The Death Shift

by Peter Elkind

  The quest for attention did not diminish after people began to wonder whether Genene was harming children. Instead of shrinking from suspicions—first at Medical Center Hospital, then in Kerrville, finally from criminal investigators and the press—Genene repeatedly tempted fate, daring her accusers to act, relishing the thrill of center stage. In the midst of the county hospital’s internal inquiries, she approached doctors and asked: “Do you think I’m killing babies?” At the meeting announcing the removal of the LVNs, she stood up and declared: “It’s me you’re after.” In Kerrville, after Kathy Holland had confronted her with the bottle of succinylcholine, Genene orchestrated a dramatic suicide attempt, with a drug dose she knew would do no harm—if indeed she had swallowed any at all. There was the matter of her suicide note, with its suggestive reference to “seven people, whose life I have altered.” After Holland dismissed the nurse, Genene’s lawyer had advised her to leave the state; Genene instead relocated to San Angelo, just three hours away. And when she made bond after her arrest, Genene moved back to Kerrville. Finally, there was her remark to Kathy Engelke, a stranger in the Bexar County Jail, who for some reason hadn’t heard: “I’m Genene Jones, the nurse that killed the babies.”

  One child-abuse expert familiar with the case has likened Genene’s behavior to that of a volunteer fireman who sets a blaze, then appears first on the scene in hope of becoming a hero by putting it out. In discussing the desire for a pediatric ICU at Sid Peterson Hospital, Ron Sutton suggested a motive that was but a manifestation of the syndrome. Still another theory is that Genene was playing, manipulating the health of children to satisfy a power complex, without intending to kill any of them.

  In the case of this nurse who murdered babies, subtleties of motive are beside the point. Genene Jones’s behavior defines her clearly as a psychopath. For her, the rules of society did not apply. For her, the lines between truth and fiction, between good and evil, between right and wrong, did not matter.

  How many children did she kill? That is impossible to say with certainty. But a coauthor of Dr. Istre’s CDC study estimates that as many as fifteen children may have been murdered in the pediatric ICU at Medical Center Hospital. Adding the single death with which she was charged, that of Chelsea Ann McClellan, makes sixteen dead children, enough to make Genene Jones quite important indeed—as one of the most prodigious serial murderers in the history of American crime.

  And what of Kathy Holland? The pediatrician acknowledges that she was aware of the suspicions that surrounded Genene Jones at Medical Center Hospital, even that she received a direct—if vague—warning from Dr. Robotham. This makes it difficult to accept Holland’s claim that she suspected nothing—despite eight crises in her office, including at least one incident where Genene treated a patient on her own—until the discovery of the tainted bottle of succinylcholine. At the other extreme, it is also implausible that Holland participated in a conspiracy, a dark collaboration to build her practice by inducing arrests.

  In the wide swath between these possibilities, I believe, lies the truth. Kathy Holland is a woman whose stubbornness shrouds deep insecurities. Having hired the nurse for her practice, despite the advice of others, she was determined to hold her ground. As she had with previous superiors—notably Pat Belko—Genene curried Holland’s favor, then used her trust to manipulate the doctor into covering for her misdeeds. In Genene, Holland saw a woman like herself—victimized by men, persecuted unjustly, battered by life, struggling to make a go of things. Genene made Kathy Holland feel important. Theirs was never the classic relationship of superior and subordinate. The nature of their association was cast during Holland’s residency, when Kathy was the nervous intern, Genene the confident, experienced nurse who took charge. It was residency, too, that bred Holland’s medical philosophy. She had embraced Jim Robotham’s attitude: In every subtle sign, there was a lurking medical calamity. With her nurse providing distorted clinical reports, Holland lacked the perspective to recognize that the children arresting in her office were hardly ill. As the emergencies continued, she shut her eyes to what was going on.

  When all the trials were over, Kathy Holland decided to remain in Kerrville, despite a residue of local hostility that showed no signs of abating. Holland sold the house on Nixon Lane and began seeing patients in a modest yellow cottage about a mile from downtown Kerrville. She supplemented her income by moonlighting at San Antonio hospitals. But she could not perform her trade at the much smaller local hospital that was so critical to the rebuilding of her crippled practice. Although Ron Sutton made a point of declaring publicly that Holland had done nothing wrong, the Kerrville medical community refused to restore her privileges at Sid Peterson. Unwilling to walk away from the tragedy that had crippled her career and altered her life, stubbornly unwilling—yet again—to give in, Kathy Holland retained an attorney and filed suit against the hospital.

  In this tragedy of few heroes, many share blame with Genene Jones. Among them is Kathy Holland, who has never acknowledged that her failure transcended poor judgment and naïveté. But responsibility also rests with the doctors and administrators in San Antonio who had known so much about the troubled nurse before the clinic in Kerrville even opened. They were the ones who had evidence she was harming children. They were the ones who tolerated her blackmail. They were the ones who refused to fire her for fear of litigation and scandal. They were the ones who sent her out into the world without a word of warning—just a warm letter of recommendation. Ultimately, those at Medical Center Hospital and the UT medical school must share much of the blame for what happened to Chelsea McClellan—and to the untold number of other children whom Genene hurt and whom Genene killed. Those people should have known better. Unlike Genene Ann Jones, they lacked the excuse of madness.

