by Peter Elkind
“This investigation has been long, hard, and very productive,” concluded Millsap. “The focus now shifts for final resolution to other forums, specifically the Justice Department and state licensing agencies. We pledge our full cooperation toward the final goal of producing full and complete justice for all concerned.”
Art Brogley, the gumshoe who had spent the past two years tracking the misdeeds of Genene Jones and those who employed her, was bitter about the decision to bring the investigation to an end. Brogley had been unimpressed with the departure of Belko, Harris, and Mousseau. He figured the hospital was cutting its losses; he suspected his bosses had cut a deal. But what angered Brogley most of all was the failure to charge Genene Jones with murder for what she had done in the pediatric ICU.
Brogley’s efforts had ultimately narrowed to two potential cases for indictment. The first concerned Joshua Sawyer, the smoke-inhalation victim who had displayed signs of improvement, then arrested twice and died in the presence of Genene Jones. Lab reports Brogley had discovered showed his blood contained a toxic level of Dilantin. The second was Patrick Zavala, whose postoperative death had set off the complaints of the surgeons.
Brogley had heard Nick Rothe explain over and over that they lacked enough evidence in either case—that they might win a conviction on emotion, but it would never stand on appeal. He had heard the arguments that even two more murder convictions would not affect how long Jones remained in prison. But to Brogley, that didn’t matter. The investigator had spent months immersed in the brief lives of these children—and more than a dozen like them. Born to the indigent and powerless, the poor dumb slobs that gnawed at Brogley’s bleeding heart, these kids were truly victims.
As Millsap’s decision to pull the plug loomed, one afternoon Brogley had stormed into Rothe’s office in a rage. If they didn’t have enough evidence, the investigator preached, they should keep at it until they did. If it had been the mayor’s daughter, perhaps a police captain’s son—someone who could bring pressure—wouldn’t they pursue it to the bitter end? It was all politics, railed Brogley. They had no right to give up; Genene Jones had murdered these kids.
Nick Rothe nodded his head. “You and I know she murdered these kids,” he said quietly. “But there’s nothing anybody can do about it now.”
Thirty-Three
Even after receiving judgment, Genene Jones reveled in the spotlight. In the days following her trial in Georgetown, she chatted happily to reporters for hours about the very events that she had been unwilling to discuss in court. A succession of media visitors found her in fine spirits; just days after collapsing in tears upon her conviction, she was mugging for photographers. “I’m not afraid of jail, because I’m innocent,” Genene declared. “If I had to spend ninety-nine years in solitary, I could live with myself because I didn’t do anything.” Speaking from her jail cell, Genene griped that the Georgetown jury had fallen for a “snow job.” Chelsea was a very sick baby, she explained. “You have to ask the Lord why she died.” Genene professed her affection for the child she had been convicted of murdering. When Chelsea died, Genene said, “I cried for over a week.” In one interview, the nurse even attacked Petti McClellan, calling her tearful court testimony “so obvious an act that it was an insult to Chelsea.”
Always eager to surprise, Genene announced that she was engaged. She said she would marry Ronnie Rudd, the convicted auto thief with whom she had developed a romance in the Williamson County jail. But in a shrieking front-page headline—MASS KILLER CLAIMS “KILLER NURSE” LOVE—the San Antonio News suggested a different paramour: Henry Lee Lucas, the one-eyed drifter who professed to have raped and murdered more than one hundred women. The story attributed its mind-boggling report to an unidentified “lawman,” who claimed Lucas had fallen in love with Jones and “wanted” her—“just like he wanted the others.” Genene had already vented her unhappiness about even sharing the jail with Henry Lee. “There is one great difference between the two of us,” she complained. “One, I am innocent. Two, he is guilty. I don’t like being classified with the man. It’s like good and evil.”
Genene had spent much of her time behind bars working on a book about her ordeal, even preparing a list of prospective publishers in New York City. She abandoned the project after her conviction, having learned that Texas law barred convicted felons from reaping profit from books or films about their misdeeds.
But Genene continued writing her own account of her story in a revealing series of letters to Keith Martin, her friend from her years as a beautician. The two had resumed contact after Genene’s indictment for Chelsea’s murder, despite her deposition statements that Martin was the father of her daughter—and that he had later died in an automobile accident. Genene blamed her declaration that Martin was dead on a simple misunderstanding. The question of Crystal’s paternity became a major subject of their correspondence.
In Kerrville, Genene had told Kathy Holland that her first husband, Jim DeLany, had fathered Crystal during a brief reconciliation after their divorce. She said she had named Martin as the father because her mother hated DeLany. Nonetheless, Genene sought, in these new letters, to persuade her gay friend that he was Crystal’s father. Anticipating Martin’s logical response—that he knew of no occasion when they had had sex—Genene offered an extravagantly creative explanation. She recalled a time during their earlier friendship when she had nursed him back to health from a severe fever. Genene informed Martin that he had engaged in sexual intercourse with her then, but that he didn’t recall it because he was delirious.
Genene first offered this claim in a letter postmarked February 15, 1984, and presumably written as her defense attorneys were presenting their case in Georgetown. The back of the envelope carried the notation: SIT DOWN AND OPEN WITH EXTREME CAUTION. Inside was a snapshot of Crystal.
