LAS VEGAS — A former nurse who authorities say killed himself shortly before exploding two powerful bombs targeting his former boss in a rural Nevada town had previously been investigated for unaccounted morphine at the hospital where he worked, state documents indicate.
The state said it investigated Glenn Franklin Jones for two incidents in 2015 involving morphine at Grover C. Dils Medical Center in Caliente, where Jones had worked in recent years.
The investigation indicated that Jones in July and August 2015 had obtained morphine syringes for patients but failed to document whether the drug was administered, a violation of protocol.
Jones had his nursing license revoked for unprofessional conduct by the Nevada State Board of Nursing in April for a period of five years, the documents state.
Jones had been notified of the case against him and summoned in February but failed to appear at the March hearing before the revocation was ordered.
Lincoln County Sheriff Kerry Lee said his office wasn’t notified by the hospital about missing medication or asked to investigate, and it didn’t have any reports of any past conflicts between Jones and Joshua Cluff, his supervisor.
Jason Bleak, Dils hospital administrator, declined to comment on the nursing board investigation but said broadly that the hospital reports all possible cases of nursing misconduct to the board.
Bleak said Jones voluntarily resigned from his position in August 2015 and had in the year before that voluntarily cut back his schedule, working just part-time.
Bleak also confirmed that Cluff was Jones’ supervisor. The two men, along with Cluff’s wife, Tiffany, all worked as nurses at the hospital and had a relationship outside of work. Bleak said there was no known animosity among them or against the hospital.
Authorities said Jones, 59, died of suicide on July 13 in Panaca after setting off bombs inside the Cluffs’ house and in a rental car in front of the house in the Mormon enclave near the Utah border.
Authorities haven’t indicated a motive. They said the bombs used in the attack were sophisticated enough to hurl car parts, building materials and bomb fragments across the town with some debris landing up to a mile away.
Clark County Coroner John Fudenberg said Jones died of a gunshot wound to the head, and his body was blown up in the blasts.
Joshua Cluff and a daughter weren’t home at the time, and his wife and their other two daughters fled from the house just before the explosions. Messages left for the Cluffs haven’t been returned.
A search of Jones’ motorhome in Kingman, Arizona, where he had been living for several months, led authorities to several pounds of explosives and improvised bombs, said Rusty Cooper, Kingman’s deputy police chief. Explosives experts also detonated a box of black powder that was found inside.
“It appears this was a bomb-making lab,” Cooper said of the motorhome towed Friday evening from a recreational vehicle park.
Cooper declined to detail what investigators had seized from the motorhome but said he didn’t think any weapons were found. A search of a nearby storage unit didn’t turn up anything dangerous.
FBI spokeswoman Bridget Pappas in Las Vegas called the investigation ongoing, and said no details could immediately be provided.