  Epilogue

  Genene Jones appealed her two convictions without success. Although her prison sentences totaled one hundred and fifty-nine years, under Texas law she will be eligible for parole when she has received credit for twenty. With good time, Jones could be considered for release as early as March 28, 1990—after less than seven years of incarceration. She would be thirty-nine years old.

  Gladys Jones died on August 6, 1985, at the age of seventy-four. She was buried on August 9 in the family plot at the Lockhill Cemetery in San Antonio, beside her husband and her two sons. Three weeks later, Genene wrote Gladys’s attorney from prison that “mother’s death has been quite a shock, and I haven’t really accepted it.” Genene went on to inquire about her inheritance. There was not to be any; Gladys Jones left her entire estate, valued at $113,471.73, to her daughter Lisa, excluding Genene even from mention in her will.

  Genene’s daughter, Crystal, lived with her grandmother until Gladys died. Lisa assumed legal conservatorship and arranged for Crystal, then eight, to live with a great-aunt. Genene’s son, Edward, remained in the custody of the state, where he could receive psychiatric counseling in a group home for children. Lisa occasionally takes the two children to visit their mother in prison.

  A year after winning the conviction of Genene Jones in Georgetown, Ron Sutton made national headlines again—as prosecutor of the “slave-ranch” case, in which a family of Kerrville ranchers imprisoned drifters and brutally tortured one of them to death with an electric cattle prod. In 1988, influenced by his own conservative views and Texas’s emergence as a two-party state, Sutton switched parties and easily won reelection as a Republican. He still harbors dreams of running for Texas attorney general.

  Sam Millsap rejected advice that he switch political parties, and his bid for reelection in 1986 ended with defeat in the Democratic primary. Resuming the practice of corporate law, he became a partner in a San Antonio firm.

  Nick Rothe, burned out from years as a criminal-trial lawyer, decided in 1988 to join the local firm of Stolhandske & Stolhandske, which had filed most of the lawsuits against Medical Center Hospital. Rothe planned to develop a specialty in medical-malpractice claims.

  Art Brogley was
fired from the DA’s office in January 1987 in a purge by Sam Millsap’s successor. In January 1988, he found work as a client-abuse investigator at the San Antonio State School for the mentally retarded.

  After Genene Jones was convicted, the Texas Board of Vocational Nurse Examiners scheduled a disciplinary hearing to consider the status of her nursing license. In a letter, Genene responded: “If you have, as you say, investigated my case, you are already aware of my innocense + so should any learned nurse of the board. As evidence showed there was no crime committed. I should not be punished because of a ‘media’ conviction.” On January 21, 1986, the panel concluded that Jones represented “an imminent peril” to the public health and voted to suspend her license “until such time as she appears before the board.”

  The Texas Board of Medical Examiners, after a lengthy investigation, decided to take no action against Kathy Holland.

  The complaints that Sam Millsap promised against B. H. Corum, Marvin Dunn, Pat Belko, Judy Harris, and Virginia Mousseau also produced no sanctions.

  After leaving Medical Center Hospital in 1984, B. H. Corum started his own medical-consulting company in San Antonio. He specialized in recruiting doctors for rural communities, helping physicians enter private practice, and offering management advice to hospitals. Less than four months after Corum’s resignation, a San Antonio newspaper reporter found him prospering. The resulting story was headlined: “RESIGNATION FROM BCHD PAYS OFF FOR CORUM.”

  Corum continued to decline requests for interviews about the tragic events at Medical Center Hospital. He did offer his perspective, however, on July 31, 1986, during a sworn deposition taken for the McClellans’ civil suit. During almost a full day of questioning, Corum was asked when he first became aware, “either by way of statistical basis, a specific event, or a specific report,” that Genene Jones had caused the injury or death of any infant in the pediatric ICU. Corum responded: “Sir, I don’t think I have ever received any information that says that Genene Jones caused the death of any patients in the pediatric intensive care unit.” Corum said he knew only that Genene Jones was present when a number of deaths occurred.

  After resigning her position at Medical Center Hospital, Virginia Mousseau returned to Minneapolis and became a nursing administrator for Group Health, Inc., a 240,000-member health maintenance organization. In September 1988, she resigned her position with the HMO.

  Judy Harris took a position as an instructor at the UT nursing school in San Antonio.

