In order to prevent this, she was charged with another murder this past May (she was only convicted of one murder originally). It seems a pretty safe bet she'll never be freed.
Jones, like so many other serial killing nurses, was motivated by a desire to look like a hero, so she would give the children various life-threatening drugs so that she could then "save" them and experience the gratitude of her patients' families. But, of course, as a sociopath, she cared little if the children died in the process.
She's one of the few serial killer nurses who actually looks the part:
I can't put my finger on exactly what it is about her face that makes her look so brutal. (I don't think it's just a matter of her homeliness.) Her lips are thin, but not extremely so. Here's a more recent picture of her:
Age has a way of homogenizing people, and here she just looks like an average sixty-ish woman, just a little more masculine.
Sure enough, Jones had been adopted, meaning, she likely spent her earliest, most formative years without the sort of bonding experience most people have.
In any case, reading about Jones led me to list of serial killers who are now free. After reading about their crimes, it's hard not to feel that countries with a maximum allowable sentence of 21 years or so are misguided.
Norwegian Arnfinn Nesset, a male nurse who was convicted of killing 22 people, and is thought to have killed hundreds, received a sentence of 21 years. He served his time, and is now living free, somewhere, under an alias.
Anders Breivik, who killed 77 and wounded 319 more in Norway in 2011, was also given a 21 year sentence.
Colombian Pedro Lopez, "The Monster of the Andes," served 11 years in an Ecuadorian prison for having raped and killed 80 girls, though he boasted of having killed over 300. He was then rearrested as an illegal immigrant and handed over to Colombian authorities who subsequently declared him insane. He was declared sane three years later and released on $50 bail, at which point he fled. His whereabouts are now unknown.
The existence of people like Nesset and Breivik and Lopez make laws allowing maximum prison sentences of only 20 years seem insane.
Criminally insane.
Posts
21 comments:
I had no idea that Anders Breivik was walking so soon.
I never heard of Lopez before (I do like true crime accounts, somehow I missed him), he truly got freedom cheaply. Of course, the statistics do lead us to assume that he will re-offend and get locked up or executed, versus living a quiet harmless life to preserve his freedom.
I thought you might appreciate the article about this woman, if you haven't seen her story yet:
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/09/01/woman-recorded-unconscious-friend-being-raped-shared-on-social-media-prosecutors-say.html
====GUINEA HENWEED
GUINEA HENWEED --
Evidently Breivik's sentence can be extended if the authorities feel he's still a threat to society. How the Norwegians figured nest was not a threat anymore, though, I don't know.
Lopez's whereabouts are unknown, and if he's still alive, the assumption is that he's still offending. But it's probably more likely that the relatives of some of his victims, or maybe some police, got together and tracked him down and dispensed some outside-the-legal-system justice. The Brazilian police are famous for that, and I'm guessing the Colombian police aren't all that different. Plus there were plenty of relatives of the victims who would have been more than happy to kill him, I"m sure.
I had heard about Beth Rae Harris. Strangely, the NY Times hasn't focused on her crime. The funny thing about Harris is, did she actually think she was going to get away with it after posting it on the internet? Maybe she figured since she wasn't actually one of the rapists, that she wasn't committing any crime.
I wish there was more common sense in sentencing, both here and in Europe. Obviously someone like Jones should be shot or hanged, publicly, without too much delay. The serial killing of children ought to carry a cruel and unusual exception -- the execution should be cruel and unusual. On the other hand, there are cases of violent acts committed under exceptional and mitigating circumstances which should be commuted, given the person's remorse and rehabilitation. I've always found the genuinely repentant compelling.
Ambivalent Misanthrope --
Does being hanged or shot qualify as "cruel and unusual?" Those used to be the most common execution methods. There's really no method of death which quite makes up for having killed 60 young children.
