Former respiratory therapist Jennifer Anne Hall charged with murder — 20 years after string of Missouri hospital deaths

In the five months Jennifer Anne Hall was a respiratory therapist at Hedrick Medical Center, the rural Missouri hospital experienced 18 "code blue" incidents — an alarming increase in sudden cardiac arrest events for a hospital that historically averaged one of them a year, according to a police investigator.  

Nine of those patients died, and nine recovered. Twenty years later, Hall was charged this month with first-degree murder in one of the deaths — that of 75-year-old Fern Franco.

Livingston County Prosecuting Attorney Adam Warren, who launched an investigation 10 years ago, said Franco died of lethal doses of succinylcholine — a relaxant that paralyzes the respiratory muscles — and the pain reliever morphine. The prosecutor did not disclose a possible motive or say why the investigation took a decade.