Naman Shrestha
For a few months between late 2000 and early 2001, Vickie Dawn Jackson wreaked havoc in a local hospital of a small town in Texas. She deliberately caused the deaths of ten patients by injecting them with unprescribed drugs. When the pattern was noticed, the police worked to build a case against her and indict her for her crimes. The terror within the hospital walls is revisited in the episode titled ‘Code Blue: A Lone Star State Serial Killer’ of Oxygen’s ‘Sins of the South,’ supported by the in-depth interviews with the victims’ loved ones and the officials linked to the case.
Deaths at Nocona General Hospital Increased When Vickie Dawn Jackson Joined
Born on February 13, 1966, in Montague County, Texas, Vickie Dawn Carson Jackson completed her education and went on to become a licensed vocational nurse in 1989. In her early days as a professional nurse, she reportedly worked at various hospitals and a nursing home in the North Texas region. By then, she had gotten married and was a mother of two children. In 1997, while the marriage had deteriorated and she was raising her kids single-handedly, she crossed paths with Kirk Jackson. As sparks flew between them, they tied the knot and made their relationship official.
After gaining enough experience, Vickie was able to get a job at the 38-bed Nocona General Hospital, which mostly dealt with and treated elderly patients, in late 2000. From the time she was hired to early 2001, there was a sudden surge in the number of deaths in the hospital, almost twice the normal amount, as noticed by her colleagues. Thus, an investigation was launched to get to the bottom of it all. Since she was the prime suspect, the hospital was getting ready to fire her, but the investigators ordered them to hold it off as they wanted to catch her red-handed. The detectives installed a camera above the crash cart and put a Mivacron vial containing saline in the cart, hoping to catch the killer in the act.
Unfortunately, the nurse did not take the bait, and the plan failed. Around the same time, it was reported that Vickie and her husband, Kirk, were having troubles in their marriage. However, on February 19, 2001, a 61-year-old patient named Donnelly Reid suffered a respiratory arrest, which was not possible in his condition. Fortunately, with the help of another doctor, Donnelly was saved. When the patient gained consciousness, he testified that Vickie came into his room and injected something into his IV while she watched him struggle. The doctors and investigators believed that she had somehow evaded surveillance and administered Mivacron. Around the time of Vickie’s time at the hospital, numerous vials of muscle paralytic drug, Mivacurium chloride, also went missing.
Vickie Dawn Jackson Was Indicted For the Deaths of 10 Patients
In light of all the evidence and the testimony of Donnelly, the detectives brought her in for questioning on February 20, 2001, at the hospital conference room. Meanwhile, upon searching her house, the detectives discovered a syringe with liquid in it inside her curbside garbage bin and sent it for further examination. The next day, Vickie was sacked from her duties at the hospital. When her husband, Kirk, came to know about it all, he was left shell-shocked. Moreover, Donnelly ended up filing a lawsuit against the dismissed nurse but died a couple of months later of pneumonia. Soon, the former nurse at Nocona General Hospital was sued by the children of the late 87-year-old Boyd Bruce Burnett, blaming Vickie for injecting the patient with an unprescribed drug that led to his demise on Christmas Eve of 2000.
A few months after she was fired, the bodies of 10 former patients were exhumed to check if their bodies had any trace of Mivacron in them. Until they found some concrete proof that she had a hand in the deaths, the police could not arrest her. More than a year later, all the exhumed bodies tested positive for Mivacron, causing them to change the manner of death to murder. As soon as the reports came in, the investigators arrested and charged Vickie Dawn Jackson on July 17, 2002, with four counts of capital murder at a local grocery store where she had been working at the time. For the rest of the six murders, she was charged with them in January 2004, which resulted in an increase in her bond from $2 million to $6 million.
Vickie Dawn Jackson is Currently Incarcerated, Awaiting Parole
In March 2005, Vickie Dawn Jackson’s trial resulted in a mistrial, following which the second trial was shifted to San Angelo with a new group of jurors. During her second trial, an FBI special agent took the stand and testified that she killed the patients because they were too demanding. In addition, she also allegedly tried murdering a 14-year-old girl and a 40-year-old woman battling Crohn’s disease.
By the end of the trial, the jury found her guilty on all counts. In October 2006, she received a life imprisonment sentence. Almost a decade later, in 2015, the convict and her defense team sought a new trial, but the court dismissed the request. Currently, the 58-year-old former nurse is serving her sentence in TDCJ Christina Melton Crain Unit at 1401 State School Road in Gatesville, Texas, with her parole eligibility date scheduled for July 2042.
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