'Angel Of Death' Charles Cullen Killed At Will For 16 Yrs, Until A Friend Saw Through Him

Charles Cullen, an ICU nurse at a US hospital, admitted to killing at least 29 people. His reign ended after his friend got suspicious and aided cops to nab him.

Charles Cullen in a courtroom on December 15, 2003 in Somerville, New Jersey.

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A crime is not a simple story all the time. It goes murkier as one tries to understand the questions every crime poses. And the most crucial question remains ‘why’, the answer to which tells the motive, the thought, and the evil behind it. And when it's serial killing, the 'why' becomes more intriguing. Serial killers do sometimes have a 'why' behind their crimes, but sometimes they don't. They just kill at will — the cases that leave investigators, criminologists and criminal psychologists more puzzled. Charles Cullen was one such killer.

The year 2003 ended on a very unusual note for Americans as they were about to see one of the deadliest criminals in the history of the country. Charles Cullen, an ICU nurse at Somerset Medical Center in Somerville, was brought in for one first-degree murder and one attempted murder on December 12, 2003, according to a New York magazine report. What followed the arrest became an intense case study that inspired an author to write a book, and a director to make a film and a long documentary.

Charles Graeber’s book ‘The Good Nurse’ and Tobias Lindholm's film by the same name and a documentary tell the story of Cullen, who admitted to killing 29 people but may have murdered a couple of hundreds more, according to what police investigation reportedly found.  

Digoxin, Insulin And 16 YearsOf Ruthless Killing

Charles Cullen killed numerous people in his 16 years of career, majorly in nursing. After arrest in 2003, he admitted to killing at least 29 people while working in nine hospitals and one nursing home. Investigators, however, estimate his victim count to be nearly 400, making him America’s one of the most prolific killers, according to Sky News and Fox News reports.

Cullen’s choice of weapon was a drug called digoxin. According to Sky News, this is a medication routinely used to treat people with an irregular heartbeat or heart failure, but is lethal in large doses. Cullen used to inject digoxin and lethal doses of insulin and other drugs in patients' saline pouches.

He told another nurse close to him that he wanted to ‘help’ the patients, by ending their sufferings. However, the drugs he chose tell a different truth. These medications were brutal, which would first torture the patients and then kill them.

 

 
Friendship That Brought Him Down

A lot in Charles Cullen’s story revolves around a special relationship. Nurse Amy Loughren worked in the same Somerset Medical Center in Somerville where Cullen was a nurse. He didn’t know this hospital would be his last.

Loughren told Sky News that she saw in Cullen a kind man, someone she wanted to spend time with and be friends with. Interestingly, it was Loughren who helped detectives build the case against him, something she says was painful.

A single mother and cardiomyopathy sufferer, Loughren met Cullen in a New Jersey hospital. With time, their bond grew stronger. The Sky News report says he even helped Loughren cover up her illness and care for her two young daughters.

In an interview to Fox News, she recalled Cullen as a funny person. "He was very sarcastic. He was always very self-deprecating. He would turn everything back on himself and make a joke about it. He was also brilliant and knew more about medications than any pharmacist I had ever met. He really understood policies and procedures. I trusted him more than any other nurse that I worked with."

 

Suspicion

Loughren was approached by investigators in 2003 who were suspicious of the number of deaths at the Somerset hospital that were connected to Cullen. Fox News reported that one Florian J. Gall was being treated at the facility and was showing signs of improvement when he suddenly died.

"When I found out he was fired, I was so upset," she said. "I felt he was such a good nurse and if he could be fired, all of us could be fired...When I called him to discuss it, he kept saying how confused he was…," she was quoted as saying in the Fox News report. Explaining what made her suspicious, she said: "...when I was in that questioning room, the lead investigator took an opportunity when my representative left the room to give me some papers. It showed evidence of Charlie’s activity with specific medications. It was so clear from those entries that something sinister was going on."

Loughren said she was "very sick" at the time and had been advised a heart transplant. "I realized that if these were my last days and I did not help put away this serial killer, then I wasn’t who I believed myself to be," she explained why she aided the probe. 
Loughren also said Cullen preferred the graveyard shift, for which it was not easy to find people to work. 

 

'Had So Much Guilt Because I Saw That Moment'

Loughren said she had a flashback of walking into Cullen injecting a patient. She added that she didn’t realise he was committing a murder.

"I had so much guilt because I saw that moment," she said. "Perhaps I could have stopped him… Obviously, I did not know what was really going on. But I made a pact that I would do anything to make certain that he would never harm another patient." She began collecting evidence at the hospital. She agreed to meet and confront Cullen at a local restaurant. As detectives waited outside, she talked about all the deaths in the hospital with Cullen while wearing a wire.  

She said, as quoted by Fox News: "He suddenly became so smug and proud. There was a darkness to him. The confusion I first heard in his voice was gone. This was no longer my friend Charlie. His posture, the way he communicated, his voice — it all changed. Even the color of his eyes seemed to change. Then I realised it was over. It was finally over."

Cullen, who later came to be known as the ‘Angel of Death’, was finally arrested after killing 13 patients in less than a year. He pleaded guilty to killing 29 patients and the attempted murder of six more. In 2006, he was sentenced to 18 consecutive life terms. While he claimed that he committed his crimes to ease the suffering of his patients, Loughren said that was not true.

"I wanted to believe he was a mercy killer," she said. "But the patients he chose were better. Many of them had their discharge papers ready. Many of them were already on the road to recovery. They were going to be transferred out. Some of them were very young and were definitely going to survive," she added. "And then I saw the medications he chose. There are hundreds of medications he could have given these patients just to help them fall asleep and go off into nothingness, never waking up again peacefully. Instead, he chose medications that were brutal. He chose medications that would terrorize patients… I do not believe he is sorry at all," Loughren said.