Charles Cullen
Encyclopedia
Charles Edmund Cullen is a former nurse who is the most prolific serial killer
in New Jersey
history, and suspected to be the most prolific serial killer in American history. Cullen told authorities in December 2003 that he could specifically recall the murder of perhaps 40 patients during the 16 years he worked at 10 hospital
s in New Jersey and Pennsylvania
. But in subsequent interviews with police,psychiatric professionals, and the only journalist with whom he had ever granted interviews, Charles Graeber, it soon became clear that he had killed many more, whom he could not specifically remember. Experts have estimated that Charles Cullen may ultimately be responsible for some 400 murders- making him the most prolific serial killer in American history.
, being the youngest of 8 children. His father, a bus driver, was 58 years old at the time of Charles' birth. Cullen's father died when Cullen was seven months old. Two of his siblings also died in adulthood.
Cullen described his childhood as miserable. He first attempted suicide
at the age of nine by drinking chemicals taken from a chemistry set. This would be the first of 20 such suicide attempts throughout his life. Later, working as a nurse, Cullen fantasized
about stealing drugs from the hospital where he worked and using them to commit suicide.
On December 6, 1977, Cullen's mother died in an automobile accident; his sister was driving. Devastated by his mother's death, Cullen dropped out of high school and enlisted in the U.S. Navy in April 1978. He was assigned to the submarine
corps, and served aboard the ballistic missile
sub USS Woodrow Wilson. Cullen rose to the rank of petty officer
third class as part of the team that operated the ship's Poseidon missiles
. Already, Cullen showed signs of mental instability
. He once served a shift in a green surgical gown, surgical mask and latex
gloves stolen from the ship's medical cabinet. He was transferred to the supply ship USS Canopus
. Cullen tried to commit suicide seven times over the next few years. He received a medical discharge from the Navy on March 30, 1984.
. Cullen administered a lethal overdose of medication intravenously. Cullen admitted to killing several patients at St. Barnabas, including an AIDS
patient who died after being given an overdose of insulin
. Cullen quit his job at St. Barnabas in January 1992 when hospital authorities began investigating who might have tampered with bags of intravenous fluid. In fact the St. Barnabas internal investigation revealed Cullen was deemed the person most likely responsible for contaminating IV bags with insulin. The act of randomly contaminating so many IV bags with insulin is believed to have caused the deaths of many dozens of patients during his five year tenure at St. Barnabas; these deaths alone far exceed the number of victims to which Charles Cullen ultimately confessed.
Cullen took a job at Warren Hospital in Phillipsburg, New Jersey
, in February 1992. He murdered three elderly women at the hospital by giving them overdoses of the heart medication digoxin
. His final victim said that a "sneaky male nurse" had injected her as she slept, but family members and other healthcare workers dismissed her comments.
In January 1993, Adrienne Cullen filed for divorce
. She later filed two domestic violence
complaints against him and filed for a restraining order
against him, which was denied by a court judge. Cullen had shared custody
of his daughters and moved into a basement apartment
on Shaffer Avenue in Phillipsburg
. Cullen said he wanted to quit nursing in 1993, but court-ordered child support
payments forced him to keep working.
In March 1993, he broke into a co-worker's home while she and her young son slept, but left without waking them. Cullen then started phoning her frequently, leaving numerous messages and following her at work and around town. The woman filed a complaint, and Cullen pleaded guilty to trespassing and was placed on a year's probation
. The day after his arrest, Cullen attempted suicide. He took two months off work, and was treated for depression
in two psychiatric facilities. He attempted suicide two more times before the end of the year.
Cullen left Warren Hospital in December 1993 and took a job at Hunterdon Medical Center
in Flemington, New Jersey
, early the next year. Cullen worked in the hospital's intensive care/cardiac care unit for three years. During his first two years, Cullen claims, he did not murder anyone. But hospital records for the time period had already been destroyed at the time of his arrest in 2003, preventing any investigation into his claims. However, Cullen did admit to murdering five patients in the first nine months of 1996. Once more, Cullen administered overdoses of digoxin
.
Cullen found work at Morristown Memorial Hospital in Morristown, New Jersey
. He was fired in August 1997 for poor performance. He remained unemployed for six months and stopped making child-support payments.
