Notorious: Charles Cullen

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Speaker 5 They are the very places in which so many put their trust and lives.

Speaker 2 Hospitals.

Speaker 6 The idea of having a serial killer in the healthcare industry.

Speaker 7 It's tragic.

Speaker 2 All have to deal with hospitals.

Speaker 8 Everyone, some point in time in their life, puts their life in the hands of others.

Speaker 9 We are not looking for predators among this population.

Speaker 10 We know that nurses are supposed to be healing patients. Instead,

Speaker 10 some used their power to kill them.

Speaker 11 The nurse was like a shadow in the corner.

Speaker 5 The angel of death, Charles Coat, killed dozens and dozens of sick patients.

Speaker 9 Very few healthcare serial killers actually have mercy as their motive.

Speaker 10 This was a man who had a lot of loss in his life.

Speaker 9 He felt as if he had been betrayed by the hospital system.

Speaker 9 Charles Cullen exploited the trust that is part of many healthcare industries in order to carry out his crimes.

Speaker 12 Charles Cullen, you stole the last years of my father's life.

Speaker 13 This individual has escaped authorities for 17 years.

Speaker 14 Charles Collin is probably one of the most prolific serial killers the world has ever known. But when you start looking at why he did this, that's when the case gets really perplexing.

Speaker 15 It was a dirty, dark secret.

Speaker 15 New Jersey Police Control Center can help you. Yeah, hi, I'm calling from Somerset Medical Center.

Speaker 17 We're trying to investigate a ditch toxicity that occurred in a patient, our critical care unit. This person went into digit toxicity and actually expired.

Speaker 17 His digit jumped from 1.33 to 9.61 in a day, which is kind of unusual.

Speaker 18 Oh, this is a police matter. You have to report it to the police.
This is a huge issue.

Speaker 19 In 2003,

Speaker 21 I was contacted by Somerset Medical Center.

Speaker 19 My name is Tim Brun.

Speaker 19 I was one of the lead detectives in the Charles Cohen investigation.

Speaker 21 Somerset asked me to investigate the death of a patient that did occur in their facility.

Speaker 14 In June of 2003, Florian Gall went to the Somerset Medical Center critical care unit. He was a Catholic Church official who was in his 70s.

Speaker 14 My name is Jeff Mulvajilla, and I was one of the lead reporters covering the Charles Collin case for the Associated Press.

Speaker 14 Florian was on a breathing machine to help treat his pneumonia.

Speaker 14 He was on the road to recovery and discharge after his terrible illness.

Speaker 14 But on June 28th, 2003,

Speaker 14 Reverend Gall suddenly went into cardiac arrest

Speaker 14 and died.

Speaker 15 Because he did not have any type of heart issues, it was unusual, which arose suspicion within the hospital administration to look into these matters.

Speaker 14 An autopsy was conducted. It turned out his digoxin levels were off the chart.

Speaker 4 Digoxin is a drug that can either save your life or end you.

Speaker 15 My name is Dr.

Speaker 6 Harry Millman and I'm a toxicologist.

Speaker 4 Digoxin is used primarily for patients who suffer from congestive heart failure.

Speaker 1 When you give too much of digoxin,

Speaker 15 the heart will be doing a lot of extra work.

Speaker 4 And as a result, you're going to have a heart attack.

Speaker 14 Gull's death was a big problem for Somerset Medical Center. This was not the first digoxin overdose.

Speaker 19 Somerset Medical Center had been conducting an internal investigation for several months.

Speaker 6 They were, in particular, looking into five suspicious occurrences.

Speaker 23 Three of the patients had abnormal levels of insulin in their system.

Speaker 30 And in two other cases, there were indication of extreme high levels of digoxin.

Speaker 26 After five suspicious deaths, Somerset medical officials fear a dark pattern is emerging, and so they call in the police department to investigate.

Speaker 6 Our investigative team were summoned to a meeting that took place in a conference room at Somerset Medical Center.

Speaker 28 At that early stage, we weren't quite sure if this was an intentional act by an individual or some sort of a medical mystery type of case.

Speaker 7 We did investigate nursing staff on the critical care unit where all these events were occurring.

