaker 4: town of Curville in a rural pediatric clinic, and harms
Speaker 4: workhads and murders another one.
Speaker 6: Now, tell us about the very strange relationship and very
Speaker 6: important relationship of Kathleen Holland and Jeanine Jones. How does
Speaker 6: the how does Kathleen come to employ Janine and also
Speaker 6: not have any inkling of her? You would think by
Speaker 6: this time, well maybe the first two times it would
Speaker 6: be glossed over, but you would think by the third
Speaker 6: time you already said it in essence, got a recommendation
Speaker 6: from Belcohen, was so despite everything. But tell us how
Speaker 6: a little bit about Kathleen Holland and her trusting nature
Speaker 6: and and what it is she sets out to do
Speaker 6: and happens when she meets Janine Jones.
Speaker 4: Sure, sure, Well, Kathleen Holland is a resident at Bear
Speaker 4: County Hospital. She's a doctrine training and she finishes her
Speaker 4: residency there and she is there at the time when
Speaker 4: there are all these suspicions swirling around Janine. She's aware
Speaker 4: of them. She's heard them from nurses, she's heard of
Speaker 4: them from doctors, but she's dismissive of them. She's she
Speaker 4: had had kind of a rough child to herself.
Speaker 3: She was.
Speaker 4: Very defensive about any criticism of herself of and just
Speaker 4: decided that Janine was being unfairly treated. She was one
Speaker 4: of those in this in this polarized environment who was
Speaker 4: on Jeanine's side and was very protective and defensive of her.
Speaker 4: But she had heard all of the suspicions about her
Speaker 4: and rejected them. So then when she at the time
Speaker 4: when Jeanine Jones is about the time in Jeanine Jones
Speaker 4: is being tossed out with a good recommendation from the hospital.
Speaker 4: Kathy Holland is setting up a private pediatric clinic after
Speaker 4: finishing her residency in a small town about sixty miles
Speaker 4: from San Antonio called Kerrville, a rural area which has
Speaker 4: mostly elderly population but a growing population of younger adults
Speaker 4: with kids. And she sets up a new pediatric practice there.
Speaker 4: And who does she designed to hire his her nurse,
Speaker 4: her office nurse, but Jeanine Jones. She just didn't buy
Speaker 4: into the the accusation surrounding her and brings her aboard
Speaker 4: as her office nurse.
Speaker 6: Now, let's talk about a very important drug and I'll
Speaker 6: try to pronounce this properly since then ole cult and
Speaker 6: this drug, what is its characteristic? What's its main thing?
Speaker 4: That it's it's known for sure, it needed a pretty
Speaker 4: good job. It's called seximal coline, and it's a drug
Speaker 4: that leaves you paralyzed but conscious. And it's used typically
Speaker 4: in an operating room, a very controlled environment where uh,
Speaker 4: you know, you have respirators, you have a large staff ready,
Speaker 4: everything is very stable and you and very controlled, and
Speaker 4: you use it to as you're in anesthesiologist typically on
Speaker 4: the scene and administering it. And it's used to paralyze someone,
Speaker 4: but uh, in order to insert a breathing tube. And
Speaker 4: it's used routinely for surgery because you need in sort
Speaker 4: of breathing tube for for many medical many surgical procedures.
Speaker 4: But if you think about it, your you're you're complete,
Speaker 4: you're paralyzed, but you're completely conscious. You can't breathe for yourself,
Speaker 4: and and so you have to be in a situation
Speaker 4: where someone or a machine can breathe for you while
Speaker 4: you're being operated on or whatever's being done. So that
Speaker 4: sucks on a coline. It's used rarely outside of an
Speaker 4: operating room setting, but Kathy Holland had it in her
Speaker 4: office and it becomes a critical element. And what happens next.
Speaker 6: Now, Kathy Holland, this is her dream to do this
Speaker 6: her private practice, and she is recommended to come to
Speaker 6: this area and it was under service, we'll say, in
Speaker 6: terms of pediatricians. So people in the area that we
Speaker 6: had newborns or people with children period, were pretty excited
Speaker 6: that this woman was going to be coming in. It
Speaker 6: seemed to be highly respected. They were excited about the whole.
Speaker 4: Thing, fresh cutting edge kind of experience. Yeah.
Speaker 6: Absolutely, and so and with her was her her right
Speaker 6: hand person. It was Janine Jones, this trusted nurse that
Speaker 6: she figured really had what the kind of characteristics she needed.
Speaker 6: And it's very tough. She could do that IV thing
Speaker 6: that was seemed to be tough for a lot of people.
Speaker 6: So and she's and she had total confidence in this woman.
Speaker 6: So Chelsea Ann McLellan, her mother is petty, yes, and
Speaker 6: and her husband is read and they bring in. They
Speaker 6: first bring in her to see Kathy Holland, and of
Speaker 6: course Janine Joan is around, so tell us about that
Speaker 6: very first experience. He just comes in with a bad cold.
