Rama S. Prasad
Professor Tolmasov
Soc 5
January 9, 2018
Charles Cullen, An Angel of Death
Charles Cullen was born on February 22, 1960 in West Orange, New Jersey. As the youngest of eight children, Cullen recounted his childhood as miserable. Seven months after his birth, his father who was a bus driver died. He told people that his self-disgust, low esteem, and depression drove him to commit suicide multiple times. The first attempt actually happend at 9 years of age, when Cullen drank a concoction of chemicals from a chemistry set. Throughout his life, Charles Cullen would attempt suicide at least 20 times. At the age of seventeen, his mother was killed in a car accident, which caused him to dropout of high-school and enlist in the US Navy. He served as a petty officer third class on the USS Woodrow Wilson, a ballistic missile submarine, and was a member of the team who operated the Poseidon missiles. (Webb, 2015) During his time in the Navy, Cullen began to showcase his mental instability. There was one incident when he completed a shift wearing a mask, surgical gown, and gloves that he had stolen from a medical office. He was then transferred to a supply ship called the USS Canopus and committed several of unsuccessful suicide attempts. (Webb, 2015) He finally received a medical discharge on on March 30, 1984 and enrolled at the Mountainside Hospital School of Nursing in Montclair, New Jersey. He graduated three years later and started working at the St. Barnabas Medical