Hospitals and nursing facilities are places of comfort and hope, for patients. It is a sanctuary of healing. Yet in criminal history, one man was tried and convicted for the murder of 40 patients. Charles Edmund Cullen would soon be known as the Angel of Death. For 16 years Charles worked without raising any suspicion about his work, which is indeed very surprising.
Charles was born in New Jersey, and was overwhelmed by his childhood that he contemplated suicide at age 9. He had tried to take his life on many occasions. In 1978 his mother was killed in a car accident and Charles was so sad that he later dropped out of school. He managed to enlist in the US Navy, and worked well to be promoted as a Petty Officer. However he was observed as becoming mentally unstable and he was transferred out of the submarine and discharged from the navy in 1984. Charles enrolled in a nursing school and soon found a job at a hospital.
It was at St.Barnabas Hospital that Charles committed his first murder by injecting a Judge. He later killed others including an AIDs patient. He quit the hospital when they began an investigation.
His next employment was at Warren Hospital, New Jersey where he killed 3 elderly women. During this time he also filed for divorce. It is weird how a father can commit murder and return home to his family. In 1993 he was caught by police for stalking a female co-worker. He next worked in the ICU of Hunterdon Medical Centre where he murdered 5 patients with overdose. In 1997 suffering from depression he entered a psychiatric facility but left shortly. Even with his mental instability it is uncertain how he got hired at other hospitals, but some assume it was due to lack of trained nurses. Once again he committed 5 murders at St.Lukes Hospital, Pennsylvania. He attempted suicide again by carbon monoxide poisoning but the police intervened and he was saved.
Working once more at Somerset Medical Centre in 2002 he killed 5 more patients with overdoses of insulin and digoxin. Here co-workers found him checking the medical records of patients not assigned to him. Finally in 2003 Charles Cullen was arrested at a restaurant. He confessed to detectives that he had killed 40 patients. By July 2005 Charles was sentenced to life in prison and received 18 life sentences. Charles tried to justify his bizarre murders by telling police that he wanted to reduce the suffering of patients, especially the terminally ill. He claimed he could not bear to see them suffer. His mind was as like a ‘fog’ and he could not remember exactly how many he had killed. The maniac nurse worked the graveyard shift (at night) where there was less interaction with other staff and no visitors, giving him full control of the helpless patients. Ironically his murder weapon was the same drugs that were made to help patients recover. Following his conviction many of the hospitals he had worked in were sued by the families of the victims. Some speculate that the Angel of Death, Charles Cullen had killed as many as 400 patients during his career of 16 years as a medical care giver.