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You know, in my life,
I've gotten a lot of happiness out of helping people.
So I thought it would be a good thing for me
to become a nurse.
I started off working at night.
I would find myself…
feeling overwhelmed.
Feeling like
I couldn't watch people hurt.
At times, the only thing I could do…
was to try and end their suffering.
I couldn't stop.
Breaking news now from New Jersey.
The whole town is reeling from the revelations.
A nurse has been murdering patients in a hospital
in Somerset County.
The nurse may be the most prolific serial killer
in American history.
I was a single mom,
and I started working at Somerset as a critical care nurse.
My two daughters, I would drop them off at school and drive to New Jersey.
Oh, it was a great, great little town.
The hospital was the heart of the community.
I was young. I was energetic. I was a little on the hyper side.
I know one of the senior nurses had banned me from drinking coffee.
Amy was really special.
You know, it was always nice when we were working on the same side together.
I loved being an ICU nurse.
Those patients, I loved feeling like I was their protector.
And I was going to do everything that I could to make sure they were okay.
We deal with death.
We literally step in front of the face of danger.
It's a very precarious place to be.
So we had to rely on each other.
And Charlie was the best teammate.
I loved working with him.
He was an excellent nurse,
and he always had a way of saying something that would make me laugh.
The three of us worked together most of the time.
Get another IV.
We were named The Three Musketeers.
We worked together really well.
Charlie.
After that came out, I called him the Somerset spokesmodel,
which he was.
And everyone saw that flyer.
Everyone associated Somerset Medical Center with Charles Cullen.
He has his quintessential smirk,
and you can even tell from that particular photo
he's very proud that someone wants to take his picture
and someone's asking his opinion.
You know, I always felt that he was the boy that was bullied.
That was the air that I got from him.
And I always wanted to protect him.
My brother, Florian, always wanted to be a priest.
I think people might have said that, you know, he was shy,
but when it came to things that he felt strongly about,
he was very passionate.
He was not only a brother, but a friend.
One day, he called me about two o'clock in the morning.
He said, "I'm having some trouble breathing."
So I said, "Fine, I'll meet you at the hospital."
He was going to Somerset.
The doctor in the ER saw him.
But he was getting very, very short of breath.
They came and said that they had to intubate him.
I remember Reverend Gall because he was there for quite some time.
And his sister
was always at the bedside.
The doctor said, "He made it through the night."
"Let's give it time, you know. We're being cautiously optimistic."
"He seems to be better."
"He's stable."
I remember being there and saying, "Well, Florian, I'm gonna go."
And I could see he, like, perked up. Like, you know, he heard me.
Reverend Gall was getting better.
He had actually been moved
from one area of the ICU over to the CCU.
I was shocked when I heard
he'd coded and died,
because he was doing better.
Thank you for calling the New Jersey Poison Control Center.
Please stay on the line. A poison specialist will be with you shortly.
Poison Control Center, can I help you?
Hi, I'm calling from Somerset Medical Center.
We're trying to investigate a toxicity that occurred in a patient.
We had gotten a call at the poison center from a nurse who was asking about Digoxin.
Digoxin is normally used to treat heart failure.
It would strengthen your contraction.
It would make it stronger.
But as that level gets higher and higher, your heart rate starts to slow down.
And you die.
She tells me that she has a patient
who hadn't gotten their dose of Digoxin in about two days,
but the level is continuing to climb.
And I said, "That makes no sense."
That was on the 16th.
On the 28th, in the same unit, we had another Dig-toxicity.
-Same unit? -Yeah.
First thing I think of is lab error.
He-- He died.
I said, "Anything else strange going on?"
"Any patients with low blood sugars?" What we call hypoglycemia.
Off the record, there were two people in the hospital before this
that went hypoglycemic really strangely.
-Uh-huh. -And we were starting to panic.
I'm gonna put it right in your hands.
You now have a police matter.
At Somerset Medical Center, patient safety comes first.
Hi, I'm looking for Nancy.
I'm just trying to follow up the outcome. What did you decide to do?
Actually, administration has kind of taken over the investigation.
They've called in our attorneys.
And they've asked me really not to talk to any outside agencies at this point.
So you don't know if they've gone to the authorities yet?
I don't know that, no.
And I've probably shared more than I should have right now.
And then there was dead silence. We heard nothing.
On Friday, October 3rd,
I received a call from the Somerset County prosecutor
about a death that occurred at Somerset Medical Center.
My on-call detective at the time
happened to be Danny Baldwin.
Danny was new into the office and new into our unit.
I felt a bit of pressure, being the new guy.
I wanted to do a good job and show that I deserved to be there.
We weren't exactly invited into a meeting.
We were ordered into a meeting.
I felt tension in the air. I realized I was sitting
in the presence of high-ranking members of the Somerset Medical Center.
The administrators, along with their legal team,
had been looking into the deaths of several patients.
Mary Lund, a risk manager,
turned out to be our point of contact with the hospital
with regards to this case.