Dear Keith,
I must discuss an urgent matter with you prior to taking the stand. If I don’t do it now, I’m afraid you will be hurt. I’m not sure there is anyway for you not to be hurt. Please believe me when I say there are no alterior motives for my telling you now. I just feel you have the right to know prior to the publications that will take place during the trial.
Do you remember the night of your illness when I was nursing you through. What I guess I mean is do you really remember that night.
From your reaction the day you met Crystal I felt you had some doubt about what happened.
Something did happen that night Keith. She being the end product.
“Please don’t faint,” Genene wrote. She said Crystal knew nothing about Keith being her father. And she declared that she didn’t wish her revelation to cause him any problems. “We both know your lifestyle and it is one you have chosen…” The letter was signed, “Love Genene.”
In a brief note dated February 17—the day after her sentencing—Jones implored Martin to visit her in jail. She instructed him in a postscript to “Tell them your my brother—Keith Jones.” Martin did not visit Genene. Instead, in an angry letter, he challenged her account of Crystal’s conception. A few days later, Genene responded.
Dear Keith,
Please calm down. I thought I made it plain in that letter that the only reason I was even telling you was that at the time that letter was written I was going to take the stand. I was only concerned for your well being. I believe I also made it clear that I expected nothing from you. I only felt you had the right to know prior to any testimony.
As for initiating the sexual act? Wrong. During that night in your delirium I honestly thought it was me you wanted + that you realized you were making love to me, until you called me a mans name. It was then I realized you were delirious. And it was then, that I felt such great pain…
Crystal is your daughter…
…But please try to go on with your life as if this knowledge had never reached you. I am sorry now that I even told you…
Genene said she had not taken the stand because it would have served no purpose. The jury wa
s biased, she declared; it had reached its verdict during the first week of the trial. Jones also asked Martin to forgive her penmanship, explaining, “I have taken to the shakes for some reason. God bless my friend,” she concluded.
In late February, Genene was transferred to the Bexar County Jail for a pretrial hearing in San Antonio. On February 28, she wrote Martin to denounce the report on her case on 20/20, which had prompted him to ask questions. The complaint about the ABC broadcast—for which Genene had flown to New York to tape an interview—illustrated her love-hate relationship with the press. While blaming the media for her conviction and assailing their failure to embrace her perspective—that she was the innocent victim of a conspiracy—she continued to accept countless requests for interviews.
Dearest,
…20/20 is no different than the local rags that are printed…I think you know me well enough to know I could never hurt another human being. What + who I hurt was prestige + big money. And I’ll tell you now, that if I had it to do over again, knowing what I know now, I would do it again. I would fight God for those kids, if I had to.
Before being transferred to San Antonio, Genene wrote, she had met with Judge Carter, who “apologized for not making the paramount decisions that were needed. He feels I am innocent + assure[s] me the appeal will go through.” But Genene said she knew she would have to spend many months in prison. She intended to use that time, she wrote, to better herself and grow. Her jailers were “extremely nice,” but the prisoners were “filled with hatred.” She was being kept in isolation in the hospital area “for my own safety.”
Genene complained to the director of the Bexar County Jail, but it wasn’t about her safety. Instead, she expressed unhappiness that her television, confiscated because of a malfunction, had not been replaced. “She probably liked things a lot better in Williamson County,” the jail director told a local reporter. “She’s probably not happy here, because we cannot give her the personal attention she was used to getting.”
In a letter to Martin dated March 7, Genene declared that she now understood why she was in prison. She also elaborated on the fiction that Judge Carter considered her innocent and had offered an apology.
Sweet Man,
…Keith, this situation is so complex. I am just now understanding, although vaguely, what’s going on. Let me see if I can capsulize it.
I was responsible for the investigation at the hospital…Myself and two other nurses. Because of that report the hospital district lost mega bucks. Administrators were fired, grants lost + all hell broke loose. After a press conference last year that I had the public became aware that the hospital was to blame + lawsuits were then filed…
In looking back now, I feel that Kerrville was a set-up. The fact that Holland knew the situation at the hospital + her total 360° turn in testifying proved that to me. The district + the county have got to find some way out of that situation. They have to try + put the blame on someone else besides themselves…
Genene added that she had met with Judge Carter and that he was helping with her appeal. In the meantime, she said, she remained in isolation—a place that was dark and smelly and frequented by rodents. “Write again soon my friend,” she concluded. “I love your essence.”
On March 26, Genene was rushed to the emergency room at Medical Center Hospital with a complaint of difficulty breathing. She was admitted for a short stay on the hospital’s ninth floor, where she remained under guard; a few nurses from the pediatric ICU came to visit. The medical director of the jail said Genene suffered from chronic asthma attacks and a stomach ulcer. With her second trial postponed until October, Genene was transferred to her long-term home—the Texas Department of Corrections prison for women in Gatesville, called the Mountain View Unit.
