- In a small texas town hospital,
A mystery grows more terrifying by the day.
- All these patients that were having respiratory codes,
But they were in the hospital
For nothing to do with respiratory issues.
- Do we have a bad batch of medication
Or, you know, something that could explain this?
Too many people were dying.
- One of the journalists that came by the office and said,
Well, did you not notice the deaths?
- The clock is ticking as more surprise deaths
Shake the community.
- My dad was my life.
What happened?
I just got through talking to him.
Then he was gone.
- Went through the charts.
I could not find any one common denominator.
- With no physical evidence,
The local chief calls in the big guns.
- The texas rangers, fbi.
You're like, oh, my gosh. What's going on?
- They came to nocona and reviewed 31 codes
That had happened during that period of time.
- All the data suggests there is a murderer among them.
- I believe in the bible.
I believe an eye for an eye.
I wanted revenge is what I want.
- We got somebody here killing people.
Now we got to prove it.
- But until the angel of death is caught,
There's no stopping the body count.
- Small rural hospital.
It's a shock to anybody
That you might have a serial killer.
- She gets this look of terror on her face.
And she said, it's happening again.
[sustained beep]
["just another ghost"]
♪ ♪
- ♪ oh, child ♪
♪ come home to the gallows pole ♪
[bluesy music]
- Just across the red river from oklahoma
Sits the tiny town of nocona, texas.
With hardly 3,000 people, nocona owns a singular blend
Of southern hospitality and a rugged texas resilience.
[horse whinnies]
- A lot of cowboys, a lot of ranching,
And then a lot of oil field work as well.
- I think of nocona, I think of genuine people.
And genuine people, to me, are in the south.
- Very southern bible belt,
Just good small-town country values.
- You know almost everybody.
You see them at the grocery store
Or the post office.
- Someone's in the hospital, word gets around.
Someone dies,
Word gets around almost immediately.
- That was certainly the case when nocona was gripped
By the biggest and deadliest mystery
That anyone could imagine.
- The nocona general hospital administrator, chuck norris,
Called me on February the 6th, 2001,
And asked to speak with me at the hospital.
They told me they thought something was strange going on
And that they had already did an internal investigation.
They had a lot of death during the month
Of December and January,
And that was very suspicious.
- Hospital executives briefing chief holcomb
Say these suspicious deaths began two months prior,
Long before it became clear something evil was afoot,
During the height of the worst flu season to ever hit nocona.
- That was and still is the busiest
The hospital had ever been.
We had over 120 patients in the hospital in December,
Over 117 in January.
Most of the patients that were admitted were elderly.
- Nocona general hospital is one of the smallest hospitals
In the state of texas.
Myself and my brother work here together.
It's rare that somebody comes in
That I don't know who they are
And their parents and their grandparents
And their kids,
Which is the joy of being family medicine.
- The close communal ties made December's loss
Of 11 elderly townsfolk especially hard,
Many of whom had dnrs, "do not resuscitate."
However, on the cold texas morning of January 7th,
What happened to 65-year-old jimmy ray holder,
Who had no dnr, was out of the blue.
- He had a heart attack at home there in nocona.
And my stepmother took him up to that hospital.
I was actually on the phone with him the night before.
He sounded great.
He was doing really good.
And I was going to visit him the very next day.
- But their visit was not to be.
[phone ringing]
- I was asleep.
I got a phone call from my stepmother
Saying that he had passed.
And I was like, what happened?
I mean, I just got through talking to him.
He sounded really good.
And she goes, I don't know.
He was gone.
I basically broke down.
I was crying.
My dad was my life.
[somber music]
I spent a lot of time up in taos with him,
You know, up in the mountains, just looking out--
The wildlife.
You know, he worked his whole life
Just to take care of his family.
And that made him special to me.
- Family heartbreaks continue over the course
Of the next 22 days,
As ten more elderly patients die.
These deaths were seemingly of natural causes,
Yet the rising body count
Heightens the doctor's concern.