In October 1997, Cullen appeared in the Warren Hospital emergency room and sought treatment for depression. He was admitted to a psychiatric facility, but left a short time later. His treatment had not improved his mental health. Neighbors said that he could be found chasing cats down the street in the dead of night, yelling or talking to himself, and making faces at people when he thought they weren't looking. In February 1998, Cullen was hired by Liberty Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Allentown, Pennsylvania
. He worked in a ward for patients who needed ventilators to breathe. In May, Cullen filed for bankruptcy
, claiming nearly $67,000 in debt
s. Liberty fired Cullen in October 1998 after he was seen entering a patient's room with syringes in his hand. The patient ended up with a broken arm, but apparently no injections were made. Cullen was accused of giving patients drugs at unscheduled times. While at Liberty another nurse was fired for causing the death of a patient that Cullen later admitted to killing by lethal injection. Even in that case, Liberty failed to report the incident/murder to the police, coroner or nursing board.
Cullen worked at Easton Hospital in Easton, Pennsylvania
, from November 1998 to March 1999. On December 30, 1998, he murdered yet another patient with digoxin. A coroner's blood test showed lethal amounts of digoxin in the patient's blood, but an internal investigation was inconclusive and nothing pointed definitively to Cullen as the murderer.
Cullen continued to find work. A nationwide nursing shortage made it difficult for hospitals to recruit nurses, and no reporting mechanisms or other systems existed to identify nurses with mental health issues or employment problems. Cullen took a job at a burn unit at Lehigh Valley Hospital
in Allentown, Pennsylvania, in March 1999. During his tenure at Lehigh Valley Hospital, Cullen murdered one patient and attempted to murder another.
In April 1999 Cullen voluntarily resigned from Lehigh Valley Hospital and took a job at St. Luke's Hospital in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
. Cullen worked in St. Luke's cardiac care unit. Over the next three years, he murdered five more patients and attempted to murder two. On January 11, 2000, Cullen attempted suicide again. He put a charcoal grill in his bath tub, lit it and hoped that the carbon monoxide
gas would kill him. Neighbors smelled the smoke and called the fire department and police. Cullen was taken to a hospital and a psychiatric facility, but was back home the following day.
No one suspected Cullen was murdering patients at St. Luke's Hospital until a co-worker accidentally found vials of unused medications in a disposal bin. The drugs were not valuable outside the hospital, and were not used by recreational drug users, so their theft seemed curious. An investigation showed that Cullen had taken the medication, and he was fired and escorted from the building in June 2002. Seven St. Luke's nurses who worked with Cullen later met with the Lehigh County
district attorney to alert the authorities of their suspicions that Cullen had used drugs to kill patients. They pointed out that, between January 2002
and June 2002, Cullen had worked 20 percent of the hours on his unit but was present for nearly two-thirds of the deaths. But investigators never looked into Cullen's past, and the case was dropped nine months later for lack of evidence. It was later learned that hospital administrators had stymied the investigation by not being totally forthcoming with investigators.
In September 2002, Cullen found a job at Somerset Medical Center
in Somerville, New Jersey
. Cullen worked in Somerset's critical care unit. Cullen's depression worsened, even though he had begun dating a local woman. Cullen murdered eight more patients and attempted to murder another by June. Once more, his drugs of choice were digoxin and epinephrine.
On June 18, 2003, Cullen attempted to murder Philip Gregor, a patient at Somerset. Gregor survived and was discharged; he died six months later of natural causes. Soon afterward, the hospital's computer systems showed that Cullen was accessing the records of patients he was not assigned to. Co-workers were seeing him in patient's rooms. Computerized drug-dispensing cabinets were showing that Cullen was requesting medications that patients had not been prescribed.
The executive director of the New Jersey Poison Information and Education System warned Somerset Medical Center officials in July 2003 that at least four of the suspicious overdoses indicated the possibility that an employee was killing patients. But the hospital put off contacting authorities until October. By then, Cullen had killed another five patients and attempted to kill a sixth.
State officials penalized the hospital for failing to report a nonfatal insulin overdose in August. The overdose had been administered by Cullen. When Cullen's final victim died of low blood sugar
in October, the medical center alerted state authorities. An investigation into Cullen's employment history revealed past suspicions about his involvement with prior deaths. Somerset Medical Center fired Cullen on October 31, 2003, for lying on his job application
. Police kept him under surveillance
for several weeks until they had finished their investigation.
. On December 14, 2003, Cullen admitted to homicide detectives Dan Baldwin & Tim Braun the murder of Rev. Florian Gall and the attempted murder of Jin Kyung Han, both patients at Somerset. In addition Cullen told the detectives that he had murdered as many as 40 patients over his 16 year career.
