The Shocking True Story of The Good Nurse

The Shocking True Story of The Good Nurse

Welcome to MsMojo, and today we’re discussing The Shocking True Story of The Good Nurse.

For this video, we’ll be looking at the life and crimes of Charles Cullen, and how a former co-worker brought him down.

Have you seen “The Good Nurse”? Let us know in the comments.

Charles Cullen

Less than a year after Charles Edmund Cullen was born on February 22, 1960, his father died, leaving him with a single mother and 7 older siblings. He had what he’d later describe as a “miserable” childhood in West Orange New Jersey, where he was frequently mistreated by classmates. The first time he tried to take his own life was at age 9.

Things worsened in December of 1977 when his mother Florence, the only person who looked out for him, died in a car accident. Charles was a senior in high school and after the painful loss, he decided to drop out and enlist in the Navy. He’d make rank as a petty officer (PO) but never really fit in with his peers. He endured hazing and tried to end his life again, leading to him being committed to the Navy’s psychiatric ward on multiple occasions. He was ultimately medically discharged in 1984. After the Navy, Charles made a career change. He began attending Mountainside Hospital School of Nursing in Montclair, New Jersey, where he would be elected president of his class. He met his future wife in and, after 6 months of dating, they married in 1987. In the years to come, they’d have two daughters.

16 Years of Murders (1988-2003)

Charles Cullen started his first job out of nursing school working in the burn unit of Saint Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston. In June 1988 was when he killed his first known victim: Judge John W. Yengo, who was admitted after having an allergic reaction. Charles injected a lethal amount of insulin into the patient’s IV, and would go on to kill dozens more patients during his employment at Saint Barnabas. The hospital actually suspected him of spiking the IVs bags in January of 1992, but Cullen had already fled before any action was taken.

It didn’t take long for him to find his next job at Warren Hospital in Phillipsburg. Here, he gave at least three elderly women an overdose of a heart medication none of them were prescribed – digoxin. In January 1993, Charles was served divorce papers. His wife alleged that he displayed erratic, violent behavior, including harming the family dogs. Not long after, Charles began stalking his coworker Michelle Tomlinson, even breaking into her home while she and her 6-year-old were sleeping. For this, he was sentenced to one year of probation. However, he would soon be investigated for the death of his third victim, a 91-year-old patient named Helen Dean who suddenly died of heart failure.

Cullen used digoxin to kill at least at least 5 patients during his three years working at the intensive care unit Hunterdon Medical Center in Flemington. In Aug 1997, he was fired from Morristown Memorial Hospital for his “poor performance.” He would then find work in Pennsylvania at Liberty Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. However, in October 1998, he was terminated after giving patients unprescribed medication.

Cullen then worked at Easton Hospital from November 1998 to March 1999. During his time there, he was a suspect of internal investigation into the death of Ottomar Schramm, who had a fatal amount of digoxin in his blood. Cullen benefited from the worldwide shortage of nurses at the time, which allowed him to continue to work even though he was a murder suspect.

He moved around different hospitals in different burn units from March of 1999 to June of 2002, continuing his murdering spree. Systemic failures allowed him to get off relatively scot-free in all cases and, even with complaints and suspicions piling up against him, Cullen kept his nursing licenses in Pennsylvania and New Jersey intact.

Capture & Conviction

After a short time at Sacred Heart Hospital in Allentown, Charles Cullen returned to New Jersey in September 2002 to start at Somerset Medical Center, his last hospital. By summer 2003, Somerset became wary when they realized there was an unusually high amount of digoxin and insulin-related deaths in the same ward. However, Cullen wasn’t fired until the end of October… after he’d already killed 13 people.

Detectives enlisted the help of Cullen’s fellow critical care unit nurse and close friend Amy Loughren in November 2003. She shared records from the hospital’s drug distributing computer system. In early December 2003, Loughren wore a wire when she met Cullen at a restaurant. Investigators arrested him and within a couple days, he confessed to killing “30 to 40” patients throughout his 16-year nursing career. Though they can’t be certain, and some investigators believe the number is closer to being in the hundreds.

In April 2004, Charles Cullen pleaded guilty to murder and attempted murder. He also took a plea deal to avoid the death penalty and, on March 2, 2006, he was sentenced to eleven life sentences to be served consecutively. He was then given another six life sentences on March 10. This means he’ll be eligible for parole in… 2388. (Something tells us there won’t be a lot to debate about by then.)

The Good Nurse

In 2013, investigative journalist Charles Graeber published “The Good Nurse: A True Story of Medicine, Madness, and Murder.” He’d talked with Cullen for years trying to gain some insight into his motivations and how he got away with his crimes for over a decade and a half.

Jessica Chastain stars as Amy Loughren in Netflix’s film adaptation of Graeber’s best-selling book, along with fellow Oscar-winning actor Eddie Redmayne as Cullen. It first premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September of 2022. In October, the film had a limited theatrical release before its launch on the streaming platform. Both the book and film have been praised for their non-sensational approach to the story, putting the spotlight on Loughren’s heroic efforts rather than Cullen’s psychology or violent acts.

Netflix’s documentary about the case, “Capturing the Killer Nurse,” is slated to arrive in November 2022.