Speaker 19 We recognized that a nurse named Charles Cohen

Speaker 29 was not at any one hospital for any long period of time.

Speaker 10 Charles Cohen worked as a nurse for 16 years. at eight different hospitals between Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
And that alone raised suspicions.

Speaker 10 I'm Dr. Casey Jordan, a criminologist who specializes in the study of violent crime, including healthcare serial killers.

Speaker 22 So we began to focus on Cullen actually quite early.

Speaker 19 But when mentioning Charles Cullen's name, the hospital did emphasize that he did not appear to have any type of direct involvement with the case.

Speaker 14 They said he was a hard worker. Cullen related well to people he worked with, although he sort of seemed like an underdog to even the people who liked him.

Speaker 9 Charles Cullen was born and raised in West Orange, New Jersey, which was economically challenged.

Speaker 9 I'm Dr. Catherine Ramsland.
I'm an expert on serial murder, and I wrote a book about healthcare serial killers. Cullen was a late life child in a Irish Catholic family with eight brothers and sisters.

Speaker 14 When Charles was only seven months old, his father died and his mother had to raise him on her own.

Speaker 9 His mother had a few part-time sewing jobs and so he came essentially from a real disadvantaged place.

Speaker 14 Cullen described his childhood as miserable. It was a family without a lot of money.

Speaker 14 His siblings were much older. They weren't weren't a huge part of his life all of the time.

Speaker 9 Into this house came all kinds of people visiting his brothers and sisters, men in and out who were strangers, who were potentially dangerous.

Speaker 9 There was an abusive boyfriend of one of his sisters and he put lighter fluid into that guy's drink because he didn't like him.

Speaker 9 So we already know that as a kid, he doesn't have any hesitation going over the line morally to hurt somebody.

Speaker 14 Colin attempted suicide several times, including once when he was just nine years old, when he drank chemicals from a chemistry set.

Speaker 10 He was obviously a very troubled child, but the worst thing to ever happen to him occurred when he was a teenager.

Speaker 9 When Charles was in high school, his mother was in an accident

Speaker 9 and died.

Speaker 9 He was devastated,

Speaker 9 but also angry because when he got the call from the hospital,

Speaker 9 they at first didn't tell him that his mother was dead,

Speaker 9 giving him some hope that she was going to recover. And then he finds out not only is she dead, but her body's already been taken away.

Speaker 9 So he felt as if he had been betrayed by the hospital system.

Speaker 10 This was a turning point for Charles. He became very angry and lost.
His father had died before he ever even had a memory of him. His mother dies in this horrific car accident.

Speaker 10 This would leave anyone angry, but for Charles, he was very angry at God. Why was he suffering so much loss?

Speaker 14 After his mother died, he dropped out of high school.

Speaker 9 Cullen didn't really know what he was going to do with his life

Speaker 9 because of all the loss he had experienced. He felt out of control, helpless, and disempowered.
He wanted to re-exert power.

Speaker 9 So he went into a nursing school.

Speaker 33 Coming up, Charles Pellin murdered my mother. You've bloodied and stained the medical profession.

Speaker 26 The victims' families come face to face with the killer himself.

Speaker 34 I want you to die tomorrow because you know what? There ain't no doors out of hell, babe.

Speaker 26 In October 2003, Somerset Medical Center is the last stop on Nurse Charles Cullen's killing spree.

Speaker 26 And the first time investigators finally get involved in the case. But with no real evidence against him, detectives dig deeper into his personal life.

Speaker 10 They see his father had died before he ever even had a memory of him. His mother dies in this horrific car accident.

Speaker 9 Because of all the loss he had experienced, Cullen felt out of control, helpless, and disempowered. He wanted to re-exert power.

Speaker 9 So he went into a nursing school.

Speaker 14 While Colin was in nursing school, he worked several jobs, one at a restaurant.

Speaker 14 The only thing he liked about the job was his boss there, Adrian.

Speaker 14 Colin and Adrian had a fast courtship. They were engaged after only about six months.
They were married shortly after he finished nursing school in 1987

Speaker 35 and 1988.

Speaker 14 Colin's first daughter was born.

Speaker 10 This had to add all kinds of life-changing stress that he just wasn't prepared for.