- A lot of those patients were found expired.
That was unusual.
Didn't seem to be that sick.
Even though we were twice as busy as we normally were,
Too many people were dying.
So I personally took 12 charts, sat down.
Were these patients on the same iv fluids?
Were they on the same medications?
I could not find any one common denominator.
It was a huge mystery.
- Indeed, something was terribly wrong
Inside nocona general.
And a few nights later, all hell breaks loose.
[dramatic music]
- I remember the night. It was January the 30th.
And orvel moore was another patient.
He was an old country, kind of a cantankerous guy.
I think that was his way of telling you he liked you.
He'd give you a hard time.
[indistinct radio chatter]
I got a call that mr. Moore was coding,
A respiratory arrest or a code blue.
And then they tell me there's a code
In room 17 at the same time.
We did an appendectomy that morning on lydia weatherhead.
- This patient also can't breathe.
But lydia weatherhead is only 14 years old.
- When I got in that room,
They had to put a breathing tube
Through their mouth, down into their lungs,
And she immediately started breathing.
- [coughing]
- I went down to mr. Moore's room.
We worked his code.
He did not make it.
[sustained beep]
So I pronounced him dead.
♪ ♪
I can't remember in my career
Having two cold blues at the same time.
♪ ♪
Got my suspicion even up higher than it already was.
♪ ♪
There wasn't really a thought that someone's here
Taking people's lives.
It was, do we have a bad batch of medication
Or something that could explain this?
And couldn't really find anything.
- Rattled by orvel moore's passing
And lydia weatherhead's near-death experience,
Len dingler tries to figure out what's happening
In this hospital, finding a most quiet place to ponder.
- I went into orvel moore's room.
I sat in his room, waiting on the funeral home
To come here and pick up his body.
Just had my eyes closed.
And kirk walked in the room.
- Kirk jackson was the nurse's aide.
Kirk would go in and prepare the bodies
For the funeral home to come and pick them up.
Kirk was married to one of the nurses,
Vickie dawn jackson.
- He said, something's not right.
And I said, I know, kirk. Something's wrong.
And he said, they're calling me the grim reaper."
And I said, well, kirk, anybody that knows you knows
You're not the grim reaper.
He was seeing more people, obviously, die
Than he was used to seeing too.
And it bothered him.
- One of the journalists that came by the office and said,
Well, did you not notice the deaths?
I noticed a pattern. We're 35% senior citizen.
We have bad weather conditions, and the mortality rate goes up.
We had had a fairly rough December, weather-wise,
And the mortality rate goes up.
So yeah, it was up,
But it wasn't astronomically up.
But what I learn later is, the hospital knew
This rate's not right for us.
♪ ♪
- Already on razor's edge,
The next morning changes nocona general forever.
- Donna carnutte, she was 47.
But I would not expect someone of her age
To suffer a code blue.
- She was sitting up in the bed,
Holding on to the top side rails,
Like, struggling to stay upright
And gasping for every breath.
[rapid beeping] and she collapsed into the bed.
She had a pulse, but she was not breathing.
[sustained beep] so we initiated the code blue.
- Team to icu, please.
- That's when the unimaginable occurred
To a 35-year-old woman down the hall.
- And a second code happened almost simultaneously.
[rapid beeping]
- Lisa pelkey, but a respiratory arrest
At her age, that would be almost unheard of.
She had a heartbeat.
She just wasn't able to breathe.
[rapid beeping]
- Ms. Carnutte, after a few moments,
Her eyes come open.
And we're all just like, this is great.
She's awake.
I hooked up the iv back to her that she already had.
And after a few minutes, she sits up,
She gets this look of terror on her face, and she said,
It's happening again.
- Coming up...
- The texas ranger told me, you're jumping to conclusions.
We don't know anybody's murdered anybody.
- Had an undercover agent come in.
And they installed a video camera system
Above the crash cart.
