by Peter Elkind
Gladys was bewildered and heartsick about her daughter’s predicament. She just wanted to be left alone, to live out her days quietly with a small circle of friends and family. Now she had reporters badgering her, trespassing on her property and phoning the house for comment. Prosecutors had even subpoenaed her telephone records. The newspapers made Genene sound like a baby-killer—an accusation no mother could bring herself to believe. But Gladys also knew from bitter experience that she couldn’t trust her daughter. Genene had filled her mother’s golden years with disappointment; even as she accepted help, she was never grateful. Yet Gladys had always stood by her because she was family. Now, in the worst scrape of her life, Genene was demanding that her mother save her again.
Terrified that this latest disaster would deplete her life’s savings, leaving her penniless, Gladys had allowed her daughter to languish in jail for thirty-six days. She hoped that the judge would reduce the bond. In a series of anguished letters, Genene begged her mother to free her immediately. She cared only about being with her family, Genene wrote; she couldn’t survive in jail. In one letter, she sent Gladys a two-page suicide note, to be saved “for the right time.” “It’s the only way out I have,” she wrote. Genene pleaded with Gladys to pour any inheritance she was to receive into the cash payment a bonding company would require to bail her out. “Isn’t my life worth $25,000 to you?” she demanded.
When the judge refused to lower the bond, Gladys relented, with the help of an unusual arrangement. Most bonding companies required security and at least 10 percent in cash—in Genene’s case, $22,500. Dale Moreau and Edd Hodges of the newly formed Hill Country Bonding Service in Kerrville agreed to write Genene’s bond in exchange for the posting of property and a nonrefundable payment of $10,000. Gladys did not ask why; it was soon to become apparent that the two men were eager for publicity. When the sheriff asked for additional security, Gladys placed a $50,000 certificate of deposit in a Kerrville bank, subject to seizure by the county if Genene failed to appear in court.
At the time of her release, Genene’s attorney, Bill Chenault, instructed her to stay in one place and maintain a low public profile. The other half of the defense team was equally nervous about how Genene would make use of her freedom. There was much about Genene Jones that disturbed Joe Grady Tuck.
More than a few people still regarded Joe Tuck as the best criminal lawyer in Kerr County. A prematurely balding man with a graying red beard, Tuck, at thirty-seven, already had a career as a political wunderkind behind him. Once the youngest DA in the country, he had been elected at the age of twenty-six in a district that adjoined Ron Sutton’s territory. Having retired to private practice after a couple of terms, he was not the least bit eager to represent Genene Jones; defending an accused baby-killer wouldn’t win him many clients in Kerrville. But Murray Jordan’s request had left Tuck little choice. Jordan was a longtime friend; besides, a small-town lawyer knew better than to refuse a judge’s call.
When Tuck paid his first visit to Genene Jones, then still in jail, he was struck by the simpleminded nature of her apparent belief in her innocence. The nurse had a rapid-fire answer for every question he could ask. Genene had got him going. As he listened to her, he could not help thinking: “This poor woman’s getting railroaded.” Tuck left with the thought that Jones might make a good witness. The trick was to have her appear softer and more demure; careful coaching, a little makeup, and new clothes could do it. But as Tuck studied the details of the case, he came to a different judgment. Out of Genene’s bewitching presence, Tuck concluded that his client was guilty.
Like many criminal-defense attorneys, Tuck usually tried to avoid reaching such a conclusion. He never asked a client if he had committed the crime with which he had been charged. Instead, he simply asked each to tell his story. If that account wasn’t likely to produce a happy result, Tuck would suggest an alternative—or perhaps a plea bargain. But in Genene Jones’s case, Tuck found a conclusion of guilt inescapable. In looking at the facts, he couldn’t think of any other explanation. Genene was the common link in all the children’s arrests; she had to have done it.
