Former Chillicothe respiratory therapist charged with patients’ deaths pleads guilty

A Johnson County woman and former Chillicothe respiratory therapist admitted her involvement in the deaths of two patients who prosecutors say were poisoned.

Jennifer Hall, 42, pleaded guilty in Livingston County Circuit Court Friday to lesser charges of two counts of first-degree involuntary manslaughter and one count of second-degree assault.

Hall was arrested last May and initially charged with the first-degree murder of 75-year-old Fern Franco — and this February, the same charge for the death of 37-year-old David Wesley Harper.

Both were patients at Hedrick Medical Center in Chillicothe where Hall worked at the time of their deaths in 2002.

While Hall was employed at the hospital from December 2001 to May 2002, the hospital saw 18 cardiac arrests or “Code Blue” events and nine “medically suspicious” deaths, according to charging documents. Before then, the hospital saw an average of one Code Blue a year.

“She liked Code Blues,” one nurse testified in a deposition.

Franco, thought to be Hall’s final victim at the hospital, was found dead the morning of May 18, 2002, after being admitted for pneumonia. A witness told detectives that she had seen Hall around Franco’s room before.

Hall was placed on administrative leave on May 21, 2002.

Livingston County Coroner Scott Lindley conducted an autopsy that revealed Franco had morphine and succinylcholine in her system, neither of which had been prescribed to her and would have made it more difficult for the woman to get oxygen to her lungs.

Succinylcholine is a muscle relaxant that can be difficult to detect post-mortem, Lindley told The Star Saturday. Despite the autopsy, prosecutors did not initially believe they had enough evidence to prosecute the case.

A doctor named Cal Greenlaw suspected foul play at the hospital when, on Feb. 18, 2002, a patient’s heart stopped, and he struggled to revive her.

After a nurse told him about two other suspicious code blue incidents in which people died, Greenlaw told hospital administrators he believed “there was someone on staff at Hedrick who was attempting to kill and sometimes succeeding in killing patients.” He suggested that Hall was the killer, but hospital management took no steps to learn if it was true, according to court documents.

Families of patients who died during Hall’s employment later sued the hospital.

Lindley said it was a “big deal” that Hall admitted to giving the patients unauthorized drugs, despite the charges being less severe than what prosecutors had initially filed.

“I don’t think there’s any doubt in my mind that she always thought she would never be prosecuted,” he said.