- We didn't want to tip anybody off
That we just had a huge suspicion,
Someone's killing people.
- ♪ come home to the gallows pole ♪
- ♪ judgment day shall come ♪
- In nocona's small rural hospital,
Two patients are undergoing respiratory arrest
Simultaneously for the second time
In less than 48 hours.
One of the patients is revived but again stops breathing.
- When I hooked her back up to her previous iv bags,
That's when it started all over again.
[dramatic music]
- Alarm bells were going off.
What is going on?
- Lisa pelkey and donna carnutte,
We revived both of them.
[steady beeping]
We have two codes Monday night.
Now I have two codes Wednesday morning.
Then one of the pharmacy technicians walked up to me
And asked me, she said, what's mivacron for?
And I said, well, we use that to paralyze people.
Why would you ask me that?
She said, well, we have a vial missing
Out of the crash cart.
I felt all the blood rush out of my head, and I felt faint.
- Mivacron is a paralytic.
It is used to paralyze somebody so that you can intubate them
When you put a breathing tube down somebody's throat.
It only lasts about 20 minutes in your system
Before it wears out.
- To be given mivacron without any kind of sedative,
They're laying there suffocating to death,
Unable to tell anybody that they can't breathe,
They can't move.
It's about the cruelest way to kill somebody.
And I knew right then, something in my heart,
Somebody's here killing people.
♪ ♪
I thought someone was going in and injecting mivacron
Into an iv bag
And that caused the patients to go
Into a respiratory arrest.
- Reeling from his epiphany that someone may be murdering
His patients with mivacron, len dingler begins defending
Against what he believes is a killer amongst them.
- Told them, draw blood, change out the iv bag,
Change out the iv tubing,
And take all of that to my office.
I called quest, our reference lab,
And I asked them,
Is there a test for mivacron in the body?
And they said, there is no test for that.
But we went ahead and kept the blood anyway
For evidence, just in case.
- I walked around to the hospital
Administrator's office, chuck norris.
I said, chuck, I believe we have
Somebody here killing people.
- Len informs only the fewest members
Of hospital management,
Keeping his belief that there's a murderer
In their midst from staff.
Knowing proof will be vital, dr. Dingler wants to be
Certain his theory is correct before contacting authorities.
- We removed all the mivacron from the crash carts.
You're going to have to go to the pharmacy
To sign it out.
If anybody else codes,
We're going to change out the iv tubing.
We're going to change out the iv bag.
I said, I want you to make a chart.
On the vertical axis, I want everybody
That works here across the top.
We're going to mark every day that somebody has died.
Do this for December and January,
And let's see if we can see a pattern.
- In December, there were 11 deaths in the hospital.
In January, 14 people died.
The dinglers try to determine
Which of these deaths are suspect.
But before they can finish the chart,
The worst kind of data keeps coming in.
- That Sunday night, e.E. Jackson died.
- The mivacron was locked away,
And nobody signed out a vial.
Yet e.E. Jackson is found dead in his room
By nurse vickie dawn jackson.
Even at the advanced age of 92 years old,
The dinglers still suspect foul play
Because e.E. Jackson fits the pattern
Of suspicious deaths:
Stable one minute, then found dead the next.
- Preacher jackson, he was my patient.
That was kirk jackson's grandfather.
Really good fella.
- The next morning,
The dingler brothers look at the chart,
Hoping it will not only prove len's theory correct,
That someone is murdering patients,
But also answer the most disturbing question:
Who?
- It was as obvious as the nose on your face.
90% of the code blues were at night.
There were two code blues where vickie jackson, a nurse,
And her husband, kirk, worked the same night.
Initially, it looked like it could be kirk or vickie.
- This, of course, gives the doctors pause,
Knowing that e.E. Jackson was kirk's grandfather.
It also makes vickie and especially kirk
Less likely for the same reason.
- But when you add in the two very suspicious codes
That happened on a different shift of nurses,
The only person that had switched over
Into those other shifts was vickie dawn jackson.