The belief that he was working to free a woman who had committed horrible crimes was not, in isolation, what bothered the lawyer; most of the people he represented were guilty. What really disturbed Tuck was that Jones was unlike any criminal defendant he had known. He had defended people who falsely professed innocence; they lacked Genene’s extraordinary conviction. He had also represented individuals who were truly innocent; they regarded their situation with outrage and fear. But Genene seemed to revel in her plight. She was actually eager to battle Sutton. It’s almost like megalomania, Tuck thought. “She was above all this. She had nothing but contempt for everyone against her, and never doubted for a minute that she could beat them.”
Tuck decided that Genene Jones was insane. That was why the nurse acted so certain of her innocence; she didn’t know she was guilty. The lawyer began to plot strategy for a psychiatric defense. Tuck would admit that Jones had committed the crimes with which she was charged, but plead that a mental disability absolved her of any responsibility for them. Before a jury of self-reliant Texans, an insanity plea was a high-risk defense, a lawyer’s last resort. But Tuck could think of no other approach that would work. If everything went right, Genene might walk free after a few years of confinement in a state mental hospital.
The biggest obstacle to such a plan was Genene Jones herself. Tuck had hinted at the approach, and the nurse was having none of it. To the defense lawyer, that merely reinforced his theory. But Tuck needed Jones’s cooperation to execute his strategy; he decided to try to persuade Genene that she was insane. Tuck contacted Dr. Franklin Redmond, a prominent psychiatrist in San Antonio, and made arrangements for him to examine Genene Jones. Tuck wanted the doctor to furnish evidence that Jones was crazy—to provide him with ammunition to confront Genene with her guilt. Tuck and Chenault told their client a psychiatric exam would aid her defense. But Genene did not know the nature of the help that they sought. She believed she was seeing Redmond to prove her sanity. In fact, she was there to prove her insanity. In arranging the appointment, Tuck frankly confided to the doctor his own theory: His client was “some kind of homicidal maniac” and didn’t know it.
Redmond interviewed Genene Jones only once, in a three-hour session on July 15. The psychiatrist entered the meeting with little information about Genene’s background. He had no knowledge of her history of lying, which dated back to childhood. He was unaware of her frequent hospitalizations and countless visits to emergency rooms, the vast majority of which had revealed nothing wrong. He knew nothing about the false reports of emergencies she had made while a nurse at Medical Center Hospital, or of similar incidents in Kerrville. He was not informed of Genene’s untruthful stories about the identity of her daughter’s father and Cathy Ferguson’s medical history. And he knew nothing of the many witnesses—doctors, nurses, paramedics, parents, and others—who contradicted Jones’s account of what had happened to the children under her care. Thus Dr. Redmond relied entirely on his single session with Genene Jones—a woman who had fooled many others before.
After completing his interview with Genene Jones, the psychiatrist phoned the attorneys for the defense to inform them of his findings. Several weeks later, he sent a written summary of his conclusions to Bill Chenault.
Her mental status during the evaluation revealed that she was a 33-year-old woman who was casually dressed, who was friendly and cooperative to the interview. She established and maintained good eye contact throughout the interview. She showed no hesitancy in answering the questions that were put to her. She seemed relatively comfortable, with no overt signs of anxiety. Her mood seemed neither depressed nor elated. Her affect was appropriate. She was oriented to person, place and time. She was of average to above average intelligence. Her recent and remote memory seemed intact. Her thoughts were goal directed. There was no evidence of hallucinations, delusions, loose ass
ociations, blocking, ideas of reference or other evidence of thought disorder.
I asked many probing questions along some of the lines that we had previously discussed, specifically about her relationships with Dr. Holland, [Debbie] Sultenfuss, [Cathy] Ferguson, Petti McClellan, Gwen Grantner and Garron Turk. I asked her specific and probing questions about her sexual orientation, about her previous relationships, about her interpersonal interactions on all of her jobs, including the Bexar County Hospital experience. I explored the issue of her reaction to stress and emergency type situations.
