Charles Cullen worked as a registered nurse for 16 years, in nine hospitals and a nursing home in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Over that time he gave patients deadly doses of medication, most often the heart drug digoxin. Between 2004 and 2006 he pleaded guilty to murdering 29 patients and trying to murder six more. He told detectives the real number was 30 to 40, and investigators who worked the case believe it may be far higher.
He was caught in 2003 at Somerset Medical Center in Somerville, New Jersey, after the state's poison control center spotted a run of overdoses that made no medical sense. Two county detectives traced the drugs to him through the hospital's computerized medication cabinets, and a fellow nurse who was his friend agreed to help them. Prosecutors in seven counties agreed not to seek the death penalty in exchange for his help in naming his victims. He is serving consecutive life sentences in New Jersey.
The case also exposed how he had been able to keep working. Several employers suspected him, fired him or let him resign, and none of their suspicions followed him to the next job. Lawsuits, a confidential settlement with five hospitals, and new reporting laws in New Jersey and Pennsylvania came out of it.
Cullen was born on February 22, 1960, in West Orange, New Jersey, according to Salon. He was the youngest of eight children of a working-class Irish Catholic family, and his father died soon after he was born, according to his biographer, the journalist Charles Graeber. His mother supported the household by sewing and with help from charity, and a sickly aunt lived with them. Graeber told NPR's Fresh Air in 2013 that two of Cullen's brothers had substance abuse problems, that his sisters came and went, and that Cullen remembered the home as unsafe and his childhood as miserable. He was close to his mother, who protected him.
His mother died in a car crash during his senior year of high school. In the account Graeber gives in his book, Cullen blamed the hospital that received her body. He tried to kill himself and he joined the Navy. Cullen told 60 Minutes in 2013 that he had tried to kill himself many times, starting when he was young, and in his recorded confession he said he had never really liked being who he was.
He left high school in 1978 and enlisted in the Navy, The Philadelphia Inquirer and Salon reported; Graeber's book says he later earned a GED. Salon reported that he reached the rank of petty officer second class, was hazed and bullied, and received a medical discharge in 1984. Graeber said there were episodes of strange behavior in the Navy and what appeared to be suicide attempts.
In March 1984 Cullen enrolled at the Mountainside Hospital School of Nursing in Montclair, New Jersey. He was the only man in his class, and a classmate talked him into running for honorary class president, which he won. He paid his way with jobs at Dunkin' Donuts, Caldor and Roy Rogers, and through the last of those he met the woman he married, a Roy Rogers manager with a business degree. They were engaged about six months after their first date and married the week after he finished nursing school. These details come from the opening chapter of Graeber's book, published as an excerpt by NPR and WNYC. The Inquirer and Salon give his graduation year as 1986.
He came back a day early from his honeymoon at Niagara Falls to start work in the burn unit at Saint Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston, New Jersey. NBC New York dated his start to June 1987.
The first death in his guilty pleas happened there. On June 11, 1988, John W. Yengo Sr., 72, of Jersey City, died at Saint Barnabas. He was a municipal court judge, and Cullen killed him by putting the heart drug lidocaine into his intravenous line, according to the Inquirer and Salon. Cullen later admitted killing other patients at Saint Barnabas as well, Salon reported, among them a man with AIDS whom he gave an overdose of insulin; those deaths were not among the charges.
According to Graeber, speaking to CBS in 2013, Cullen told investigators he had "dosed" three or four people a week at his first job and did not know what happened to all of them. Graeber told Fresh Air that Cullen had given Essex County detectives a figure of two or three times a week for that period. Only one death from those years has been definitely identified.
Around 1991, staff in the intensive care and coronary care units saw patients crash without warning, and insulin was found in intravenous bags kept in a supply closet, Graeber said. The hospital's security chief believed Cullen was responsible but could not prove it. Cullen was taken off the schedule through a staffing agency owned by the hospital, and he left in early 1992. Salon dated his departure to January 1992, during the hospital's inquiry into contaminated IV bags. Graeber said Cullen passed two polygraph tests in the course of his career and lied in both.
Cullen next worked at Warren Hospital in Phillipsburg, New Jersey, which hired him on neutral references, standard practice at a time when nurses were in short supply, according to Graeber. CBS New York described the move to Warren as the start of the run of killings that lasted until 2003.
