Charles Edmund Cullen

Serial Killer

Charles Edmund Cullen: The Nurse Who Murdered Patients Across New Jersey and Pennsylvania

Overview

Charles Edmund Cullen was an American registered nurse and serial killer who used his position inside hospitals to deliberately poison patients entrusted to his care. Born on February 22, 1960, in West Orange, New Jersey, Cullen worked in hospitals and nursing facilities in New Jersey and Pennsylvania during a nursing career that stretched for approximately sixteen years. His crimes remained undetected for years as he moved between medical facilities, despite repeated questions about his conduct, suspicious medication practices, unusual patient emergencies, and problems at several of his workplaces. Cullen eventually admitted killing dozens of patients. Twenty-nine murders were established through his guilty pleas in New Jersey and Pennsylvania: twenty-two in New Jersey and seven in Pennsylvania. He also pleaded guilty to six attempted murders. Cullen told investigators that the true number of people he killed could have been substantially higher, at one point estimating approximately thirty to forty murders. Because of incomplete medical records, the passage of time, and the large number of patients who died at facilities where he worked, investigators were unable to determine with certainty whether additional deaths were caused by him.

A Killer Working as a Nurse

Cullen became a registered nurse after attending nursing school and began working at Saint Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston, New Jersey, in 1987. Hospitals gave him direct access to vulnerable patients, intravenous lines, medication rooms, and powerful prescription drugs. Instead of using that access solely to care for patients, Cullen began secretly administering medications that had not been ordered by physicians or deliberately giving excessive quantities of prescribed drugs. Among the medications associated with his crimes was digoxin, a powerful heart medication that can become deadly in excessive doses. He also used insulin and other medications capable of causing sudden and potentially fatal changes in a patient's heart rhythm, blood pressure, or blood sugar. The clinical effects could resemble complications of an existing illness, particularly when the victim was already hospitalized. This helped conceal Cullen's crimes because unexpected deterioration among seriously ill patients was not automatically treated as evidence of deliberate poisoning. ...

Confirmed Victims: (24)

John W. Yengo Age: (72), Date of Death: 1998-06-11

Survivors:

Stella Danielczyk Age: (73), Date of Attack: February 2000

John Gallagher Age: (90), Date of Attack: February 8, 2001

Paul Galgon Age: (72), Date of Attack: December 28, 2001

Philip Gregor Age: (48), Date of Attack: June 18, 2003

Jin Kyung Han Age: (40), Date of Attack: June 29, 2003

Frances Agoada Age: (83), Date of Attack: August 27, 2003

Charles Cullen - Wikipedia