Speaker 9 He developed a serious problem with alcoholism.

Speaker 9 He became a secret alcoholic just to endure the life that he had chosen, that he hated.

Speaker 9 He would tell his wife he wasn't drinking when he was.

Speaker 14 At the same time, Cullen started his first nursing job at St. Barnabas Hospital.

Speaker 14 A few months after Cullen's first child, 72-year-old John Yango, is admitted to St. Barnabas Medical Center.

Speaker 26 John Yango is a father of four and a retired municipal court judge. He enters the hospital after some medication triggers an allergic reaction.

Speaker 28 He had a healthy heart.

Speaker 10 Charles Cullen was on duty and Yango was expected to make a full recovery.

Speaker 10 But instead,

Speaker 10 he died.

Speaker 10 In 1988, this was the first suspicious death under Cullen's care. At first, the hospital just assumed that Yango died of an allergic reaction.

Speaker 10 But after the toxicology report came back, they found that he had an unusually high level of insulin in his blood.

Speaker 27 We found out that at the time Cullen was working there, St.

Speaker 22 Barnabas Medical Center had quite an extensive internal investigation.

Speaker 24 looking into several suspicious overdoses and deaths that did occur in their facility.

Speaker 15 And further, further, Laura Cullen

Speaker 29 was the primary target of their internal investigation.

Speaker 27 Every time there was a suspicious death, it turned out Cullen was working.

Speaker 24 We found that information to be quite valuable.

Speaker 22 It rose further suspicion.

Speaker 22 The hospital let him go without proper notification to law enforcement and other agencies.

Speaker 26 Now hot on Cullen's trail, investigators questioned the person closest to him during his five years at St. Barnabas.

Speaker 20 During the course of our investigation, I actually spoke to his wife.

Speaker 22 It did not appear as though she was surprised by our looking into his suspicious activity.

Speaker 27 She was aware of the internal investigation at St.

Speaker 24 Barnabas

Speaker 7 and she did express that the marital relationship was quite strained. She did provide us a broader picture of the person we were looking at.

Speaker 9 He was not really cut out to be a husband or a father.

Speaker 14 He was neglectful of the children, leaving them alone when they were very young.

Speaker 9 And then his wife began to get nervous when a neighbor's dog wandered into their property. And the dog ended up getting poisoned and she was afraid it was her husband who had done it.

Speaker 9 And if he could poison a dog, could he do that to them?

Speaker 9 The things that are risky in Cullen's life are the depression, the substance abuse, the manipulations, the lies, the secretiveness.

Speaker 9 They don't necessarily say he's going to commit a crime, let alone become a killer, but these are all warning signs of somebody who's at risk for becoming a psychopath.

Speaker 9 And that's exactly what's happened.

Speaker 10 Terrified of her husband, Adrienne divorces Charles Cullen in 1992. And at the same time, he starts a new job at Warren Hospital in New Jersey.

Speaker 26 Warren Hospital is the second hospital that Cullen is employed by. Because his record doesn't reflect any wrongdoings, administrators are none the wiser about his brutal past.

Speaker 10 At this juncture, investigators are once again stunned at what they discover.

Speaker 10 They realize that after his wife filed divorce papers, two elderly women suspiciously die of digoxin overdoses at Warren Hospital.

Speaker 26 Detectives are now beginning to see a pattern between negative events in Cullen's personal life and suspicious deaths that have occurred.

Speaker 26 In 1993, 91-year-old Helen Dean is recovering well following breast cancer surgery.

Speaker 14 Her son was by her side throughout her treatment.

Speaker 14 One day, Cullen asked the son, Larry Dean, to leave the room.

Speaker 2 He did.

Speaker 14 When he returned, his mother said that the nurse had stuck her. A day later, she was dead.
Larry Dean was convinced that Cullen had murdered his mother.

Speaker 9 Anyone who's been a patient in a large hospital knows that people come in and out constantly.

Speaker 9 A healthcare serial killer will take advantage of that because they can easily enter a room and do whatever they want. Usually patients just passively take the care they're given.

Speaker 4 The hospital, authorities suspected a drug overdose and so they tested her biological fluids for 100 different drugs.