At Warren he killed three elderly women with digoxin, the Inquirer reported. Fox News, publishing the list of victims in his pleas, named them as Lucy Mugavero, 90, of Phillipsburg, who died on March 9, 1993; Mary Natoli, 85, of Phillipsburg, who died on July 23, 1993; and Helen Dean, 91, of Lopatcong Township, who died on September 1, 1993. At his sentencing in 2006, Mary Natoli's granddaughter, Debra Yetter Medina, told him there was "no door out of hell."
His private life was coming apart in the same years. The Inquirer reported a bitter divorce in the 1990s, a bankruptcy in 1998, and at least three hospital stays for depression and suicide attempts in the decade before his arrest. In March 1993 he was arrested for stalking a co-worker after breaking into her home in Pennsylvania; he pleaded guilty to trespassing and was put on a year's probation, Salon reported. None of this cost him his license. When he was arrested in 2003, New Jersey's Division of Consumer Affairs said he had no complaints or disciplinary actions on record since he was licensed in 1987, and his Pennsylvania license, held since June 1994, was in good standing.
After two months off, Cullen went to the intensive care unit of Hunterdon Medical Center in Flemington, New Jersey, according to Salon. He later admitted killing five patients there with digoxin in 1996. The five named in his pleas were LeRoy Sinn, 71, who died on January 21, 1996; Earl Young, 76, May 31, 1996; Catherine Dext, 49, June 9, 1996; Frank Mazzacco, 66, June 24, 1996; and Jesse Eichlin, 81, July 10, 1996.
He then moved to Morristown Memorial Hospital. A spokeswoman for its parent company said in 2003 that he was fired in August 1997 for "poor performance." Salon reported that he was then out of work for six months and went to the emergency room at Warren Hospital seeking treatment for depression.
In February 1998 Cullen went to work at the Liberty Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Allentown, Pennsylvania. NBC New York reported that he was fired after a resident was injured. Salon's 2022 account attributes the death of another resident there to him, a death blamed at the time on a different nurse; no death at Liberty was among the charges. Even so, Liberty gave him a positive reference when he later applied to St. Luke's Hospital, the hospital said in 2003.
From November 1998 to March 1999 he worked at Easton Hospital in Easton, Pennsylvania, Salon reported. Ottomar Schramm, 78, of Bethlehem, a retired Bethlehem Steel worker, died there on December 30, 1998, from an overdose of heart medication. An inquiry into the suspicious death ended without result, NBC New York reported. Schramm's death became the single Northampton County murder in Cullen's pleas.
He also worked at Lehigh Valley Hospital in Salisbury Township, near Allentown; the Lehigh County district attorney said his employment there ran from 1998 to 2000, while Salon described a short stint in the burn unit at its Cedar Crest campus from March 1999. Matthew Mattern, 22, of Shamokin, Pennsylvania, died at Lehigh Valley Hospital on August 31, 1999, and Cullen pleaded guilty to his murder. He also pleaded guilty to the attempted murder of Stella Danielczyk, 73, of Larksville, in February 2000. Lehigh Valley Hospital, like Liberty, later gave him a positive reference.
Cullen worked in the coronary care unit at St. Luke's Hospital, which reports place in Bethlehem or in Fountain Hill, from June 5, 2000, to June 5, 2002, according to a 2016 opinion of the Superior Court of Pennsylvania. He pleaded guilty to five murders there. The victims named in his pleas were Irene Krapf, 79, of Tamaqua, who died on June 22, 2001; William Park, 72, of Lehighton, November 8, 2001; Samuel Spangler, 80, of Bethlehem, January 9, 2002; Daniel George, 82, of Bethlehem, May 5, 2002; and Edward O'Toole, 76, of Bethlehem, June 2, 2002. He also pleaded guilty to trying to kill John Gallagher, 90, on February 8, 2001, and Paul Galgon, 72, on December 28, 2001.
Nurses on the unit grew uneasy about missing medications. In June 2002, two unopened heart medications were found hidden in a needle disposal bin, and he was taken off patient care, according to the hospital's spokeswoman, Susan Schantz. Lehigh County District Attorney James Martin later said Cullen had twice hidden unopened heart and blood pressure drugs in such a bin. Cullen quit rather than cooperate with the hospital's inquiry, Schantz said. The Pennsylvania court put it this way: he resigned when told he was suspected of giving patients medications that had not been authorized. Cullen himself told 60 Minutes that St. Luke's had offered him a neutral reference if he resigned, and that his license should have been taken away much earlier.
