Genene Ann Jones (born July 13, 1950) is an American licensed vocational nurse and confessed serial killer, currently serving a sentence of life in prison for the murder of an 11-month-old baby boy in 1981. She was previously convicted in 1984 for the murder of a 15-month-old baby girl and sentenced to 99 years in prison.
In 2017, prosecutors in Bexar County, Texas, found out that Jones was on path to be released in March 2018 due to an old state law aimed at relieving prison overcrowding. In response, district attorney Nico LaHood created a task force to investigate cold cases and prevent Jones from leaving prison. She was ultimately charged in May 2017 with the murder of five babies who died at the Bexar County Hospital in the early 1980s. Jones initially pleaded not guilty, but accepted a plea deal in January 2020 and pleaded guilty to one of those counts (the murder of Joshua Sawyer) in exchange for the remaining charges to be dismissed and avoid a trial by jury, as well as recovering personal belongings taken from her prison cell as evidentiary proof.
Jones was sentenced in the Sawyer murder case on January 16, 2020, to life in prison with no parole eligibility for 20 years.
Early life Youth
Born in Texas in July 1950, Genene Jones was adopted by Richard Jefferson "Dick" Jones and his wife Gladys. She grew up in the San Antonio area and attended John Marshall High School in San Antonio, where she used to work in the library. After Jones' arrest in 1983, the school's librarian claimed that she was "different", comparing Jones with the other kids and saying that she kept a "bossy" authority over others and had a low patience with the typical teenage games and pranks. Jones showed early signs of emotional and psychological problems despite having a good relationship with her adoptive parents. She was known for fabricating illnesses and displaying troubling behaviors, including manipulative rhetoric to seek attention through the suffering of others.
Dick Jones was a well known businessman in the San Antonio area. In the early 1960s, he bought a property on Fredericksburg Road (near TX State Highway Spur 345) and built a nightclub named the Kit Kat Swim Club. The building included a dancing floor, a patio, and a pool. Young Jones enjoyed spending time with her father and helped him in painting billboards and placing advertisements around Bexar County. However, shortly before her 18th birthday, she lost two brothers, one of whom died when an improvised explosive device he had built exploded in his hands. Dick Jones also died shortly before her birthday, from a short illness in January 1968. He was 56 years old at the time.
First marriage and nursing career When Jones graduated from high school in June 1968, she married a high school classmate – James Harvey DeLany Jr. – and had also enrolled at a beauty school. She began working at the Methodist Hospital beauty parlor in San Antonio soon after getting a certification as a beautician. While working at the beauty parlor, DeLany was drafted into the Navy, forcing the family to relocate to Albany, Georgia, and Jones to resign from her job. During their time in Georgia, the couple had a son – Richard Michael – who was born in January 1972.
The marriage between Jones and DeLany, however, quickly began to fall apart that same year. In August 1972, Jones returned to Texas and filed for divorce in Bexar County. She told the judge that DeLany had a bad temper and accused him of physical violence. The judge ultimately dismissed the suit two months later when Jones and DeLany reconciled and she reversed her statements. Less than two years later, in March 1974, Jones filed again for divorce, this time pushing for a definitive settlement. The divorce was granted in June 1974 and a bitter legal battle ensued between Jones and DeLany, lasting nearly three years. In their crossed accusations, Jones filed charges against DeLany for failing to pay their son's child support and DeLany responded with another lawsuit, claiming that Jones violated visitation rights terms. In August 1976, Jones won a contempt citation litigation against DeLany and the lawsuits continued until they were asked to hold a mediation and end their legal battles. They agreed and desisted from pursuing any other case against each other. Four months after the end of their legal battles, Jones had a second child, Heather, whom she initially declared in a deposition to have been conceived from a relationship with a man named Ron English who had died out of state. In a private conversation with one of her bosses several years later, Jones admitted that the girl had been the result of a "quick reconciliation" with DeLany in the midst of their legal battles.
In mid-1977, Jones moved in to her mother's home and joined the San Antonio Independent School District to pursue a career in nursing. She kept a remarkable academic record, getting grades above approval points. In her licensing exam in October 1977, Jones scored more than 200 points above the passing grade. Later that year, she took her first job as a nurse at the Methodist Hospital, where she was asked to resign after having a conflict with a doctor. Her second job came as an employee of the South Texas Medical Center, where she worked in the obstetric unit. After three months at the South Texas facility, Jones resigned to have a minor surgery and to be able to rest. She went back to work in October 1978 upon answering an ad from the Bexar County Hospital (now known as University Health), which hired Jones as part of the vocational nurses staff, placing her tasks at the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU), where she was required to work with critically ill newborns and babies.
