If true crime is your thing, there is no shortage of disturbing films and harrowing shows to help scratch your true crime itch. This month, Netflix is gearing up to release chilling new drama The Good Nurse, a film based on the events surrounding American serial killer Charles Cullen.
Cullen was a nurse who worked at nine hosptals in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and is responsible for at least 29 deaths during his 16-year medical career. The film is based on Charles Graeber’s 2013 book of the same name and boasts an Oscar winning cast fronted by Jessica Chastain ( Interstellar ) and Eddie Redmayne ( Fantastic Beasts ).
If that sounds up your street, The Good Nurse is released on Netflix on Wednesday, October 26, and in select cinemas across the UK from Friday, October 21. But what is the real story behind the film?
Charles Cullen’s life before his medical career was fraught with misery. Both his parents died young – he lost his father when he was seven months old, and his mother when he was a senior in high school.
He claimed to have been bullied throughout his formative years by his schoolmates and sister’s boyfriends. He also attempted suicide several times, first at the age of 9 and again around age 20 while serving in the United States Navy – where he also claimed to be bullied by his fellow crewmen.
He received a medical discharge from the Navy in 1984, after which he enrolled in a New Jersey nursing school, graduating and starting work at the states’ Saint Barnabas Medical Center two years later.
In 1988, after two years at Saint Barnabas, Cullen took his first victim – at least the first he confessed to – by injecting a lethal overdose of medication to a patient’s IV bag. Cullen later confessed to the killing of several other patients at the hospital.
He left Saint Barnabas in 1992 after suspicions arose around several patient deaths and authorities opened an investigation. The investigation later concluded Cullen was responsible for dozens of deaths at the hospital, as reported by the New York Times.
Just one month after leaving his role, he found employment at another hospital in Phillipsburg, New Jersey. In the years that followed, Cullen was accused of stalking a woman, he made several more suicide attempts, and was treated for depression in at least three psychiatric facilities, all while murdering countless victims at the nine hospitals at which was employed.
He was fired or resigned many times throughout his medical career, for reasons including poor performance or when he felt his close to being caught out. The last hospital which employed him was Somerset Medical Center in Somerville, New Jersey, which he joined in September 2002.
It was at this hospital where Cullen’s heinous crimes would eventually catch up with him. The hospital had computerised records which showed he was accessing patients to which he was not assigned, and medications for which his patients had no prescription.
In July the following year, hospital officials were warned that at least four suspicious overdoses suggested an employee may have been to blame. The hospital failed to contact authorities for three months, by which point Cullen murdered at least five more patients.
In October 2003, police were notified of yet another suspicious death at Somerset, and subsequently opened an investigation into Cullen. He was fired on October 31 after hospital officials found several of his previous employers had suspicions around many patients’ deaths and had lied on his job application.
After spending weeks under police surveillance, Cullen was arrested on December 12 for one count of murder and attempted murder, both of which he confessed to. He later told police he had murdered as many as 40 patients over his 16-year medical career.
Over the next seven months, Cullen pleaded guilty to committing 22 murders in New Jersey and seven in Pennsylvania, as reported by CNN. He also admitted the attempted murder of six people. He was spared the death penalty as part of a plea deal, for which he agreed to help authorities identify his many victims.
Cullen received 11 life sentences for his crimes, according to CNN, and to this day, now aged 62, remains imprisoned at the New Jersey State Prison in Trenton. The true number of Cullen’s victims will likely never be known, but Charles Graeber, who wrote the book on which the new film is based, suggests there could be hundreds.
Writing in the New York Times in 2007, he said: “Some investigators with an intimate knowledge of the case are convinced that the real number is over 300. By that reckoning, Charles Cullen would be the biggest serial killer in American history.”
The Good Nurse is available to stream on Netflix on October 26, and in select cinemas across the UK from October 21.
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