One nurse took her concerns to the district attorney. Martin's office reviewed the records of 67 patients who had died in the coronary care unit during Cullen's last six months there and found no evidence of wrongdoing; Martin closed the case by letter on May 28, 2003. The Pennsylvania court later summed up that inquiry as having "bore little fruit," and noted that the death certificates of the patients Cullen later confessed to killing listed causes consistent with their illnesses. St. Luke's said after his arrest that it had told the state nursing board, which then moved to revoke his license.
His co-workers' suspicions did not reach his next employers. St. Luke's later told local hospitals privately that Cullen was not eligible to be rehired, but when Somerset Medical Center asked about him, it left that out, a New Jersey judge found in 2007. "Had we been asked, we would have recommended that he not be hired," Schantz said in 2004.
In July 2002 Cullen spent about two weeks at Sacred Heart Hospital in Allentown, which fired him for what a spokesman called "interpersonal problems with existing employees." The Inquirer and NBC New York put his time there at 16 days. By 2003, the Inquirer reported, he had been fired from four of his previous seven jobs.
In September 2002 Cullen started in critical care at Somerset Medical Center in Somerville, New Jersey. The hospital's chief medical officer, Dr. William Cors, said later that Somerset had confirmed his New Jersey license and that his references gave only his dates of employment. "Short of an actual conviction for a criminal act, there is nothing that needs to be reported when someone is fired," Cors said in December 2003.
The opening chapter of Graeber's book finds him in October 2003 living in Bethlehem with his girlfriend and her two teenage sons, driving 45 minutes each way to Somerset, and earning 27.50 dollars an hour. He held certifications in advanced cardiac life support and critical care, and colleagues saw him as a dependable hire who would take nights, weekends and holidays. Graeber described him as charming, self-deprecating and narcissistic, and said he was often on the code teams that answered cardiac emergencies, where he was praised for being first in.
He killed more patients at Somerset than anywhere else: 13 in about 13 months, according to CBS. The Somerset victims named in his pleas were:
Eleanor Stoecker, 60, of Bedminster, who died on February 12, 2003. She had asthma, was recovering and was in no pain when he gave her a fatal overdose of digoxin, CBS reported. Her son Richard J. Stoecker spoke at the sentencing.
Joyce E. Mangini, 74, of Raritan, February 23, 2003.
Giacomino J. "Jack" Toto, 89, of Bridgewater, February 23, 2003. His daughter, Dolores Stasienko, came from Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, to speak at the sentencing.
John J. Shanagher, 83, of Bridgewater, March 11, 2003. His son, John Shanagher, said the family would never feel safe in a hospital again.
Dorthea K. Hoagland, 80, of Middlesex, April 6, 2003.
Melvin T. Simcoe, 66, of Green Brook, May 5, 2003.
Michael T. Strenko, 21, of Manville, May 15, 2003, his youngest victim. A college student with an autoimmune disease, he was recovering from routine surgery to remove his spleen.
The Very Rev. Florian J. Gall, 68, of Whitehouse Station, a Roman Catholic pastor, June 28, 2003. He was recovering from pneumonia when he died unexpectedly. His sister, Lucille Gall, said at the sentencing that there was no closure for the families.
Pasquale M. Napolitano, 80, of Peapack-Gladstone, July 13, 2003.
Christopher B. Hardgrove, 38, of Somerville, August 11, 2003.
Krishnakant Upadhyay, 70, of Bridgewater, September 20, 2003.
James R. Strickland, 83, of Bowie, Maryland, September 23, 2003.
Edward P. Zizik, 73, of Three Bridges, October 21, 2003.
He also pleaded guilty to trying to kill three Somerset patients: Philip Gregor, 48, of South Bound Brook, on June 18, 2003; Jin Kyung Han, 40, of Basking Ridge, on June 29, 2003; and Frances Agoada, 83, of Franklin Township, on August 27, 2003.
In July 2003 a pharmacist at Somerset contacted the New Jersey Poison Information and Education System about suspicious cases, NBC New York reported. Graeber said an assistant pharmacist reached Dr. Bruce Ruck at the poison center, and that Ruck and his supervisor, Dr. Steven Marcus, the center's director, pressed the hospital to act and said they would report it themselves if it did not. The center found several patients with digoxin overdoses or unexplained high insulin levels.