The problem with repentance is, it can so easily be faked. And there's no group of people better able to counterfeit it than sociopaths, those consummate actors. I've heard of a lot of murderers who claim to regret their actions and appear remorseful, but in most cases they seem to be doing it in order to sway a judge to lighten their sentence, or to get parole.
John Craig-
I'm wondering if, like sexual predators, murderers are incapable of reforming/rehabilitation.
Those of us that have been in contact with Mental Health Consumers (MHC) know that after a time they begin to use the system, manipulate. They learn the "acceptable" behavior and language but don't live by it, just use it to get what they want.
Are convicted murderers then able to manipulate and say what they've learned is accepted behavior to get them out on parole or released from prison?
Yes, I understand there's a difference between sociopaths and those diagnosed with mental health disorders. Their end game is usually completely different but the games can be similar or identical.
There was no mention of the death penalty which is of course the ultimate sentence. Conservatives are usually for it and liberals are usually against it but that's not exclusive.
As for maximum sentences those are written into law and each state has their own set, so does each country that doesn't have regional (State) laws like our nation does. They're relative. Some may believe 21 years for a convicted murderer is way too many while others think it is not enough. Murder in itself has many variables that have to be considered to conclude what sentence a person is given and even that is subjective.
Is Genene Jones a definition of Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy? If she is to be released and never in that position again to murder has she served her time and to be accepted back into society? Or is she still capable of doing it again given the circumstances? Is it incurable and a permanent mental defect?
Dave
John said: I can't put my finger on exactly what it is about her face that makes her look so brutal.
Maybe just the pictures the press used of her but I see a lack of empathy on her face; no warmth - maybe the eyes?.
On a side note, I wonder how she fills her narcissistic supply for positive approval? Hard to be the "hero" life saver when you are behind bars.
Dave --
A sexual predator will never change his sexuality, i.e., child molesters will always be attracted primarily to children. And sociopaths, whether they murder or not, will never change. But there have to be plenty of people who kill who aren't sociopaths. If their killing was justifiable, obviously they won't be charged with murder one or even second degree murder, they'd be charged with manslaughter, or maybe not even charged at all. But even with a premeditated first degree murder, there have to be cases where someone was just pushed to his limit, maybe by a sociopath who somehow ruined his life, and just wanted revenge. Are those people rehabilitatable? I would think so.
Yes, I'd think most convicted murderers -- even the non-sociopaths, would say whatever it took to get out. (I know I would, and I'm not a sociopath.)
A lot of countries don't have the death penalty; and if they have a maximum sentence of 21 years, they don't even have life in prison as a possibility for punishment.
Agree, every murder has its own unique set of circumstances.
No, Genene Jones did not have Munchausen's Syndrome-by-Proxy, she had something different. These weren't her children she was making sick and killing, so she wouldn't have been able to expect attention and sympathy when they got sick and died. She wanted to be able to revive them in the nick of time, and thus look like a hero, and thus receive the adulation of her fellow nurses and the gratitude of the parents. (And if she was unable to save them, and they died, she wouldn't have cared, being a sociopath.) Similar, but not quite the same as MSBP.
Yes, Jones would definitely be capable of doing it again, though she'd obviously never be given the opportunity. Her incurable ad permanent mental defect is simply sociopathy.
GT --
Yeah, she looks cold, though we can all look cold at times. With her somehow you get the impression it just goes bone deep though. Then again, that may just be my impression because I know what she did. It's easy to "see" stuff like that after the fact.
Yes, I'm guessing she goes without much narcissistic gratification as a serial child murderer behind bars. But maybe she gets a certain frisson just from knowing that the other inmates fear her, or, at least, know that she's semi-famous.
John -- agree completely that remorse is routinely faked, most emphatically by sociopaths. I should have said that the ones I find most compelling and worthy of a sentence reduction are the ones who don't try to prove their remorse, but it can be deduced from the person's total conduct, quite aside from any legal or parole-inspired process. There may even be, as you point out above, cases where the person was pushed to his limit and may not be outwardly 'sorry' but who nevertheless does not constitute a threat to peaceful co-existence. I remember seeing a documentary, for example, about a man who killed his wife (probably a sociopath) because she kept abusing their baby. He died an old man in prison, and I was struck by the injustice of that.