Speaker 7 But with the toxicology exam, they did not specifically look for digotsin, which ultimately was his drug of choice for Miss Dean.

Speaker 14 But Charles Cullen is once again the main focus of the investigation. Warren Hospital questioned Cullen about Dean's death, but he denied that he'd done anything.

Speaker 10 They even gave him polygraph tests, which he passed. And that actually is not uncommon with serial killers.
They have this pall of denial in the interest of self-preservation.

Speaker 14 They weren't able to pin him with any deaths, so they allowed him to resign and move on.

Speaker 9 When he gets away with it, now he will develop this sense of narcissistic immunity that, wow, I can do this. I have the power to do this, and they can't touch me.

Speaker 14 Charles Collin is probably one of the most prolific serial killers the world has ever known. But when you start looking at why he did this, That's when the case gets really perplexing.

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Speaker 26 By 2003, Charles Cullen is a person of interest for mysterious deaths across eight different hospitals.

Speaker 26 Police still have no evidence to connect him with the murders. But after investigating his background, they've uncovered an unlikely pattern that pushes their suspicions over the edge.

Speaker 9 The police found such a high correlation between when his life went downhill and he was depressed and somebody dying.

Speaker 14 When his family life crumbled, Cullen didn't know how to cope. So anytime there was something going wrong in Charles Cullen's life, a patient died.

Speaker 10 This pattern becomes more and more evident the more the investigators are going from hospital to hospital, tracking all of these mysterious deaths.

Speaker 10 After Charles Cullen left Warren Hospital, he moved on to Hunterden Hospital in Flemington, New Jersey.

Speaker 10 Detectives see that now that he is divorced from his wife, he started dating a nurse in his new workplace. And there he had everybody fooled, including his girlfriend.

Speaker 10 They thought he was highly competent, extremely hard worker. And as far as we know, during that timeframe, there were no suspicious deaths.

Speaker 26 A little over a year later, that all changes when his life goes into upheaval.

Speaker 14 In early 1996, Cullen's relationship with the nurse was on the rocks.

Speaker 9 He is a controlling person, and now he's feeling helpless. So he's looking for ways to restore his sense of power and control over his life.

Speaker 14 That's when he started killing again at Hunterton Medical Center. By July, there were five unexplained digoxin overdoses at Hunterton Medical Center.

Speaker 21 He was allowed to move on to another facility.

Speaker 14 Cullen knew that he could beat the system. He would leave a job when somebody was on to him.
And he was always allowed to find another job.

Speaker 10 The more these hospitals dig, the more that they can stitch together that this could be the work of one of their employees.

Speaker 26 Having investigated Cullen's career up to Hunterdon Medical Center, detectives are certain he's the person responsible for the deaths. But now they have to find physical proof in order to arrest him.

Speaker 26 They follow Cullen's trail to the fifth medical facility he moves to, Easton Hospital in Pennsylvania.

Speaker 10 In 1998, after Cullen had started working at Easton Hospital, he apparently had run into financial troubles because that was the year he filed for bankruptcy.

Speaker 10 And all of a sudden, patients start mysteriously dying at Easton Hospital.

Speaker 9 When we look at Cullen's timeline, you can actually see when something bad happens within a week or two, somebody dies.

Speaker 9 It's pretty clear that when things are failing in his life, when he's feeling disempowered, killing patients becomes much more the place of solace, of releasing the feelings of stress and also empowering himself.

Speaker 9 So it becomes more frequent the more his life fails.

Speaker 11 My father was a wonderful guy. We had lots of happy memories growing up in my house.
My sister and I and my father played in the trombone choir in church.

Speaker 11 My father loved the church and he taught us to love each other and treat each other with respect.

Speaker 11 I'm Christina Toaths and my father was Autumn Archram. He's a patient at Easton Hospital.
My father was transported to Easton Hospital on December 29th, 1998 because he was having seizures.

Speaker 11 In the emergency room, the nurse was kind of like a shadow in the corner.

Speaker 11 He just was standing there with his syringe and just watching us. At that point, I asked him what that was for, and he said it was in case my father's heart stopped.