Speaker 6: But tell us what happens on that very first appearance
Speaker 6: in Kathy Holland's Sure.
Speaker 4: Well. Janine Chelsea Chelsea McLellan was was one of Kathy
Speaker 4: Holland's first patients. And the Blowens were young, young parents.
Speaker 4: They lived about fifteen miles outside of town. Very charming,
Speaker 4: nice people, you know, sort of country folk, and her
Speaker 4: dad was a meter reader.
Speaker 3: And uh uh.
Speaker 4: Chelsea came in too to doctor Holland's office on the
Speaker 4: second day. She was in private practice and she basically
Speaker 4: had sniffles, and Janine Joan, you know, she's been examined.
Speaker 4: Jeanine Jones takes her in the other room, and the
Speaker 4: next thing anyone knows is Jeanine Jones is saying, don't
Speaker 4: go to sleep, baby, Chelsea, wake up, and summons doctor
Speaker 4: Holland into the other room in the clinic and they
Speaker 4: find Chelsea limp on the examining table and Jeanine's putting
Speaker 4: an oxygen mask over her face, and she stopped breathing
Speaker 4: and she's rushed immediately. They call a ambulance and she's
Speaker 4: rushed immediately to the hospital which is just a few
Speaker 4: miles away, and she's completely limp and it's totally unclear
Speaker 4: what happened. Chelsea stops and starts breathing again on her
Speaker 4: own after they breathe for her for a while. But
Speaker 4: as far as as mccollins are concerned, doctor Holland and
Speaker 4: Jeanine Jones have saved Chelsea's life. She had some sort
Speaker 4: of emergency. They don't understand what happened, but she recovered
Speaker 4: from it, and the doctor and the nurse are heroes.
Speaker 4: And that's the first visit by Chelsea McClellan into doctor
Speaker 4: Holmes clinic.
Speaker 6: Now we can't go into everything, but there is again
Speaker 6: it looks like there should be some signs. Kathy Holland
Speaker 6: should be suspicious, but of course, especially at this point,
Speaker 6: not at all, not whatsoever. And the same family brings
Speaker 6: there is scheduled to have their son come in, but
Speaker 6: they say bring Chelsea again and tell us what the
Speaker 6: premise is to bring her in again, and then what
Speaker 6: happens at this next time they're at the in.
Speaker 4: The sure sure this is a couple of weeks later
Speaker 4: and Chelsea Petty. Petty brings in Chelsea with with her
Speaker 4: son Cameron, Camera's got the flu. The doctor Holland had
Speaker 4: asked that they bring in Chelsea as well for a
Speaker 4: for a quick check up after the previous episode that
Speaker 4: she had, and while he's in there, they decided to
Speaker 4: go ahead and give her her baby shots, two shots
Speaker 4: which doctor Holland ordered, so Janine is the one who's
Speaker 4: going to administer them. She prepares the needles and she
Speaker 4: injects Chelsea in the thighs with the first shot, and
Speaker 4: suddenly Chelsea seems to have stop trouble breathing after the
Speaker 4: first injection is going in and Patty mclaum says, stop,
Speaker 4: do something. She's having another seizure. She's stopping breathing, and
Speaker 4: Janine says, no, no, it's okay and goes ahead and
Speaker 4: gives her the second shot in the thigh and by
Speaker 4: the time she pulls a syringe out, Chelsea stop breathing
Speaker 4: completely again, so they call the ambulance. She's limp, she
Speaker 4: isn't breathing. They rush her to the hospital in Currville.
Speaker 4: She's still in bad shape. She's then they plan to
Speaker 4: transport her from Currville to San Antonio, and everyone sort
Speaker 4: of piles into a Karen Man of of ambulance cars
Speaker 4: on the way to for the for the the trip
Speaker 4: from Kerville to San Antonio to bring her to the
Speaker 4: hospital there. And although Chelsea had gotten better, uh for
Speaker 4: a time, on the way there, she stops breathing again,
Speaker 4: and they pull over to a tiny hospital on the
Speaker 4: way try to resuscitate her, and and she does, and
Speaker 4: Chelsea passed away. Jeanine Jones is Jeanine Jones is with
Speaker 4: her the whole time, and she's under Jeanine's care. And
Speaker 4: by the way, when she you know, they're paramedics in
Speaker 4: there too, and they comment on Jeanine's strange behavior that
Speaker 4: you know, Chelsea arrests and Jeans has pulled this son
Speaker 4: of a bitch over and says she's flat lined, and
Speaker 4: this whole emergency unfolds, and Chelsea does at the age
Speaker 4: of fifteen months. But the bigger gamesoun sorry, go ahead,
Speaker 4: go ahead, I was going to tell you just so,
Speaker 4: the bigger picture is, you know, Chelsea had two episodes
Speaker 4: in a period of a couple of weeks, but literally,
Speaker 4: what's going on in Doctor Holland's office is in the
Speaker 4: period of a month, eight kids walking there with typical
Speaker 4: office problems. They have colds or sniffles or need shots
Speaker 4: or I mean, these are not kids going into an emergent,
Speaker 4: to an emergency room or to a ICU. These are
Speaker 4: kids going into a doctor's piatric clinic for routine stuff.