Marcus spoke by telephone with Cors about the deaths and urged him to go to the police. Marcus recorded the call, and 60 Minutes later aired it. On the tape, Cors said the hospital was weighing "throwing the whole institution into chaos" against its duty to protect patients, and that "we have been trying to investigate this" before rushing to judgment. About three months passed before the hospital contacted law enforcement, CBS reported, and in that time Cullen killed five more patients. "I'll remember them for the rest of my life," Marcus said in 2013. Marcus told News 12 New Jersey in 2025 that when the hospital declined to report, he went to the state Department of Health himself, and that nothing happened until Somerset called law enforcement months later.
Somerset contacted the state police in October 2003, NBC New York reported, and fired Cullen on October 31. CBS reported that the stated reason was that he had lied on his job application. An internal review had found questionable laboratory results in six patients, who, Cors said, had "multiple, serious medical problems."
The case went to Detectives Tim Braun and Danny Baldwin of the Somerset County Prosecutor's Office. Braun told 60 Minutes in 2013 that the hospital's cooperation went as far as answering court-ordered subpoenas. Somerset gave them a short document and, they said, no notes of its interviews, according to Graeber.
The unit's drugs came out of automated dispensing cabinets made by Pyxis, which recorded who withdrew what. The hospital told the detectives that the system kept records for only about two months. The manufacturer told them the data was stored indefinitely, and that, Graeber said, broke the case open. Asked by Steve Kroft whether the hospital had lied to them, Braun said, "Yes they did." Asked whether it had obstructed the investigation, he said, "They didn't try to help it, that's for sure." Somerset said in a 2013 statement that it had "fully cooperated."
The records showed Cullen requesting drugs his patients had not been prescribed. He had learned to place and cancel orders so that the drugs came out without leaving a record, NBC New York reported, and when he realized investigators were watching that pattern, he switched to ordering large quantities of acetaminophen, which was kept in the same drawer as digoxin.
The detectives needed someone close to him. Amy Loughren, a single mother of two, had worked as an intensive care nurse at Somerset from about 2000 and had become Cullen's friend. In 2013, when she spoke to CBS, she used the surname Ridgway. She told Fox News in 2022 that he was funny, sarcastic and unusually knowledgeable about medications, and that she trusted him more than any nurse she had worked with. She had cardiomyopathy, a disease of the heart muscle, and on days when she felt faint he would quietly cover for her.
After Cullen was fired, investigators approached her. When she saw the records of his drug withdrawals, she was convinced something was wrong. She helped the detectives read his drug orders and worked with them and an assistant prosecutor in secret, though she was ill and had been told she might need a heart transplant. She said she felt she had failed to protect the patients and needed to act for their families and for the nurses she represented. Wearing a wire, she met Cullen at a restaurant while detectives waited outside. She said he turned smug and proud during the meeting, and that she saw something in him she had not seen before.
Loughren also recalled having once walked in on Cullen injecting a patient without understanding what she was seeing. She told CBS in 2013 that learning the truth about him was "the most devastating moment of my entire life," and that she believed he was sorry only that he had been caught. She visited him in jail several times; he stopped answering her letters when he learned she was working with prosecutors, NBC New York reported.
Cullen was arrested on December 12, 2003. He was 43, and he was charged with murdering Father Gall and attempting to murder another Somerset patient. Two days after the arrest he admitted to Braun and Baldwin that he had killed Gall and tried to kill Jin Kyung Han, Salon reported. At first he told a detective he had killed 12 to 15 patients, and later he put the number at 30 to 40, NBC New York reported. On the confession tape aired by 60 Minutes he said 30 to 40. He said there was a long period of his life he could not remember, Graeber said.
When he was arrested, he described the killings as mercy killings of "very sick" patients, the Associated Press reported. Many of the victims were old and gravely ill, but some were not near death, and some were recovering or close to being sent home.
Most of the deaths could not be proven without his cooperation, investigators said later. Prosecutors offered a deal: in return for his cooperation in identifying victims from 1984, when he entered nursing school, to his arrest, they would not seek the death penalty for any murder in five New Jersey counties and two Pennsylvania counties. He would receive multiple life sentences in each state and serve them in New Jersey, with no parole eligibility in New Jersey for 127 and a half years and none in Pennsylvania. He also agreed to help regulators work out how to prevent such crimes. "We need to use Mr. Cullen and we need to debrief him to find out how he was able to accomplish what he accomplished," said New Jersey Attorney General Peter Harvey.
