by Peter Elkind
The Death Shift
The True Story of Nurse Genene Jones and the Texas Baby Murders
Peter Elkind
Copyright
Diversion Books
A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.
443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1008
New York, NY 10016
www.DiversionBooks.com
Copyright © 1983, 1989 by Peter Elkind
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
For more information, email [email protected]
First Diversion Books edition January 2015
ISBN: 978-1-68230-158-6
For Kate
But whoso shall offend
one of these little ones
which believe in me,
it were better for him
that a millstone
were hanged about his neck,
and that he were drowned
in the depth of the sea.
MATTHEW 18:6
Preface
There are some people on earth who cannot bear to live an ordinary life. This quirk of personality, exceedingly rare among mankind’s billions, leads certain individuals to great acts—as with the medical researcher who labors tirelessly to develop a cure for a dreaded disease. It drives others to unimaginable evil—as in the case of Genene Jones.
Genene Jones’s demons—and the crimes they spurred her to commit—compose a dark and compelling tale. But this book is far more than an account of one woman’s madness. Its story offers a window into the frailties of modern medicine—the petty jealousies and arrogance, the fears and ambitions, the bureaucratic paralysis—that can produce tragedy. This is a story about the criminal-justice system: of eager prosecutors, leaked secrets, and greedy lawyers. Most powerfully of all, it is an account of every parent’s worst nightmare—of discovering that someone to whom he has entrusted his child has acted to harm rather than to heal.
I first wrote about these events in August 1983 for Texas Monthly. I am grateful to Nicholas Lemann, a gifted editor and writer, who entrusted me with that assignment—my first for a magazine—and has been a source of astute guidance ever since. I owe thanks to several others who are or have been associated with Texas Monthly, including Michael Levy and Gregory Curtis, who remained supportive of this project through my lengthy leave of absence from the magazine’s staff; Paul Burka, who has taught me much about writing, reporting, and critical thinking; and Jan Jarboe, a candid and constant friend. Stephen Harrigan and Joseph Nocera have offered invaluable counsel, both personal and literary, over a period of years; their criticism of early drafts contributed immeasurably to this book.
I am grateful also to my skillful and patient editor at Viking Penguin, Mindy Werner, without whom this book would not exist, and to her assistant, Janine Steel. Maura Wogan has provided invaluable legal advice on this manuscript. My agents, Vicki Eisenberg and Ann Whitley, have been a steady source of ideas and support. To Adele Elkind, I offer thanks for thirty years of encouragement. But my greatest debt is to my wife, Kate, who has endured late nights, missed deadlines, and forgone vacations with grace and selflessness.
A few words about technique: Everything in this book, to the best of my knowledge, is true. It is based on reporting conducted over a period of five years, including more than a hundred interviews, as well as review of thousands of pages of confidential documents, transcripts, letters, and court records. All recounted conversations are based on the memory of at least one of the participants. While a few people requested anonymity, I have created no composite characters or fictional dialogue. Because this is a work of nonfiction, it is after much hesitation that I decided to alter the names of four characters in this story. I have used the pseudonymous first names of Edward and Crystal for Genene’s two underage children, who deserve an unfettered opportunity to make more of their lives than has their mother. I have used the pseudonymous first name of Lisa for Genene’s sister, who spoke frankly with me about her family, but understandably wishes to minimize her association with the events described in this book. Keith Martin is also a pseudonym, for reasons which will become obvious in the pages which follow.
I am grateful to the dozens of people who helped me compile this story. Many spoke candidly when it was particularly difficult—before Genene Jones went to trial. Special thanks to Pat Alberti, Art Brogley, John Carter, Cheryl Cipriani, Elton Cude, Chris Cuellar, Joe Davis, Vincent DiMaio, Jeff Duffield, Edwin Edwards, Karen Glenney, Gerald Goldstein, Alejandro Gonzales, Jim Greenfield, Toni Grosshaupt, John Guest, Janet Jones, John Mangos, Petti and Reid McClellan, Arthur McFee, Sam Millsap, Marisol Montes, Michael Pearson, Cherlyn Pendergraft, Jim Perdue, Ed Rademaekers, Debbie Rasch, Annette Richardson, Nick Rothe, Jim Stinnett, Ron Sutton, Joe Grady Tuck, and Diane Whitworth.