Speaker 4: And eight kids have nine separate episodes where they stop
Speaker 4: breathing and are rushed to the hospital in Kerrville, which
Speaker 4: you know, typically we'll see one or two emergency kid
Speaker 4: emergencies in a year, that's in a life threading basis.
Speaker 4: And here they're having eight, uh you know, eight kids
Speaker 4: who stop breathing in a month from a single doctor's office.
Speaker 4: It's just it's just mind boggling. I mean, it's only
Speaker 4: at the very end of this that doctor Holland becomes
Speaker 4: concerned and rights and and and and seems and after
Speaker 4: she's confronted with this pattern by the hospital and the
Speaker 4: doctors at the hospital and acknowledgism, begins to consider whether
Speaker 4: something is going on in her office.
Speaker 6: The thing is, though, by the time that she finally
Speaker 6: you know, the enough people tell her that there's something
Speaker 6: going on, and she realizes she is also a suspect
Speaker 6: in this because she's been so supportive of Janine Jones
Speaker 6: all this time.
Speaker 4: Absolutely absolutely, she's made she's offered explanations for everything that's happened.
Speaker 4: You know, maybe this kid is meningitis, maybe this kid
Speaker 4: has pneumonia, maybe she's she's she's got this mentality that,
Speaker 4: you know, there's an explanation for every emergency, and it's
Speaker 4: completely dismissive that that there's no good explanation for what's
Speaker 4: going on.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 6: To muddy the water's further, there's a relationship over and
Speaker 6: beyond the friendly, supportive relationship at work, So tell us
Speaker 6: a little bit about that and what some people think
Speaker 6: might be going on there as well.
Speaker 4: Sure, well, doctor Holland and Jeanine were very close, and
Speaker 4: doctor Holland is married at this time to an older man,
Speaker 4: and he's building a new house for them about thirty
Speaker 4: miles fifteen or twenty miles away from Currville and is
Speaker 4: often spending the night on the construction site. So doctor
Speaker 4: Holland is during this period, so she's close to a
Speaker 4: clinic has rented or purchased, I've forgotten which a house
Speaker 4: in Currville where she's allowing Jeanine to stay, and Janine
Speaker 4: is staying there, and another nurse who is very close
Speaker 4: to Janine in San Antonio, part of her circle, named
Speaker 4: Debbie sultan Thus, who's working at the hospital, is staying
Speaker 4: there as well. And doctor Holland stays there. So in
Speaker 4: the community of Currville, which is a very conservative place,
Speaker 4: you know, there's all the sort of rumors that there's
Speaker 4: a sort of den of lesbians there. There's no indication
Speaker 4: that that's what was going on, but but they do
Speaker 4: have a very close relationship and assortment of ways. You know,
Speaker 4: they they're spending time at at night together, you know,
Speaker 4: messing around with the Ouiji boards, and you know, have
Speaker 4: a very close personal relationship in addition the professional one,
Speaker 4: which you know certainly contributes, you'd think to doctor Holland
Speaker 4: being as blind as she was to what was going on.
Speaker 6: Now we there's all kinds of little things that that
Speaker 6: are adding up to There's Holland finds a bottle of drugs,
Speaker 6: and then then there's an actual bottle found, but when
Speaker 6: it's tested it's one sixth the strength, So somebody has
Speaker 6: been replacing it and diluting it and using it there's
Speaker 6: we talked about the ambitious DA. We talk about there's
Speaker 6: a doctor Dwayne Packard, you become suspicious after Missy reich
Speaker 6: reichenow Is dies. There's a doctor Bradley us as well
Speaker 6: an these theologists. Uh so tell us about some of
Speaker 6: the people that verge that that that gather together to
Speaker 6: be become suspicious before we get to the prosecution.
Speaker 4: Of ensuring Well, well, Misty didn't die, she got she
Speaker 4: stopped breathing. She was one of those kids that stopped
Speaker 4: breathing in Kurville. But but but this is the this
Speaker 4: is the period when uh you know this all when
Speaker 4: when it's brought to a to a to a stop.