On April 29, 2004, in Somerset County, Cullen pleaded guilty to 13 murders, all at Somerset Medical Center in 2003, and to two attempted murders there. He agreed to plead guilty to the 1998 murder of Ottomar Schramm in Northampton County. The hearing took about an hour. He wore a bulletproof vest under his shirt, said little beyond "Yes, your honor" and the names of the drugs, and twice corrected his lawyer, Johnnie Mask: once to say a count was an attempted murder, and once to point out that a victim was a man. Janette Hardgrove, whose husband, Christopher, was among the victims, said she was disappointed he did not explain himself. "I'd like to know why," she said. Schramm's daughter said she had thought Cullen was crazy but no longer believed it.
In May 2004, in Belvidere, New Jersey, in a Warren County case, he pleaded guilty to killing three more patients at Warren Hospital in 1993, among them Lucy Mugavero and Mary Natoli, bringing his admitted murders to 16. Warren County Prosecutor Thomas Ferguson handled the case.
Later in 2004, in a Lehigh County courtroom in Allentown, he pleaded guilty to six murders and three attempted murders: five deaths at St. Luke's, one at Lehigh Valley Hospital, and nonfatal overdoses at both. Prosecutors said two more St. Luke's patients had become sick from overdoses and later died but that their deaths might have had other causes. All of the victims had been seriously ill, District Attorney Martin said, but not all were expected to die soon. CBS, reporting the plea, put his total at that point at 23 fatal overdoses and 5 nonfatal ones.
The remaining New Jersey pleas covered the five Hunterdon deaths, the death of Judge Yengo at Saint Barnabas, and a third attempted murder at Somerset. By early 2006 his pleas stood at 29 murders and 6 attempted murders: 22 murders and 3 attempts in New Jersey, and 7 murders and 3 attempts in Pennsylvania.
In late 2005 Cullen asked to donate a kidney to a relative of a friend, a man in New York who was dying. Prosecutors said he could not do it before he was sentenced and postponed the sentencing indefinitely, the Inquirer reported; Cullen then said he would stop cooperating. "He's either going to die in jail or pursuant to the death penalty," Attorney General Peter C. Harvey said.
In February 2006, Superior Court Judge Paul W. Armstrong ruled in Somerville that Cullen must attend his sentencing, set for March 2, so that relatives could speak to him in person. Cullen had asked to skip it and then withdrawn the request; the judge ruled anyway so that he could not change his mind. Armstrong allowed the kidney donation after sentencing, though New Jersey officials and Cullen disagreed over whether the operation should take place in New York or New Jersey. "He has to hear that we're human beings," said John Shanagher.
On March 2, 2006, about 60 relatives filled the courtroom in Somerville. Cullen, 46, again wore a bulletproof vest. When given the chance to speak, he said he had "nothing to say." Judge Armstrong sentenced him to 11 consecutive life terms for 22 murders and 3 attempted murders. "You betrayed the ancient foundations of the healing professions," the judge told him.
"In case he forgot what my mother looked like, look into my eyes now, Mr. Cullen," said Richard J. Stoecker, whose mother, Eleanor, died in February 2003. "You don't even have the guts to look this way, do you?" Dolores Stasienko, Jack Toto's daughter, called him a demon from the lowest depths of hell. Others called him vermin and garbage.
On March 10, 2006, he was sentenced in both Pennsylvania counties. In Northampton County, in an 11-minute hearing he did not attend, he received a life sentence without parole for the murder of Ottomar Schramm, his twelfth life term. "We live in a world touched by someone else's evil and that will never change," said Schramm's daughter, Kristina Toth. "I wish someone would make Charles Cullen answer why he picked my dad."
The same day, in Allentown, President Judge William Platt of Lehigh County sentenced him to six more life terms, bringing the total to 18. Cullen objected to remarks the judge had made to a newspaper about compelling him to attend, and he repeated "Your honor, you need to step down" hundreds of times over about 30 minutes. The judge had him gagged with a cloth and duct tape. He kept on, and the hearing went ahead. "We think you are a total waste of human flesh," Walter Henne, Irene Krapf's son-in-law, told him. Julie Sanders, a friend of John Gallagher, said Cullen had meant to show disrespect to everyone in the courtroom.
