Former Nurse Charles Cullen Gets 11 Consecutive Life Terms as Victims' Families Confront Him in Court
Relatives spoke for nearly four hours while Cullen sat silent. He will not be eligible for parole for 397 years, and Pennsylvania added more life terms a week later.
Published
For nearly four hours, relatives of the patients Charles Cullen killed told him what he had taken from them. On March 2, 2006, a judge in Somerville, New Jersey, sentenced the former nurse to 11 consecutive life terms.
Superior Court Judge Paul W. Armstrong rejected Cullen's earlier claim that he was ending patients' suffering, saying the court "would not countenance the characterization of these crimes as acts of human compassion." Cullen, 46, will not be eligible for parole until he has served 397 years. He had pleaded guilty to 22 murders in New Jersey and seven in Pennsylvania and admitted attempting to murder six people, under a deal that spared him the death penalty in return for helping prosecutors identify the patients he killed. He had once told authorities he killed up to 40 people in a 16-year nursing career.
About 60 relatives attended, and Cullen, wearing a bulletproof vest, sat with his eyes closed or lowered and told the judge he had "nothing to say." The daughter of Jack Toto, 89, held up a photo of her father and called Cullen a monster. "Maybe you thought you could play God that day by injecting her, but she planned on living, she was a fighter," the son of Eleanor Stoecker said. The mother of Cullen's youngest victim, who was 21, said, "I walk around with a hole in my heart."
On March 10, a judge in Northampton County, Pennsylvania, sentenced Cullen to life for the 1998 murder of Ottomar Schramm at Easton Hospital. At a second hearing that day in Lehigh County, where he admitted killing six patients, Cullen chanted at the judge for 25 minutes, demanding that he step down, and deputies placed a mesh hood over his head.
Sources
- Killer nurse gets 11 life sentences, CNN
- N.J. Killer Gets 11 Life Sentences, Fox News (Associated Press)
- Cullen's outburst stuns courtroom: serial killer targets sentencing judge with relentless chant, refuses to be quiet, The Morning Call (Allentown)
Related News
- December 15, 2003: Nurse Charles Cullen Charged With Murder, Tells Investigators He Killed 30 to 40 Patients
- April 29, 2004: Former Nurse Charles Cullen Pleads Guilty to 13 Murders in a Deal That Spares Him the Death Penalty