It was just like, no way.
That's not possible.
That was her husband's grandfather
Last night that died.
Surely, she wouldn't have done that too.
- I don't really know how to profile a mass murderer.
But I wouldn't think it would be
Somebody that seemed to be sweet and kind,
Which vickie was.
- She was always very nice, very cordial,
A very sweet lady.
Never had any patients complain about her.
- So it was definitely a shock and a surprise.
I'm trying to help people's lives.
I'm trying to save them.
I've got somebody, on the other hand,
Deliberately taking their life.
- But who is responsible for the unusual deaths
Is still in question.
While the dingler brothers feel in their gut
The killer is vickie dawn jackson,
It's here that the doctors reach out for help
Because they can't rule out kirk or anyone else
Without a police investigation.
- We called chief of police for nocona, kent holcomb.
- This all leads up to the meeting
On February 6, 2001, at nocona general,
Where chief kent holcomb hears the dinglers' belief
That vickie dawn jackson is killing patients.
- I told chief holcomb, since we had mivacron missing
And we had suspicious deaths,
We thought one nurse was killing patients.
- We got a town of 3,200 people,
Small rural hospital.
It was a shock to myself.
It was a shock to anybody that you might have
A serial killer in town.
- But once chief holcomb is up to speed,
He pumps the brakes.
- You go into an investigation with an open mind.
We looked at everybody on the employment list,
But also there was no test for mivacron.
They could test the liquid,
But we couldn't test the bodies
To know how many patients had been
Injected with mivacron to determine
If they were murdered.
So I call in a texas ranger friend of mine, ranger johnson,
Who come down and help.
Well, first thing, we had to figure out
How much mivacron was missing
And determine if that was actually a case of theft.
We contacted our district attorney
To let him know what we had and what we were doing.
- The district attorney's office
Requested the fbi be involved.
- Law enforcement's methodical approach makes sense,
But it's tough for the dinglers to accept
With what they feel is a killer
On the loose in their hospital.
- The texas ranger told me, you're jumping to conclusions.
We don't know anybody's murdered anybody.
I told him, you're wasting time.
We got somebody here killing people.
And he said, you don't know that.
I couldn't prove that.
In my gut, I knew that.
This is vickie.
[rapid beeping] now we got to prove it.
- ♪ come home to the gallows pole ♪
- ♪ judgment day shall come ♪
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- At nocona general hospital,
There have been up to 18 suspicious deaths
Since December of 2000.
And the dingler brothers believe most of them
Have been caused by nurse vickie dawn jackson.
They deduce vickie is stealing a drug called mivacron
From the crash cart, then secretly injecting
Mivacron into patients' iv bags,
Causing them to stop breathing.
But chief holcomb tells the dingler brothers
There is no proof.
- I know at least 20 codes from the hospital investigation.
Vickie jackson was present during all these codes.
And at some point, she would even be the one
To find the patient and call the code.
But the proof just wasn't there.
- We didn't have any cctv footage in the hospital,
Nor do we have a visitors' log that people would sign in.
Nurses were in and out of the rooms
All the time without charting that they were in there.
So there was no record of who was in which room
At what time in any possible way.
- While looking for more evidence linking vickie
To the suspected murders, investigators tell
No one else on staff that vickie is the prime suspect.
- And so we started doing interviews with the witnesses
And hospital staff, nurses, doctors, everybody and anybody
That worked at the hospital that we could possibly do.
- We started seeing local policemen,
The texas rangers,
Fbi people, and quite a few staff
That had been called up to talk with law enforcement.
You're like, oh, my gosh. What's happening?
You know, what's going on?
- Other nurses have seen vickie coming out of the room,
Even when they weren't her patients.
And she would say, that patient seems to be
Having trouble breathing.
But you still have to prove manner of death.
You still have to prove that it was a homicide.
- Vickie jackson went into e.E. Jackson's room,
Who is the grandfather of her husband, kirk jackson.
