Five Women Serial Killer Profiles (5 page)

Velma’s new execution date was scheduled for the
2nd of November in 1984 at
2.00 a.m. at
the Central Prison in Raleigh, N.C. four days after her fifty-second birthday. She spoke on the phone the day before her death to close family and friends, which included
Billy Graham and his daughter Anne Graham Lotz, who told her to think of it as the “gateway to heaven.” She also received final visits from family and told them that, ''when I go into that gas chamber at 2 a.m., it's my gateway to heaven.''

Velma refused her last meal and only asked a guard for Cheeze Doodles and a Coca-Cola.

Velma was allowed to choose between two methods of execution: lethal injection or lethal gas. She chose injection.

In her cell, Velma took a final communion. She was then prepared for her death. She was made to wear an adult diaper before she was allowed to dress in clothes of her choice. She chose to wear pretty pink pajamas with embroidered flowers, which covered her gentle, rounded figure. When dressed
, she checked her hair in the mirror.

Guards then took her to a preparation room where she was asked if she had anything to say. She did. Velma wanted to apologize for all the hurt that she had caused and to thank everybody who had supported her for the past six years. She thanked her family for standing by her, and her lawyers and the prison department for their kindness.

She was then asked to lie down on an operating trolley (gurney) to which she was secured with straps and ankle and wrist restraints. A stethoscope and heart monitor were then taped to her chest.

North Carolina Execution Chamber

Needles connected to IV leads were inserted into her arms, and a saline drip was started before the guards wheeled Velma into the execution chamber shortly before 2.00 a.m.

Inside the confines of the prison walls, the other inmates began banging on the Plexiglas windows of their cells. Outside the prison walls, crowds gathered. Supporters of Velma’s and opponents of the death penalty held lighted candles while humming Velma’s best-loved hymn
“
Amazing Grace,
”
while those supporting the death penalty were in a jovial mood, waving their placards in the air that contained slogans such as, “Velma’s going to hell,” and, “Good-Bye Velma and good-riddance,” and they chanted against the gently, humming of “Amazing Grace
:”
“Die, die bitch, die, die bitch!”

Some of the protestors outside the prison

In the execution chamber, three syringes were attached to each of the IV lines into Velma
, and these were operated by three volunteers. One of the IV lines was a dummy so that none of the three volunteers could claim he had actually killed her. Velma first received medication to make her sleep, followed by a poison, pancuronium bromide, to stop her heart.

As she lay on her death bed, she was asked to start counting backwards from one hundred. Velma obeyed until her voice sank slurring into muteness. On November 2nd, 1984, at 2:15 a.m., Velma Barfield was pronounced dead. Velma was the first woman to be executed in America since 1962 and the first woman
to be executed since the re-introduction of the death penalty in 1976. She was also the first woman to be executed by lethal injection.

Following the execution, Velma’s body was taken away by a waiting ambulance for burial. She was buried next to her first husband and father of her children in the
Parkton Cemetery, Parkton Robeson County, North Carolina. At the funeral, her son Ronnie broke down, cried, and begged her forgiveness for not having done more to save her.

Genene Anne Jones was born on the 13
th
of July, 1950 and was immediately handed over for adoption. Dick and Gladys Jones became her new parents. They already had two adopted children, both older than Genene, and later adopted another child, a boy named Travis, who was two years Genene’s junior. 

They lived
just north-west of San Antonio, Texas. A city that is nothing like the stereotypical image of a Texas city. To its credit, it lacks the modern skyline of a large city and neither does it have the tumbleweed-strewn landscape of the Wild West. The Jones lived in a four-bedroom, two-story, house. Rick Jones was a larger than life character, an imposing six feet tall figure, weighing around 240 pounds, and bald. He was a professional gambler and entrepreneur. He also operated nightclubs. When the night clubs went bust, he tried running a restaurant, but that was unsuccessful. His next venture was a billboard company, and he would frequently take one or another of the children in his truck to help him put up the billboards. Later, Genene was to recall that this was one of the happier memories of her life.