Somerset Medical Center had conducted an internal investigation
surrounding incidents where patients at that facility
experienced abnormal laboratory findings.
The first two incidents were low glucose levels.
The following two were elevated Digoxin levels.
So we requested also the internal investigation that they conducted.
The following day, after receiving the internal investigation from Mary Lund,
I was expecting to receive a binder of information.
It was a document written by an attorney.
And it was very sparse.
They did not uncover any suspicious activity.
They did mention a professional registered nurse, Charles Cullen.
but did not identify acts of foul play or anything of that nature.
But we did conduct a routine background check.
It came up with two arrests.
Drunken driving in the 1980s, and criminal trespass.
I reached out to Palmer Police
to try to get some additional background information.
As I was on the phone, I can hear the clerk in the background
rummaging through what sounded like filing cabinets.
And apparently, attached to the report,
there was a stick 'em note.
And that little stick 'em note indicated that, a few months earlier,
Pennsylvania State Police had requested
basically the same information I was seeking about Cullen.
There was a Pennsylvania State Police detective's name and phone number.
I contacted the Pennsylvania State Police and spoke with Trooper Egan,
and he informed me that he was conducting an investigation on Charles Cullen
with regards to stockpiling medications up at St. Luke's Hospital.
In our line of work,
you come to learn that things happen for a reason.
Had that not been attached to the file…
this case would not have exploded the way it did.
If, in fact, Cullen was involved…
he still had access to the patients.
We were up against the clock.
As Cullen became a focal point of our case…
Danny and I approached individuals close to him.
We started interviewing family members.
We learned that Charles Cullen was a very smart individual.
A loving father, cared about his kids.
While they did not know the scope of our investigation,
they did not appear surprised that we were knocking on their door, talking about him.
I never really liked being who I was.
After my mother's death,
I didn't cope with it very well.
Mother was the only person at that time
that sort of kept a cushion between what was happening in the house…
…and me.
With her gone…
I…
I just felt very…
unprotected.
June of '87, I graduated my nursing school.
It was the only thing I thought I could do.
And I felt like I was helping people.
I remember I was at the nurse's station,
and I checked my pulse,
and I'm like, "Fuck!"
About 180.
And Charlie saw me.
And he said, "Are you all right?"
And I started to go down.
He got me into a room, sat me in one of the chairs,
and he said, "What is going on?"
So I explained to him
what was really going on with me.
I was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy while I was working at Somerset.
It would literally feel like my heart was going to jump out of my chest.
The medications weren't helping,
and that disease can be fatal.
My prognosis wasn't good.
I didn't know really how much time I was going to have with my daughters.
But I didn't want anyone to know that I was that sick.
I was worried about not being able to pay my bills,
not being able to have insurance.
And the only way
that we were able to have insurance was through our jobs.
I trusted Charlie with that secret,
even though if it got out, it could cost me everything.
He said, "We need to get you into the ER," and I'm like, "I can't."
"I have three patients tonight. I absolutely cannot."
So he said, "Stay here."
And when he came back…
he opened his hand, and it was Cardizem.
And I took it.
I never really thought about where he got the medication.
That night, he not only took care of my patients,
he also documented for me.
He never told anyone.
And that was not the only time that he took care of me.
After talking to Trooper Egan,
it was learned Cullen had worked at several other hospitals,
so Tim and I began putting together a timeline of Charles Cullen's career.
I was able to get Charles Cullen's resume
to backtrack every facility that he had worked at.
Nine hospitals and one nursing home.
We interviewed people associated with Charles Cullen.
We found out he had been known to abuse his family pets, his dogs,
and actually, in one case, he may have poisoned one animal
that was a family pet.
They also referred to an incident at Warren Hospital.
While the details were minimal,
it was through that tip
that we went to the Warren County Prosecutor's Office
and learned about their case.
My name is Sharon Jones,
and I'm the niece of Helen Dean and the cousin of Larry Dean.
She was like a mother to me.
And Larry and I were like brother and sister.
This is Larry's library, this room.
It has his books, his pipes.
Larry was very close with his mother. Extremely close. Larry never married.
His mother was everything. His mother was his world.
Helen went to Warren Hospital for a procedure,
and prior to being discharged,
she was doing fine.
They were going to send her to the Coventry Center for rehabilitation
so that she could go home.
Larry was there, visiting his mother,
and this fellow came in, a male nurse,
and asked him to leave the room.
The male nurse pulled the curtain around her.
And Larry's out at the nurse's station and he heard her holler, "Ouch!"
He went into the room,
the male nurse came running out,
and he said to his mother, "What happened?"
She said, "He stuck me with a needle."
Larry always carried a Swiss army knife,
and he pulled out the knife with the magnifying glass and looked,
and sure enough, there was a prick mark on her anterior right thigh.
Later in the afternoon, they took her by ambulance, did the transport,
and Larry stopped at home on the way to pick up her slippers,
and he no sooner got in the door and the phone rang.