She came back out and whispered in a nurse's ear
That something wrong with preacher jackson.
And they go in there.
They couldn't revive him.
- Investigators don't reveal that vickie is their target,
Not even when speaking with vickie's husband,
Kirk jackson.
- We talked to kirk several times.
Kirk jackson was an aide there.
You know, he could have been involved.
A lot of times, kirk was there while vickie worked.
During the investigation and talking to kirk,
We did believe kirk.
- Investigators corroborate, as a nurse's aide,
Kirk did not have access to the crash cart
Or clearance to handle any medication.
- Everything just still pointed towards vickie jackson.
- Meanwhile, chief gets his results back
Regarding any potentially missing mivacron.
- We went back to the 1st of December.
And we determined, through paperwork and witnesses,
That approximately 14 vials of mivacron were missing.
That threw a big red flag up.
From my learning about mivacron,
It don't take much to do the job.
- As mivacron is metabolized out in the body, it changes.
Every medicine does.
And so there was no test.
The fbi actually had to invent a test
To test bodily fluids for mivacron.
- The missing mivacron and the number of patients
Going into respiratory arrest
Supports the theory
That they were injected with mivacron.
But since no test yet exists to detect mivacron
In human tissue, chief holcomb learns
Everything there is to know about vickie dawn jackson.
- She was there for two years on my shift.
And so I got to know her a little bit.
Vickie was always very quiet.
- I knew vickie for a number of years.
She came in early, stayed late, worked hard.
[somber music]
- Vickie wound up going to work at the nursing home
When she was 16.
Always wanted to be a nurse.
- Vickie seemed kind of troubled
During her prior marriage.
Actually got a divorce.
They had two kids.
- In 1997, while raising two children alone,
Vickie frequents the local country music dance hall
And meets a young, handsome fellow, kirk jackson.
- And then she wound up marrying kirk,
Whose family is from nocona.
[bird caws]
[tense music]
- Vickie and kirk were having marital problems,
According to our investigation, but nothing major
That they couldn't work through.
- Though it's said vickie's kids had
Recently moved out of kirk and vickie's home
Because of their domestic discord.
- The kids went to live with their father.
And vickie was the one that was ordered to pay child support.
- But to investigators,
Vickie's ongoing familial and financial woes
Lend no proof that she is murdering patients,
Much less her husband's grandfather.
- And we're telling them, I think we need to fire her.
They said, well, don't fire her.
There's no more mivacron available.
Y'all have taken care of that.
And I said,
We don't know that she doesn't have any stockpiled.
- What you don't want to do is scare somebody off
And want to give them every opportunity
To give you more evidence before the case is filed.
- But as of right now,
There's no evidence to arrest her.
- So investigators hatch a plan
To catch vickie in the act.
- Paging dr. Stevens.
- Had an undercover agent come in,
Acting like a phone tech.
And they installed a video camera system
Above the crash cart that was being tampered with.
- Mivacron is clear.
We took a vial and emptied it
And very carefully replaced it with saline
And put a dummy vial back in the crash cart.
We didn't want to tip anybody off
That we had a huge suspicion that this could be happening.
- Chief holcomb's team sticks to that camera like glue.
- We recorded the crash cart for several weeks,
And nobody tampered with the crash cart
That wasn't supposed to.
- Paging dr. Stevens.
- The fbi were convinced that she didn't have
Any more medicine.
- And it looked like they were probably right
Because nothing happened after February the 4th
For a couple of weeks.
Until donnelly reid gets medication.
He has a respiratory arrest, code blue.
- The fbi was wrong.
- Coming up...
- He said a nurse came into his room
And put some medicine into his iv
And stayed there and watched it.
- Sometimes the suspect will tell you
What you need to know, the truth.
♪ ♪
- ♪ come home to the gallows pole ♪
- ♪ judgment day shall come ♪
[suspenseful music]
[sustained beep]
- Despite prime suspect vickie dawn jackson
Being under watch by investigators,
Patient donnelly reid is coding and can't breathe.