As a child
, Genene felt slightly left out from the family; she referred to herself as the “black sheep” of the family. She was small and overweight which did not help her insecurities. Sometimes to gain her parents’ attention, she would feign illness.

At John Marshall High School
, she was known to be bossy and aggressive. Genene worked in the library and if the other students weren’t working the way she thought they should be, Genene would tell them what to do.

She also had a reputation for manipulating and lying to people to make her the
center of attention. The person she was closest to was her brother Travis. Tragically, at the age of fourteen, he made a pipe bomb. Premature detonation of home made bombs is a danger in constructing any homemade bomb, and it blew up in his face, killing him. At Travis’s funeral, Genene, who was only sixteen, howled and fainted. Shortly after this tragedy, her father Dick was found to have terminal cancer. He refused the treatment offered and died in January of 1968, at the age of just fifty-six, just slightly over a year following Travis’s tragic accident.

The family was devastated
. Genene’s mother Gladys began drinking heavily. Following Genene’s graduation from High School in 1968, she married James DeLany ("Jimmy"), an overweight high school dropout. The marriage was as if she was attempting to fill an emptiness left by her father and younger brother for her new husband had little interest in anything except hot rods and cars with large engines modified to achieve higher performance and speed.

Seven months following the marriage, Jimmy joined the navy. Left alone, Genene went on a sexual rampage. Her mother, Gladys
, who was still supporting Genene, persuaded her to get herself an occupation or a career. Genene eventually listened and enrolled in Mim’s Beauty School. Once qualified, she landed a job at a beauty parlor at the Methodist Hospital. Here, she discovered that she enjoyed working in a hospital environment.

When her husband returned home from the navy, Genene became pregnant and gave birth to a son
: Richard Michael DeLany born on January 19, 1972.The marriage lasted for four years before Genene left Jimmy. She moved out when he was in the hospital recovering from an accident. She cited violence on her divorce papers for the failure of the marriage.

Not long after the divorce
, Genene's oldest brother was diagnosed with cancer and died. Genene began to worry about getting cancer and no longer felt comfortable with handling hair dyes. She decided to begin training to become a nurse, even though she was pregnant with her second child, a daughter she named Heather. Luckily, her mother Gladys was happy to help with the children.

Genene did well in the one-year nursing program and excelled at her licensed vocational nurse (LVN) examinations on October 18, 1977 and landed her first nursing job at the Methodist Hospital in San Antonio. Genene appeared competent at her job but resented the fact that in the medical hierarchy she was at the bottom. After only eight months, Genene was discharged for two reasons: there were complaints from a patient concerning rude, inappropriate behavior and also her attempts at making judgments where she lacked the necessary authority. Her next job did not last too long either at the obstetrics-gynecology ward at Community Hospital. Genene then found work at Bexar County Medical Center Hospital in the ICU pediatric unit. She was never asked for what reasons she was dismissed from her last jobs. It was at the Bexar County that she left a tragic and horrifying mark.

Genene began working in the pediatric intensive care unit on October 30, 1978.The head nurse in the unit, Pat Belko, liked Genene and saw her as an enthusiastic
, hard-working, dedicated nurse with knowledge and technical skill above that of most LVNs. Genene, knowing that Pat Belko held her in such high regard, made her feel special and superior to the other nurses on the unit. The other nurses disliked her. They found her foul-mouthed and disliked her graphic details of her sexual conquests. Genene would bully new nurses on the ward and would insist they report to her. More than one nurse transferred out of the unit to escape her bullying and tyrannical personality.

Genene would also
, on occasion, refuse orders from nurses senior to her saying, “She would do what was best for the child.” The other nurses soon recognized that Genene enjoyed feeling needed and particularly liked attending to the very ill on her three to eleven p.m. shift. The doctor in charge of the unit, James Robotham like Pat Belko, liked Genene. He, too, saw her as a hard-working dedicated nurse. He was impressed by her many questions and how eager she was to learn. Genene had the nickname “Robotham’s pet,” bestowed on her by the other nurses.

