Naman Shrestha
Oxygen’s ‘Accident, Suicide, or Murder: Among Us’ delves deep into the mysterious deaths of healthy patients at a Missouri hospital between December 2001 and May 2002 and how Jennifer Anne Hall was connected to them. Following the deaths of patients, hospital administrators became suspicious of her, but it took more than two decades for justice to arrive. The episode not only covers the decades-long investigation but also the conviction of the perpetrator, the details of which the viewers might want to investigate further.
Jennifer Hall Brought Death With Her to Hedrick Medical Center
Born in the early 1980s, Jennifer Anne Hall began to have run-ins with the law quite early on in her life. When she was in eighth grade, she reportedly set fire to her own school. Later in her life, when she graduated from high school and became eligible to work in hospitals, Jennifer bagged a job at a hospital, where she caused a fire. She eventually stood trial for that and was found guilty of starting the fire. While she waited for her sentence hearing, she received an offer from Hedrick Medical Center in Chillicothe, Missouri, which claimed that it did not know anything about her criminal history. Her stint at Hedrick Medical Center began in December 2001.
Working as a respiratory therapist, Jennifer’s arrival at the hospital resulted in a series of mysterious deaths and medical emergencies of six otherwise healthy patients. During her time working there, the hospital registered a total of 18 cardiac or respiratory arrests, which are also known as Code Blue events in medical terms. Several hospital staff members found it suspicious, as before Jennifer, the hospital averaged one Code Blue event per year. Things escalated when 75-year-old Fern Franco was admitted to the hospital for pneumonia in her lung on May 17, 2002. The very next day, Jennifer found Fern in cardiac arrest, and another Code Blue was raised. Unfortunately, the doctors and nurses could not save her.
Jennifer Hall Was Fired When She Didn’t Comply With Hospital’s Orders
Just a couple of months before Fern’s death, Coval Gann had died under mysterious circumstances as well. Admitted due to dehydration, he died of a heart attack. For months, many doctors and nurses believed that a killer was lurking among them, which was why unexplained deaths had been taking place at the hospital. When one of the staff members went through the medical records of the dead patients, Jennifer Hall’s name was the one thing common in each of them. Since Jennifer was under suspicion, the hospital ordered her not to be present in a patient’s room without the presence of another person. However, when she failed to abide by this directive by being alone with Fern, she was fired in May 2002.
After her time at Hedrick Medical Center was over, she served one year in prison for her previous arson charges. In 2010, the hospital and Jennifer were accused of poisoning their patients by the families of five patients who died during Jennifer’s time at the hospital. However, in August 2015, the court dismissed the lawsuit as the statute of limitations had expired for civil action. Even Jennifer denied the claims against her at the time. After escaping handcuffs for her crimes for about two decades, Jennifer Hall was about to feel the wrath of justice when the case was reopened, this time with the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit involved.
By 2022, the authorities managed to collect enough evidence to build a case against Jennifer and get an arrest warrant for her for the murder of Fern Franco. Finally, on May 4, 2022, she was arrested at a hotel in Overland Park without bond and charged with first-degree murder of Fern. Several months later, she was also charged with the killing of 37-year-old David Wesley Harper, who was another patient at Hedrick Medical Center in 2002. The investigators alleged that Jennifer gave both the victims a strong dose of a muscle-relaxing drug called succinylcholine, which led to their subsequent demise.
Jennifer Hall is Incarcerated at a Missouri Prison Today
In 2023, instead of going to trial, 42-year-old Jennifer Hall agreed to a plea deal and admitted to poisoning three patients — Fern Franco, David Wesley Harper, and Coval Gann — and received lesser charges of two counts of first-degree involuntary manslaughter and one count of second-degree assault. She also pleaded guilty to one count of attempted assault in connection with the demise of Norma Pearson. In August 2023, the former respiratory therapist was sentenced to 18 years in prison with the possibility of parole.
Given the course of the sentence, Coval Gann’s son was dissatisfied. He talked about the same, stating, “She should spend the rest of her life in prison. She’s a serial murder case. But at least that’s better than nothing. I just wish it had happened when my mom was alive so she could have had some closure on it also.” Currently, Jennifer Anne Hall is serving her sentence behind bars at the Missouri Department of Corrections – Women’s Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center in Vandalia, Missouri.
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