The Ambivalent Misanthrope --
No question, there are SOME miscarriages of justice, and the example you cite is a perfect one. The tricky part is winnowing those out from all the other cases.
My apologies. When I was typing "murderers" I was thinking of serial and not all in general. The psychotic or sociopathic not accidental or non premeditative. Those who are wired to do such not the guy who comes home to find his wife in the middle of infidelity.
Thanks for correcting my MSBP error. I'm not educated in these areas, trying to learn and sometimes make mistakes.
Not Dave --
No problem at all. No, serial killers can never be reformed: they're sociopaths, and will never change. And, in a sense, they're like tigers which have acquired a taster human blood. They need to be put down (or at least, put away).
There are things worse than the death penalty, I read an IAMA on reddit of a soviet camp guard of a work camp in the 70s, if you were so bad, you didn't get the death penalty, you were sent "there".
Reading about it, I would take the death penalty instead of going to that place.
-Ga
Ga --
It's all a matter of perspective. A lot of people say (seriously) "I'd kill myself if such and such happened," but then if it happens, they rarely kill themselves. Most of us will do anything to survive. And when you think about it, if the work camp were worse than death, most of the inmates there would have just killed themselves. Where there's life, there's almost always hope.
I doubt it's hope that kept some of them alive (many did try to commit suicide, but they had a camp doctor who made sure you weren't getting out so easily).
It's an animal instinct that kept them from committing suicide.
I will imagine it from the Soviets point of view, if you have a monster child rapist who really doesn't fear death, will laugh in the face of his firing squad, then there would not be satisfaction in the death penalty. They would think you may as well use them as a source of slave labor until they drop dead.
I imagine it would give more satisfaction to see their versions of Ted Bundy get worked till a skeletons and dropped dead full of sores and wounds than to see him kept in clean prison then given a quick death lasting a minute. I mean, he didn't fear dying, may as well sent him to a camp.
And technically there is more suffering in the work camp scenario and pain inflicted than the American death penalty. But is it about retribution, pragmatic reasons (don't waste free slave labor), or something else in their reasoning?
A fried told me about a Korean movie called "I saw the devil (2010)" about a guy who instead of instantly killing a serial killer sociopath who murdered his loved one, decides to track him down, beat him bloody, but holds off from killing him, he decides to put a tracking chip on him so he can keep finding him and beat him bloody again several times, breaks his legs I think, keeps injuring him more and more but doesn't end it quickly. I think I'll watch it now.
-Ga
Ga --
The way you draw the picture, yes, a Soviet work camp would have been worse than a clean and quick death in an American prison. I suppose I was reacting in part to the people who say, "Oh, I'm against the death penalty because then [the murderer] will have to live with himself an think about his crimes!" -- as if that's a worse punishment for some sociopath who feels zero remorse about anything other than having been caught. People who say that are remarkably clueless about sociopaths.
The other thing about those Soviet camps, they weren't just for monstrous child molesters. They were also for people like Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who objected to the communist system.
The work camp I mentioned was during the 1970s after Stalin, the guard in the IAMA said they sent only criminal offenders, rapists, child molestors, mass murderers to his (although we can't rule out they segregated political offenders into other camps during the latter years of the USSR).
He mentioned a story of a child rapist being thrown into the "hole", they found he snuck in nails and nailed his testicles to the ground. The doctors promptly "healed him" so he could continue to live.
I wonder though if it is a waste to just execute immediately, maybe forced labor for several decades before execution would more resourceful in the US justice system. But there is the problem with private prisons and people getting sent for smoking weed and stuff, more rules, more abuse.
