Infamous nurse may accept a plea deal
Already convicted, Jones charged in 5 other deaths
Genene Jones was on the verge of walking out of jail two years ago.
Convicted of killing an infant in 1984, the former pediatric nurse had served only a third of her sentence when a new law to reduce prison crowding opened the door for her release in 2018.
Had the Bexar County district attorney not charged Jones in the deaths of five other babies, she would have been a free woman.
Faced with the new charges, Jones chose to fight them. Now she’s expected to enter into a plea deal this morning in what could be the final chapter in a case that spread fear about an “angel of death” amid San Antonio’s most vulnerable children.
A court document shows Jones is scheduled to appear before Judge Frank J. Castro in 399th state District Court to change her not-guilty plea on charges that she killed the five babies under her care in 1981 and 1982.
Details of a plea agreement were not available. Jones’ options are to plead guilty or no contest. Or she could change her mind before the plea is entered and proceed to trial.
Bexar County District Attorney Joe Gonzales said Wednesday he could not comment until there is a resolution of the case.
A text message sent to Cornelius Cox, Jones’ de
fense attorney, was not answered.
In the early 1980s, Jones, now 69, worked as a nurse in the pediatric intensive care unit of what later became University Hospital.
She’s accused of killing Richard “Ricky” Nelson on July 3, 1981; Rosemary Vega on Sept. 16, 1981; Paul Villarreal on Sept. 24, 1981; Joshua Sawyer on Dec. 12, 1981; and Patrick Zavala on Jan. 17, 1982.
All were patients at the hospital and ranged in age from 3 months to 2 years.
Court records indicate the children were injected with an overdose of a muscle relaxer or an unknown substance.
Since the administration of former Bexar County District Attorney Nico Lahood brought Jones back to San Antonio in 2017 to face the new allegations, relatives of the children have felt the anguish of reliving their deaths, while seeking what they called the ultimate justice — that Jones die in prison.
“I don’t want her walking the streets and hurting other babies,” Rosemary Cantu told the San Antonio Express-news last year. “She needs to be behind bars.”
Cantu was 18 when she gave birth to her daughter, Rosemary Vega. Cantu cleaned rooms and made beds in the pediatric intensive care unit, where she met Jones.
When her daughter and namesake was 2, she underwent a series of surgeries to correct a congenital heart defect. While Rosemary was undergoing a checkup, Cantu said
Jones told her she was going to give her daughter “something to help her … to make her feel better,” Cantu recalled.
As soon as Jones left the room, Cantu said her daughter’s condition changed. Rosemary Vega died Sept. 16, 1981.
“It’s hard, it’s hard,” Cantu said through tears. “I saw it and have been living with this for years.”
Hope Pacheco’s heart breaks like the others when she remembers the death of her baby, Patrick Zavala, who was in the hospital for surgery on a defective heart valve.
“He was doing really good,” she said. “Genene said Patrick is a lucky baby. She told me to go ahead and go home. About an hour and a half later, he had taken a turn for the worse. By the time I got there, my son had passed away.”
He died Jan. 17, 1982, after he was injected with “a substance unknown.” He was 4 months old.
Cantu’s nightmare was shared by Petti Mcclellan-wiese, who also witnessed Jones give her daughter, 15-month-old Chelsea Mcclellan, an injection.
It was her daughter’s death — Chelsea was injected with a fatal dose of a muscle relaxer at a doctor’s office in Kerr County — that ultimately led to Jones’ conviction and her imprisonment since 1984.
She was sentenced to 99 years in that case and received 60 years for a similar attempt on a San Antonio child who survived.
Set to be released in March 2018 after serving a third of her sentence because of a law designed to ease prison crowding, Jones was
indicted in 2017 on the five murder charges filed in Bexar County.
Mcclellan-wiese, who in 2013 began a national crusade to keep Jones behind bars because of the potential release, was brought in to help with the new cases because of her knowledge and experience, said Jason Goss, who as a prosecutor in the Lahood administration led the efforts to try to bring solid cases to the grand jury for indictment.
“Petti was the catalyst for everything,” he said. “I called Petti and I asked her if she would participate. At first, she was reluctant, but when she realized we were going to do it, she cried and cried. She was the witness that tied everything together.”
When Goss joined the DA’S office in 2015 and was asked by his investigator Larry Dehaven to look into assertions that Jones could have killed 60 or more children while in her care, he set his sights on looking for evidence.
“I was horrified, but told him I would look into it when I had time.”
Goss said that around 2016, he began his investigation, going through medical records, combing a list of some 45 babies, sorting and sifting through countless boxes in four different locations, almost always after he left work at 5 p.m., and concluding at midnight.
“Nico’s orders to me were to not indict anything that we would not be able to try because of the moms,” said Goss, because “it would kill them” if they were to fall short.
“He didn’t want to put the families in the situation where there was an indictment and we could not go forward,” Goss said.
In May 2017, Jones was indicted in the death of Joshua Sawyer. The child had been hospitalized for smoke inhalation after a house fire. He died Dec. 12, 1981, from an overdose of Dilantin, a seizure medication. He was 11 months old.
Goss said they were able to bring an indictment because his mother, Connie Weeks, kept every single one of her son’s medical records, which gave them a link to Jones.
Mcclellan-wiese did not live to see this latest chapter — she died in July at 64.
Neither did Juanita Villarreal, who died just before Christmas. Her son Paul was 3 months old when he died Sept. 24, 1981, after being injected with Heparin, an anticoagulant.
Villarreal’s youngest daughter, Melissa Luna, 28, promised to continue representing her late mother and Mcclellan-wiese, with whom she grew close, and Richard “Ricky” Nelson, who was 8 months old when he died July 3, 1981. He has no living relatives.
Had the alleged crimes taken place today, Jones could have been charged with capital murder-child under 10, a charge that did not exist in the 1980s. That capital offense is punishable by death or life in prison.
If Jones is tried, she would face a maximum of life in prison on each charge.
She currently is being held in Bexar County Jail in lieu of posting $1 million bail in each case.