In April 2004, Cullen pleaded guilty in a New Jersey court to killing 13 patients and attempting to kill two others by lethal injection
while employed at Somerset. As part of his plea agreement, he promised to cooperate with authorities if they did not seek the death penalty for his crimes. A month later, he pleaded guilty to the murder of three more patients in New Jersey. In November 2004, Cullen pleaded guilty in a Allentown, Pennsylvania
court to killing six patients and trying to kill three others.
As of July 2005, Cullen remained in the Somerset County Jail in New Jersey as authorities continued to investigate the possibility of his involvement in other deaths. Cullen is currently serving a sentence
of life in prison without parole
for over 100 years, to be served consecutively with his other sentences in Pennsylvania. On March 2, 2006, Cullen was sentenced to 11 consecutive life sentences in New Jersey, to be ineligible for parole for 397 years. He is held at New Jersey State Prison
in Trenton, New Jersey
.
On March 10, 2006, Cullen was brought into the courtroom of Lehigh County President Judge William H. Platt for a sentencing hearing. Cullen, who was upset with the judge, kept repeating "Your honor, you need to step down" for 30 minutes until Platt had Cullen gagged with cloth and duct tape. Even after being gagged, Cullen continued to try to repeat the phrase. In this hearing Platt gave him an additional six life sentences. As part of his plea agreement, Cullen has been working with law enforcement officials to identify additional victims. Cullen originally told authorities about 40 patients he could specifically recall killing during the course of his 16-year nursing career.
In August 2006, Cullen donated a kidney to a male relative of a former girlfriend.
or respiratory arrest
and being listed as a "Code Blue" emergency. Cullen has told detectives that he could not bear to witness or hear about attempts at saving a victim's life. Cullen also claims that he gave patients overdoses so that he could end their "suffering" and prevent hospital personnel from "de-humanizing" them.
Investigators say that he is and may have caused patients themselves to suffer, but he appears not to realize that this contradicts his claims of wanting to save patients from further pain and suffering. Similarly, Cullen has told investigators that although he often thought about murdering his victims over several days as he witnessed their "suffering," the decision to commit murder was performed on impulse.
He told detectives in December 2003 that he lived most of his life in a fog, and that he had blacked out the memory of murdering most of his victims. He said he could not recall how many of them there were or why he had chosen them. In some cases, Cullen has adamantly denied committing murders at a given facility. But after reviewing medical records, he later has admitted that he was involved in patient deaths there.
. According to detectives and Cullen himself, several hospitals suspected he was harming/killing patients but failed to take appropriate legal actions.
Prompted by the Cullen case, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and 35 other states adopted new laws which encourage employers to give honest appraisals of workers' job performance
and which give employers immunity when they provide a truthful employee appraisal. Many of the laws, passed in 2004 and 2005, strengthen disclosure requirements for health care facilities, bolster legal protections for health care facilities that report improper patient care and require licensed health care professionals to undergo criminal background checks and be fingerprint
ed at their own cost.
Serial killer
A serial killer, as typically defined, is an individual who has murdered three or more people over a period of more than a month, with down time between the murders, and whose motivation for killing is usually based on psychological gratification...
in New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
history, and suspected to be the most prolific serial killer in American history. Cullen told authorities in December 2003 that he could specifically recall the murder of perhaps 40 patients during the 16 years he worked at 10 hospital
Hospital
A hospital is a health care institution providing patient treatment by specialized staff and equipment. Hospitals often, but not always, provide for inpatient care or longer-term patient stays....
s in New Jersey and Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
. But in subsequent interviews with police,psychiatric professionals, and the only journalist with whom he had ever granted interviews, Charles Graeber, it soon became clear that he had killed many more, whom he could not specifically remember. Experts have estimated that Charles Cullen may ultimately be responsible for some 400 murders- making him the most prolific serial killer in American history.
Early life
Cullen was born in West Orange, New JerseyWest Orange, New Jersey
West Orange is a township in central Essex County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the township population was 46,207...
, being the youngest of 8 children. His father, a bus driver, was 58 years old at the time of Charles' birth. Cullen's father died when Cullen was seven months old. Two of his siblings also died in adulthood.
Cullen described his childhood as miserable. He first attempted suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
at the age of nine by drinking chemicals taken from a chemistry set. This would be the first of 20 such suicide attempts throughout his life. Later, working as a nurse, Cullen fantasized
Fantasy (psychology)
Fantasy in a psychological sense is broadly used to cover two different senses, conscious and unconscious. In the unconscious sense, it is sometimes spelled "phantasy".-Conscious fantasy:...
about stealing drugs from the hospital where he worked and using them to commit suicide.