And it was the Coventry Center
telling him that his mother had died,
within, like, five minutes upon arrival.
My cousin that night went to the prosecutor's office
to report that his mother was murdered.
And Larry knew in his heart and his soul
that this man who was in her room,
who she identified before she died
as the man giving her a lethal injection…
So they did toxicology testing.
They tested for every single drug you could imagine, except one.
Digoxin.
The Warren investigation was closed.
They did have suspicion,
but they did not have the evidence to prove a criminal case.
Cullen was allowed to move on.
We found that following the investigation at Warren,
Cullen admitted himself to a psychiatric facility.
I wanted very much to
quit being a nurse
after Warren Hospital.
But they were telling me that I was a deadbeat dad.
That I had to continue to support the children.
I knew that if I was placed in these situations,
that I would feel the need to…
to end suffering.
I didn't know
how to say it.
What was happening, what I was feeling, what I was doing.
Most of us start our lives in hospitals,
most of us will end our lives in hospitals and we'll visit them throughout.
They're universal.
But those who staff the hospitals for the most part,
especially the nurses,
they really are treated as interchangeable parts.
Staffing agencies often are filling slots.
People are filling in all the time.
People come and go, and being transient is somewhat expected.
The institution of private, for-profit healthcare, the business of healthcare,
is one that Charlie Cullen was perfectly suited for.
You become invisible,
and he was, to many, a man without a face.
The idea that a nurse might be harming or killing patients
was very disturbing,
but even though Cullen's background was painting a dark picture,
we knew our prosecutor would not sign an arrest warrant
based on hearsay and rumors.
He was a public safety risk at this point.
It was very concerning for us that he was still working at Somerset Medical Center
while we were continuing to gather enough information to make an arrest.
Donna and I were noticing
that our lab results were completely skewed.
And I could hear other nurses also calling
and saying, "Yep, my blood sugar's 22 again this morning."
We thought there was something wrong with the lab.
And if we weren't sure about something,
we would go straight to Charlie and ask him.
He knew medications like I have never seen.
I think he had a passion for understanding the way that medications worked.
I used Digoxin because…
it would work…
over a period of a couple hours.
The nurses I was working with…
they didn't know what was going on.
I wish
I was stopped years ago.
I thought I would be.
We needed to build a case.
Medical homicides are a bitch to work.
They're tough cases to prove.
There's no eyewitnesses, there were no cameras,
and we did not have any crime scenes that were preserved.
I visited Mary Lund, the risk manager at Somerset Medical Center.
I asked her whether or not there were any more documents.
She told me she had given us everything she had.
When we went back to Warren Hospital to see if there were records available
that we could delve deeper into, the documents had been destroyed.
It was a dead end.
We were kind of like fish floundering.
My stress level was noticeable to my loved ones
and, you know, people around me.
We were desperate for a breakthrough in the case.
We needed help.
We needed outside help.
Thank you for calling New Jersey Poison Control Center.
Please stay on the line and a poison specialist will be with you shortly.
New Jersey Poison Control Center, can I help you?
Got the call, and it was a detective from the Somerset County Prosecutor's Office,
who basically was asking about Digoxin.
I said, "Are you calling about Somerset Medical Center?"
Absolute dead silence on the phone,
and he said, the detective said, "What are you talking about?"
I said, "We've been telling them they have a murderer on their hands for a while."
And he said, "I'm gonna be down in your office in about 15 minutes."
Bruce said, "Damn tootin' we know about it."
"We've been trying to get somebody to be involved."
They said, "Are you willing to talk to us?"
That's when Bruce got hold of me and said, "Are you willing to talk to them?"
I said, "Damn straight."
We got to Dr. Marcus's office,
and as soon as he greeted us, he said words to the effect,
"Where have you been? You should've been here months ago."
He had a recording of phone calls he had with the hospital.
Who's speaking?
-Good morning. Hi, is this Bruce?
-Yes, how are you? -Hi, Bruce. This is Mary Lund.
Hi. Dr. Marcus will be here in one second.
As Tim and I listened to the recordings, it became apparent to us
that the hospital wasn't telling us everything that was going on.
Here he is.
Dr. Marcus, could you kind of summarize
what you've already spoken to Nancy about?
Dr. Marcus had been in touch with the hospital months earlier.
If there is somebody out there that is purposely doing this,
if you don't report it to the police and somebody else dies…
I would not waste time.
-Okay. -All right.
Well, we appreciate your input.
It took three more months before the hospital made any notification to us.
And even at that,
the information they provided us at the start of the investigation
was minimal.
I said it then, I'll say it now.
The hospital was covering up.
They were afraid of being sued.
If the word is, "Don't go there, you have a high risk of death,"
people aren't gonna go.
Doctors don't want to bring their patients there.
Doctors don't want to bring their patients there,
community doesn't want to go there,
the hospital's gonna lose a lot of money.
The hospital loses money, and the board starts firing people.