Throughout the interview, I found no evidence which would make me think that Ms. Jones in any way is suffering from a major psychiatric disorder, such as schizophrenia. I found no evidence for psychosis such as hallucinations or delusions. I found no evidence that she might have done things alleged in the indictment as part of a delusion or a psychosis and be unaware of them. She reports no amnesia for the events surrounding the incidents with the children included in the indictment. She has explanations which are coherently put together and make sense. She further denies any of the specific actions such as injecting any kind of medication into the children that was not specifically ordered. Further, she seems to be clearly aware of her current situation in terms of her indictment and the impending trial and has the capacity to cooperate in her defense.
Ms. Jones does seem to have personality characteristics which by her history may have caused her difficulties in the past. She appears to be a very outspoken person and it seems that there have been incidents in her past where this outspokenness has caused friction with her supervisors and/or co-workers.
Based on the data available for me to evaluate, I feel that this summary, with the expressed opinions as stated, exhausts the relevant contributions of clinical psychiatry to the legal aspects of this case.
Redmond’s findings torpedoed Tuck’s plan for an insanity defense. The psychiatrist had not only concluded that Genene was sane but also appeared convinced that she was innocent. It was the only psychiatric examination that Genene Jones would undergo.
After gaining her freedom on June 29, Genene had moved her children and her new husband to Gladys Jones’s house in northwest San Antonio. Gladys was less than delighted to host the circus that surrounded her daughter. Genene’s presence meant a fresh wave of visits from nosy reporters. Gladys was also sickened by Genene’s marriage—in her letters from jail, she had called Garron the love of her life—and puzzled by her evident excitement about her plight. Genene pored over the stories about her case that Gladys had clipped like an author reading rave reviews. Keith Martin, Genene’s old friend from her beauty-parlor days, visited the house. He found Genene plotting strategy and Gladys Jones depressed. Martin mentioned to Gladys that Genene, in her deposition, had testified that he was dead. “Keith, you know what Genene’s all about,” said Gladys. “She’s a pathological liar. I’ve had it with her.” After less than a week in San Antonio, Genene and Garron moved to the home of Turk’s grandmother in Brady. The woman who had written of her desperation to be with her family left her two children in San Antonio with their grandmother.
For about one month, Genene followed her lawyers’ instructions and kept a low profile. Then, as if to stare down the community that accused her of murder, she and Garron moved back to Kerrville. Their new residence was a stone cottage just west of town. It was the home of Edd Hodges, Genene’s bail bondsman, who eagerly assumed the role of the nurse’s protector and public spokesman. Explaining the odd arrangement, Genene told Tuck she had moved in with Hodges for safety; she said she had received a death threat in Brady. Genene brandished the note excitedly, explaining that she had found it on her typewriter. It read: “YOUR DEAD.” The note—even down to the misspelled contraction—was identical to one sent in March 1982 to another nurse in another city. The city was San Antonio, and the nurse was Suzanna Maldonado—the RN who had complained that too many children were dying on Genene in the pediatric ICU.
Genene’s car had been repossessed after her indictment. The nurse also owed money from her treatment the previous fall at Sid Peterson Hospital. But in moving to Kerrville, she had selected the one town where she was certain to find no work. She did not make much effort to find any; Genene was preoccupied with her case. She lived off borrowed money from her mother and with the help of free housing; bail bondsman Hodges was charging Genene’s entourage no rent. After a few weeks, Garron took a minimum-wage job at a Kerrville Pizza Hut to help pay for the groceries.
Despite Genene’s apparent poverty, the Kerr County Attorney, noting her ability to arrange a $225,000 bond, petitioned Judge Jordan to free the county from paying her legal bills. Hoping to prove that the defendant was not indigent, the county attorney subpoenaed Gladys to appear in Kerrville for questioning about the family assets. Genene’s sickly mother greeted the summons with disgust. “Why am I being bothered with this thing?” she asked. When she failed to show up on the scheduled date because she was ill, the county attorney moved to have the seventy-two-year-old woman cited for contempt of court. Instead, Gladys testified at a second hearing, where in a barely audible voice she made it clear that she intended to offer no more financial help to her daughter. “It was understood that if I went [on] her bond and got her out of jail, that would be all I could possibly do for her,” Gladys testified. The judge agreed that Genene was entitled to her indigency status; the contempt motion against Gladys was withdrawn.
