Jennifer Hall Bio – Jennifer Hall Wiki
Jennifer Hall, the Overland Park woman charged with first-degree murder for the 2002 death of a patient at a rural Missouri hospital, was arrested Thursday night in Johnson County, Kansas, on an identity theft charge.
AGE:
Jennifer Hall is 41 years old.
DETAIL OF INCIDENCE:
Former hospital respiratory therapist Jennifer Hall has pleaded not guilty to a first-degree murder charge filed in Missouri earlier this month, people confirm.
Hall was charged May 4 in connection with the death of 75-year-old Fern Franco — one of nine patients at Hedrick Medical Center in Chillicothe, Mo., who suspiciously died over a three-month period in 2001 and 2002.
At the time of the deaths, staff members had suspected Hall was connected to them. According to charging documents obtained by KCTV, staffers told police they thought she’d been injecting patients with succinylcholine, a drug that paralyzed their diaphragms, causing them to suffocate.
Coworkers allegedly believed 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.
Hall’s defense attorney, Matt O’Connor, tells that as a respiratory therapist, his client did not have access to the drugs “supposedly used in this case.”
“She was charged with murder for allegations that are over 20 years old and were not brought to her attention anywhere near the time of occurrence,” O’Connor says.
In 2012, amid speculation of her involvement in the patients’ deaths, Hall agreed to an interview with KMBC where she denied being a serial killer. “It’s shocking to know that somebody can think something so horrible of you and the real truth is out there somewhere,” Hall told the news station at the time.
Asked if she worried about being arrested in the future, Hall said, “No, I did nothing wrong. I feel like the truth is out there. It just needs to be found.”
For several days after the May 4 murder charge was filed, Hall was unaccounted for. On May 12, investigators tracked her location to a motel in Overland Park, Kan., where she was apprehended without incident, according to the Livingston County Sheriff’s Office.
In light of Hall’s not guilty plea, her case will go to trial, which O’Connor believes will be “a voluminous task given the stale nature of the allegation.”
Just before Hall was located and arrested last week, Fern’s granddaughter, Aprille Franco, spoke to PEOPLE about the murder charge — and the prospect of finally locking up Fern’s killer two decades after his death.
“I hope this will make it to trial,” Aprille said, “and if [Hall’s] not the one responsible, I hope they dig deeper into who is responsible.”
“We need to get justice,” she added, saying that all of the families who lost loved ones while Hall worked at Hedrick Medical Center deserve to know the truth. “We were all devastated by this.”