And they figured, "You know what? Let's just sweep it under the rug."
Danny and I wondered,
how many other hospitals where Cullen had worked had been doing the same thing?
Covering up and not reporting.
We needed to know what had happened at the other hospitals
as soon as possible.
So Danny went out to meet the Pennsylvania State Police
to glean deeper information into their investigation.
It went from that little stick 'em note
with the Pennsylvania State Police detective's name and number.
During my initial phone call with Trooper Egan,
he informed me that he believed that medications were being stolen
by Charles Cullen.
But he didn't go into details over the phone.
It wasn't until after we met
he began to tell us everything that had transpired.
Trooper Egan, he was looking into the mortality rate at St. Luke's Hospital.
He showed me some of his reports.
Then he informed me that a nurse had advised him
that Charles Cullen was killing patients,
and that she had the courage to tell what was going on.
So this all started in 2002.
I worked with Charles Cullen
in a small ICU at St. Luke's Hospital in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
We had a really nice, tight group of people that worked well together.
He was quirky.
Had his oddities.
But, you know, ICU nurses are kind of weird.
I was there the night that he was taken out
and was allowed to resign, two or three o'clock in the morning,
and everything was very hush-hush.
A day or so later,
I was calling one of my coworkers,
saying, "Do you have any idea what is going on here?"
They told me that there were more than 50 vials of medications
that were found discarded in the needle box.
Many of them were unused, but some were used.
So I began to think about the whole thing.
Prior to him being led out of there,
there was a time, twice within a week, almost exactly a week,
I had had patients who were very stable and they coded.
It didn't make any sense to me.
So I compiled a list of all the people who had expired during that time,
and then I went back to gather the dates,
the times, the names and so forth,
put all that together.
There were 67 deaths.
I thought it was statistically reasonable
for Charlie to have been on duty for a quarter of them,
so it came out to around 17.
I saw 40.
More than twice the number that would even statistically make sense.
I believe that there were two people in particular of mine that he targeted.
People that I had a real fondness for.
One of them's name was Sam.
And Sam was a huge man.
His hands were like baseball mitts. He was enormous.
And when he came to our unit, he was completely locked in.
He didn't open his eyes, he didn't talk, he didn't respond in any way.
And days into taking care of Sam, all of a sudden, we heard this…
I thought, "What in the world?"
And it took us a little while to realize that he was talking.
It was this low, rumbling voice, and this big, big man,
and it took us hours to realize
that he was very slowly saying, "Oh, I love you."
And he was responding, whenever I was on duty, that way.
And in a matter of days after that,
he started singing "You Are My Sunshine" when I'd be in the room.
So a dear, sweet man. And, um…
he coded when Charlie was on.
I reached out to my manager, to my director,
and said, "I am now sure that he was killing people."
And they all said, "Nope."
"We are sure he wasn't."
And said, "We've already investigated that and we've ruled it out."
I drove home crying that morning.
And I called a dear friend, who was a police captain.
I called him on the way home and I said,
"John, I don't even know what to do with this. I don't know what to do."
"Nobody will listen. Nobody's taking any action to stop him."
But I am now absolutely certain that he's killing patients,
and not just one or two, he's killing a lot of patients,
and I can't get anybody to listen.
And after multiple days of trying to get the hospital to listen…
we turned it over to the state police.
But the investigation was very slow.
And then I was on duty one evening,
and the CEO of St. Luke's Hospital called all the nurses into our lounge
and announced that the investigation was closed,
and that the state police had found that Charlie had not done anything wrong.
After that, I started hearing a lot of rumors amongst my coworkers.
Things like, "Whoever the nurse is who reported this
created a lot of havoc
and nearly cost St. Luke's the construction of their new site."
To borrow money to do the construction,
they had to report any potential lawsuits, and that was their focus.
They didn't want to be penalized. They didn't want to lose money.
It was easier to give Charlie a nice reference and let him go on,
rather than deal with the repercussions of this whole thing.
St. Luke's is a US top 100 rated hospital,
an enormous ecosystem of healthcare, and it was still expanding.
They had a bond rating out for a whole new campus at the time.
They just wanted him out of there as quietly as possible,
whether, again, by…
…by intention or coincidence,
in a manner that was the most likely to minimize danger of lawsuit.
One that protected the institution at the cost of protecting the patients.
Gall.
The pattern we were seeing with the cases involving Cullen,
the one in Pennsylvania,
the one in Warren, with the Helen Dean incident,
the investigations stopped due to lack of evidence.
The hospital administrators themselves suspected that Cullen was up to no good.
Strickland.
Hardgrove.
Shanagher.
These types of incidents followed Cullen
in almost every place he worked,
and we did not want our case
to fall the way the other cases did.
One of the things that I really wanted to focus in on and look at
was the Pyxis transactions.
The Pyxis machine is really a computerized medication dispensing machine.
I wanted to see what type of medications Charles Cullen was withdrawing.