Any errors of interpretation within these pages are, of course, my own.
Prologue
It was just past noon when Petti McClellan headed for the cemetery to visit her little girl. Chelsea Ann would have been fifteen months and eleven days old that day. Petti kept track, as though there would be another birthday to celebrate, with adoring grandparents and funny hats and ice cream and, most of all, a big homemade cake, with three wax candles—one, of course, to grow on—planted firmly in a thick coat of sugary chocolate frosting. The truth was that Petti, even though she had journeyed to the cemetery daily during the week since the funeral, didn’t really accept that Chelsea was gone. It had all been so sudden.
Slender and a bit frail, Petti McClellan was a girlishly pretty woman with dark hair and sad eyes. She and her husband, Reid, both twenty-seven, lived in a trailer home seventeen miles from the Garden of Memories Cemetery in Kerrville, where they had buried their only daughter. The air was dry and cool on this late-September day, despite the midday Texas sun. Situated near the geographic center of the state, Kerrville was renowned for its gentle climate. The sleepy retirement community stood in the heart of the Texas Hill Country—a dramatic highland of craggy peaks, blazing wildflowers, crisp skies, and sparkling streams. Carpeted with grass and shaded by trees, the Hill Country was a land of great beauty, a soothing relief from the parched prairie to the west, the treeless plains to the north and east, and the semitropical brush country that stretched south to the Rio Grande. But the Hill Country was also a place of hidden dangers—of thin soil and erratic rainfall, of flash floods and venomous snakes.
Petti parked her dusty Oldsmobile just inside the cemetery grounds and started on the short walk to her daughter’s grave. During her first visit to this place, upon seeing the small sealed box containing the body, Petti had screamed, “You’re killing my baby!” and crumpled to the ground. Family and friends had sent her to a psychiatrist to help her cope; he had placed Petti on powerful sedatives that kept her in a haze much of the day. Now it was images of Chelsea that fogged the young mother’s mind: of blue eyes and tiny blond curls, and of her daughter’s smile, cherubic and winsome, full of innocent delight and spoiled mischief. There was another image too: the look of terror in Chelsea’s eyes when she suddenly was unable to breathe.
The sound of moaning in the distance swept away Petti’s fog. Looking up, she noticed a heavyset woman kneeling at the foot of her daughter’s grave. Petti McClellan knew the woman. It was Genene Jones, the nurse in the pediatrician’s office where this nightmare had begun, where the world had spun out of control with the flash of a steel syringe. Genene was rocking back and forth before the mound of upturned earth that covered Chelsea. Tears streamed down her face. And she was wailing the dead child’s name, over and over, in a chilling incantation: Chelsea! Chelsea! Chelsea!
After watching silently for several minutes, Petti crept close
r and called to the nurse. What was she doing there? Genene struggled to her feet and stared—not at but through Petti, as though she weren’t even there. Then the nurse walked off, without uttering a word. Frozen by the encounter, Petti noticed that Genene had left behind a bouquet of flowers. But she had taken something too: a bow from Chelsea’s grave.
Until that moment, the McClellans had believed that Genene Jones and Kathy Holland, the doctor for whom Genene worked, had done everything they could to save their daughter’s life. Now Petti began to think there was something strange about the nurse—something she didn’t know or understand, something horrible and frightening.
She did not yet suspect that Chelsea had been murdered.
PART ONE
The Making of a Nurse
The Vocational Nurse’s Pledge
In all sincerity and with my loyalty and fidelity, I pledge to uphold the honor of this vocation;
To assist the physician and the professional nurse in performing any service which will improve the welfare of humanity;
To safeguard any confidence entrusted in me, I will at all times apply the Golden Rule, toward friend and foe alike.
