SAN ANTONIO (CN) – A former Texas nurse dubbed the “Angel of Death” because of her suspected ties to the killings of up to 60 young children in the 1980s was indicted on two new murder charges Thursday.
Bexar County District Attorney Nico LaHood said that a grand jury charged Genene Jones in the deaths of two more children: 8-month-old Richard Nelson in 1981 and 4-month-old Patrick Zavala in January 1982.
Jones, 66, now faces four new murder charges upon her mandatory release from a state prison next March.
A San Antonio grand jury last week indicted her for the murder of a 15-month-old girl. The same grand jury accused Jones of killing an 11-month-old boy in a separate murder charge in late May.
Prosecutors suspect Jones is responsible for the deaths of up to 60 infants and young children in the early 1980s while she worked in the pediatric intensive care unit at a local hospital, for which she was labeled the “Angel of Death.”
LaHood said that Jones would be held accountable for as many children’s deaths as the evidence will support. The district attorney’s office approved a task force to investigate Jones just after LaHood’s election in 2015.
A judge in 1984 sentenced the ex-nurse to concurrent prison terms of 99 years and 60 years for the death of 15-month-old Chelsea McClellan and for injecting a 4-week-old boy with Haparin who survived the attack.
Jones is scheduled for release in 2018 under a 1977 mandatory release law that LaHood said she was grandfathered in under, which was meant to prevent prison overcrowding.
Bail has been set at $1 million for each new murder charge.
Jones faces up to 99 years in prison if convicted. She is currently incarcerated at the Lane Murray Unit in Gatesville, Texas but will be extradited back to San Antonio to await trial on the four new charges after her release.
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