During my first meeting with Mary Lund back in early October,
she informed me that the Pyxis only held information up to 30 days.
That seemed very odd to us.
I actually contacted the manufacturer in California.
The representative was shocked.
They said all data needed was retrievable from the unit.
We were being played by the hospital administrators.
It was flatly criminal, what they were doing.
I immediately went over to Mary Lund's office.
And explained to Ms. Lund that if she did not give us this information,
that we were going to confiscate the Pyxis machines
and have the FBI forensic team do a forensic analysis.
Immediately after our conversation,
she picked up the phone, started making calls…
and, uh, surprisingly…
…she was able to retrieve the information for me.
It was a crucial piece of evidence.
We were able to put certain medications in the possession of Charles Cullen
at the time that particular incidents were occurring with the patients on the unit.
But we were a ways away from actually charging Cullen,
so we needed to get him away from patients.
With the information we had gathered in his background,
we came up with a discrepancy in one of his job applications.
We used that as the guise for Somerset Medical Center
to basically fire him.
He was led out of the building by security.
I was absolutely floored. Shocked.
"Why would you…"
"Why would you get rid of him?"
"Why would they fire such a good nurse?"
And I went into protection mode.
Saved message. Monday, 6:57 p.m.
Hey, Amy. This is Charlie. Just returning your call.
Um… Ugh, I--
There's a big story to tell.
There was a big, big commotion. Give me a call back, all right?
When I called, I was like, "Honey, what happened?"
I was so upset,
and he said that they fired him
because he had not been completely honest on his application.
We talked for quite some time. I was very concerned about him.
He seemed depressed.
I told him that I would give him a reference,
and that we would be okay.
Now Cullen was removed from the hospital,
it was time to speak with his co-workers to see if anybody may have witnessed him
doing something strange.
There were detectives at work,
and they were asking a whole bunch of questions.
We start running things in our own minds. All of us.
If Charlie could get fired,
then any of us could get fired.
We wanted to move the process along as fast as we could,
but there was a request from the hospital
that went through my upper chain of command
that a hospital administrative representative would be present.
As it turned out, Mary Lund was the representative who sat in,
and the nurses feared
truthfully cooperating in front of their boss.
We're getting nowhere.
We had gone through pretty much the entire staff
and the one name that kept popping up was Amy Loughren,
the last to be interviewed.
And I made the decision that I wanted to be the one to interview Amy.
When I went in to the little back room,
Mary Lund, who was the risk manager,
went in with me.
She had coached me and said, "Everything's gonna be fine."
I just told him right out that absolutely this is all just bullshit.
I think I said "bullshit" a lot.
And then, for some reason,
Mary Lund had to leave.
I was getting good vibes from Amy.
I liked that she was defending her friend.
So I felt that she would be worth the risk of me showing her
and revealing to her some of the information that I had.
He pushed a piece of paper across the desk.
It was Charlie's Pyxis printouts.
She shook her head. It was like a totally different person.
It was like she let her guard down. And she said, "Wow."
Like she started thinking in her head,
what I'm telling her could possibly be truthful.
It was so obvious
that there was something sinister in that paperwork.
I just blanked out.
And my vision came in.
I remember being at the nurse's station.
I saw a patient go into V-tach.
I yelled out, "Code blue."
I got to the room,
and Charlie was already with this patient.
And Charlie was injecting the patient.
I asked Charlie, "What medication are you giving?"
And he said, "Lidocaine."
And I thought that was odd.
It was a moment, a brief moment,
where I thought, "Why is he giving lidocaine?"
As we're in the middle of the code, doing CPR, continuing with lidocaine,
the resident arrives.
I give him, as the code leader,
"This is the progress of our code blue."
And he said, "Who gave this patient lidocaine?"
I said, "I did. I gave lidocaine."
"I'm the code leader. I ordered lidocaine."
He said, "She's allergic to lidocaine."
So I walked in on him murdering someone, and I didn't…
I didn't see it.
And I didn't think about it.
After I had that revelation,
I watched Danny, and I watched for his response.
And Danny
mouthed the words, "Will you help me?"
I don't remember driving home that day.
I just remember,
when I got home, I called Donna.
It felt like a tidal wave, you know? It felt like…
For the patients, the families…
The fact that I trusted him.
I really trusted him.
A day or so after the interview with Amy Loughren,
we decided to travel to her home.
If we could convince Amy to work with us, we'd have someone on the inside.
When they arrived at my house,
Tim and Danny were looking at all of this paperwork that they had
as a completely different language.
They didn't speak the language.
And so they asked me what I saw on the Pyxis printouts.
And I saw
multiple cancellations.
Those cancellations included deadly medications.
So he would go in under a patient's name…
he would push "Digoxin,"
the drawer would pop open,
and he would take some medicine.
Then he would cancel that particular interaction.
As we are getting into all of those conversations…
…my phone rings.
And it's the risk manager, Mary Lund.
I was shocked, and a little suspicious. Why is she calling me at home?