In August 2006 Cullen donated a kidney to the dying New York man and returned to prison the same month, the Inquirer reported.
Cullen was held at New Jersey State Prison in Trenton, where Steve Kroft interviewed him for more than an hour in early 2013. Salon reported in 2022 that he was in protective custody there. The Inquirer reported in 2022 that he was serving 18 consecutive life sentences with an earliest possible parole date of June 2388; Salon gave June 10, 2388.
Reports differ on how they count his sentences. CBS New York said in 2013 that he was serving 11 life terms in New Jersey, the national CBS News site said 17, and the Associated Press, the Inquirer and Fox News have given 18.
The 60 Minutes interview, broadcast on April 28, 2013, was his first on television and, CBS said, the first time the program had interviewed a serial killer in its 45 years on the air. He said he had thought "people aren't suffering anymore, so in a sense, I thought I was helping." When Kroft pointed out that several victims were neither close to death nor in great pain, he said there was "no justification" and that he had "felt overwhelmed at the time." Asked what he would tell the families, he said he had felt he needed to do something, and did, and that this was not an answer to anything.
He said he had come to accept the word murderer. "I think that I had a lot of trouble accepting that word for a long time, but I accept it," he said. Asked whether he was sorry, he said yes. "But like I said, I don't know if I would have stopped."
Of his total, he said, "Forty is the estimate. I gave the number between 30 and 40," and he thought investigators had identified most of them. Digoxin, he explained, can cause "complete heart block" in larger amounts.
Graeber, who spent six years on the case and said in April 2013 that he was the only journalist to have interviewed Cullen in prison, rejects the mercy explanation. He told Fresh Air that the killings had nothing to do with what patients needed or wanted and were about Cullen himself. Some patients were put into insulin shock, or through repeated cardiac crises followed by shocks and resuscitation. Graeber does not regard Cullen as clinically insane, and he said the nickname "angel of death" misrepresents him. Loughren has said the patients he chose were often recovering or about to be discharged, and some were young.
Families of the New Jersey victims sued in New Jersey Superior Court. In August 2007 Superior Court Judge Bryan D. Garruto, sitting in New Brunswick, refused to dismiss St. Luke's from the case. He found that the hospital had not affirmatively described Cullen as a model employee, but that it had told other local hospitals he was not to be rehired while leaving that out when Somerset asked, so it was not immune from liability. He also let Somerset add similar negligence claims against St. Luke's.
In February 2008, after four days of court-ordered mediation, the families reached a confidential settlement with five hospitals: Saint Barnabas, Warren, Hunterdon, Somerset and St. Luke's, the Associated Press reported. No amount was disclosed. St. Luke's said the settlement was not an admission of wrongdoing, and its spokeswoman called Cullen's actions "the ultimate betrayal of the sacred trust between nurses and patients." The families' lawyer, Michael Barrett, who represented the families of Father Gall and Michael Strenko, said the four years of litigation had been "a constant reminder of their loss."
In Pennsylvania, eight families whose relatives had died at St. Luke's while Cullen worked there sued him in Lehigh County. He did not respond or put up a defense, and Judge Edward Reibman ruled him responsible for the eight deaths. In March 2010 a jury awarded the families 95 million dollars after three hours of deliberation. The largest share, 18 million dollars, went to the family of Debra Shachter, who died at 41 and left a husband and three daughters. Cullen had said in court papers that he had no money; the families' lawyer, Mark Altemose, said the award would let them collect if he ever sold his story. None of these eight deaths was among his criminal convictions. Graeber counts them as about eight more deaths for which Cullen was held liable in civil court.
Another set of suits went on for more than a decade. In 2004 two families, those of Regina Miller and Marilyn Hall, sued St. Luke's for wrongful death. The court ruled for the hospital in 2009 because the families lacked expert testimony on negligence, and the ruling was upheld in 2010. St. Luke's then sued the families, their lawyers and a doctor for wrongful use of civil proceedings, later dropping its claims against the families themselves. The families sued in turn. On July 1, 2014, a jury found that St. Luke's had lacked probable cause to keep pursuing its suit and had acted for an improper purpose, but awarded no damages. The Superior Court of Pennsylvania affirmed that verdict on June 24, 2016.
New Jersey's Patient Safety Act, approved on April 27, 2004, two days before Cullen's first guilty plea, requires health care facilities to report serious preventable adverse events to the state and to tell patients or their families about them. The text of the law does not mention Cullen.