Speaker 4: What happens is the the doctors in the Kerville hospital
Speaker 4: are extremely suspicious of what's going on. They're examining the
Speaker 4: kids as they the last few kids as they come
Speaker 4: into the emergency room to wonder, you know, to to
Speaker 4: see what's going on, to see what try to figure
Speaker 4: out what's happening here with these kids who stop breathing
Speaker 4: in a pediatric clinic and are being rushed into the
Speaker 4: emergency room. And at one point, as an anesthesiologist, they
Speaker 4: make a point of an anesthesiologist are there, uh to
Speaker 4: watch what's happening. And the anesthesiologist who deals with sexual
Speaker 4: colin all the time, watches one of the babies. I
Speaker 4: believe it was Misty Uh coming starting to move after
Speaker 4: being paralyzed previously and not breathing, and her she has
Speaker 4: kind of jerk emotions and it occurs to him because
Speaker 4: he's seen this many times. This is what a kid
Speaker 4: looks like when they're coming out from under the effects
Speaker 4: of sexual coling. He's an anesthesiologist. He deals with that
Speaker 4: drug all the time, and he reports back to the
Speaker 4: dean of the medical community, an older doctor I believe
Speaker 4: he's in the seventies at that point, named doctor Packard,
Speaker 4: and they smell a rat and they get together and
Speaker 4: they and they bring in doctor Holland and they say,
Speaker 4: what do you think is going on? They ask her
Speaker 4: questions and they ask her do you have suximal coling
Speaker 4: in your office? And she says, yes, I do. I
Speaker 4: use it to in debate if I have an emergency
Speaker 4: and I need to intubate a kid to put a
Speaker 4: breathing tube, and I have it there to make it
Speaker 4: possible to put the breathing tube down, to keep the
Speaker 4: kid from struggling against the tube. After this all happens
Speaker 4: this inquiry, the doctors have decided decide afterwards to suspend
Speaker 4: doctor Holland's privileges. Doctor Holland goes back to a clinic
Speaker 4: and she checks her little bottle as stuck on the
Speaker 4: coline and Janine had previously said it had been lost,
Speaker 4: but then said she'd found it and ordered more of it.
Speaker 4: And she inspects the bottle and the bottle is full,
Speaker 4: but then she looks at the top of the bottle
Speaker 4: and it's got syringe holes on the top, so something
Speaker 4: strange is going on. It later gets tested, it turns
Speaker 4: out that it was diluted. It was five to six
Speaker 4: saline solution. So someone presumedly Jeanine Jones, clearly Jeanine Jones,
Speaker 4: had used the drug when it never should have been used,
Speaker 4: never was authorized to be used or ordered by the doctor,
Speaker 4: and then to make it appear as though it had
Speaker 4: never been used, she filled it with saline solution, so
Speaker 4: that that said. Doctor Holland sees that and and uh
Speaker 4: and freaks out confronts Jeanine Jones. All sorts of strange
Speaker 4: things happened then, including Janine through making a half hearted
Speaker 4: suicide attempt to sort of dramatically announcing that she's leaving,
Speaker 4: leaving what appears to be a suicide note in assisting
Speaker 4: she's she's she's take an overdose of drugs, although it
Speaker 4: appears she didn't really take anything that would potentially kill her.
Speaker 4: And uh, and doctor Hollin's privileges are suspended. They're treating
Speaker 4: no more children, and an investigation has finally begun in Kerrville.
Speaker 4: And by the way, all this time, the people the
Speaker 4: doctor san Antonio are learning, uh that there's bad stuff
Speaker 4: going on involving Kathy Holland and Jeanine Jones and Kerrville,
Speaker 4: and still they don't come forward. In fact, they have
Speaker 4: a committee meeting where they're hearing about this and they're
Speaker 4: said that if asked about it, they should all maintain
Speaker 4: a judicious silence instead of telling the authorities about what's
Speaker 4: going on. So at this point, yeah, so at this point,
Speaker 4: at this point, the investigation finally begins, after all these
Speaker 4: kids are hurt, after some you know, kids are killed,
Speaker 4: you know, all this pain continues for so long.
Speaker 6: You know, it's interesting too, is just and then this
Speaker 6: what's you know, nonfiction just Trump's fiction incredibly is that
Speaker 6: when you get this person that you've drawn this incredible
Speaker 6: portrait of this little Chelsea's death and then it's deemed
Speaker 6: in this crazy story as SIDS, so some infant death syndrome,
Speaker 6: you know, so very very interesting that the same reasons
Speaker 6: why these hospitals are trying to have this judicial silence
Speaker 6: UH and their lawyer can't advise advise them, and it's
Speaker 6: it's problematic always is that prosecution is not that easy
Speaker 6: as well, because we're talking about circumstantial evidence, and you
Speaker 6: also talk about that the babysitter comes forward and looks
Speaker 6: like it's very promising to testify that she actually witnessed
Speaker 6: Jannine Jones administer these lethal doses of drugs, and then
Speaker 6: they realize that she's a very very poor witness. Yes.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this was an incredibly difficult case to prosecute, both
Speaker 4: in Kurville and especially in San Antonio, where the kids
Speaker 4: were sick to very sick to begin with, and where
Speaker 4: there's so many medical medical personnel who are having contact
Speaker 4: with the kids. There's lots of nurses and doctors who
Speaker 4: are treating the kids in the pediatric ICU, so it's
Speaker 4: hard to pin pin it on Jeanine Jones. To prove
Speaker 4: that babies were murdered and to prove that she did it.