Suspected criminal activity First cases (1978–1981)
Jones initially worked the 11p.m.–7a.m. shift during her first three months at Bexar County Hospital. She later switched to the slot of 3p.m.–11p.m., where she was under the mentorship of registered nurse (RN) Cherlyn Pendergraft. At Jones's trial in 1984, Pendergraft testified that during the time she worked with Genene Jones, a six-day-old boy died from complications of necrotizing enterocolitis. Pendergraft, who was used to dealing with such situations, recalled that Jones "went berserk" over the boy's death, sobbing and staring at his body until hospital workers took the baby's corpse away to the facility's morgue.
Pendergraft added that, as time passed, Jones gained confidence and eventually became a strong presence in the nursing staff, also saying that some of her colleagues disliked Jones's condescending attitudes and some conversations where she boasted about her sexual experiences and future life plans. Nurses who worked with Jones said that she liked to tease others about their allegedly lower medical knowledge, often criticizing decisions made by the doctors and exposing what she thought were medical mistakes. Some other personnel reported that Jones held a strong and particular contempt for doctors, enjoying her frequent confrontations with young interns, whom she was known to challenge in their opinions. According to doctors who worked on her shifts, Jones used to question drug dosages and the prescribed medications for the patients, with an intern saying that Jones called him and other physicians so many times over minimal issues that she had become known among doctors to be a "real pain in the ass".
On the morning of May 21, 1981, 15-month-old Christopher James Hogeda died from cardiac arrest. The baby had been hospitalized at Bexar for six months prior to his death due to congenital heart problems, pneumonia and diarrhea. In a similar pattern to several other deaths, Jones showed a strong emotional reaction to the boy's death, crying and holding the child's body in her arms, and reaffirming that Hogeda was "her boy". Four months later, on September 16, 1981, two-year-old Rosemary Vega suffered a sudden decompensation and died after having a massive cardiac arrest while awaiting preparations for a common and unrisky operation in the heart. The girl's mother, Rosemary Cantu, was 18 years old at the time and worked in the housekeeping department of Bexar. She testified that Jones came into the room and injected the girl with an unknown substance as Rosemary sat on her mother's lap. When Cantu asked Jones what the drug was for, she responded that it was a medication for the girl "to [get] rest". Rosemary Vega entered into a sudden and unexplained shock shortly after Jones left the room, displaying symptoms of irregular breathing, which activated the PICU code blue. Confused by the child's abrupt crisis, doctors administered different reverse mechanisms in the emergency resuscitation procedures. These attempts failed and Rosemary Vega died within minutes.
By late 1981, the hospital registered an unusual death rate at the PICU. The facility's authorities had suspicions that Genene Jones could be harming babies, but their investigation proved inconclusive. The report alleged that even though ten baby deaths had occurred under Jones's watch, they could have been the product of a coincidence, while not fully discarding the possibility of negligence or wrongdoings by Jones. Despite the concerns, Jones continued to work at Bexar's PICU as more children suffered unexplained and abrupt health crises. Rumors began to spread among the nursing staff; Jones's colleagues began calling her shift the "Death Shift", though most – except for a nurse named Suzanna Maldonado – believed that it was "bad luck" instead of deliberate acts of harming children. On October 10, 1981, six-month-old Jose Antonio Flores died after suffering from an uncontrollable bleeding. Despite a 52-minute attempt to resuscitate him and the unusually violent nature of the baby's death, no autopsy was conducted on Flores's body. A handwritten record from the day of the boy's death highlighted that Genene Jones was present during the emergency brain scans immediately after the child decompensated, and that his health worsened even further shortly afterwards. On December 22, 1981, Doraelia Rios, a 25-month-old girl, died soon after Jones took up the PICU shift. The baby was recovering from a gastrointestinal surgery when she abruptly decompensated. On the day of the girl's death, Jones left a note on the nursing book, addressing Doraelia directly and wishing her a Merry Christmas.
Final months at Bexar Hospital (1982)