And then she really started questioning me about,
had I spoken to the detectives after our meeting?
She then also advised me that it would be a good idea to not talk to them
unless there was a representative from the hospital with me.
Trying to scare me away from talking to the detectives.
While I'm talking to her on the phone,
Danny and Tim are trying to listen in on this conversation.
I had a lot to lose.
A career, a family.
I had cardiomyopathy.
I was worried about being disabled,
about not being able to have insurance.
I needed to talk to my daughter. It had to be a family decision.
So, when she came home from school, we sat down,
and I told her that Mommy was working with someone
that very possibly could be hurting people,
possibly killing people,
and that I have an opportunity
to perhaps prevent him from hurting anyone else.
She said, "If we have the opportunity to maybe stop a killer,
of course we have to stop him. Of course we have to do this."
An 11-year-old had more moral aptitude
than someone who is responsible for risk management.
Amy agreed to allow us to record her conversations with Charles Cullen.
One of the essential roles for me in the investigation
was to keep that relationship with Charlie.
We had a mass murderer on the loose
and we had to make sure,
one, he wasn't gonna take off
and go somewhere where we couldn't track him,
or, two, find another position as a nurse in another facility
where he would go back to his old tricks.
We knew that he was looking for a job.
We knew that, emotionally, he was becoming more depressed.
It was hard, when I would hear his voice.
I would feel like
I was betraying him.
But I just knew it in my bones,
he was going to continue to kill, and he would just get better at it.
My mind raced.
There was fear…
of being caught.
I couldn't stop.
I had applied…
for a full-time position
at a different facility.
And I knew that it would happen again.
Amy came to our office
and gave us advice on patterns we should be looking for.
As I kept going there, I really felt like I was part of the team.
And I realized, maybe I was a small voice,
but what I had was a language none of them could speak.
I also asked them,
"Where's the charts from Cerner?"
And Danny and I kind of looked at each other
and basically said, "Who is Cerner?"
She said, "It's not, 'Who's Cerner? What's Cerner?'"
I said, "That's all of the records of the patients."
Without the Cerner printouts,
it was going to be so hard to put that syringe in his hand.
When I went back to work,
I started printing out the patient records so that I could look at them.
Apparently, when nobody was watching her,
she would go to the computer and print out reams of information about patients,
knowing that she could have been charged by the institution.
That took a tremendous amount of fortitude.
Putting myself under that kind of stress,
I was already concerned about my health.
And yet I knew that,
even if I was risking my life…
I knew I had to help them.
We used all of these different pieces of information
to cross-reference each other.
It was a paper trail going back to Cullen.
If we could prove one death…
we got him.
We needed a body.
We needed to obtain Digoxin from the tissue.
We felt that Reverend Gall was probably our strongest case,
in spite of the fact that he'd died several months prior.
Never in a million years
would I have thought he would walk in my door
and basically say, "Your brother was killed."
That moment, I was angry.
Because I…
This is impossible. This can't, you know… This can't happen.
He said that they would probably want to exhume the body.
Would I give my consent?
That's a lot for any family to have to deal with.
You know, and go through a whole reburial again at the cemetery.
You almost want to say,
"Let him rest in peace."
But I said, "It's not a problem. I will give you my consent."
I remember her telling me that her brother spent his whole life helping people,
and now, even in death, he has the opportunity to help people as well.
After the exhumation, Reverend Gall's remains
were transported to the state regional medical examiner's office
in anticipation of a, uh, autopsy.
Because of the amount of Digoxin that was found in Reverend Gall's body,
that gave us enough to change the cause and manner of death
from a natural death, that the hospital reported, to homicide.
But we were lacking a couple pieces that a jury sometimes would like to see.
Something physical.
That syringe, or that IV bag that was contaminated.
It's not always that easy.
Charlie called me
to tell me he was so excited that he had gotten a job.
So I called Tim to let him know.
If he took a job,
the likelihood of Cullen killing more people was very, very strong.
We were out of time.
Without a confession, he was going to continue to murder.
He was going to continue to kill.
So they asked me if I would meet with him
and wear a wire.
Saved message.
Hey, Amy. This is Charlie. Just returning your call.
Friday's possible. I don't know what time you were thinking of.
But sure, yeah, I'd like to get together.
We had Amy wired up, and we were positioned in the parking lot.
I was terrified.
When I walked into the restaurant,
Charlie hugged me for the very first time,
and I was so afraid
that he would feel that black box
that was taped to the small of my back.
-How are you? -Okay.
-Yeah? -Yeah.
There was a lot of background noise in the restaurant, a lot of loud music.
It was almost like a happy hour.
I had a problem when I first started out.
An incident with low blood sugar.
And at Warren Hospital, a patient had died 24 hours after I'd been her nurse.
Someone said, the son had said, that I injected her.
And what about Father Gall?
What happened? Charlie, what happened?
I can't…
I know you can.
I see you, and I'm not stupid.