On December 6, 1977, Cullen's mother died in an automobile accident; his sister was driving. Devastated by his mother's death, Cullen dropped out of high school and enlisted in the U.S. Navy in April 1978. He was assigned to the submarine
Submarine
A submarine is a watercraft capable of independent operation below the surface of the water. It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability...
corps, and served aboard the ballistic missile
Ballistic missile
A ballistic missile is a missile that follows a sub-orbital ballistic flightpath with the objective of delivering one or more warheads to a predetermined target. The missile is only guided during the relatively brief initial powered phase of flight and its course is subsequently governed by the...
sub USS Woodrow Wilson. Cullen rose to the rank of petty officer
Petty Officer
A petty officer is a non-commissioned officer in many navies and is given the NATO rank denotion OR-6. They are equal in rank to sergeant, British Army and Royal Air Force. A Petty Officer is superior in rank to Leading Rate and subordinate to Chief Petty Officer, in the case of the British Armed...
third class as part of the team that operated the ship's Poseidon missiles
UGM-73 Poseidon
The Poseidon missile was the second US Navy ballistic missile system, powered by a two-stage solid fuel rocket. It succeeded the Polaris missile beginning in 1972, bringing major advances in warheads and accuracy...
. Already, Cullen showed signs of mental instability
Mental illness
A mental disorder or mental illness is a psychological or behavioral pattern generally associated with subjective distress or disability that occurs in an individual, and which is not a part of normal development or culture. Such a disorder may consist of a combination of affective, behavioural,...
. He once served a shift in a green surgical gown, surgical mask and latex
Latex
Latex is the stable dispersion of polymer microparticles in an aqueous medium. Latexes may be natural or synthetic.Latex as found in nature is a milky fluid found in 10% of all flowering plants . It is a complex emulsion consisting of proteins, alkaloids, starches, sugars, oils, tannins, resins,...
gloves stolen from the ship's medical cabinet. He was transferred to the supply ship USS Canopus
USS Canopus (AS-34)
USS Canopus was a Simon Lake-class submarine tender of the United States Navy, operational from 1965 to 1994.- Construction :...
. Cullen tried to commit suicide seven times over the next few years. He received a medical discharge from the Navy on March 30, 1984.
Murders
The true date of Cullen's first murder is not known. The first murder which he told detectives that he remembers occurred while Charles Cullen was working on the Burn Unit of St. Barnabas Medical Center, on June 11, 1988. Judge John W. Yengo, Sr. had been admitted to St. Barnabas Medical Center suffering from an allergic reaction to a blood-thinning drugAnticoagulant
An anticoagulant is a substance that prevents coagulation of blood. A group of pharmaceuticals called anticoagulants can be used in vivo as a medication for thrombotic disorders. Some anticoagulants are used in medical equipment, such as test tubes, blood transfusion bags, and renal dialysis...
. Cullen administered a lethal overdose of medication intravenously. Cullen admitted to killing several patients at St. Barnabas, including an AIDS
AIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...
patient who died after being given an overdose of insulin
Insulin
Insulin is a hormone central to regulating carbohydrate and fat metabolism in the body. Insulin causes cells in the liver, muscle, and fat tissue to take up glucose from the blood, storing it as glycogen in the liver and muscle....
. Cullen quit his job at St. Barnabas in January 1992 when hospital authorities began investigating who might have tampered with bags of intravenous fluid. In fact the St. Barnabas internal investigation revealed Cullen was deemed the person most likely responsible for contaminating IV bags with insulin. The act of randomly contaminating so many IV bags with insulin is believed to have caused the deaths of many dozens of patients during his five year tenure at St. Barnabas; these deaths alone far exceed the number of victims to which Charles Cullen ultimately confessed.
Cullen took a job at Warren Hospital in Phillipsburg, New Jersey
Phillipsburg, New Jersey
Phillipsburg, known locally as P'burg, is a town in Warren County, New Jersey, in the United States. As of 2010 United States Census, the town's population was 14,950....
, in February 1992. He murdered three elderly women at the hospital by giving them overdoses of the heart medication digoxin
Digoxin
Digoxin INN , also known as digitalis, is a purified cardiac glycoside and extracted from the foxglove plant, Digitalis lanata. Its corresponding aglycone is digoxigenin, and its acetyl derivative is acetyldigoxin...
. His final victim said that a "sneaky male nurse" had injected her as she slept, but family members and other healthcare workers dismissed her comments.