Genene’s most distinguishing medical skill was her ability at inserting intravenous lines (IVs) into veins. Many patients are put on IVs to provide direct access to a vein. This could be used for injecting drugs, drawing blood, or giving fluids. For many nurses
, inserting IVs is a daily chore, but one that many never master as veins move under the skin, making it easy to miss a few times before hitting the right spot. With a baby, it is even more difficult as their veins are only the size of a thread. Genene, however, never found any vein too small or any patient too restless. One doctor said of her, “She could stick an IV in a freaking fly.”

The intensive care pediatric unit where Genene worked was a rectangular room about 26 f
eet long by 24 feet wide. It contained eight beds, in separate cubicles, with large glass windows that allowed the nurses to keep an eye on the patients and on the machines that monitored their heartbeats and breathing. At the back of the unit was a small sitting area for the nurses to sit and relax. A large cupboard contained equipment and supplies for conducting simple lab tests.

The patients’ ages treated in the ICU ranged from a few months up to sixteen
-years-old. Newborn babies were kept in a separate neonatal ICU on a lower floor of the hospital. Children were brought to the ICU after surgery or to be treated for an injury or a disease.

A pediatric nurse in the ICU unit normally has one or two patients assigned to her who demand almost constant attention. For the first three months at the hospital
, Genene worked nights before moving to the 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. shift. Bexar County hospital had a nursing shortage, and Genene would often volunteer to work over-time.

Genene thrived on the excitement of an emergency
, and even if it was not one of her patient’s, she would involve herself in the situation. If a child died, Genene would cry and then offer to carry the body to the morgue. A chore most other nurses detested.

In the pediatric intensive care unit where Genene worked, a medical emergency was known as a code. A code would begin if a nurse noticed, for example, that a child had difficulty breathing or
his or her heart beat had become irregular or had stopped. In these situations, the nurse would alert the nursing station, who would then press a white emergency button. This would bring doctors running to the pediatric ICU. If a nurse believed there was a severe emergency, she would alert the nursing station to a “code blue”. In this case, a switchboard operator would send a message over the public address system announcing, “Code blue to Pedi ICU”, which would summon help throughout the hospital. ICU nurses would then race to the patient with a “crash cart,” loaded with equipment and emergency drugs. Doctors, medical students, respiratory therapists, pharmacists, and others would rush to the ICU. In the center of all this activity would be the patient’s nurse, who put in the code. These were the situations that Genene thrived on, as she would be very much the center of attention being the nurse in charge of the patient.

At Bexar County Hospital ICU if a child died
, the child’s nurse was responsible for delivering the body to the morgue in the basement. Frequently, the child’s parents would wish to hold the child before it was taken to the morgue. The nurse would first have to wash off the blood from the body and remove any catheters or tubes. When the parents had finished their “goodbyes,” the nurse would then call the security guard and deliver the body to the morgue.

In 1980, less than a year after gaining her RN degree, twenty
-five-year-old Suzanna Maldonado began work in the pediatric ICU. She worked the eleven-to-seven shift; the shift following Genene’s. Suzanna took a dislike to Genene, finding her aggressive, rude, and arrogant.

When shifts changed every eight hours, the nurses going off duty would meet for a “report,” with the nurses coming on duty. At this meeting
, the nurses would describe the state of their patients and any special problems for which to be on the lookout. Suzanna disliked Genene’s predictions of gloom and doom and her harrowing predictions of which child was going to die. She also noticed how she scared the new nurses.

To the parents of the critically ill patients, Genene showed an entirely different personality. She would patiently listen to their complaints and fears and have long chats with them. She would become their friend and call them by their first names.

More and more of these “code blue” emergencies began to occur on the 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. shift, with many of the babies dying. Suzanna Maldonado was among the first to notice that they all coincidentally happened on Genene’s shift and were normally her patients. Suzanne began taking notes and watching Genene carefully. Other nurses and doctors began talking about the number of children dying in the pediatric ICU from problems that were not normally fatal.

