Texas Nurse Pleads to Killing 10 Patients

A former Texas hospital nurse will be sentenced to life in prison after entering a plea to charges of killing 10 of her patients by injecting them with a drug usually used to temporarily halt breathing. Vickie Dawn Jackson, 40, entered a no contest plea, but will receive the same sentence she would have gotten had a jury found her guilty.

Jackson was charged with the deaths of 10 patients at Nocona General Hospital in 2000 and 2001. One of the victim was her husband's grandfather.

Investigators found that 20 vials of the drug, usually used to allow the insertion of a breathing tube, were missing from the hospital.

They also found a syringe with traces of the drug was found in Jackson's garbage.

Jackson's defense attorney Bruce Martin said the former nurse decided to enter the plea because her adult daughter was scheduled to testify against her. "She has never admitted guilt and she was never convicted by a jury," Martin said. "And her daughter never had to testify against her. Those things meant something to her."

Under a "no contest" plea, a defendant does not admit guilt, but can be sentenced just as if they pleaded guilty.

Former nurse enters plea in 10 deaths

By Angela K. Brown - The Associated Press

October 3, 2006

FORT WORTH, Texas - A former hospital nurse pleaded no contest Tuesday to killing 10 patients nearly six years ago by injecting them with a drug used to temporarily halt breathing.

Vickie Dawn Jackson, 40, will be sentenced to life in prison, the same sentence she faced if she had been convicted by a jury in San Angelo.

Authorities have not offered a motive for the slayings.

Defense attorney Bruce Martin said Jackson decided to enter the plea because her adult daughter was on the state's witness list.

"She has never admitted guilt and she was never convicted by a jury," Martin said. "And her daughter never had to testify against her. Those things meant something to her."

Jackson was accused of killing the patients, including her third husband's grandfather, by injecting them with a drug used to stop breathing to allow insertion of a breathing tube.

Prosecutor said the deaths occurred during her night shifts at Nocona General Hospital in 2000 and 2001. More than 20 vials of the drug were missing and a syringe with traces of the drug was found in the nurse's garbage, they said.

Prosecutors were surprised by the plea, which came less than a week before Jackson's trial was scheduled to begin.

"Frankly, I've never been so surprised in a case in my life," said Jack McGaughey, district attorney for Montague, Clay and Archer counties, who had planned to call 58 witnesses. "The end result is as good as we could have gotten."

Daughter tells prosecutors nurse 'capable' of murder

LubbockOnline.com

February 6, 2005

NOCONA (AP) - To many in town who saw and chatted with Vickie Dawn Jackson at a burger joint, gas station or the hospital where she worked, she was sweet, patient and kindhearted.

To her family, Jackson was anything but that.

Jackson, a former nurse who goes on trial this week on charges she killed patients at Nocona General Hospital, was "a baby face on the outside but hell on the inside," said her daughter, Jennifer Carson, 18.

Montague County District Attorney Tim Cole, center, addresses the media along with, from back left, Montague County Sherif Chris Hamilton, FBI Special Agent Dale Ensley and Texas Ranger Richard Johnson, during a news conference in Montague, Texas, Wednesday, July 17, 2002. Cole talked about the case of a former nurse Vickie Dawn Jackson who is charged with killing 10 patients and attempted murder on another at Nocona General Hospital.

"I don't know if she did it or not, but she's perfectly capable of it," Carson said.

Jackson, 38, is charged with killing 10 patients by administering lethal drug doses and trying to kill an 11th patient in late 2000 and early 2001. Her capital murder trial in nearby Archer City centers on two of the deaths, and she faces up to life in prison if convicted.

Carson said her mother moved to Nocona, a rural North Texas town of about 3,000 people, with her family from Indiana when she was a child. She was a teenager and had already been divorced when she met Leroy Carson, who said he never wanted a serious relationship with her but married her after she got pregnant in 1984.

A year after their son was born, the couple had a daughter, Jennifer. The children were still in diapers when Jackson started attending nursing school at night, Leroy Carson said.

She complained that the classes were hard but never talked about why she wanted to be a nurse, although Jackson's mother worked at a nursing home, Leroy Carson said.

After earning a degree and her certification, Jackson worked at several nursing homes and hospitals, Leroy Carson said. She would say she was tired of a job and quit, he said.

At home she nagged and yelled at her husband and the children, Leroy Carson said.

"She was rough talking to them and had a bad habit of slapping them," Leroy Carson said.

One day she came home from work crying because a patient had died, but she seldom discussed her job, Jennifer Carson said.

After 12 years of marriage, Leroy Carson divorced his wife in 1996. She quickly married for a third time to Kirk Jackson and got custody of the kids, but they were abused by their stepfather so they moved back with their father, Jennifer Carson said.

By all accounts, 2000 was a hard year for Jackson: she lost custody of her children, a close relative died and she suffered a miscarriage after fighting with her husband, Jennifer Carson said. One day, Jackson told her daughter she'd talked to a psychiatrist who diagnosed her with bipolar disorder.

"I said, 'What is that?' She said, 'I could kill you and get away with it'," Jennifer Carson said.

Report: Drug may have been missing almost two months before police called

LubbockOnline.com

July 22, 2002

NOCONA (AP) — Eight deaths in 11 days among patients at Nocona General Hospital looked simply like "a run of bad luck" to the then-attending physician.

Dr. Chance Dingler said he wouldn't have suspected a serial killer roaming the halls of the small-town hospital in late December 2000 and early January 2001.

"That never crossed my mind," Dingler testified in a deposition obtained last week by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Instead, it took the rest of that January before hospital officials, confronted with a total of 15 dead patients in the 38-bed hospital, would suspect that missing vials of a paralyzing drug could be connected to the deaths.

A former nurse at the hospital, Vickie Dawn Jackson, was indicted last week on two counts of capital murder, accused of killing four patients. Traces of Mivacron, a paralyzing drug, were found in their bodies.

Nocona hospital officials have maintained that they alerted authorities as soon as they realized there was a problem — on Feb. 6, 2001 — and followed all rules and procedures. The hospital's pharmacist told the State Board of Pharmacy two days later that "at least 10 vials of Mivacron injection" were either lost or stolen.

However, a review of hospital records and depositions obtained through a lawsuit filed by the family of one who may have been injected with the drug, shows that Mivacron might have been missing nearly two months before police were called.

The after-hours pharmacy log at the hospital shows that Mivacron was replaced on the crash cart, the cabinet containing equipment needed when a cardiac arrest occurs, four times between Nov. 23, 2000, and Jan. 9, 2001, without any corresponding charges to patients.

But hospital officials say those records do not mean that Mivacron was missing, only that it was replaced on the crash cart.

Len Dingler, the hospital's chief of staff and Chance Dingler's brother, said Sunday that the crash cart is the most likely place for the drug to have been swiped and would have been the easiest place for Vickie Jackson, as a licensed vocational nurse, to obtain the drug.

Hospital officials know that one Mivacron vial was taken from the crash carts on the overnight shift Jan. 30-31, 2001, a realization that triggered the facility's internal investigation, he said.

"It's crazy to think they're sitting there and don't know anybody is dying — this is a teeny little hospital," said Austin lawyer Donna Bowen, who is representing the family of Donnelly Reid, who lost consciousness Feb. 18, was revived and later died.

Nurse in Texas Charged With Killing Patients

The New York Times

July 18, 2002