Speaker 4: There's very strong, circumstantial evidence, there's an incredibly troubling pattern,
Speaker 4: but it's hard to prove one single murder on her.
Speaker 4: To prove that she, you know, there's a smoking gun
Speaker 4: basically where smoke and syringe as they came to call it.
Speaker 4: In Currville, it was difficult too, because again, you still
Speaker 4: have the pattern. I mean, it's it's an improbable, impossible pattern,
Speaker 4: but you don't have proof that she injected the drug,
Speaker 4: or at least we didn't think we could get that.
Speaker 4: So the investigation proceeds on two tracks. When when it's
Speaker 4: finally revealed that the stuff had been going on in
Speaker 4: San Antonio, there's a there's a big city prosecutor who's
Speaker 4: conducting a big investigation of what's happening in the county
Speaker 4: hospital in San Antonio, and there's a rural prosecutor named
Speaker 4: Ron Sutton who's conducting investigation of what happened in Cerrville.
Speaker 4: They're on parallel tracks. They're cooperating with each other, really
Speaker 4: struggling to come up with a case. And in San Antonio,
Speaker 4: despite sifting to an enormous amount of information and conveniing
Speaker 4: ad ran jury in Kerrville. They are trying to trying
Speaker 4: to find out whether there's a way to prove that
Speaker 4: sexual coaling was was used that change to use sexal
Speaker 4: m colin, and they the drug had long been thought
Speaker 4: to be the perfect murder weapon for doctors, and just recently,
Speaker 4: not long before they suddenly discovered the doctor the prosecutor
Speaker 4: around Sutton discovered that there was a new test that
Speaker 4: had been pioneered in Sweden to detect the presence of
Speaker 4: sex and m coline and embalmed body tissue. So once
Speaker 4: he discovered this, he got a permission in a court
Speaker 4: order and had Chelsea mccllin's body xhoomed and took tissue
Speaker 4: samples with the help of medical experts in the US,
Speaker 4: had them packed an ice and had them frozen and
Speaker 4: sent off for testing by this doctor in Sweden. Very
Speaker 4: claimed steam doctor and lo and behold, it comes back
Speaker 4: positive for the presence of sexal coline from the tissue
Speaker 4: taken from Chelsea McClellan's legs where she got those baby
Speaker 4: shots from Jeanine Jones. And that was the critical piece
Speaker 4: of evidence that kind of nailed the case and legend
Speaker 4: Jennie Jones's murder, indictment and ultimately her conviction.
Speaker 6: Now, how big a story was this in Texas? Well,
Speaker 6: we can we can guess, But how big was this
Speaker 6: story nationally? And how big a story was this internationally,
Speaker 6: especially at that time? This was quite an unusual story
Speaker 6: at that time, wasn't it? It was?
Speaker 4: It was indeed, I mean, this is, on its face,
Speaker 4: is you know, the most improbable situations. You have a nurse.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's every parent's worst nightmare. And you have
Speaker 4: a nurse who's sworn to care for kids who's deliberately
Speaker 4: harming them, killing them in a in a medical setting.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's chilling in every way imaginable. You have
Speaker 4: a serial killer baby nurse. And sensational of course too.
Speaker 4: And so when it first broke that she was even
Speaker 4: under suspicion of this, that there were and there was
Speaker 4: an investigation of of deaths in the county hospital, it
Speaker 4: was front page news, front page news in New York
Speaker 4: Times and the US, the country and and overseas some
Speaker 4: and and it remained a big story through her trial.
Speaker 4: When I wrote my book we published editions in uh
Speaker 4: in England, and I think we had one other international edition,
Speaker 4: but it was a in there. There's a TV movie made,
Speaker 4: there was a It's been featured on a number of
Speaker 4: true crime series, documentary series. It's a story that's, you know,
Speaker 4: that's gotten a lot of attention for good reason, which
Speaker 4: is because it's so compelling, and and and and because
Speaker 4: it's about more than just a crazy nurse. I mean,
Speaker 4: as horrible as what Janeane Jones did, but to me
Speaker 4: made the story really worthy of a book was the
Speaker 4: bigger picture of the medical officials who had made all
Speaker 4: this possible honestly, who had failed a stopp her, who
Speaker 4: had not done the right thing, who had made terrible
Speaker 4: mistakes that let her go to Kerrville and harm more
Speaker 4: kids and murder Chelsea McLellan. You know, the tale of
Speaker 4: a sort of insight into the medical bureaucracy, how it
Speaker 4: failed to operate properly and protect kids who you know,
Speaker 4: whose business it was to protect.
Speaker 6: That.