"They're going to start thinking I'm the Death Nurse," Genene joked to other nurses one day. After a two week period in the unit when seven children had died
during the 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. shift, the shift became known around the hospital as the death shift. The rumors and gossip about Genene began to intensify. Her boss Pat Belko defended her, believing it was just malicious gossip from the other nurses who were jealous of Genene’s competence.

Dr. Robotham, Genene’s one time ally
, also started to become suspicious of Genene when a six-month-old baby, Jose Antonio Flores, was admitted to the ICU with diarrhea, vomiting, and a fever; fairly common childhood symptoms. When placed under Genene’s care, he suffered from unexplained seizures and went into cardiac arrest. Genene put a “code blue” into operation. The baby survived, and he seemed to be improving until the following day’s 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. shift. Yet again, Jose suffered seizures and bleeding, and his heart stopped. This time, the doctors could not save him.

Later tests showed that he had had an overdose of heparin
, an anticoagulant drug. No doctor had ordered it to be given to him. When it happened again to another child, a three-month-old boy named Albert Garza who survived, Dr. Robotham confronted Genene who angrily denied any wrong doing. Tighter controls were then introduced over the drug cabinet, in particular over access to heparin.

Dr. Robotham reported his suspicions about Genene to the hospital administration.

The administrators, not wanting a hospital scandal, decided that Dr. Robotham was over reacting. Sick babies died.

With Dr. Robotham and other doctors now complaining about Genene, her star nurse, Pat Belko began to take the rumors and gossip more seriously. Dr. Robothan and Pat Belko asked the hospital administrators to carry out an internal investigation.

With several senior staff now requesting an investigation, the hospital administration was forced to begin an internal inquiry to see if one of its nurses was killing her patients. As the investigation got under way, patients in the pediatric ICU continued to suffer from unexplained medical problems and in some cases died. Patients, who had seemed stable, inexplicably stopped breathing or had heart seizures. Nearly all happened on the three-to-eleven shift. Dr. Robotham demanded that Genene be fired.

The financially strapped
, struggling hospital lacking definitive proof of wrongdoing, fearful of an expensive lawsuit, and bad publicity, was unwilling to fire Genene or call in the district attorney. Without definite facts, firing Genene or calling the district attorney would put the hospital on shaky legal ground, as so far the inquiry had nothing but circumstantial evidence to link her to the incidents in the ICU. Genene could sue them and possibly win. Bexar County Hospital was also deeply concerned with its public image. It was desperate to generate paying patients to cover the costs of the poor and disadvantaged charity cases the hospital was supposedly created to accept. It didn’t need the bad publicity a law suit would bring.

Months later
, the inquiry found that between the months of May and December of 1981 ten children in the pediatric ICU had died after “sudden and unexplained” complications. In all cases, Genene was present and involved in the child’s care. The report concluded: “This association of Nurse Jones with the deaths of the ten children could be coincidental. However, negligence or wrongdoing cannot be excluded.” They never did anything with the report as Genene had left the hospital.

The administrators decided the simplest way around the problem was to only allow qualified RNs to work in the ICU as part of an upgrade to more professional care.

Pat Belko’s boss, Ms. Mousseau, called a meeting of all the nurses on the pediatric ICU and broke the news to them. Apart from Genene, there were six other LVNs working on the unit, one of whom had worked there since 1969. They were told that they would all be offered other jobs in the hospital and if they decided to leave the hospital, they would all be given good references. They had until March 22nd to leave the ICU. Genene was offered another job at the hospital but was told that there were no other available pediatric positions. She resigned and left the hospital’s employ on March 17th, 1982.

The administrators of the hospital were relieved. To them
, the problem was solved. The medical emergencies on the three-to-eleven shift returned to normal numbers, and the “unexplained medical events” stopped.

Genene was unperturbed. She had been offered a job from Dr. Kathleen Holland, who she had befriended at Bexar Hospital. Dr. Holland was opening up a new pediatrics clinic in Kerrville, Texas 58 miles (93
 km) northwest of San Antonio.