In January 1993, Adrienne Cullen filed for divorce
Divorce
Divorce is the final termination of a marital union, canceling the legal duties and responsibilities of marriage and dissolving the bonds of matrimony between the parties...
. She later filed two domestic violence
Domestic violence
Domestic violence, also known as domestic abuse, spousal abuse, battering, family violence, and intimate partner violence , is broadly defined as a pattern of abusive behaviors by one or both partners in an intimate relationship such as marriage, dating, family, or cohabitation...
complaints against him and filed for a restraining order
Restraining order
A restraining order or order of protection is a form of legal injunction that requires a party to do, or to refrain from doing, certain acts. A party that refuses to comply with an order faces criminal or civil penalties and may have to pay damages or accept sanctions...
against him, which was denied by a court judge. Cullen had shared custody
Child custody
Child custody and guardianship are legal terms which are used to describe the legal and practical relationship between a parent and his or her child, such as the right of the parent to make decisions for the child, and the parent's duty to care for the child.Following ratification of the United...
of his daughters and moved into a basement apartment
Basement apartment
A basement apartment is an apartment located below street level, underneath another structure—usually an apartment building, but possibly a house or a business. Rent in basement apartments is usually much lower than it is in above-ground units, due to a number of deficiencies common to basement...
on Shaffer Avenue in Phillipsburg
Phillipsburg, New Jersey
Phillipsburg, known locally as P'burg, is a town in Warren County, New Jersey, in the United States. As of 2010 United States Census, the town's population was 14,950....
. Cullen said he wanted to quit nursing in 1993, but court-ordered child support
Child support
In family law and public policy, child support is an ongoing, periodic payment made by a parent for the financial benefit of a child following the end of a marriage or other relationship...
payments forced him to keep working.
In March 1993, he broke into a co-worker's home while she and her young son slept, but left without waking them. Cullen then started phoning her frequently, leaving numerous messages and following her at work and around town. The woman filed a complaint, and Cullen pleaded guilty to trespassing and was placed on a year's probation
Probation
Probation literally means testing of behaviour or abilities. In a legal sense, an offender on probation is ordered to follow certain conditions set forth by the court, often under the supervision of a probation officer...
. The day after his arrest, Cullen attempted suicide. He took two months off work, and was treated for depression
Clinical depression
Major depressive disorder is a mental disorder characterized by an all-encompassing low mood accompanied by low self-esteem, and by loss of interest or pleasure in normally enjoyable activities...
in two psychiatric facilities. He attempted suicide two more times before the end of the year.
Cullen left Warren Hospital in December 1993 and took a job at Hunterdon Medical Center
Hunterdon Medical Center
Hunterdon Medical Center is a 176-bed non-profit community hospital located in Raritan Township, New Jersey near Flemington.Hunterdon Medical Center was founded in 1946 and opened in 1953, a culmination of efforts by the Hunterdon County Board of Agriculture to provide rural medical care to the...
in Flemington, New Jersey
Flemington, New Jersey
Flemington is a borough in Hunterdon County, New Jersey, United States. As of the United States 2010 Census, the borough population was 4,581. It is the county seat of Hunterdon County....
, early the next year. Cullen worked in the hospital's intensive care/cardiac care unit for three years. During his first two years, Cullen claims, he did not murder anyone. But hospital records for the time period had already been destroyed at the time of his arrest in 2003, preventing any investigation into his claims. However, Cullen did admit to murdering five patients in the first nine months of 1996. Once more, Cullen administered overdoses of digoxin
Digoxin
Digoxin INN , also known as digitalis, is a purified cardiac glycoside and extracted from the foxglove plant, Digitalis lanata. Its corresponding aglycone is digoxigenin, and its acetyl derivative is acetyldigoxin...
.
Cullen found work at Morristown Memorial Hospital in Morristown, New Jersey
Morristown, New Jersey
Morristown is a town in Morris County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the town population was 18,411. It is the county seat of Morris County. Morristown became characterized as "the military capital of the American Revolution" because of its strategic role in the...
. He was fired in August 1997 for poor performance. He remained unemployed for six months and stopped making child-support payments.
In October 1997, Cullen appeared in the Warren Hospital emergency room and sought treatment for depression. He was admitted to a psychiatric facility, but left a short time later. His treatment had not improved his mental health. Neighbors said that he could be found chasing cats down the street in the dead of night, yelling or talking to himself, and making faces at people when he thought they weren't looking. In February 1998, Cullen was hired by Liberty Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Allentown, Pennsylvania
Allentown, Pennsylvania
Allentown is a city located in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, in the United States. It is Pennsylvania's third most populous city, after Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and the 215th largest city in the United States. As of the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 118,032 and is currently...