Speaker 11 But I didn't think anything about it because I just wouldn't assume that anyone would want to hurt my dad.

Speaker 11 We expected my father to survive for sure, but he didn't seem to be recovering quickly enough.

Speaker 11 And then somebody ordered a blood test and he had been given an overdose of digoxin, which was a medication he should not have been given. My father was given four times the legal amount.

Speaker 11 I actually got a phone call from my father's doctor, and he said, Chris, nobody would give him this drug here. It's not prescribed.
He said, I don't know who gave him this drug.

Speaker 11 And then my dad passed away within another day. He never really came out of it.

Speaker 11 That's a night I'll never forget.

Speaker 11 I just miss being with him. I miss all the time we had.
I feel like there's a part of my life that

Speaker 2 we didn't have and never will have.

Speaker 2 So.

Speaker 26 Cullen consensually resigns from yet another hospital and in 2002 begins working at Somerset Medical Center, his eighth and final hospital.

Speaker 14 In 2001, Cullen's brother died of brain cancer.

Speaker 14 In the year that followed, a lot more patients died at his hand.

Speaker 14 That's when the law finally caught up with him.

Speaker 24 As we are gathering all the various information from different health care facilities, personal background, it became obviously clear that we were looking at a serial killer.

Speaker 14 Authorities realized that he could have been responsible for up to 400 deaths.

Speaker 29 We knew that we had to stop him before he could murder any other victims.

Speaker 26 In 2003, investigators are determined to apprehend Charles Cullen, but they still don't have a concrete connection to the deaths.

Speaker 26 They take a new approach and turn to the one person close enough to him for help, fellow critical care nurse Amy Loffran.

Speaker 10 Amy is a nurse who is a very good friend of Charles Cullen and often works on the same shift.

Speaker 10 She gave him high alkalades for his abilities.

Speaker 10 So when police approached her and said, we think he could be responsible for these deaths, she did not want to believe it.

Speaker 15 We presented Amy with a sheet, which happened to be Cullen's PIXIS printout.

Speaker 22 PICSIS is a medication dispensing unit and has to be activated by a nurse with an ID,

Speaker 29 along with the drug that is being requested.

Speaker 14 The computer has a log of every time it's in use, so the detectives were able to access Cullen's activity.

Speaker 14 What they found was a lot of digoxin being dispensed.

Speaker 10 The police then showed Amy Charles Pixis' activity. Amy took one look at that printout, and she knew.

Speaker 10 He would put in an order for digoxin and then cancel it, and then claim that it was just a mistake. But there were so many mistakes.

Speaker 10 He also requested drugs that shared the same drawer with digoxin. The inventory was never getting counted, and the machine just kept getting refilled.

Speaker 32 Amy instantly saw a pattern.

Speaker 31 She said he's killing people.

Speaker 14 This wasn't just a coincidence or a few mistakes. This was murder.

Speaker 7 At that point, Amy agreed to help further our investigation by offering her assistance.

Speaker 21 What we came up with was a plan to lure Cullen to going to dinner with Amy and at the same time wear a body wire.

Speaker 26 Amy Laughrin agrees to help detectives get a confession out of Cullen.

Speaker 10 After ordering, she looks him in the eye and she says, I know you killed those people.

Speaker 10 But he says, I'm not going down without a fight.

Speaker 10 It's not really an admission of guilt or a confession, but it was enough that the police could arrest him and start the interrogation so they could get a full confession. confession.

Speaker 23 Moments after

Speaker 30 Cullen was brought back to homicide,

Speaker 28 where Detective Baldwin and I were awaiting his arrival, we just did not have the evidence to put Cullen in jail for the rest of his life.

Speaker 22 The evidence we needed was a confession.

Speaker 35 My name is Detective Sergeant Tim Braun.

Speaker 35 With me is Detective Dan Baldwin. We're both from the Somerset County Major Crimes Unit.
And we are here today for the purpose of obtaining a voluntary tape statement from Mr. Cullen pertaining to the

Speaker 15 death

Speaker 15 of

Speaker 35 Reverend Florian Gall. We are also here to speak to Mr.

Speaker 35 Cullen in reference to several other deaths that occurred. at Somerset Medical Center and other medical and health care facilities.