The law that grew directly out of his case came a year later. The Health Care Professional Responsibility and Reporting Enhancement Act, approved on May 3, 2005, requires hospitals and other health care entities to report to the state Division of Consumer Affairs, within seven days, when they discharge a licensed professional, cut or suspend privileges, or accept a resignation during a review, among other actions. It requires them to keep complaint and disciplinary records for seven years and to tell other employers truthfully, when asked, whether they made such a report. It protects good-faith reports and references from lawsuits, obliges professionals to report colleagues who pose an imminent danger, and requires criminal background checks for licensing. Its sponsor, State Senator Joseph F. Vitale, said Cullen had abused the trust placed in health care workers. "The culture of secrecy and the 'Hear no evil, See no evil' attitude will, we believe, end today," he said. Somerset and other New Jersey hospitals supported the measure, which became known as the Cullen law, Fox News reported.
In Pennsylvania, Gov. Ed Rendell signed a law in 2005 protecting employers from lawsuits over the work histories they disclose about current or former employees, the Inquirer reported. The Associated Press reported in 2006 that lawmakers in both states had passed laws protecting hospitals and nursing homes that report disciplinary action against employees.
In 2025 Marcus told News 12 New Jersey that the laws do not go far enough. He argued that unexplained overdoses should be reported to the Department of Health and investigated in the way hospital-acquired infections are. The department said facilities are not required to report suspicions to it, but that this did not relieve them of their duty to report to law enforcement.
Graeber's book, The Good Nurse: A True Story of Medicine, Madness, and Murder, was published in 2013. Cullen was reported to be unhappy with it. Netflix released a film of the same name in October 2022, with Eddie Redmayne as Cullen and Jessica Chastain as Amy Loughren. The Inquirer described it as fictionalized and focused mostly on the months before his arrest. Loughren said the film helped her move past trauma from the case. A documentary, Capturing the Killer Nurse, directed by Tim Travers, appeared the same year with audio of Cullen and interviews with victims' relatives, detectives and Loughren.
Twenty-nine murders are what the courts recorded. Cullen's own estimate was 30 to 40. Graeber told 60 Minutes he would be very surprised if the true figure were not "in the hundreds, multiple hundreds," and Braun has said the toll could reach "multiple hundreds." "Every facility he worked at, he killed," Braun told News 12 in 2025. These higher figures are estimates, not findings.
In December 2025 News 12 New Jersey reported on two families who believe their relatives may have been among the uncounted. Harry Frasca and John McKernan died at Saint Barnabas in 1989 and 1991, when Cullen was among those caring for them. Both deaths were ruled heart attacks. McKernan's son said his father was found to have high levels of digoxin although the family did not use it. Frasca's daughter said that when she asked the Essex County Prosecutor's Office to look again, the person she spoke to asked whether he was supposed to give Cullen another life sentence. A former cold case detective, Aileen Clowes, said the office briefly reopened the case in 2023 after receiving information about a possible victim, and that a captain soon told her to stop. A spokesman declined to say why the inquiry ended, but noted that New Jersey has no statute of limitations for murder, so the matter "remains subject to potential prosecution."
As of December 2025, News 12 New Jersey reported that Cullen was serving life in prison for the murders of 29 patients. Reports from 2022 placed him at New Jersey State Prison in Trenton.
Proven by final judgment, on his guilty pleas: 29 murders and 6 attempted murders, 22 and 3 in New Jersey and 7 and 3 in Pennsylvania, all named in the published list of victims.
Admitted but never charged: the deaths beyond the 29 that fall within his own estimate of 30 to 40, including the patient with AIDS at Saint Barnabas.
Attributed in civil court only: eight deaths at St. Luke's, for which a Lehigh County judge held him responsible in a 2010 civil case he did not defend.
Suspected and unproven: totals in the hundreds suggested by Graeber and Braun; the 1989 and 1991 Saint Barnabas deaths raised by the Frasca and McKernan families; a death at the Liberty nursing home that Salon attributes to him.