With God as my strength, it will be my privilege as well as my duty to serve the needs of my fellow man as a Vocational Nurse.
One
Those who occupy the San Antonio estate where Genene Jones grew up say that there are ghosts in the house. The old eight-acre Jones homestead was long ago sold for development as apartments. But the family’s two-story stucco mansion still stands, divided into efficiency apartments and a rental office, and vestiges of the past also linger.
One spirit—he lives in the rental office—is said to be that of a teenage boy who was killed in a terrible explosion. The second apparition, who inhabits Apartment 2, is said to be that of his father, the victim of a sad, untimely end. No one in the house claims to have heard voices or seen objects move through the air. But people say they have discovered drawers open and piles of papers in places where they weren’t. And according to the apartment manager, the two rooms in question sometimes grow inexplicably cold—even in the fiery South Texas summer.
Genene Ann Jones was similarly haunted by her past. Growing up, she complained often that she was unwanted and unloved. At the moment of her birth, in fact, she was. Star-crossed from the start, Genene entered the world on the thirteenth of July, 1950, in San Antonio, Texas. Her parents promptly gave her up for adoption. She became the daughter of Dick and Gladys Jones, one of four adopted children in a family destined to suffer more than its share of worldly misfortune.
They lived in the oldest city in a brash and youthful state. To the casual modern-day visitor, San Antonio appears the most tranquil and genteel of any Texas town, a subtropical paradise where native and tourist, Anglo and Hispanic, while away hours sipping margaritas and strolling along landscaped river walks. It seems a model of the peaceful social revolution that the Sunbelt boom has brought to America: The ninth-largest city in the nation, it was the first major city to have a Hispanic majority and the first to elect a Hispanic mayor. Civic fathers trumpet the community as a burgeoning high-tech oasis.
The picturesque image is a facade. Beneath the veneer of modern sophistication, San Antonio is one of America’s poorest cities, dominated by a vast Mexican barrio, where tens of thousands live ill-clad, ill-housed, ill-fed, and ill-educated; where miles of streets lie unpaved; where infant mortality far exceeds the national average; and where more than half the people in entire neighborhoods cannot read or write in any language. San Antonio is a dependent city. Lacking substantial industry, it must rely economically on outsiders—on the federal payroll from a ring of military bases and on a critical trade in tourism; it is a symbol of the town’s dependence that the tallest downtown building is a hotel. San Antonio is also a city that harbors a tradition of bloody deeds—of murders and lynchings and random acts of violence. The city’s very history is defined by an epic massacre.
The first permanent settlement there dates back to 1718, when Spanish soldiers and missionaries established an outpost in the wilderness, two hundred miles north of Mexico, along the headwaters of a humble river. The centerpiece of their tiny colony, in what would one day become the city’s downtown, was the Mission San Antonio de Valero—later known as the Alamo. Plagued by epidemics, internal squabbling, and bloody Indian raids, the settlement struggled to survive. The missions failed as religious institutions, and Spain converted them to secular military forts before the beginning of the nineteenth century. In 1821, revolution made Texas part of an independent Mexico. But the Anglos who were settling the territory felt revolutionary impulses of their own.
In quest of an independent Texas, an army of Texans and American frontiersmen captured San Antonio in December 1835. When Mexican troops arrived ten weeks later, the handful of rebels left to guard the city took refuge behind the thick stone walls of the Alamo, by then a roofless ruin. On February 23, Mexican general Santa Anna laid siege to the mission, defended by less than two hundred men, with an army of five thousand. Modern scholarship suggests that when the fortress was overrun, a handful of the famous martyrs, including Davy Crockett, actually surrendered and were executed. But by killing many times their number and holding off Santa Anna for thirteen days, the Alamo’s defenders gave the rebels time to rally and inspired the quintessential Texas legend.