Speaker 32 He was mirandized and waived his rights and agreed to speak to us.

Speaker 10 They were hoping for a full confession, but they weren't really sure what they would get out of him.

Speaker 10 My intent was to

Speaker 10 decrease suffering in people.

Speaker 26 After 16 years of murdering patients across eight hospitals, and staying out of the reach of law enforcement, Charles Cullen has finally been apprehended.

Speaker 26 However, detectives still need a confession in order to charge him with murder and seek a conviction.

Speaker 35 Mr. Cullen, I'm trying to get some detail here to help us as we progress with this investigation.

Speaker 16 He never tried or attempted to kill anyone.

Speaker 15 I don't even know.

Speaker 15 Okay.

Speaker 7 When we asked about the murders, he did not admit his acts against his victims.

Speaker 35 Charles, could you explain what Pixis is?

Speaker 35 It's

Speaker 39 a computerized medication dispensing machine.

Speaker 15 Right.

Speaker 15 Mr. Cullen, you went into the Pixis system to remove the Joxon.

Speaker 15 I can't give any specifics about that.

Speaker 33 This is your name, correct?

Speaker 14 Yes, it is. Okay.

Speaker 15 What would this be?

Speaker 15 That's under the patient's name.

Speaker 15 Perfect call.

Speaker 35 In the activity column, there's a cancel remove.

Speaker 35 Does this at all help your recollection of this

Speaker 15 event?

Speaker 32 At that point, I think it was clear to him

Speaker 22 that we had enough evidence and that he was not going home.

Speaker 31 He was going to jail.

Speaker 21 He just kind of, in a sense, broke down.

Speaker 15 You too showed me that here. So thank you.

Speaker 16 It's okay to try, Joe.

Speaker 35 Don't feel like you have to hold back.

Speaker 19 He said, I'm ready to talk mr.

Speaker 35 Cullen

Speaker 30 had it been your intention to cause the death of the various patients

Speaker 15 yes it was

Speaker 15 okay

Speaker 24 Cullen did make his confession to Detective Baldwin and I and he took us on a seven hour journey through his career.

Speaker 11 How many patients

Speaker 23 have you helped to their death?

Speaker 15 Possibly 30 to 40 patients.

Speaker 39 30 to 40

Speaker 30 deaths.

Speaker 32 On that day, he said he killed up to 40 people over 16 years.

Speaker 32 But it's our strong belief that those numbers were much higher.

Speaker 7 In fact, in conjunction with the medical records, legal experts later on in the investigation confirmed that the numbers may be well into the hundreds.

Speaker 7 I just couldn't stop. I couldn't stop.

Speaker 35 The

Speaker 35 question that arises out of all of this, Charles, is the why.

Speaker 35 My intent was to

Speaker 35 decrease suffering in people

Speaker 35 I saw throughout my career.

Speaker 35 I

Speaker 35 didn't intend for these

Speaker 35 patients, these people to

Speaker 35 suffer.

Speaker 15 And I kept on going back to that behavior I thought I could change.

Speaker 15 But I don't think I was capable of doing that. I couldn't seem

Speaker 15 to stop trying to do this. It was a dirty, dark secret.
I know I

Speaker 39 have caused suffering for the family members

Speaker 39 that lived through it.

Speaker 14 We'll never be certain of how many victims there actually were.

Speaker 14 Cullen made a deal with New Jersey prosecutors to spare him the death penalty.

Speaker 14 He initially said he believed he killed around 40 people.

Speaker 14 He pleaded guilty to 29 murders.

Speaker 35 Let's talk about the matter pertaining to Florian Gal.

Speaker 35 Are you responsible for his death?

Speaker 26 Yes, I am.

Speaker 35 And why is that, Charlotte?

Speaker 15 Because I injected him with a medication,

Speaker 15 medication called Tejoxa.

Speaker 7 He agreed to cooperate and identify his victims.

Speaker 35 At any time, was Miss Dean your patient?

Speaker 21 No, she was

Speaker 22 in the room of my patient.

Speaker 35 Was it your intent when you injected her?

Speaker 15 Yes, yes it was.

Speaker 35 Any particular reason why you picked that individual knowing that she was on her way home?