Details that vary between sources: his nursing school graduation (1986 in the Inquirer and Salon; NBC New York says 1984, the year he enrolled); when he left St. Luke's (June 5, 2002, according to the Pennsylvania court and the hospital; September 2002 in later AP reports); his dates at Lehigh Valley Hospital (1998 to 2000 according to the Lehigh district attorney; from March 1999 for about a month according to Salon); how often he gave overdoses at his first job (three or four times a week, or two or three, both attributed to him by Graeber); the number of life sentences (11, 17 or 18; 18 is the combined total of 11 in New Jersey and 7 in Pennsylvania); the earliest parole date (June 2388 in 2022 reports); and whether his first charge in Somerset County was one attempted murder or two. One 2022 report calls the New Jersey judge "Paul W. Parker" and says he pleaded guilty to all 29 murders in 2005; court reporting at the time names Judge Paul W. Armstrong and shows the pleas spread from 2004 to 2006.
February 22, 1960: Charles Cullen is born in West Orange, New Jersey.
1978: leaves high school and enlists in the Navy.
1984: medical discharge from the Navy; enrolls at Mountainside Hospital School of Nursing, Montclair, in March.
1986: graduates from nursing school (Inquirer and Salon).
June 1987: starts in the burn unit at Saint Barnabas Medical Center, Livingston (NBC New York).
June 11, 1988: Judge John W. Yengo Sr. dies at Saint Barnabas; the first death in his pleas.
Around 1991: insulin found in IV bags at Saint Barnabas; he leaves in early 1992.
1992: joins Warren Hospital, Phillipsburg.
March 1993: arrested after breaking into a co-worker's home; pleads guilty to trespassing, one year's probation.
March 9, July 23 and September 1, 1993: deaths of Lucy Mugavero, Mary Natoli and Helen Dean at Warren Hospital.
January 21 to July 10, 1996: five patients die at Hunterdon Medical Center, Flemington.
August 1997: fired by Morristown Memorial Hospital for poor performance.
February 1998: starts at Liberty Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, Allentown.
December 30, 1998: Ottomar Schramm dies at Easton Hospital.
August 31, 1999: Matthew Mattern dies at Lehigh Valley Hospital.
February 2000: attempted murder of Stella Danielczyk at Lehigh Valley Hospital.
June 5, 2000: starts in the coronary care unit at St. Luke's Hospital, Bethlehem.
February 2001 to June 2002: five murders and two attempted murders at St. Luke's.
June 2002: unopened heart drugs found in a needle disposal bin; he resigns (June 5, 2002, per the Pennsylvania court).
July 2002: about two weeks at Sacred Heart Hospital, Allentown; fired.
September 2002: starts at Somerset Medical Center, Somerville.
February 12 to October 21, 2003: 13 Somerset patients die by his hand, among them Michael Strenko (May 15) and Father Florian Gall (June 28); three others survive his attempts.
May 28, 2003: Lehigh County district attorney closes the St. Luke's inquiry.
July 2003: a Somerset pharmacist contacts the New Jersey poison center.
October 2003: Somerset contacts the state police; fires Cullen on October 31.
December 12, 2003: arrested; two days later he admits killing Gall and trying to kill Jin Kyung Han.
April 27, 2004: New Jersey's Patient Safety Act approved.
April 29, 2004: pleads guilty in Somerset County to 13 murders and 2 attempted murders.
May 2004: pleads guilty in Warren County to three murders.
2004: pleads guilty in Lehigh County to six murders and three attempted murders.
May 3, 2005: New Jersey's Health Care Professional Responsibility and Reporting Enhancement Act approved.
Late 2005: dispute over his kidney donation delays sentencing.
February 2006: Judge Armstrong orders him to attend sentencing and allows the donation.
March 2, 2006: 11 consecutive life terms in New Jersey for 22 murders and 3 attempted murders.
March 10, 2006: life without parole in Northampton County; six life terms in Lehigh County, where he is gagged in court.
August 2006: donates a kidney and returns to prison.
August 21, 2007: a New Jersey judge rules St. Luke's can be sued over his hiring by Somerset.
February 2008: confidential settlement between New Jersey families and five hospitals.
March 2010: Lehigh County jury awards 95 million dollars to eight families in a civil case against Cullen.
2013: Graeber's book published; April 28, 2013, the 60 Minutes interview is broadcast.
July 1, 2014: jury finds St. Luke's lacked probable cause in its suit against two families; affirmed June 24, 2016.
October 2022: The Good Nurse film and Capturing the Killer Nurse documentary released.
2023: Essex County prosecutors briefly reopen inquiries into possible further victims.
December 2025: serving life in prison, per News 12 New Jersey.