  Pat Belko left nursing, obtained a real estate license, and took a job selling homes in San Antonio. In October 1988, with the real estate market in a slump, Belko quit and began devoting full time to her home and family. She is bitter about her treatment by Medical Center Hospital—treatment that she says destroyed her professional reputation. She believes that she was never given enough information to fire Genene Jones. “I think I gave them an awful lot of my life,” Belko remarked during a January 1989 interview. “And they told me I didn’t do enough…Sometimes I feel like I may as well have been incarcerated myself.” As for those who worked for her who say they were certain that Genene was killing children: “It makes me so mad that some of these people are built into such heroes…if they knew she was doing something, why didn’t they call the police?”

  Belko now accepts the theory that Genene Jones, crushed over her ouster from the pediatric ICU at Medical Center Hospital, deliberately harmed patients in Kerrville to foster a need for a pediatric ICU there. But she remains “unconvinced” that Jones intentionally harmed a single child at Medical Center Hospital.

  John Guest remains executive director of the Bexar County Hospital District, where he is presiding over a period of unprecedented prosperity. Under Guest’s direction, Medical Center Hospital has attracted more private patients and won increased support from taxpayers. In 1988, Guest initiated a five-year, $45 million hospital expansion program, to be financed entirely with annual budget surpluses.

  Guest sat for a lengthy interview in the fall of 1988, after the litigation against Medical Center Hospital was resolved. “I now believe that Genene Jones did harm to kids in our hospital,” he said. “That was never a predominant possibility [in our minds] at the time all this stuff was going on…All of us are guilty of having blinded ourselves to the most evil possibility of all: that Jones was a murderer. Given what I know now, we should have all behaved very differently…” Guest saw lessons for others in his institution’s experience. “I don’t want healthcare people to lose sight of the fact that there are evil people in the world. Our inability to recognize that, I think, is in part responsible for all of this. I would never have been able to believe that a caregiver could do something like this. It’s not unthinkable to me anymore.”

  John Guest’s improvement program at Medical Center Hospital began with a $750,000 facelift on the pediatric floor. The pediatric ICU, renamed the Pediatric Special Care Unit, was expanded to sixteen beds, stocked with new equipment, and redecorated in bright, cheerful colors. Mortality in the redesigned unit is low; by all accounts, it is running well. The nursing staff in the ICU once again includes LVNs.

  Marvin Dunn worked for California-based American Medical International, the nation’s third largest hospital chain, for about three years before becoming a private consultant. He now offers advice to academic medical centers. He lives in the Los Angeles area.

  James Robotham remains associate professor of anesthesiology at Johns Hopkins medical school in Baltimore.

  Robert Franks continues to serve as professor of pediatrics at the UT medical school in San Antonio.

  Kent Trinkle had part of a lung removed after developing cancer, and became an active anti-smoking spokesman. He subsequently performed San Antonio’s first heart transplant.

  Jim Brookshire and Burt Carnes both continue in private practice in Williamson County.

  Laura Little handled the unsuccessful criminal appeals for both Genene Jones and Henry Lee Lucas. She is now enrolled in a Ph.D program in clinical psychology at the University of New Mexico.

  Kathy Holland continues to practice pediatrics in Kerrville while pursuing her lawsuit against Sid Peterson Hospital. She helps pay her bills by moonlighting at hospitals in San Antonio. In 1985, Holland was married for a third time, again to a man much her senior, a retired Kerrville radiologist.

  During the seven months before Genene’s trial in Georgetown, Debbie Sultenfuss worked at a nursing home in the remote South Texas city of Eagle Pass. She abruptly left the position in January 1984. Sultenfuss now holds another job and lives with her parents in Natalia, Texas, about thirty miles south of San Antonio. A January 1989 phone inquiry to speak with her about Genene Jones brought a terse response from one of her parents: “I’m sorry; the subject of that is closed.”

  Petti McClellan enrolled in nursing school in August 1984 and became an LVN. After working at the Kerrville VA Hospital for three years, she went to work with her mother, doing consulting work for doctors. Reid remains employed at the Central Texas Electric Co-Op, where he is now a troubleshooter.

  The McClellans named the UT medical school and Medical Center Hospital as additional defendants in their $7 million lawsuit against Genene Jones and Kathy Holland. After extensive pretrial discovery and deposition-taking, the suit was settled out of court for an undisclosed amount in early 1988. With the help of money from the settlement, Petti and Reid built themselves a new home closer to Kerrville. In 1988, with Nick Rothe representing them, the McClellans adopted a baby girl. They named her Kiley Nicole.

  Petti McClellan continues to visit the Garden of Memories Cemetery in Kerrville. She always goes on June 16 and September 17, the dates of Chelsea’s birth and Chelsea’s death. During each visit, Petti has discovered a bouquet of cut flowers on her daughter’s grave. She has asked friends and relatives whether they left the flowers; they have told her they did not. The bouquets bring back chilling memories of the time, just days after her daughter’s death, when Petti discovered Genen
e Jones in this place, wailing and moaning and crying out Chelsea’s name. Before stalking off, Genene had left behind a bouquet. Now, when she visits her daughter’s grave, Petti snatches up the blooms she finds and tosses them away.

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