If you’ve watched The Good Nurse, you may have questions about where Charles Cullen is now and if he’s still in jail after he was convicted of murdering dozens of his patients.
Cullen, who has been nicknamed the “Angel of Death,” is a registered nurse and serial killer who was convicted in 2004 of murdering at least 29 patients throughout his medical career, which spanned 16 years and nine hospitals. Though only 29 murders could be confirmed, Cullen has confessed to killing as many as 40 patients. Law enforcement officials believe the real number of his victims could be closer to 400. Cullen was arrested in 2003 after officials found probable cause that Cullen had administered a lethal injection of insulin into at least one patient. Cullen’s former co-worker and friend Amy Loughren, who was also a nurse at the hospital he worked at before his arrest, was crucial to the police’s investigation. Loughren was the one who alerted police to Cullen’s records of accessing drugs, as well as wore a wire in a conversation with him that led to his arrest.
Since Cullen’s arrest, there have been several documentaries and movies made about his case, including Netflix’s 2022 film, The Good Nurse, based on Charles Graeber’s bestselling book, The Good Nurse: A True Story of Medicine, Madness, and Murder
. In an interview with Newsweek in 2022, Loughren opened up about the conversation she had with Cullen at a diner that led to his arrest. “What’s interesting is that the documentary that’s coming out [Catching the Killer Nurse], has the actual audio of the two of us speaking, and we were having just a regular afternoon beer with something to eat and just talking shop,” Loughren said of the conversation. “And I just kept building up to making sure that he understood that I did care about him and that we were friends—and we were—and then when I did finally confront him it was the way that Eddie [Redmayne who plays Cullen] captures.”
She continued, “The response from Charles Cullen is eerily accurate, my friend Charlie changed from being this underdog, sort of Mr. Rogers type, to… everything about him, his demeanor, his color, the way that his eyes move, he became very almost reptilian in the way that he moved as if there was an emptiness there, and it was terrifying. It was terrifying to watch him become the murderer.”
So where is Charles Cullen now and is he still in jail for his murders? Read on for what we know about where Charles Cullen is now and what happened to him after his arrest and convictions.
Where is Charles Cullen now?
Image: JoJo Whilden / Netflix.
Where is Charles Cullen now? Cullen, a registered nurse and serial killer, was arrested at a restaurant in New Jersey on December 12, 2003, and was charged with one count of murder in the case of Florian J. Gall and one count of attempted murder in the case of Jin Kyung Han. Both Gall and Han were patients at Somerset Medical Center in Somerset, New Jersey, where Cullen worked from September 2002 to October 2003. Two days after his arrest, Cullen confessed to law enforcement officials that he had murdered Gall and attempted to murder Han. In April 2004, Cullen pleaded guilty to Judge Paul W. Armstrong in New Jersey of murdering 14 patients and attempting to murder two patients by lethal injection of medications like insulin and digoxin while he worked as a nurse at Somerset.
As part of his plea deal agreement, Cullen agreed to cooperate with authorities to avoid the death penalty for his crimes. A month after his first guilty plea, Cullen pleaded guilty to the murder of three more patients in New Jersey. In November 2004, Cullen pleaded guilty to murdering six more patients and attempting to murder three others. During his trial, Cullen was restrained and gagged by law enforcement officials after he continued to interrupt the proceedings and taunt the judge by chanting, “Your Honor, you need to step down.” On March 2, 2006, Judge Armstrong sentenced Cullen to 11 consecutive life sentences. He is not eligible for parole until June 10, 2388. Cullen’s sentencing hearing was on March 10, 2006. When he was brought into the courtroom, Cullen, upset with the judge, continued to taunt him by chanting, “You’ Honor, you need to step down” for 30 minutes until he was gagged with a cloth and duct tape. The judge gave Cullen, who continued the chant even after he was gagged, six additional life sentences for a total of 16 consecutive life sentences. Throughout his trial, Cullen confessed to murdering around 40 patients but law enforcement officials could only confirm 29 victims. The real number of his victims is believed to be around 400, which would make Cullen one of the most deadly serial killers in United States history. Cullen is still alive and currently held at the New Jersey State Prison in Trenton, New Jersey.
In an interview from prison in 2013, Cullen claimed he murdered his victims to prevent them from “suffering anymore” from their illnesses. “I thought that people aren’t suffering anymore, so in a sense, I thought I was helping,” he said at the time. “My goal here isn’t to justify. You know what I did there is no justification. I just think that the only thing I can say is that I felt overwhelmed at the time.” The motive, however, didn’t fit with at least one victim, Florian J. Gall, who was recovering from pneumonia and was set to make a full recovery when Cullen injected him with a lethal dose of digoxin.
In an interview with AV Club, Eddie Redmayne, who played Cullen in Netflix’s 2022 movie The Good Nurse, explained what it was like to play Cullen’s relationship with Amy Loughren, his co-worker and friend who was crucial to his arrest. “The fact that he didn’t seem to fulfill the stereotypes necessarily, but also having spent time with the real Amy beforehand, she really emphasized the truth of their friendship, the depth of their friendship,” Redmayne said. “The fact that he saved her life. His humor, but like his dry humor and the fact that he would always use how screwed up his home life was as a sort of self-deprecating thing. But the fact that her love for him was very real.” He continued, “And that was intriguing because it meant that for Jessica [Chastain] and I, when she was so strong about that, that that became the thing. But she was also really interesting in that she described him as she only ever saw this monster twice, and that it was a different human being and that this thing glazed over him. She describes it as dissociative, and so even though I’d read all about his background and his upbringing, which is woven with trauma, hearing [from] this person that was so close to him [that he] was two different people was an insight.”
Image: Courtesy of Twelve.
For more about Charles Cullen, read Charles Graeber’s 2014 book, The Good Nurse: A True Story of Medicine, Madness, and Murder. The book, which Stephen King called “one of the best books I read this year,” tells the true story of Charles Cullen—also known as “The Angel of Death—a registered nurse and serial killer who murdered as many as 400 patients while he worked as a trusted caretaker. The Good Nurse, which was the inspiration for Netflix’s 2022 movie of the same name—investigates Cullen’s 16-year-long killing spree and how he got away with murder for so long.The book includes hundreds of pages of unseen police records, wire-tap recordings and video tapes, as well as interviews with whistleblowers and confidential informants. The Good Nurse also features exclusive conversations with Cullen himself, the detectives who caught him and Cullen’s nurse Amy Loughren, Cullen’s former co-worker and friend who was crucial to his arrest. The Good Nurse also investigates the for-profit medical system and how Cullen, whose murderous career spanned nine hospitals, was ultimately protected by the same hospitals he terrorized. “The most terrifying book published this year. It is also one of the most thoughtful…call it literary true crime…” reads a review by Kirkus Reviews.
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