So why?
You're so good.
Why?
Let me help you.
And then the wire itself went dead on us.
I said, "I know you did this."
"I know you did this and everything's gonna be okay. I still love you."
But for the first time,
it wasn't Charlie.
He became very pale.
He stiffened…
turned his head.
His voice changed.
I was not with my friend Charlie.
I was not.
It was emptiness.
It wasn't darkness,
it wasn't a monster.
It was just nothingness.
He didn't care about me. He didn't care about anything.
He just said, "I want to go down fighting."
If Cullen went free, he'd be killing more people.
You can't take chances with that.
So Danny and I confronted him
and asked him if he'd, uh, take a ride with us.
And we advised him that he was being placed under arrest
for the murder of Reverend Gall.
Once Cullen was brought into our office,
we proceeded with the interview.
When Tim and I was talking to him, it wasn't anything confrontational.
It wasn't that we were yelling at him, screaming at him.
We were talking to him like I'm talking to you now,
and he just said, "I just can't."
He wrapped himself, pulled his knees to his chest as if in a fetal position
while he's answering us.
And you can see him literally holding in what's inside him.
It was just there, but just not coming out.
We were still willing to give it more gas,
but, you know, those observing us…
uh, you know, said enough was enough.
I felt our chance with a confession was gone.
I get a call from Tim,
and they had devised a plan
for me to talk to Charlie.
And Charlie came in, shackled…
in scrubs
and his little laceless sneakers,
and…
I just
lost it.
Just seeing him that way.
It was like seeing a child.
I didn't feel anger toward him.
I didn't feel
like there was a monster.
I felt like, once again,
that wave of guilt, of betraying a friend.
They took off his shackles,
and Charlie and I just started talking
like normal.
Like it was perfectly normal for us to just be sitting there on a couch,
him in scrubs.
It was just bizarre how ordinary it felt.
But then, I thought about
who I was really supposed to be protecting.
He had murdered some of the most vulnerable people.
They were tied down,
medicated,
unable to protect themselves.
It was my job to defend them, and I hadn't.
I knew I would do anything
to get a confession out of him.
And then I said to him…
"My life
as I know it is about to end,
because I'm being implicated."
"You get to be my hero today."
"You get to do that. You do."
"And I'm gonna ask you one question."
"How…
did you kill Father Gall?"
And he said he injected him with Digoxin.
With that, we had enough.
So we pulled her out, and we brought him in to another room,
our interview room,
and basically told him, "Now you can talk."
My name is Detective Sergeant Tim Braun.
With me is Detective Dan Baldwin.
Today is Sunday, December 14th, 2003.
The time is approximately 6:14 p.m.
Did you have an opportunity
to talk to a friend of yours prior to going on tape?
Yes, I did.
Was it after that conversation you had with your friend,
you decided to talk to us about particular incidents?
Yes, it was.
Let's talk about the matter pertaining to Florian Gall.
Uh…
Are you responsible for his death?
Yes, I am.
And why is that, Charlie?
Um, because I injected him with a medication called Digoxin.
How did that make you feel?
I…
I was relieved that he wasn't…
attached to all those machines anymore.
We were hoping for one confession at best.
We were not totally prepared
for the journey he took us on.
I felt very compelled,
very driven to end suffering as I saw it.
I would go long periods of time with nothing, but then,
I would find myself getting back,
feeling overwhelmed,
feeling like I couldn't watch people hurt,
die, be treated like nonhumans.
I… have…
…destroyed not only those people's…
God… destiny,
and…
caused probably a lot of suffering of those families,
but I have also hurt people that I love
very much.
And didn't, for the world, want to do that.
I love…
my children very much,
and very much wanted to be a part of their lives.
But I
just couldn't stop myself.
I did not want the people to see me as this… what I am.
What are you, Charles?
A person who was trusted,
and have been responsible for a lot of people dying.
I contaminated IV infusion bags with insulin.
I don't remember the specific patients or whatever.
Is there any particular reason why you might do that? Just pot luck?
I guess the majority of patients were very critical.
I was waiting in a room
with the perfect view on one of the monitors
when I heard he was using the bags.
I go back to those moments
where I picked up those bags.
I was the one delivering those deadly medications.
All of the nurses, all of the team members,
we prepared his victims for him.
And then we delivered his poison for him.
I wanted him to be a mercy killer.
I wanted to believe
he was putting people out of their misery,
but he was not.
Many of the patients that he killed
were on the road to recovery.
In some cases,
patients were being prepared for discharge because their condition had improved.
This isn't anything you can understand.
It isn't something you can reason.
One of the medications that Charlie used was Vecuronium.
Vecuronium is a paralytic.
A person would be completely alert and awake,
aware of what's going on,
but unable to speak, blink, breathe, or anything else.
So they literally would be paralyzed in their awake body,
unable to breathe as they proceeded to death.
Just horrific.
Can you tell us, in total, throughout your entire 15, 16 years,
how many patients have you helped to their death?