♪ ♪
- Donnelly reid, he had polio when he was little.
And, you know, he was just, at that time, not healthy.
- And then chance's weekend, he's on call.
Donnelly reid was his patient.
So he has a respiratory arrest, code blue.
- It's as if everyone at nocona general
Is stuck in the same recurring nightmare.
But for this code blue, the doctors are prepared.
Since nothing about donnelly reid's condition
Makes him a candidate for respiratory arrest,
Doctors deduce vickie had evaded surveillance
And injected reid with mivacron.
- We put a breathing tube down his throat because we knew,
At that time, what was happening
And simply breathed him for a bag mask ventilator
With 100% of oxygen flowing through it
Until the medicine wore off, which was about 20, 25 minutes.
He was able to move and breathe again on his own.
We drew multiple vials of blood, urine,
Just in case there was a test that could be done,
Confiscated his iv tube, and had a nurse
Sit in there with him the rest of the night.
- Later that night, dr. Chance dingler sits down
To chat with donnelly reid about what happened.
- He said a nurse came into his room
And put some medicine into his iv
And stayed there and watched him.
And mr. Reid said, very quickly,
He began not to be able to breathe
And was having some chest tightness and discomfort
And was looking up at her, trying to wave at her
To get her attention.
And she was just sitting there smiling at him
And turned around and walked out of his room.
- Dr. Dingler asked donnelly reid
For a description of the nurse.
- He said a blonde-headed nurse.
I thought, she still had medicine.
We have got to get her out of our hospital.
- The next morning, chief holcomb visits
The hospital to speak with donnelly reid himself.
- Donnelly reid identified a nurse,
Medium build with blonde hair, coming into the room
And giving him some medication.
He picked her out in a lineup,
In photographs as possibly being her.
And it was vickie jackson.
- Vickie had finished her shift
Just before donnelly reid stopped breathing.
For the dinglers, reid's brush with death
Was the final straw.
- We went to the fbi.
And we're like, we're firing her.
You cannot keep her in this hospital.
We don't care what you say or what you do.
She is not going to touch another patient
In this hospital.
If it messes up your investigation,
It messes up your investigation.
- Donnelly reid's statement isn't proof,
But combined with the fact
That vickie is about to be fired,
It's enough for chief holcomb to take a daring step
In the investigation.
- On the 20th, myself and agent burns of the fbi
Asked vickie if she would interview with us
And talk to us at the hospital.
We had her in the hospital conference room.
At that time, she was ready and willing to speak to us.
Vickie jackson's demeanor and attitude--
She acted like nothing was going on.
She didn't act scared, didn't act like she was
Being targeted or anything.
We asked her about everybody that coded,
E.E. Jackson, donnelly reid.
We talked to her normally, you know, gained her respect.
We gained a rapport with vickie.
Sometimes the longer you talk and get a connection
With the suspect,
They will tell you what you need to know:
The truth.
Vickie jackson did not do that with us.
She would blame the doctors.
I wasn't surprised she was able to keep her composure.
I mean, this is basically a serial killing,
A capital murder.
She knew the consequences.
She was that smart.
- Figuring vickie wouldn't fess up
And needing hard evidence,
Chief holcomb isn't just interviewing vickie.
He's in the midst of an all-out sting.
- While we had her at the hospital conference room,
The texas ranger and the da investigator
Were at vickie's residence with a consent-to-search form.
But you don't need a search warrant
Or consent to look in the trash.
And during that process, they searched
Through the trash that was at the curb
Ready to be picked up...
[indistinct radio chatter]
♪ ♪
And found a syringe in that trash.
And the syringe contained some sort of liquid.
- ♪ come home to the gallows pole ♪
- ♪ judgment day shall come ♪
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- After days of searching for some hard proof
That vickie jackson is the nocona general nurse
On a killing spree, chief kent holcomb
Might finally have his smoking gun,
A dirty syringe fished out of vickie's trash.
