Jennifer Ann Hall worked as a respiratory therapist in Hendrick Medical Center located in the rural northeast area of Missouri. Hall was employed at the hospital between December 2001 and May 2002. During her five months there, the hospital saw 18 “code blue” incidents. Staff at the hospital used “code blues” to indicate when patients were experiencing sudden cardiac arrest. Prior to her time at Hedrick Medical Center, the hospital averaged just one code blue incident a year.

Of the 18 patients who had a code blue called on their condition during those five months, nine passed away while the other nine recovered. One of those individuals who passed away was 75-year-old Fern Franco. Late last week, authorities announced that Hall would be facing a first-degree murder charge in Franco's death.

Days following Franco's death, staff at the hospital suspected Hall may have played a role in the death. As a result, Hall was placed on administrative leave. After taking leave, the hospital reported that incidents involving code blues had returned to their frequency experienced prior to Halls' employment.

The investigation into the surge of cardiac arrests in the hospital was launched nearly 10 years ago by Livingston County prosecuting attorney Adam Warren. Warren has not detailed why the investigation took ten years to commence but he did reveal that Franco's death was the result of a lethal dose of a paralyzing agent, succinylcholine. After being elected as a prosecutor in 2010, Warren moved forward with opening the investigation because he did not believe that there was a thorough investigation into the deaths at the time they occurred.

The former respiratory therapist has pled not guilty to the murder charge, and her attorney, Matt O'Connor, contends that Hall did not have access to the drug succinylcholine, or to any other drugs including morphine. Instead, her attorney contends that Hall is being used as a scapegoat because of a previous arson conviction against her which was later cleared in 2005.

Hall’s arrest came weeks after a warrant was issued against her for the murder charge. According to local news outlet KSHB-TV 41, authorities had probable cause to arrest Hall because of evidence that turned up during the investigation. Along the lines of this probable cause was testimony that Hall had been the closest person of contact to each of the 18 patients who had coded. Hall, who's also battling leukemia, is currently being held without bail. In a hearing set for the end of May, Hall plans to contest her bail so she can continue her chemotherapy treatments.

The local news outlet also reports on court documents including the brief criminal complaint which details that there were 34 state witnesses with claims against Hall. Chillicothe Police Officer Brian Schmidt also shares in his probable cause statement, “Because of Hall’s singular proximity to stricken patients, her access to pharmaceuticals which are deadly if misused, and her discovery and method of notifying staff of every patient’s cardiac emergency, nursing staff believed Hall was responsible for the patient deaths.”

Schmidt's statement also includes input from a mathematical psychiatry professor at Washington University in St Louis School of Medicine. The professor explains that when statistically analyzed, the deaths which occurred during Halls' time at the hospital portrayed “a pattern that would happen less than one in a million times.”

Despite the evidence brought forward in the probable cause statement and by investigators, Hall maintains her innocence. Her attorney shares, “It is absolutely devastating to my client and her family and myself, frankly, to have a case that is without merit whatsoever and based on conjecture and speculation,” O’Connor says. “This isn’t lawyer talk — there aren’t facts in support of it because Ms. Hall did not commit these acts.”

The arrest is the latest pursuit of justice for the victims' families. In 2010, a wrongful death lawsuit was filed against the hospital. St. Luke’s Health System, the company which operates the hospital, was also named in the suit. The lawsuit which represented five of the patients who passed away was eventually tossed out in 2019 by the Missouri Supreme Court. The court had ruled that the statute of limitations had expired.

In its defense, St Luke's Health System shared that it was not operating the hospital at the time of the deaths as it took over Hendrick Medical Center over ten years after Hall had been employed there.