Um, possibly 30 to 40 patients.
Okay, 30 to 40 patients in total?
Yes.
Good evening, everyone. I'm Jackie Hyland.
A former nurse at a hospital in New Jersey is accused of killing his patients.
Lots of them.
If it's true what he says, he left a trail of death behind him.
As he sees it, he only helped people who were suffering,
but police call him nothing more than a mass murderer.
Vanessa Tyler is in Somerville with more on all this.
Well, this nurse may have killed more people
than anyone else in the history of New Jersey,
in a career spanning many years, involving many hospitals,
including Somerset Medical Center,
where the nurse claims to have killed a dozen people here alone.
I think people were in shock in general, as far as the staff.
But the community, um, some of the older patients,
would make comments like, um,
"You're not gonna kill me like Charles Cullen killed patients?"
The first time someone said that to me, I went in the bathroom and cried.
Because he didn't represent who we were.
Charles Cullen confessed to killing a 40-year-old cancer patient,
and Catholic priest Father Florian Gall.
That brings the total number of murders to 23.
He didn't show any remorse in court today.
I don't wish to be represented.
I don't plan to contest the charges. I plan to plead guilty.
My late husband was in the hospital and very ill 14 years before he passed.
My eldest grandson
was able to grow up with my husband,
knowing his Pop-Pop…
because my husband lived through that crisis.
My husband had a tremendous impact in his life and his values.
And that's what Charlie took away from people.
He took away holidays with their loved ones,
and graduations, and weddings, and birthdays, and life lessons,
and all the things for dozens, perhaps hundreds of people.
He stole from their families and from them.
I guess I wanted the opportunity to see him.
Today is the sentencing hearing for State v. Cullen.
And I wanted him to know what kind of person my brother was.
Good morning. I'm the sister of the Reverend Florian J. Gall.
He was a very shy, humble, quiet, and caring man.
He was extremely trusting of others.
He never looked at anyone.
And I said, "I'm ashamed that you were a nurse."
"I'm a nurse. We're taught to save lives, not to kill people."
He never made a comment to say, "I'm sorry."
Your Honor,
Charles Cullen is charged with the murder of Pasquale Napolitano.
I want to tell you a little bit about my dad.
My dad was bigger than life. He nurtured and supported me throughout my life.
You may have taken her physical body away,
but her spirit and character is in this room now.
You don't even have the guts to look this way.
It's a shame.
My heart, it aches for my son.
It bleeds for my son!
I walk around with a hole in my heart
that will never be filled again.
It's unbelievable that one person could impact that many lives.
A registered nurse, who is supposed to be a caretaker,
took the life of my brother…
…for his own personal, selfish, and twisted gain.
I am so lost without my brother.
When we were younger, we did everything together.
He was my best friend.
Larry had passed away in 2001…
hoping and praying that this man would be found out.
And none of it happened in his lifetime, unfortunately.
If only people had listened to him.
For these crimes and for this betrayal,
you are sentenced to consecutive sentences as set forth in the global plea agreement.
Do you understand?
-Thank you all, then.
Cullen has signed a plea deal that will spare him the death penalty
if he participates fully with the investigation.
There are other people responsible for the actions
of Charles Cullen, besides Charles Cullen.
Most of the hospitals I've worked at…
they strongly suspected that there were
deaths associated with me.
Why didn't they take it further?
I think they were worried about the publicity.
If protecting human life wasn't a priority for them,
it's impossible to guess how low someone could stoop
to protect their financial interest and the interest of the hospital.
There are many questions about how he was apparently able to
get away with murder in hospitals for so long.
Dennis Miller is CEO and president of Somerset Medical Center.
-Do you take any responsibility for this? Absolutely not.
We take responsibility for investigating this guy, leading to his arrest.
I'm extremely proud of Dr. Cors and Mary Lund,
who led the investigation at our hospital.
We're the first hospital to identify him, leading to his arrest.
Could you have done a more thorough background check?
Absolutely not. The problem is the other employers that we called.
And we did a complete criminal background check
and a complete reference check, and everybody said the following.
He left in good standing and his license was intact.
The question that gets asked, how does somebody operate in a hospital,
how does somebody kill people in hospitals,
over and over and over again for 16 years?
Again, nine hospitals and a nursing home. Why didn't he get caught?
And the answer turns out to be, he was.
Over and over and over again.
And those that caught him, or had reason to suspect that something was wrong,
um, they passed him on,
with positive or neutral references, and he always found another job.
That's the scandal.
And Charlie Cullen will spend the rest of his life in prison,
but those who passed him on,
those who are paid big bucks to be responsible,
have never been held responsible.
They did a very good job at their job,
which was more to do with the institution of private, for-profit healthcare,
but they didn't do good.
They didn't do good by what that health system
is theoretically there to do,
which is to protect patients, to provide patient care.
So they… they failed,
and have yet been rewarded
for their success in protecting the institution over the patients.