If laws are simple, they work efficiently like Hong Kong's taxes, it's only 200 pages long and the wealthy don't cheat the system here, they pay their fair share. But we're facing a serious revenue problem since there is not much to tax, which is only solved by leasing out land to the Chinese, driving up rent to absurd prices.
If they are too complex like the USA, where even expats over a certain income level still have to pay taxes despite living abroad and the IRS has plans to continue to still function even if the US government is destroyed, it becomes a mess you get loopholes and tax evasion, and also face a revenue problem.
The death penalty has this problem of too much complexity and corruption in many countries like Thailand, it allows mobsters and hitmen to get off free while a guy with a pound of marijuana is dead. Or maybe it could be too simple and thrown around like it was in the USSR where two men were wrongly executed before they finally got the right guy, some cannibal who ate 52 people.
Discussing whether it is ethical or not is assuming we already know how to do it right and we just haven't decided to use it or not, which is not true, we need to discuss how the hell it could work well at all. And there seem to me zero answers.
One reason about the death penalty to be concerned about is not out of compassion for a criminal, a cannibal rapist can die for all I care, it's the fact you are giving the government that kind of power. It goes against the libertarian (lower case meaning) beliefs many people hold. But mob violence as an alternative is not a good idea either. If only it were as simple as God striking lightning down on whoever deserved it.
But removing maximum sentences for now in those countries will at least make things safer. That's a useful start.
-Ga
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/hospital-respiratory-therapist-denied-being-serial-killer-in-2012-now-she-s-accused-of-murdering-patient/ar-AAXcMJv?bk=1&ocid=msedgntp&cvid=466dd59049994c4fbbacfdc01667872a
Hospital Respiratory Therapist Denied Being Serial Killer in 2012. Now She's Accused of Murdering Patient
I found this part of the article telling....
"Coworkers believe Hall was responsible for the deaths "because of her proximity to patients, access to pharmaceuticals and her discovery of every patient's cardiac emergency," the charging documents obtained by KCTV state."
There really needs to be a term for this branch of sociopathy.
GT --
Thanks for sending that, I hadn't heard of that case. The fact that Jennifer Hall was the one to discover these patients' cardiac emergencies makes it sound as if her motivation was the same as so many other serial killing nurses, i.e., not to kill the patients, but to put them in life-threatening situations so she could appear heroic by saving them.
This type of sociopathic behaviour reminds me a little of Munchausen's Syndrome, except it's not quite sympathy and concern the sociopath is looking for, it's admiration and gratitude.
I'm surprised that the authorities (a) couldn't convict her back in 2012, and (b) would just let her out of their sight like that when they were pretty sure she was a serial killer. You'r not s supposed to just let someone like that just disappear into the weeds.
John said: admiration and gratitude.
Yes agree!! There needs to be a name coined for this branch of behavior so folks can be on the lookout for it.
Conman - money
Munchausen - sympathy and concern
Cult leader - power
Stolen Valor - respect
ECT.
Hero complex?
The fire fighter that sets the fire so they can be the one to rescue the folks trapped inside. The nurse that puts patients in harm's way so they can swoop in an save the day.
Reminds me of Might Mouse - Mighty Mouse's catch phrase was "Here I come to save the day"
Mister Trouble never hangs around
When he hears this Mighty sound.
"Here I come to save the day"
That means that Mighty Mouse is on his way.
Yes sir, when there is a wrong to right
Mighty Mouse will join the fight.
On the sea or on the land,
He gets the situation well in hand.
source: https://www.lyricsondemand.com/tvthemes/mightymouselyrics.html
GT --
Ha, I used to watch Mighty Mouse when I was a kid too. (One of the few shows my parents would allow me to watch.)
Yes, hero complex, that's exactly what it is. And yes, perfect analogy, the fireman who sets a fire so he can come to the rescue has exactly the same mentality as the nurse who puts her patients in danger.
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