Speaker 15 She was actually doing good?

Speaker 15 Well

Speaker 39 If I remember her general status that she

Speaker 16 wasn't doing well.

Speaker 2 He claimed that he was doing it to relieve people of their suffering.

Speaker 29 But as it turned out, in many cases, many of his victims were in nowhere near as critical a condition as he claimed they were.

Speaker 22 In fact, several patients were preparing for discharge.

Speaker 6 and he just decided to take it upon himself to end their lives.

Speaker 9 Very few healthcare serial killers actually have mercy as their motive.

Speaker 6 It's my belief that Cullen's motivation behind his killings

Speaker 15 is his

Speaker 6 desire, his will to exercise power and control in a godly manner almost.

Speaker 10 This was a man who had a lot of loss in his life. From the time he was a baby, losing his father, losing his mother,

Speaker 10 losing his wife. He felt a sense of loss, of power and control in his life constantly, and didn't have the coping mechanisms to deal with it.

Speaker 10 All of his murders were simply the act of him playing God.

Speaker 9 It restored to him a sense that he could control at least his most immediate environment.

Speaker 10 What more power can someone have than over life and death?

Speaker 14 Murder generally falls under state law, so Cullen was charged in both New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Speaker 5 A former nurse who claims he killed as many as 40, quote, very sick patients in New Jersey and Pennsylvania was charged today with murder. He said he did it to ease their pain and suffering.

Speaker 26 Following Cullen's guilty plea, the sentencing phase of his multiple murder case begins.

Speaker 8 The courtroom was filled with victims, victims' families, and onlookers. This was a hot ticket.

Speaker 2 I'm Gary Ashtake, an attorney in Easton, Pennsylvania.

Speaker 8 I was local counsel for the public defender who was representing Charlie Cullen to him. He thought he was providing them with a merciful death and peace, at least from his side.

Speaker 8 Can't be judgmental about that, or can you?

Speaker 4 All of the families knew that Charles Cullen is no angel of mercy.

Speaker 8 I filed the motion requesting that he be excused from sentencing. He already pled guilty.
He already admitted to what he did.

Speaker 2 We knew what the result was going to be.

Speaker 40 We are here today to sentence the defendant, Mr. Charles Cullen.

Speaker 40 Mr. Cullen, are you ready to address society as a whole? Nothing to say.

Speaker 40 I'm sorry?

Speaker 19 Nothing to say.

Speaker 40 Why is that?

Speaker 40 Mr. Cullen, I asked you a question.
Why is it that you have chosen not to address the court?

Speaker 8 All of the victims' families have been told that they were going to be given an opportunity to provide victim impact statements.

Speaker 14 The families of victims have been waiting, in some cases, many years, to face the killer of their loved one.

Speaker 8 He did not want to have to listen to what the victims had to say, but the judge had another agenda.

Speaker 26 Before the judge decides Charles Cullen's fate, the victims' families are allowed to make impact statements.

Speaker 14 The families of victims have been waiting, in some cases, many years, to be able to face the killer of their loved one.

Speaker 8 I filed a motion requesting that he be excused from sentencing. He already pled guilty.
He already admitted to what he did.

Speaker 2 We knew what the result was going to be.

Speaker 8 He did not want to have to listen to what the victims had to say, but the judge had another agenda.

Speaker 41 Why don't you look at me?

Speaker 34 I don't care if you're somebody's little boy toy in prison. That would be too good for you.
I want you to die tomorrow because you know what? There ain't no doors out of hell, babe.

Speaker 25 The judge thought victims have a right to be heard.

Speaker 2 The families need and deserve and have a right to confront this man that took away their loved ones.

Speaker 33 Serial killer, Charles Collin, murdered my mother. You ruined the lives of your family, your children, and many people in this courtroom.
You've bloodied and stained the medical profession.

Speaker 41 As a nurse, I am ashamed of you. In your sick mind, you broke the trust that patients place in us.

Speaker 43 This was not a merciful act.

Speaker 44 He was a devoted, funny, good, and decent man whom you robbed of the quiet and dignified death to which he was entitled.

Speaker 44 There is a part of me that would appreciate the irony of your dying by lethal injection.