. He worked in a ward for patients who needed ventilators to breathe. In May, Cullen filed for bankruptcy
Bankruptcy
Bankruptcy is a legal status of an insolvent person or an organisation, that is, one that cannot repay the debts owed to creditors. In most jurisdictions bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor....
, claiming nearly $67,000 in debt
Debt
A debt is an obligation owed by one party to a second party, the creditor; usually this refers to assets granted by the creditor to the debtor, but the term can also be used metaphorically to cover moral obligations and other interactions not based on economic value.A debt is created when a...
s. Liberty fired Cullen in October 1998 after he was seen entering a patient's room with syringes in his hand. The patient ended up with a broken arm, but apparently no injections were made. Cullen was accused of giving patients drugs at unscheduled times. While at Liberty another nurse was fired for causing the death of a patient that Cullen later admitted to killing by lethal injection. Even in that case, Liberty failed to report the incident/murder to the police, coroner or nursing board.
Cullen worked at Easton Hospital in Easton, Pennsylvania
Easton, Pennsylvania
Easton is a city in Northampton County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 26,800 as of the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Northampton County....
, from November 1998 to March 1999. On December 30, 1998, he murdered yet another patient with digoxin. A coroner's blood test showed lethal amounts of digoxin in the patient's blood, but an internal investigation was inconclusive and nothing pointed definitively to Cullen as the murderer.
Cullen continued to find work. A nationwide nursing shortage made it difficult for hospitals to recruit nurses, and no reporting mechanisms or other systems existed to identify nurses with mental health issues or employment problems. Cullen took a job at a burn unit at Lehigh Valley Hospital
Lehigh Valley Hospital
Lehigh Valley Hospital, based in Allentown, Pennsylvania, is the largest hospital in the Lehigh Valley and the flagship hospital of the Lehigh Valley Hospital and Health Network .-Lehigh Valley Health Network:...
in Allentown, Pennsylvania, in March 1999. During his tenure at Lehigh Valley Hospital, Cullen murdered one patient and attempted to murder another.
In April 1999 Cullen voluntarily resigned from Lehigh Valley Hospital and took a job at St. Luke's Hospital in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
Bethlehem is a city in Lehigh and Northampton Counties in the Lehigh Valley region of eastern Pennsylvania, in the United States. As of the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 74,982, making it the seventh largest city in Pennsylvania, after Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Allentown, Erie,...
. Cullen worked in St. Luke's cardiac care unit. Over the next three years, he murdered five more patients and attempted to murder two. On January 11, 2000, Cullen attempted suicide again. He put a charcoal grill in his bath tub, lit it and hoped that the carbon monoxide
Carbon monoxide
Carbon monoxide , also called carbonous oxide, is a colorless, odorless, and tasteless gas that is slightly lighter than air. It is highly toxic to humans and animals in higher quantities, although it is also produced in normal animal metabolism in low quantities, and is thought to have some normal...
gas would kill him. Neighbors smelled the smoke and called the fire department and police. Cullen was taken to a hospital and a psychiatric facility, but was back home the following day.
No one suspected Cullen was murdering patients at St. Luke's Hospital until a co-worker accidentally found vials of unused medications in a disposal bin. The drugs were not valuable outside the hospital, and were not used by recreational drug users, so their theft seemed curious. An investigation showed that Cullen had taken the medication, and he was fired and escorted from the building in June 2002. Seven St. Luke's nurses who worked with Cullen later met with the Lehigh County
Lehigh County, Pennsylvania
-Climate:Most of the county's climate is considered to fall in the humid continental climate zone. Summers are typically hot and muggy, fall and spring are generally mild, and winter is cold. Precipitation is almost uniformly distributed throughout the year....
district attorney to alert the authorities of their suspicions that Cullen had used drugs to kill patients. They pointed out that, between January 2002
January 2002
January 2002: ← – January – February – March – April – May – June – July – August – September – October – November – December- January 1, 2002:...
and June 2002, Cullen had worked 20 percent of the hours on his unit but was present for nearly two-thirds of the deaths. But investigators never looked into Cullen's past, and the case was dropped nine months later for lack of evidence. It was later learned that hospital administrators had stymied the investigation by not being totally forthcoming with investigators.
