The Death Of Charles Cullen

It is estimated that up to 440,000 patients die every year due to medical malpractice. More than 100,000 of these deaths are believed to be related to complications with medication. These deaths are caused by thousands of doctors and nurses throughout the nation; of the healthcare professionals that commit medical malpractice, most do not kill more than one patient in their entire career by these means (Maloney Law Group). However, one man would go on a medical murder spree unlike any other in history: Charles Cullen. After suffering through some rough times in his early life, Cullen would go between jobs at several hospitals as a nurse, managing to escape the authorities and notice of medical facilities and wrongfully euthanize hundreds of

Somerset would be the last institution where Cullen committed murder and where he would meet one of his only friends, Amy Loughren. Loughren began to notice suspicious patterns in Cullen’s behavior as a nurse; Cullen was ordering excessive amounts of acetaminophen from the medical center’s digitalized drug dispensary, used to keep track of drugs the nurses requested. After investigation, Loughren came to realize why Cullen was doing this: acetaminophen was kept in the same drawer as the heart medication Cullen used to kill his victims (SC 7). However, Loughren was not the only person employed on the case (“Where is

While in custody, Cullen admitted to killing only twelve to fifteen patients and explained how he took their lives. Eventually, he confessed that he had taken the lives of several more people, estimating the total count was thirty to forty patients. A few days after this, he underwent his first hearing, where Cullen announced he planned to plead guilty. Despite Cullen’s confession to only dozens of murders, investigators believe this number could have been in the hundreds. After a long, strenuous trial, Cullen pleaded guilty to twenty-nine murders across Pennsylvania and New Jersey from 1988 to 2003 (“Where is Charles…”). He was sentenced to eighteen life sentences without possibility for parole until the year 2403 (Jack & Lo,