Speaker 4: That's what made this whole tale all the more chilling.
Speaker 6: Now, to keep in line with that, the more shocking
Speaker 6: aspect of it is not just one person's murderous behavior,
Speaker 6: but the seemingly uncaring system in practicality because of the
Speaker 6: bureaucracy itself. Has there been any significant changes as a
Speaker 6: result of this.
Speaker 4: Well, there were some, not as many as a lot
Speaker 4: of people felt there should be. I mean, there was
Speaker 4: very serious consideration given in San Antonio to indicting the
Speaker 4: hospital district, or the medical school or the individuals that
Speaker 4: ran as institutions for their failure to act basically as
Speaker 4: you know, sort of us series of the crime that
Speaker 4: it's not a formal charge, but it's what it essentially
Speaker 4: amounts to. But ultimately the DA just Sam millsapp decided
Speaker 4: not to do that. That just wouldn't it. There was
Speaker 4: no good to come of that. And it was also
Speaker 4: partly because by that time, and by the way, this
Speaker 4: was hotly debated within his staff, there was no There
Speaker 4: were recommendations by a prosecutor who was kind of a
Speaker 4: line guy on the case saying we should do this,
Speaker 4: and the chief investigator in the case said we should
Speaker 4: do this, and ultimately he decided not to do it.
Speaker 4: And part of the reason was that as sort of
Speaker 4: wink wink deal the UH, some of the prosecutors in
Speaker 4: the office had one of the prosecutors in the office.
Speaker 4: A senior man, one of milstap's top deputies, had made
Speaker 4: clear to the hospital administrator that he needed to cut
Speaker 4: everybody loose, who had to fire everybody who had been
Speaker 4: involved in this and whose hands were unclean and lo
Speaker 4: and behold after you know. That message was delivered not
Speaker 4: long after. This senior prosecutor was vacationing in Mexico. As
Speaker 4: I recalled, Gus got a message on vacation that all
Speaker 4: the top officials who had been involved in protecting Janeine
Speaker 4: John's or who had not not responded the way they should,
Speaker 4: had either resigned or been fired. And this, uh, they
Speaker 4: they have and the need to do this was communicated
Speaker 4: with the new hospital administrator, John Guest, and uh, this
Speaker 4: prosecutor had said said to him, he said, you need
Speaker 4: to do this, he said, you know, he said, sometimes
Speaker 4: a man's going to do what a man's got to do.
Speaker 4: And this the deputy DA was in Mexico and I
Speaker 4: got a messag from his office and said, I don't
Speaker 4: know what this means. The message was, I don't know
Speaker 4: what this means, but all these people got fired. And
Speaker 4: you got this message from John Guests saying a man's
Speaker 4: got to day, what a man's got to do?
Speaker 6: Yeah, was there any changes, because I know it would
Speaker 6: seem odd to most people, including myself, with this person
Speaker 6: after one year, can you know or serve someone else's
Speaker 6: authority and be injecting drugs into people potentially killing them,
Speaker 6: whether it's a mistake or it's intentional. But without this
Speaker 6: training and without doctors orders, has there been any changes
Speaker 6: in terms of whose responsibility or who is more responsible
Speaker 6: for the administration of these drugs.
Speaker 4: I think they've you know, I don't know what's happening today.
Speaker 4: This is many years later. I do think there was
Speaker 4: tighter supervision imposed. I think there was. I mean, Lord
Speaker 4: knows that this isn't a consciousness or anything experience. I
Speaker 4: don't know what is for everyone in the community, everyone
Speaker 4: with an airship, especially people and hospital and I think
Speaker 4: they but you know, we're much more responsive to any
Speaker 4: any hint of a problem going forward. But I don't
Speaker 4: know explicitly what they did to uh to restrict access
Speaker 4: to medications. I mean, the reality is doctors and nurses
Speaker 4: are dealing with very powerful drugs, They're dealing with very
Speaker 4: sick kids. They are in a position to make a
Speaker 4: difference between life and death. And you know, the vast
Speaker 4: majority of the time they're helping kids, they're trying to
Speaker 4: save kids desperately. That's what they've dedicated their lives to doing.
Speaker 4: The case of a in the episode of a nurse
Speaker 4: who's who's harming kids is just so mind boggling because
Speaker 4: it's exactly the opposite of what they're there to do
Speaker 4: and what they've dedicated Nurses and doctors dedicate their lives
Speaker 4: to do. Most of them are are doing everything they
Speaker 4: can to preserve lives, not end it. And and so uh,
Speaker 4: you know, the kids, those kids are so vulnerable, and
Speaker 4: they're they're incredibly vulnerable. Someone who's you know, who's got
Speaker 4: access to drugs, who's responsible for their medical care, and
Speaker 4: is trying to do the opposite of what they're supposed
Speaker 4: to do. Now what, it's something, it's something, it's it's
Speaker 4: just it's just something you can't regulate away. You have to,
Speaker 4: you know, supervise people like this stop from immediately. If
Speaker 4: there's any concern about that happening, investigate it. You know,
Speaker 4: you can't you can't set up a structure, you can't
Speaker 4: restrict use of drugs. I you know completely. You have
Speaker 4: to track it and see if something's been used in properly,
Speaker 4: but it's it's hard to set procedures to keep it
Speaker 4: from happening.