Through Texas’s independence, statehood, and participation in the Confederacy, San Antonio grew slowly. The beginning of the great cattle drives during Reconstruction and the arrival of the railroad in 1877 attracted waves of immigrants, spawning a Wild West culture. A history of the city, written as part of a federal Work Projects Administration guide to Texas, described the late 1870s as the beginning of San Antonio’s “lurid” period:
Saloons—most of them with gaming tables—flourished. Behind their carved and polished bars flashily dressed bartenders mixed fiery drinks and dodged when bullets flew. Men whose herds ranged over ten million acres played recklessly for high stakes against cold-eyed professional gamblers and each other. Variety theaters combined the three ingredients, wine, women, and song, but the wine was hard liquor and the song was too frequently interrupted by the deadly explosion of a six-gun. A bank—now one of the city’s wealthiest—originated when a merchant accommodated his customers by hiding their money in a barrel beneath his floor.
In 1898, Teddy Roosevelt filled the ranks of his Rough Riders in a San Antonio hotel bar.
Between 1870 and 1920, the population multiplied from 12,000 to 161,000. San Antonio reigned as not only the largest city in Texas but also the most important. A base of German-immigrant merchants made it a center of banking and commerce. An already teeming Mexican quarter provided an abundance of cheap labor for agriculture and manufacturing. The San Antonio River, winding through downtown, attracted flour mills. The railroad spurred the development of stockyards and slaughterhouses and cotton warehouses. San Antonio already had become a headquarters for the military. And a young tourism trade was growing rapidly; the number of hotels had doubled in five years. Cattlemen and wealthy retirees bought second homes in the city.
Despite its new complexity and sophistication, San Antonio retained its frontier ways, catering to a catholic assortment of tastes. In 1912, a local barkeeper hawked a guide to San Antonio’s “Sporting District,” listing saloons, pits for cockfights, and whorehouses; its index of prostitutes included names, addresses, and phone numbers, and designated individual houses and women as Class A, B, or C. Located in Bexar County, the city justly acquired such nicknames as “The Free State of Bexar” and “Unsainted Anthony.”
Genene Jones’s adoptive father was a child of “Unsainted Anthony,” and the woolly character of the city flowed through him like blood. Born in 1911, Richard Jefferson Jones was the consummate wheeler-dealer. At various times during his lifetime, he owned a chain of hamburger stands, a trailer court, a gourmet restaurant, nightclubs, a parking garage, a billboard advertising busines
s, a laundromat, and a construction company. He came to his willingness to roll the dice early, during a career as a professional gambler.
Jones grew up in south San Antonio, an only child in a working-class neighborhood where kids earned their spending money throwing newspapers. His father’s premature death had left his mother strapped. Carrie Jones lived with her own mother and son in a tiny apartment; little Dick slept on a bed that extended under the kitchen sink. A clerk in a downtown ladies’ clothing store, Carrie could not even spare the change for her boy to purchase a spot for his photo in the Brackenridge High School yearbook.
Determined to improve his lot, Dick went into business after graduating from high school, in 1929. That year, of course, was no time to build a fortune, either on Wall Street or in San Antonio. In the decade to come, the flow of new residents into the city would slow to a trickle, allowing Houston and Dallas to surge ahead in population. A construction boom ended too; for a generation, not a single new building would join the downtown skyline. Although the federal payroll cushioned the city from devastation, the Depression initiated a decade of municipal torpor.
But Dick Jones had found an industry that knew no bad times. He operated a trio of local clubs, small bookie joints where he took bets on horses, professional baseball games, and anything else that would invite a wager. Each club worked a local market: the Express Recreation Club, in the basement of a downtown building, catered to doctors and newspapermen; the Broadway Tavern had a clientele of golfers from a nearby park; the Aviation Jockey Club, close to a military base, accommodated servicemen.
In the dreary days of the Depression, the colorful men who ran gambling houses, far from being shunned as rogues, commanded public affection. One of Jones’s peers, a cigar-chewing plug named V. E. “Red” Berry, eventually won election to the state legislature, where he promptly proposed the legalization of horse racing. When conventional efforts failed in the face of opposition from Baptist northern Texas, Berry introduced a bill to split the state in two. He reasoned that if the Texas legislature wouldn’t approve horse racing, the South Texas legislature surely would.