In September 2002, Cullen found a job at Somerset Medical Center
Somerset Medical Center
Somerset Medical Center, located in Somerville, New Jersey, is a nationally accredited, 355-bed regional medical center providing a variety of comprehensive emergency, medical/surgical and rehabilitative services to Central New Jersey residents....
in Somerville, New Jersey
Somerville, New Jersey
Somerville is a borough in Somerset County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the borough population was 12,098. It is the county seat of Somerset County....
. Cullen worked in Somerset's critical care unit. Cullen's depression worsened, even though he had begun dating a local woman. Cullen murdered eight more patients and attempted to murder another by June. Once more, his drugs of choice were digoxin and epinephrine.
On June 18, 2003, Cullen attempted to murder Philip Gregor, a patient at Somerset. Gregor survived and was discharged; he died six months later of natural causes. Soon afterward, the hospital's computer systems showed that Cullen was accessing the records of patients he was not assigned to. Co-workers were seeing him in patient's rooms. Computerized drug-dispensing cabinets were showing that Cullen was requesting medications that patients had not been prescribed.
The executive director of the New Jersey Poison Information and Education System warned Somerset Medical Center officials in July 2003 that at least four of the suspicious overdoses indicated the possibility that an employee was killing patients. But the hospital put off contacting authorities until October. By then, Cullen had killed another five patients and attempted to kill a sixth.
State officials penalized the hospital for failing to report a nonfatal insulin overdose in August. The overdose had been administered by Cullen. When Cullen's final victim died of low blood sugar
Blood sugar
The blood sugar concentration or blood glucose level is the amount of glucose present in the blood of a human or animal. Normally in mammals, the body maintains the blood glucose level at a reference range between about 3.6 and 5.8 mM , or 64.8 and 104.4 mg/dL...
in October, the medical center alerted state authorities. An investigation into Cullen's employment history revealed past suspicions about his involvement with prior deaths. Somerset Medical Center fired Cullen on October 31, 2003, for lying on his job application
Application for employment
An application for employment, job application, or application form is a form or collection of forms that an individual seeking employment, called an applicant, must fill out as part of the process of informing an employer of the applicant's availability and desire to be employed, and persuading...
. Police kept him under surveillance
Surveillance
Surveillance is the monitoring of the behavior, activities, or other changing information, usually of people. It is sometimes done in a surreptitious manner...
for several weeks until they had finished their investigation.
Arrest
Cullen was arrested at a restaurant on December 12, 2003, charged with one count of murder and one count of attempted murderAttempted murder
Attempted murder is a crime in England and Wales and Northern Ireland.-Today:In English criminal law, attempted murder is the crime of more than merely preparing to commit unlawful killing and at the same time having a specific intention to cause the death of human being under the Queen's Peace...
. On December 14, 2003, Cullen admitted to homicide detectives Dan Baldwin & Tim Braun the murder of Rev. Florian Gall and the attempted murder of Jin Kyung Han, both patients at Somerset. In addition Cullen told the detectives that he had murdered as many as 40 patients over his 16 year career.
In April 2004, Cullen pleaded guilty in a New Jersey court to killing 13 patients and attempting to kill two others by lethal injection
Lethal injection
Lethal injection is the practice of injecting a person with a fatal dose of drugs for the express purpose of causing the immediate death of the subject. The main application for this procedure is capital punishment, but the term may also be applied in a broad sense to euthanasia and suicide...
while employed at Somerset. As part of his plea agreement, he promised to cooperate with authorities if they did not seek the death penalty for his crimes. A month later, he pleaded guilty to the murder of three more patients in New Jersey. In November 2004, Cullen pleaded guilty in a Allentown, Pennsylvania
Allentown, Pennsylvania
Allentown is a city located in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, in the United States. It is Pennsylvania's third most populous city, after Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and the 215th largest city in the United States. As of the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 118,032 and is currently...
court to killing six patients and trying to kill three others.
As of July 2005, Cullen remained in the Somerset County Jail in New Jersey as authorities continued to investigate the possibility of his involvement in other deaths. Cullen is currently serving a sentence
Sentence (law)
In law, a sentence forms the final explicit act of a judge-ruled process, and also the symbolic principal act connected to his function. The sentence can generally involve a decree of imprisonment, a fine and/or other punishments against a defendant convicted of a crime...
of life in prison without parole
Parole
Parole may have different meanings depending on the field and judiciary system. All of the meanings originated from the French parole . Following its use in late-resurrected Anglo-French chivalric practice, the term became associated with the release of prisoners based on prisoners giving their...
for over 100 years, to be served consecutively with his other sentences in Pennsylvania. On March 2, 2006, Cullen was sentenced to 11 consecutive life sentences in New Jersey, to be ineligible for parole for 397 years. He is held at New Jersey State Prison
New Jersey State Prison
The New Jersey State Prison , formerly known as Trenton State Prison, is a state prison in Trenton, New Jersey operated by the New Jersey Department of Corrections. It accommodated over 1,900 prisoners as of January, 2005....
in Trenton, New Jersey
Trenton, New Jersey
Trenton is the capital of the U.S. state of New Jersey and the county seat of Mercer County. As of the 2010 United States Census, Trenton had a population of 84,913...