- Myself and fbi agent dave burns
Were interviewing vickie,
And I got a phone call from ranger johnson
That they had found a syringe in her trash
That had some residue of liquid inside the syringe.
We ask her what a syringe was doing in her trash
At her house, and she had no explanation.
We put the syringe in evidence until we could get that
To a lab that could test for mivacron.
- They presented her with data and said,
We know you're killing people.
She denied it all, but the hospital fired her
At that point in time.
And she was escorted out of the building.
- Kirk was fired too.
- Though not a suspect, according to administrators,
Kirk's firing is in the best interest of the hospital.
When kirk is informed his wife is the primary suspect
In the case, he's stunned.
- Kirk couldn't believe it
And didn't want to believe it, basically.
Later on, he finally believed it.
- They separated and then, I think, finally
At some point got divorced.
- And with vickie ousted, word is out among staff.
- That was probably the biggest eye-opening
Of, oh, they are highly suspicious of her.
You're kind of thinking, should I have recognized
Some facet of her personality that would lead me to think
That she could be the culprit?
♪ ♪
- Got word from the fbi lab that they were ready
For the physical evidence that we collected,
The syringe, the iv tubing, and bags.
We sent that first.
- Now chief holcomb needs to prove
Vickie injected mivacron directly into the patients
Who died suspiciously.
The liquid in the syringe
And iv equipment can be tested.
But no test exists to detect mivacron's presence
In a dead body.
[rapid beeping] - paging dr. Stevens.
Dr. Stevens, please...
- Mivacron is a drug that's got one use:
To get them intubated without the gag reflex.
I don't know that there's ever been a case
Where it was used as a murder weapon.
- We had to determine if we needed to exhume
Some of the patients that were deceased.
While the fbi was working to develop
A protocol for testing mivacron,
We had a group of doctors come in.
They determined the top ten deceased
That needed to be exhumed.
- They believed that there could be
Up to twice that many that were murdered.
But due to the circumstances,
They weren't candidates to be exhumed.
- Investigators now have a most delicate message
To deliver to relatives of the deceased
Marked for exhumation,
Including the families of orvel moore,
E.E. Jackson, and jimmy ray holder.
- They said that they felt like my father
May have been murdered.
♪ ♪
I believe in the bible.
I believe that-- an eye for an eye
If someone does something to you.
I know it's not right, but I wanted to kill her.
I wanted revenge, is what I wanted.
[bell tolls]
♪ ♪
- With nocona riveted, the exhumations begin,
Involving seven area cemeteries.
- They were spread out in texas and some in oklahoma.
- But the story of a mass murderer
In a small-town hospital has captured
The entire country's attention.
- All the media vultures, myself included,
Were on a fence and were watching.
- Medical examiners took samples of the bodies
That were exhumed.
And I transported them back to nocona pd evidence room
And placed them in the freezer.
- All of that then began being packaged
And shipped to the fbi laboratory in quantico.
- On July 12, 2001, 14 weeks after it was shipped,
The fbi shares results on a key piece of evidence
Directly linking vickie dawn jackson
To patients suspected of being murdered:
The syringe discovered in vickie's trash.
- The syringe found at vickie jackson's house
Had mivacron in it.
- But chief holcomb still can't arrest vickie
Until he can prove the patients were murdered.
And without proof there's mivacron in the bodies,
The weeks turn into months, while vickie dawn jackson
Freely walks about as if all is well.
Looking to uncover the truth,
Investigators continue interviewing vickie.
- I think she loved the attention
And loved everything being about her.
- 13 months after the exhumations
And 19 months since vickie dawn jackson is
Suspected to have started her cruel killing spree,
Word finally comes back to chief holcomb
From the fbi lab.
- We found out all ten bodies tested positive for mivacron
That we exhumed.
- The manner of death for all ten exhumed patients
Is changed to homicide.