By then, Edward had again proved too much for his grandmother to handle. Gladys told her daughter to reclaim the children. Still living at the home of her bondsman, Genene began sending Crystal and Edward to school in Ingram, near Kerrville, where their schoolmates included the two sons of Petti and Reid McClellan. Provoked by the presence of the woman he believed had murdered his daughter, Reid McClellan kept a close eye on the house where Genene was staying. Several times, he cruised by in his old pickup in the middle of the night. Reid knew his truck backfired when he shut down the engine; he would park it in front of the cottage, then turn off the key. Ka-boom! The noise would bring Hodges running out of the house, shotgun in hand. Hodges called the county sheriffs, who told Reid to knock it off.
Genene was first to face the charge of murdering Chelsea McClellan. In August, Judge Jordan had granted a motion to move the case to Georgetown, the seat of Williamson County, located a hundred miles northeast of Kerrville and twenty-eight miles north of Austin. Genene’s lawyers had sought the change of venue, arguing that the glut of pretrial publicity made it impossible for her to receive a fair trial in Kerrville. Much of the recent press, however, had come from the defendant.
One day after the trial was moved, Genene told the San Antonio Light that someone was trying to kill her. “I’m frightened,” Genene declared. “I fear for my life.” Jones’s vivid account of death threats produced a banner front-page headline: VANDALS TERRIFY NURSE JONES. Ignoring the gag order issued at her request, Genene said she was granting the interview to counter the bad publicity she had received in the past. “I want people to know I’m human too,” she said. Later that day, Genene also gave interviews to radio and television reporters.
Jones and Hodges reported no fewer than four break-ins at his house. In the first incident, the word “DEAD” had been written in shaving cream across the front door; inside the house, Genene’s purse had been dumped out, and a sheet had been cut up in the shape of a woman’s body. Then on a single day, they complained of two break-ins. They said medical records Genene was studying for her defense had been taken, a shower curtain torn, and the word “BITCH” scrawled on a bathroom mirror. In the last episode, reported to have taken place while Jones and Hodges were at a court hearing, the word “DEAD” had appeared once again in shaving cream, this time in the bathroom. In each case, Edd Hodges had called the office of the Kerr County sheriff. In each case, the sheriff’s deputies could find no clue to the identity of the perpetrators. When Hodges reported the fourth incident, chief deputy sheriff Ed Slater investigate
d the complaint personally. The deputy interviewed neighbors and inspected the hole in the window screen that was the supposed point of entry; the screen appeared to have been cut from the inside. Slater concluded the break-in reports were a hoax.
On Saturday night, August 13, a familiar face appeared in the emergency room at Sid Peterson Hospital. It was Genene Jones, complaining of stomach pain; she was worried it was an intestinal obstruction. A doctor concluded that Genene’s problem was not serious. After treating her in the ER, the physician sent her home. At 6 P.M. the next day, Genene returned, this time with her husband and Edd Hodges, who was complaining of numbness from a back problem. When Genene tried to enter the emergency room cubicle where Hodges was being treated, the Sid Peterson staff ordered her to leave the hospital. Apparently puzzled by the staff’s reluctance to let her near patients, Genene complained to reporters, asking, “Why did they want me to desert Edd when he needed me?”
Two days later, Hodges informed reporters that Genene was negotiating with a prominent Dallas lawyer, Douglas Mulder, to defend her. Mulder was Ron Sutton’s nemesis, the attorney who had acquitted the capital murder defendant in the DA’s final bid for a conviction in the Brady triple murder case. The negotiations with Mulder never progressed beyond a preliminary stage; Gladys Jones refused her daughter’s pleas to pay the attorney’s hefty retainer. Tuck and Chenault were disappointed; Genene’s court-appointed lawyers were both eager to be replaced.