In August, a TDC official, noting Genene’s nursing background, wrote to the Bexar County Hospital District to ask if there was any problem with inmate Jones’s being assigned to work in the prison hospital’s dispensary. The letter leaked into the San Antonio press, forcing an embarrassed prison spokesman to offer a public assurance that they would find Genene a task that had nothing to do with medicine. In a September 14 letter to Martin, Genene sounded euphoric about the duties she had been assigned: making Cabbage-Patch-type dolls for sale to Texas law-enforcement officials. “They are adorable, + I love the work,” she enthused. She reported that she had been transferred from a previous assignment in the kitchen “after quite a few threats with knifes and boiling water.” The hostility toward her was on a “grand scale,” wrote Genene. “I don’t go anywhere without bodyguards.”
Back at the Bexar County Jail one month later, Genene explained that she had waived a jury for her San Antonio trial because “there are not 12 people in the State of Texas who are not biased…I certainly have no control over anything at this point, which is difficult for me…” Genene suggested to Martin that she had received a fresh round of abuse in the county jail. She added: “I’m not a physical fighter, I’m a lover as you well know, but it’s coming down to push or shove + I have been pushed all I’m going to be…”
Genene’s reaction to her conviction came in a letter dated December 9. By then she had been returned to Gatesville. Martin, who was developing growing doubts about the wisdom of the correspondence, was writing infrequently.
Opening her letter “Hello Stranger,” Genene said she wished she could help Martin “deal with all of this.” But that was impossible for the moment, Genene wrote suggestively, “because prisons tend to have eyes + ears that love money + because many will pay that money for any information they can give.”
On December 15, 1984, Genene sent Martin a Christmas card, scribbling the notation: “Take care + remember my thoughts + prayers are with you always. Love Genene.” On January 28, in response to Martin’s continued denial that he had fathered Crystal, Genene wrote her final letter in their correspondence. There was no gushy term of endearment in this missive’s salutation. Gone, too, was the tone of the benevolent born-again Christian, the “lover” who signed off with the assurance that her prayers were with him.
Keith,
Listen + listen well. There will be no, NO further discussions between you + I…
I, of all people, should have known better than to be honest with you. You never knew what the word meant.
As for you “having a child”? You don’t. You are dead as far as she is concerned and as far as I’m concerned.
You are right about one thing, Keith, you will burn in the pits of hell. In fact, you will occupy the deepest pit.
Take your friends + shove them where the sun don’t shine.
As for my time. Obviously I’m doing it in here, much better than what you are doing yours in that prison you live in.
May your life reap everything + I mean everything you sow.
Genene
A few days later, Keith Martin received another letter from Gatesville. But this one was not from Genene Jones. It carried the name and handwriting of another inmate, who in vulgar and vivid prose claimed Genene as her sexual “territory” and warned Martin to steer clear. “Stay in your own element (as small as it is) & leave my ‘Queen’ to me,” the letter advised. It was signed: “Sincerely Yours, A Fuckers Nightmare.”
Thirty-Four
I went to visit Genene Jones on a dank, drizzly fall day, more than four years after we had first met in a trailer in San Angelo. A bleak agricultural community, Gatesville sat in the Central Texas plains, three hours northeast of San Antonio. Named for Fort Gates, a frontier army outpost that dated back to 1848, it was home to 7,100 people and three state prisons. The Mountain View Unit for women had been converted during the 1970s from an old home for delinquent boys. In a cluster of one-story buildings of cinder block and red brick, the prison had a capacity for 653 inmates, including some under maximum security. Ringing the property were two walls of chain-link fence, topped with ugly webs of razor wire.
The visiting room was in the most secure building on the prop
erty, occupied by the women on death row. A second fence surrounded the structure, and an armed guard in a tower kept watch over the grounds. After a quick pat-down, I was buzzed through an electronic gate to a fence-bordered path that led inside. The long, cement-floored chamber echoed like an empty locker room. A barrier—with Plexiglas at eye level, and wire mesh to the ceiling—ran the length of the room, separating inmates from visitors. There was no one on the other side. A single guard waiting at the end of the room informed me that Genene would be brought in shortly. I peered out a window, into a small, muddy courtyard. It was filled with fat cantaloupes, an incongruous sight. “The girls on death row grow them,” the guard explained.
Chattering small talk to her escort, Genene arrived. It was apparent instantly that she was different. She looked lean and hard, having lost forty pounds since our last face-to-face meeting. She wore white prison pajamas with the word JONES and her inmate number—380650—on a little orange tag on her chest. Blue makeup colored her eyelids. Her speech, once cocky and insistent, had slowed and softened into a Southern ghetto drawl. Her words had softened too.
Absent were the four-letter epithets that once salted her conversation. Genene sounded placid and relaxed, even gentle. She had greeted me a bit warily, but warmed quickly through the day. I had been told that she was furious about the lengthy magazine article I had written about her case. By the time I departed the prison, however, she acted as though I were a friend. “I’m less angry,” she explained, when I returned for a second visit. “I had a lot of hatred for a lot of people. The hatred came out of confusion because of the obvious question: ‘Why? Why is this all centered around me?’ But you have to quit asking that after a while. You have to let that go, just take a day at a time. If you hang on to hatred, it destroys you.”