And over a year since chief holcomb
Started this case, his hard work pays off.
- It was a big relief.
It was like, all right, it's not celebration time yet
Because we still had to get an indictment on vickie jackson
And get her arrested.
We had a special grand jury convened.
And she was indicted for capital murder,
Which it takes two for capital murder,
So she had five capital murder indictments
And attempted murder on donnelly reid.
We then went to vickie jackson's place of employment,
Which was brookshire's grocery store in bowie, texas,
And we arrested her there for the murders.
I ask her, the public wants to know
Why you injected mivacron in these patients.
And her response was, I don't know.
- After vickie is arrested and taken off the street,
Investigators look beyond her ex, kirk,
To see what they can learn from vickie's
Other friends and family.
- Her daughter was rather uncooperative
And then later on, after seeing a lot of the evidence,
Began to believe her mother was guilty of the offenses.
- A few days later, 15-year-old jennifer
Hands over something to authorities
That her mother had asked her to keep secret.
- Vickie's daughter said her mother
Had given her a sealed box.
And vickie told her to keep it secreted away
Until she got out of jail.
As this case progressed, I think she decided
That she didn't want that box.
♪ ♪
- ♪ come home to the gallows pole ♪
- ♪ judgment day shall come ♪
[dramatic music]
- After vickie's arrest, investigators spoke
With her teenage daughter, jennifer,
Who turned over a secret box her mother had given to her.
- Her daughter decided that she didn't want that box.
And so she delivered it
To the police department for us.
When you open that box, there was a medical book
That had a lot of information about the drug of mivacron,
Newspaper clippings about the investigation.
She had written notes about different patients
And the dates they died,
Where each of them were buried.
I took it as trophies.
I've had four serial killers in my career.
My experience, the trophies are kept
So that they can relive that experience.
Each trophy reminds them of that victim
And those events around the death of that victim.
- Vickie's keepsakes of the killings
Still don't explain the one thing
Everyone in nocona wants to know:
Why?
- We all thought it was retribution,
That she worked in the nursing home here
Prior to coming to the hospital.
And a bunch of these people were from the nursing home.
And so if they were mean to her in the nursing home
Or the family was rude to her at the nursing home,
That she found a way to get back at them.
- Indeed, approaching the trial,
Kirk jackson reveals to investigators
Retribution may have played a part
In the death of his grandfather e.E. Jackson.
- I know that that day,
Vickie and kirk had been arguing.
And then they both came to work.
And that evening, she killed his grandfather.
That would definitely be an act of vengeance, I believe.
♪ ♪
- Vickie stands accused of murdering the ten people
Whose bodies were exhumed and is charged
With attempted murder of donnelly reid.
- I was the lead witness.
I've met with the fbi for hours
Getting prepared for my testimony.
- But at the 11th hour, vickie dawn jackson takes
Matters into her own hands.
- She'd asked her attorney, am I going to be convicted?
And the attorney was like, yeah,
You're going to be convicted.
And so she said, well, I'm not going to put my fate
Into the hands of the jury.
I'm going to be in control of what happens.
Right before the trial, she pled no contest.
- It means you're not contesting
The charge against you.
You're not admitting it, but you're not contesting it.
- On October 5, 2006, vickie dawn jackson
Is found guilty of capital murder
And sentenced to life in prison.
- She's alive.
And all these other people that she killed,
Their family members are having to suffer.
I'm glad she's locked up.
But I think that she should have been executed.
♪ ♪
- This is still the biggest case I've worked.
I'm glad we got who done it.
I'm glad justice was served.
I'll never forget it.
- I'm catholic.
You always have a way to go to god
And confess your sins, and god can forgive you.
But you have to be willing to confess those sins.
And she's never admitted those sins.
She's going to rot in hell one day for that.
♪ ♪
- Only one that has the right to take a life is god.
I'm at peace for the fact that my father isn't suffering.
I just wish that he could have lived out his natural life,
You know, until god chose to take him.
♪ ♪