Speaker 12 I was convinced he was a mercy killer until I found out about those who were not terminally ill whom he murdered. You are not just a murderer, you are a thief.

Speaker 12 You stole the last years of my father's life.

Speaker 14 Cullen didn't react. He was stone-faced.
He didn't look at them. That was very, very frustrating for the families.

Speaker 45 Charles, why don't you look up at us? I'd like to show you what you did to our children. This is their dad in his coffin.
How do you like that?

Speaker 45 Would you like your children to have something like this happen to them?

Speaker 10 As these family members are speaking, Charles Colin just sat there with his eyes closed, completely checked out.

Speaker 10 It was really just a coping mechanism of him reverting or regressing into his own little world so that he didn't have to deal with what was happening in front of him.

Speaker 43 I miss my son so much.

Speaker 43 I have always been so very proud of Mike

Speaker 33 and the man he had become.

Speaker 8 It was very dramatic.

Speaker 8 They fought on.

Speaker 8 They said what they had to say. They were not going to be deterred.

Speaker 42 Originally, Cullen did not want to appear in court today for sentencing because he would feel uncomfortable when the victims read their victim impact statements to the court.

Speaker 15 Charles Cullen, you are a coward.

Speaker 15 I am very brave for standing here today, but you yet cannot even look me in the eye and face me.

Speaker 14 Between the two states, Cullen was sentenced to 18 life terms for the murder of 29 people and the attempted murder of three more.

Speaker 40 The defendant is sentenced to life in New Jersey State Prison.

Speaker 8 Charles Cullen was able to tell the difference between right and wrong.

Speaker 8 We had him evaluated by one of the top forensic psychologists in America.

Speaker 2 He did not meet the definition of insane.

Speaker 9 Usually healthcare Syriacos aren't psychotic. They wouldn't even get in those positions if they were psychotic.
They wouldn't be able to function. They wouldn't get through school.

Speaker 9 Charles Cullen passed himself off as a successful, competent health care worker and nurse. At the same time, he was a predator in the hospital system, killing people.

Speaker 10 People hear this story and they cannot understand how this individual kept being hired time and time again. What happened?

Speaker 13 It's a national problem. This individual has escaped authorities for 17 years.

Speaker 13 We did a complete criminal background check on this individual and a complete reference check on this individual, and everybody said the following. He left in good standing and his license was intact.

Speaker 13 And that's the outrageous part of this. It's time we protect patients' rights and patients' safety.

Speaker 6 It is my belief that the biggest injustice involved with this case is not only the fact that Charles Cullen

Speaker 2 did what he did, his actions,

Speaker 15 but it's the fact that this monster was able to go on for so many years to kill patients.

Speaker 4 The Charles Cullen investigation uncovered the flaws in the medical system where hospitals monitor themselves without sharing information, where medical practitioners have access to medications that can be poisonous to their patients with little administrative regard to what they do.

Speaker 10 Today, hospitals have far greater security, in no small part in reaction to the murders of Charles Cullen.

Speaker 10 Now, nurses and healthcare practitioners can report suspicious activity. It's always confidential.

Speaker 10 Every death has a review. And cameras are everywhere.
But

Speaker 10 you have to ask,

Speaker 10 is it ever really enough?

Speaker 26 For more information on Notorious, go to oxygen.com.

Speaker 3 On Boxing Day 2018, 20-year-old Joy Morgan was last seen at her church, Israel United in Christ, or IUIC. I just went on my Snapchat and I just see her face plastered everywhere.

Speaker 3 This is The Missing Sister, the true story of a woman betrayed by those she trusted most.

Speaker 46 IUIC is my family and like the best family that I've ever had.

Speaker 3 But IUIC isn't like most churches.

Speaker 18 This is a devilish cult. You know when you get that feeling where you just, I don't want to be here.
I want to get out.

Speaker 3 It's like that feeling of, like, i want to go hang out i'm charlie brinkcoast cuff and after years of investigating joy's case i need to know what really happened to joy

Speaker 3 binge all episodes of the missing sister exclusively and ad-free right now on wondery plus start your free trial of wondery plus on spotify apple podcasts or in the wondery app