.
On March 10, 2006, Cullen was brought into the courtroom of Lehigh County President Judge William H. Platt for a sentencing hearing. Cullen, who was upset with the judge, kept repeating "Your honor, you need to step down" for 30 minutes until Platt had Cullen gagged with cloth and duct tape. Even after being gagged, Cullen continued to try to repeat the phrase. In this hearing Platt gave him an additional six life sentences. As part of his plea agreement, Cullen has been working with law enforcement officials to identify additional victims. Cullen originally told authorities about 40 patients he could specifically recall killing during the course of his 16-year nursing career.
In August 2006, Cullen donated a kidney to a male relative of a former girlfriend.
Motive
Cullen said he administered overdoses to patients to spare them from being "coded" -- going into cardiacCardiac arrest
Cardiac arrest, is the cessation of normal circulation of the blood due to failure of the heart to contract effectively...
or respiratory arrest
Respiratory arrest
Respiratory arrest is the cessation of breathing. It is a medical emergency and it usually is related to or coincides with a cardiac arrest. Causes include opiate overdose, head injury, anaesthesia, tetanus, or drowning...
and being listed as a "Code Blue" emergency. Cullen has told detectives that he could not bear to witness or hear about attempts at saving a victim's life. Cullen also claims that he gave patients overdoses so that he could end their "suffering" and prevent hospital personnel from "de-humanizing" them.
Investigators say that he is and may have caused patients themselves to suffer, but he appears not to realize that this contradicts his claims of wanting to save patients from further pain and suffering. Similarly, Cullen has told investigators that although he often thought about murdering his victims over several days as he witnessed their "suffering," the decision to commit murder was performed on impulse.
He told detectives in December 2003 that he lived most of his life in a fog, and that he had blacked out the memory of murdering most of his victims. He said he could not recall how many of them there were or why he had chosen them. In some cases, Cullen has adamantly denied committing murders at a given facility. But after reviewing medical records, he later has admitted that he was involved in patient deaths there.
Legal impact
Cullen was largely able to move from facility to facility undetected, experts say, because of lacking reporting requirements and inadequate legal protection for employers. New Jersey and Pennsylvania, like most states, required health care facilities to report suspicious deaths only in the most egregious cases, and penalties for failing to report incidents were minor. Many states did not give investigators the legal authority to discover where a worker had previously been employed. Employers feared to investigate incidents or give a bad employment reference for fear that such actions might trigger a lawsuitLawsuit
A lawsuit or "suit in law" is a civil action brought in a court of law in which a plaintiff, a party who claims to have incurred loss as a result of a defendant's actions, demands a legal or equitable remedy. The defendant is required to respond to the plaintiff's complaint...
. According to detectives and Cullen himself, several hospitals suspected he was harming/killing patients but failed to take appropriate legal actions.
Prompted by the Cullen case, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and 35 other states adopted new laws which encourage employers to give honest appraisals of workers' job performance
Job performance
Job performance is a commonly used, yet poorly defined concept in industrial and organizational psychology, the branch of psychology that deals with the workplace. It's also part of Human Resources Management. It most commonly refers to whether a person performs their job well...
and which give employers immunity when they provide a truthful employee appraisal. Many of the laws, passed in 2004 and 2005, strengthen disclosure requirements for health care facilities, bolster legal protections for health care facilities that report improper patient care and require licensed health care professionals to undergo criminal background checks and be fingerprint
Fingerprint
A fingerprint in its narrow sense is an impression left by the friction ridges of a human finger. In a wider use of the term, fingerprints are the traces of an impression from the friction ridges of any part of a human hand. A print from the foot can also leave an impression of friction ridges...
ed at their own cost.
See also
- Orville Lynn MajorsOrville Lynn MajorsOrville Lynn Majors is a former licensed practical nurse from Clinton, Indiana who was convicted of murdering his patients. Though he was only tried for six murders, he is believed to have committed as many as 130 between 1993 and 1995, the period of time for which he was employed by the...
- American serial killers