Speaker 6: Now, what did janine? What was her response after being sentenced? Finally,
Speaker 6: what was her position? What was her what would she claim?
Speaker 6: What did she have to say?
Speaker 4: I interviewed her several times. I interviewed her when she
Speaker 4: was under suspicion but had not yet been indicted. I
Speaker 4: interviewed interviewed her in prison after she'd been convened, and
Speaker 4: her position in this was the same all the way
Speaker 4: through it. She was absolutely defiant. She was absolutely insistent
Speaker 4: she hadn't done anything wrong. She was fighting for the kids.
Speaker 4: She was an advocate for the children. She was their
Speaker 4: best friend, you know, she loved the babies. She it
Speaker 4: was the doctors who had made mistakes, and she went
Speaker 4: down just offered a litany of errors. If this doctor
Speaker 4: did this to this kid, this doctor did that, this
Speaker 4: doctor was incompetent, that doctor was having an affair with somebody.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's all manner of ad hominem, very specific
Speaker 4: attacks on everyone else, blaming them for what had happened,
Speaker 4: and accepting the responsibility at all for anything she had done.
Speaker 6: How did she stand up during cross examination?
Speaker 4: She she didn't. She didn't because she never took the stand. Actually,
Speaker 4: her lawyers were trying to were weighing whether to have
Speaker 4: her testifying, and she apparently wanted to testify, and she
Speaker 4: could have insisted on it, but ultimately they persuaded her
Speaker 4: it was a bad idea, and so she never took
Speaker 4: the stand and didn't face cross examination, and it would
Speaker 4: have been brutal because because the facts weren't nightmarish, were horrible.
Speaker 4: When I interviewed her, she offered her account of events,
Speaker 4: and we went and I spent four hours with her
Speaker 4: in a trailer home in St. Angelo, Texas. I declined
Speaker 4: her offers of food and drink while I was there,
Speaker 4: didn't care to have anything from her. But I went
Speaker 4: through in great detail. Actually I think I was there
Speaker 4: for six hours, but I went through in great detail,
Speaker 4: case by case, what happened, and she offered her story
Speaker 4: about various things in time, and again she said with
Speaker 4: absolute conviction, as I said, right to tail, in account
Speaker 4: of what had taken place, which was contradicted by facts
Speaker 4: and testimony, but facts that were documented and ambulance reports
Speaker 4: and medical records, you know, sort of absolutely knowable, objective
Speaker 4: information that proved she was lying about things. But she
Speaker 4: said it with you know, if you if you didn't
Speaker 4: know better, if you hadn't done the research, you know,
Speaker 4: what she said seemed very persuasive. She seems so certain
Speaker 4: of herself and so caring about the kids. But if
Speaker 4: you had done research, as I had talk to people,
Speaker 4: you not only had their testimony about what happened, which
Speaker 4: was completely at odds with hers, but you had reports
Speaker 4: and specific details from documents that made clear she was
Speaker 4: lying about things, and that would have been withering in
Speaker 4: cross examination, would have destroyed her. So ultimately I think
Speaker 4: the result was the same if she had if she
Speaker 4: had taken the stand.
Speaker 6: Now does who does she?
Speaker 3: She?
Speaker 6: She talks about the doctors, of course, not doing their job.
Speaker 6: Misdiagnosis is that what she chalked us all up to
Speaker 6: is was a conspiracy. How could she explain that an
Speaker 6: innocent person being convicted like herself, Was it a grand conspiracy?
Speaker 4: I mean, ultimately yes, she was. She didn't put in
Speaker 4: quite those terms, but that's ultimately what she would Her
Speaker 4: argument amounted to. The doctors were providing incompetent medical care,
Speaker 4: and they were covering up their mistakes and blaming it
Speaker 4: on her. That's ultimately what it amounted to.
Speaker 6: Now you talked, we talked about in the introduction that
Speaker 6: lo and behold she it can be up for parole
Speaker 6: in the near future. So tell us what kind of
Speaker 6: sentence she got and sure what her parole status is read.
