Soldier to Healer to Night Shift Killer ~ Angel of Death Part 2

 

Remember in part 1 I said I'd have to bounce back a bit, for the story to make sense? I needed to get the personal part of his life out of the way, in order to begin with all the sinster and evil things he did.... Here we go...

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

(This might explain his fascination with medical scrubs, gloves and masks while working on the submarine... maybe it became kind of a fetish for him???)  

He was so welcomed and liked in his classes that he was then elected president of his nursing class, he graduated in 1986 and started work at the burn unit of Saint Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston, New Jersey.

In 1988, while working at Saint Barnabas Medical Center, a mere 2 years into his career, he committed what is now believed to be the first time he murdered one of his patients, 72-year-old Municipal Court Judge named John W. Yengo Sr. His method??? He used an overdose of lidocaine, (an anesthetic and painkiller that can depress the respiratory and cardiovascular system). The Honorable Judge, John Yengo was there because he was receiving treatment for a severe case of sunburn. 

Registered Nurse Charles Cullen would use various medications as murder tools throughout his career; but most often he'd use a lethal cocktail of lidocaine, with a local anesthetic; insulin, (a drug used to control blood sugar levels); and digoxin, (a medicine used to treat irregular heartbeats). As a registered nurse (RN), he would know that an overdose (OD) of any one of these medications would be more than suffice to kill a patient who was already struggling with their health. 

Cullen wasn very cunning with his methods; he would use unsuspecting co-workers to use the tainted bags of IV. If he didn't directly put the drugs into the patients' IV bags, he would create the concoction into bags of saline and leave them in the storage room; where his coworkers would unknowingly use them. The reason it was not suspect, is because Charles Cullen worked the most in the Intensice Care Units (ICU), where death was very common, and the high doses of drugs he was using weren't unusual. He was in the perfect place to commit these murders!!!

There were people who grew suspicious of his actions, but everything remained hush-hush, and swept under the rug so to speak. Cullen would be let go, insteqad of being confronted to face the consequences of his actions; but because of the shortage of nurses and privacy laws, he'd quickly have a new job at another medical facility. Would he ever get caught???

In 1992, he got very close to being exposed when St Barnabas Hospital DID an internal investigation and found that Charles Cullen was the one creating the contaminated IV bags; but with the lack of proof, they couldn't file charges or take him to task for his actions and they simply allowed him to leave the premises and move on to another hospital/medical facility.

In 1993, he began working at Warren Hospital in Phillipsburg, NJ, where he killed at least three women (that we know of) with digoxin overdoses. One of his patients, Helen Dean was able to express her concern to her family, by telling them that a male nurse had administered some sort of medication by injections before she died. There were no suspicions in any of the 3 deaths that occurred under his care and Charles Cullen left Warren Hospital before he was even there for two years.

In 1995, Cullen began working at Hunterdon Medical Center in Flemington, NJ.  This is where things quickly escalated, and he upped his "game" (for lack of a better word). Charles Cullen would kill at least 5 more patients in a matter of 9 months in 1996 by administering his IV mixture with an overdose of digoxin. He remained at Hunterdon Medical Center for three years, which is surprising, considering how many patients he killed in such a short period of time.

In 1997, Cullen left Hunterdon Medical to take a job at Morristown Memorial Hospital in Morristown, N.J.; but this job didn't last very long and this is the first place he actually got fired due to him performing poorly. He remained unemployed for several months.

In February 1998, Charles Cullen was hired at Liberty Nursing and Rehabilitation in Allentown, PA. He did not last long there as many of his co-workers witnessed him going into a room of an elderly patient, who was not even his. He was carrying several syringes with him. She survived the events that happened behind closed doors, but sustained a broken arm. Charles Cullen was fired from Liberty Nursing and Rehabilitation in October 1998. It is unclear where Cullen was working between 1998 and 2002, but he was working in Pennsylvania; where he is connected to the murders of at least another seven patients!!!

Late in 2002, Cullen began working in Somerset Medical Center in New Jersey. This would be his last pit stop. Here, he killed the majority of his known victims before finally being arrested.

To be continued....