Overview
- Jones, a pediatric nurse in Texas in the late 1970s and early 1980s, is suspected in as many as 60 infant deaths, according to investigators and experts.
- The 1982 death of 15-month-old Chelsea McClellan, with succinylcholine detected in an autopsy, led to Jones’s arrest and a 1984 conviction with a 99‑year sentence.
- A Texas law aimed at easing prison overcrowding created the possibility of her release after about 33 years, prompting prosecutors to revisit cold cases.
- In 2017, prosecutors filed a new charge in the death of Joshua Sawyer, and Jones admitted guilt in 2020 to avoid a potential death sentence, receiving an additional life term.
- Authorities say lost or destroyed records mean the full victim count may never be known, and at her 2020 sentencing Judge Frank J. Castro condemned her crimes as she entered her seventies in a Texas prison.