Speaker 4: Sure, as I mentioned early on in our conversation, the
Speaker 4: Centers for Disease Control and kind of assessed how many
Speaker 4: you know this this epidemic that was Jeanine Jones, nurse
Speaker 4: thirty two. They called her because they were making a
Speaker 4: statistical study, and they ultimately concluded they were about as
Speaker 4: many as fifteen or so excess deaths as they put
Speaker 4: quote unquote excess deaths in the intensive care unit in
Speaker 4: San Antonio. But they were never able to convict her
Speaker 4: of murder. In San Antonio, they convicted her. She was
Speaker 4: convicted in one in their first trial of murder of
Speaker 4: Chelsea McClellan and received a sentence of ninety nine years
Speaker 4: from murder. And then in San Antonio, she was charged
Speaker 4: in the case of Verlando Santos, the baby who had
Speaker 4: those heparin episodes, repeated hepron episodes but had recovered ultimately
Speaker 4: when the doctor moved him safely away from Jeanine Jones,
Speaker 4: and that injury to a child conviction got her another
Speaker 4: sentence of sixty years, so she gets one hundred and
Speaker 4: fifty nine years total, but the two sentences were to
Speaker 4: run concurrently, and in addition, there were Texas mandatory parole
Speaker 4: statutes in place that had to do with prison overcrowding.
Speaker 4: And the bottom line in all of this is that
Speaker 4: even though she's been denied parole I think more than
Speaker 4: a dozen times, she's now facing mandatory parole to received
Speaker 4: mandatory parole in twenty eighteen, in early twenty eighteen, and
Speaker 4: you know, again she's been convicted of one murder, she's
Speaker 4: suspected and believed responsible for multiple murders, and thus been
Speaker 4: an outcry that this she would be one of the first,
Speaker 4: if not the first, serial killer released on parole. And
Speaker 4: in any case, you know, whether she is or isn't,
Speaker 4: that she should remain behind bars for all the rest
Speaker 4: of her life. So there has been an active campaign,
Speaker 4: really a crusade from led by parents and also by
Speaker 4: the victim rights coordinator in the City of Houston to
Speaker 4: try to bring pressure to bear to possibly bring another
Speaker 4: murder case against her and get another conviction that would
Speaker 4: keep her behind bars forever. That's going to be extremely
Speaker 4: difficult to do, I think ultimately probably impossible, but they
Speaker 4: don't want to see her released for understandable reasons. But
Speaker 4: nonetheless they're trying to do it. They've they've started a
Speaker 4: petition drive, they started a website, and they put they're
Speaker 4: putting pressure on prosecutors to try to see if they
Speaker 4: can bring another charge against her in San Antonio for murder.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's very interesting development because I think that you know,
Speaker 6: the level of outrage, Like you say, there's people are organizing,
Speaker 6: but the level of outrage, especially when the media, this
Speaker 6: is not a kind of crime that, even though it's
Speaker 6: become more commonplace, is not more easily understood. This is
Speaker 6: still very, very shocking. And that's what this book is too.
Speaker 6: I got to applaud you for it's very found experience.
Speaker 6: When you read about Janine Jones saying, oh, I'll take
Speaker 6: care of the child, or you just leave the room.
Speaker 6: You won't want to see this, and meanwhile she's you know,
Speaker 6: very ghoulish. I mean, it's very I don't know a
Speaker 6: parent's worst nightmare. You know, it's understatement, but it's very
Speaker 6: You've really captured that essence of the horror of Janine Jones,
Speaker 6: this lovable, trusted woman that couldn't be trusted at all
Speaker 6: with their little kids' lives. And we're talking kids four
Speaker 6: months and maybe some of them sickly, some of them,
Speaker 6: you know, but for the most part, again the kids
Speaker 6: that should have lived in so very, very incredibly tragic stories.
Speaker 6: So I want to applaud you for being able to
Speaker 6: capture that in this book, The Death Shift. It's been
Speaker 6: very fascinating. Now for those people that might want to
Speaker 6: read about some of your other work, or do you
Speaker 6: do Facebook or you have a website? How my people
Speaker 6: contact you?
Speaker 4: Sure, I appreciate that I have a website. It's Peter
Speaker 4: Elkine dot net. It's a personal website. But my job
Speaker 4: these days as I work for a Fortune magazine as
Speaker 4: a writer where I do investigative reporting and they've been
Speaker 4: on staff for about seventeen years, and I write about
Speaker 4: things like the n Round scandal and the Beefy oil
Speaker 4: spill and the Sony Pictures hack. I do business stories
Speaker 4: these days instead of true crime.
Speaker 6: Isn't that true crime?
Speaker 1: It is?
Speaker 4: You're right, You're right exactly. It's a different form of
Speaker 4: true crime. The stakes are different. They're not life and death,
Speaker 4: but there are grave stakes and they do affect a
Speaker 4: lot of people, no question about it.
Speaker 6: Absolutely Well. I want to thank you Peter for coming
Speaker 6: on and talking about The Death Shift. And incredible book
Speaker 6: and very deservedly a true crime classic now, absolutely and
Speaker 6: a great book. And thank you for coming on and
Speaker 6: talking about it. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 4: Very good. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 6: You have a great night, you too, good night, good
Speaker 6: good night.