Prosecution moves forward against ‘Angel of Death’
The possibility of a plea bargain was raised for the first time Thursday regarding five new murder charges filed against “Angel of Death” Genene Jones, even as the debate continues over whether she is competent to stand trial.
Jones, a pediatric nurse convicted in 1984 of killing a Kerrville toddler with an overdose of muscle relaxers, has been in Bexar County jail since she was arraigned more than a year ago in the deaths of five San Antonio children in the 1980s.
On Thursday, Magistrate Judge Andrew Carruthers accepted a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation that found Jones, now 68, competent to stand trial, but he ordered a second evaluation after her attorney challenged the report’s findings.
After the hearing, Bexar County District Attorney Joe Gonzales said his team is prepared to take Jones to trial in the new cases, but he added that “everything is on the table,” including a plea bargain, if the families of the children agree.
Cornelius Cox, Jones’ attorney, concurred with Gonzales that a plea agreement might be possible.
“We’re open — no doors have been closed in terms of trying to resolve this, whether by trial or some agreement,” Cox said. “We feel there should be closure to both sides of it. We are open to any type of situation to help us resolve this matter.”
Jones’ case has drawn international attention. The idea that a nurse caring for sick babies and toddlers could instead kill her unsuspecting patients sparked horror and outrage. While she was convicted in just one death, officials have said she may have been responsible for the deaths of more than 40, perhaps more than 60, children.
At the time of her arraignment in December 2017, then-District Attorney Nico LaHood said “everybody has a different opinion” of just how many children Jones may have killed.
Jones was 35 when she was convicted in 1984 of murder in the 1982 death of Chelsea McClellan, who was 15 months old when she was injected with an overdose of succinylcholine, a medication used to cause shortterm paralysis as part of general anesthesia.
Jones was working in San Antonio and Kerrville at the time of Chelsea’s death and during the deaths of the other children named in the new indictments.
She was sentenced to 99 years in prison in Chelsea’s case and also was found guilty of injury to a child for attempting to overdose Rolando Santos in San Antonio; that child survived. Jones was sentenced to 60 years in that case, and both terms are concurrent.
A law designed to ease prison crowding that went into effect while she was incarcerated would have allowed Jones to be released last March.
But before that could happen, LaHood presented two separate grand juries with five cases from San Antonio around the same time as Chelsea’s death, and Jones was indicted in each one in 2017.
In the new indictments, Jones is accused of murder in the deaths of Richard “Ricky” Nelson, 8 months old, who died July 3, 1981; Rosemary Vega, 2 years old, who died Sept. 16, 1981; Paul Villarreal, who was 3 months old when he died Sept. 24, 1981; Joshua Sawyer on Dec. 12, 1981; and Patrick Zavala, 4 months old, who died Jan. 17, 1982.
All were patients at the county hospital in San Antonio. ezavala@express-news.net