62 Facts About Charles Cullen

Charles Cullen confessed to committing as many as 40 murders at least 29 of which have been confirmed, though interviews with police, psychiatrists and journalists suggest he committed many more.

Charles Cullen was born on February 22,1960, in West Orange, New Jersey.

Charles Cullen was raised in a working-class Catholic family as the youngest of eight children.

Charles Cullen later described his childhood as "miserable" and claimed to have been constantly bullied by his schoolmates and sisters' boyfriends.

Charles Cullen's mother, Florence Charles Cullen, was born in England and emigrated to the US after World War II as a war bride.

Charles Cullen was killed in a car accident on December 6,1977.

Charles Cullen recalled his mother's death as being "devastating" and described being upset that the hospital did not immediately inform him of her death and cremated her body instead of returning it.

Charles Cullen successfully passed basic training and the psychological examinations required for submarine crews.

Charles Cullen rose to the rank of petty officer second class as part of the team that operated the vessel's Poseidon missiles.

Charles Cullen did not fit in during his time in the Navy and was hazed and bullied by his fellow crewmen.

Charles Cullen was disciplined for that action but never explained why he had dressed that way.

Charles Cullen attempted suicide and was committed to the Navy psychiatric ward several times over the subsequent few years.

Charles Cullen received a medical discharge from the Navy in 1984 for undisclosed reasons.

Shortly after his discharge, Charles Cullen enrolled at Mountainside Hospital's nursing school in Montclair, New Jersey.

However, Charles Cullen's wife became increasingly disturbed at his unusual behavior and his abuse of the family dogs.

Charles Cullen claimed that Cullen had spiked people's drinks with lighter fluid, burned his daughter's books, and left his daughters with a babysitter for a week.

Charles Cullen denied these claims, saying that his wife was exaggerating.

Nevertheless, she continued to insist that Charles Cullen was mentally ill.

The first murders to which Charles Cullen later confessed occurred at Saint Barnabas.

Charles Cullen eventually admitted to killing several other patients at Saint Barnabas, including an AIDS patient who died after Charles Cullen gave him an overdose of insulin.

Charles Cullen left Saint Barnabas in January 1992 when the hospital authorities began investigating the contaminated IV bags.

The investigation later determined that Charles Cullen had most likely been responsible, resulting in dozens of patient deaths at the hospital.

One month after leaving Saint Barnabas, Charles Cullen took a job at Warren Hospital in Phillipsburg, New Jersey, where he murdered three elderly women with overdoses of the heart medication digoxin.

Charles Cullen later claimed that he had wanted to quit nursing in 1993, but the court-ordered child support payments forced him to continue working.

In March 1993, Charles Cullen broke into a co-worker's home while she and her young son slept, but he left without waking them.

Charles Cullen then began stalking the woman, who filed a police report against him.

Charles Cullen subsequently pleaded guilty to trespassing and received one year of probation.

Charles Cullen took two months off from work and was treated for depression in two psychiatric facilities.

Charles Cullen's son protested that her death was not natural, and the hospital administered a lie detector test to Cullen and several other nurses, which he passed.

Charles Cullen continued to work at Warren until the following spring.

Charles Cullen began a three-year stint in the intensive care unit of Hunterdon Medical Center in Flemington, New Jersey.

Charles Cullen claimed that he did not harm anyone during the first two years at Hunterdon.

Charles Cullen admitted to murdering five patients between January and September 1996, again with overdoses of digoxin.

Charles Cullen then found work at Morristown Memorial Hospital but was fired for poor performance.

Charles Cullen remained unemployed for six months and stopped making child support payments.

In February 1998, Charles Cullen was hired by the Liberty Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where he staffed a ward of respirator-dependent patients.

Charles Cullen was fired after being seen entering a patient's room with syringes in his hand, an encounter that left the patient with a broken arm.

Charles Cullen caused a patient's death at Liberty Hospital, which was blamed on another nurse.

Charles Cullen's neighbors smelled smoke and called the fire department and police.

Charles Cullen was taken to a hospital and a psychiatric facility but returned home the following day.

Charles Cullen was offered a deal by St Luke's to resign and be given a neutral recommendation, or to be fired.

Charles Cullen resigned and was escorted from the building in June 2002.

In September 2002, Charles Cullen began working in the critical care unit of the Somerset Medical Center in Somerville, New Jersey.

Charles Cullen began dating a local woman around then, but his depression worsened.

Charles Cullen had killed at least 13 patients and attempted to kill at least one more by mid-2003, using digoxin, insulin, and epinephrine.

Somerset nurse Amy Loughren, a co-worker of Charles Cullen's who had been friendly with him while they worked together at Somerset, alerted the police after she had become alarmed about Charles Cullen's records of accessing drugs and his links to patient deaths.

Charles Cullen was arrested at a restaurant on December 12,2003, and charged with one count of murder and one count of attempted murder.

In November 2004, Charles Cullen pleaded guilty in an Allentown court to killing six patients and trying to kill three others.

On March 2,2006, Charles Cullen was sentenced to 18 consecutive life sentences by Judge Armstrong in New Jersey; he is not eligible for parole until June 10,2403.

On March 10,2006, Cullen was brought into the courtroom of Lehigh County President Judge William H Platt for a sentencing hearing.

Charles Cullen stated that he had overdosed patients to spare them from being seen going into cardiac or respiratory arrest and being listed as a Code Blue emergency.

Charles Cullen told detectives that he could not bear to witness or to hear about attempts at saving a victim's life.

Charles Cullen stated that he gave patients overdoses so that he could end their suffering and prevent hospital personnel from dehumanizing them.

Similarly, Charles Cullen told investigators that although he often observed patients' suffering for several days, the decision to commit each murder was performed on impulse.

Charles Cullen told detectives in December 2003 that he lived most of his life in a fog and that he had blacked out memories of murdering most of his victims.

Charles Cullen said that he could not recall how many he killed or why he had chosen them.

In some cases, Charles Cullen adamantly denied committing any murders at a given facility.

Charles Cullen moved from facility to facility undetected mainly because of the lack of requirements to report suspicious behavior by medical workers and inadequate legal obligations on employers.

In some cases, individual workers took it upon themselves informally to try to prevent Charles Cullen from being hired or to have him terminated.

When Charles Cullen took a job at Sacred Heart Hospital, in Allentown, in June 2001, a nurse who had heard rumors about him at Easton Hospital advised her coworkers.

The nurses threatened to quit en masse if Charles Cullen was not immediately dismissed, which he was.

The CBS newsmagazine show 60 Minutes featured an interview with Charles Cullen conducted by correspondent Steve Kroft, in an episode which originally aired on April 28,2013, and which was titled "Angel of Death".