True Crime Stories

I heard about this case many years ago. It has been featured on shows like Forensic Files and The Detectives. It was also one of those stories that was made into a Lifetime television movie. One of the things that I find most interesting about some cases are some of the locations. For instance I have done several cases from the city and area in which I currently live and when I put the cases together I can picture the area as to the way it looks now. In fact, I live around the corner from where one of the cases I have blogged about occurred and I think of it every time I drive down that road. In this case I would become at least semi-familiar with one of the areas many years after I heard of John David Smith. I also learned the area had a history. Although John David Smith did not likely know it, his marriage to Betty “Fran” Gladden would be his eventual undoing. That is not to say that I necessarily believe that when he met and later married Fran that he knew ho...

When I first began searching this name I had a bit of difficulty because I kept coming up with articles referring to Genene Jones, the Texas nurse accused of being involved in the deaths of several children. But, I knew that case was not the one I was attempting to look into even if I did not know for sure what case this was. In fact, even as I began my research in this case I still remembered little about the case. It seemed like one of those “run of the mill” cases I probably caught on one of those episodes of Dateline or something like it that showed videos of people attempting to hire someone to kill another person. Then it was Janeene's “side criminal activity” that I had remembered most from this case. On February 25, 2013 Janeene Lea Jones of North Port Florida, was arrested after she had attempted to hire a man to murder her current husband, Matthew Smith and a man named John Chamberlain who had been described as a tenant of hers. As is often the case Ja...