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Former Nurse Charles Cullen Pleads Guilty to 13 Murders in a Deal That Spares Him the Death Penalty

Cullen admitted killing 13 patients and trying to kill two more at a New Jersey hospital, and agreed to help investigators look into deaths everywhere he had worked.

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Illustration of an empty county courtroom with wooden benches, sunlit blinds and an old computer at the clerk's desk. Not an actual scene from the case.

Charles Cullen had told investigators he killed as many as 40 patients. On April 29, 2004, the former nurse pleaded guilty in Somerville, New Jersey, to 13 murders, in a deal that spared him the death penalty.

Cullen, 44, also admitted two attempted murders. All 15 crimes took place in 2003 at Somerset Medical Center, and during the hourlong hearing he named the drugs he had used in each. Wearing a bulletproof vest under his sport shirt, he said little beyond "Yes, your honor," though he twice corrected his own lawyer, Johnnie Mask: once to say that one crime was an attempted murder rather than a murder, and once to say that a victim was a man, not a woman.

In exchange for his cooperation, prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty for any murders in five New Jersey counties and two Pennsylvania counties. Cullen agreed to plead guilty to every murder he had committed, including a 1998 killing in Easton, Pennsylvania, and to help investigators look into deaths at the nine hospitals and one nursing home where he had worked during his 16-year career. New Jersey authorities said he would not be eligible for parole for 127½ years, to be served consecutively with a Pennsylvania sentence without parole. Attorney General Peter Harvey would not estimate how many people Cullen had killed but said the 40 he claimed after his arrest on December 12, 2003, were not impossible.

Relatives of the victims crowded the courtroom. The daughter of Ottomar Schramm, whom Cullen says he killed in Pennsylvania in 1998, said the hearing had made her angrier. "Seeing him today and hearing him, I don't think that he is crazy," she said. The wife of Christopher Hardgrove, 38, one of the victims, said she had hoped Cullen would explain his motives. "I'd like to know why," she said.

The Associated Press described Cullen's career as spanning nine hospitals and one nursing home, while a shorter AP summary said he had worked at 10 hospitals.

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