Missouri respiratory therapist charged with murder of patient 20 years ago
Twenty years after at least nine patients died at a 49-bed Missouri hospital, a respiratory therapist has been charged with murder.
A warrant has been issued for the arrest of 41-year-old Jennifer Anne Hall for the first-degree murder of Fern Franco, who died in May 2002 at Hendrick Medical Center, the Kansas City Star reported Tuesday.
In the five months that Hall worked at Kendrick, from December 2001 to May 2002, nine people died of cardiac arrest, a rate considered “medically suspicious,” according to court documents, and 18 people suffered cardiac or respiratory arrest; the hospital averaged one a year before Hall’s arrival.
Franco, who was hospitalized with pneumonia, was found unable to breathe on May 18, 2002 and a responding nurse was unable to revive her with atropine and epinephrine. An autopsy found succinylcholine and morphine in her body, neither of which she had been prescribed.
Succinylcholine, normally used during intubation, would have paralyzed Franco’s muscles, leaving her unable to breathe and suffocating her to death while she remained conscious, according to the probable cause warrant obtained by the Star.
“Hall’s victim was a sick, defenseless, elderly woman who was depending on Hall to care for her physical ailment within a medical facility,” Chillicothe Police Officer Brian Schmidt wrote.
“The substance Hall used to brutally take Fern Franco’s life ... paralyzes the victim’s muscles, including the diaphragm, causing the victim to suffer a ghastly death from suffocation while still maintaining full consciousness.”
Hall was placed on administrative leave three days after Franco died.
Five families whose loved one died while Hall worked at Hendrick filed a wrongful death suit against the hospital in 2010, according to the Star. At the time, Hall denied any wrongdoing.
The Missouri Supreme Court threw out the lawsuit in 2019 because it had been filed after the three-year statute of limitations.
