Netflix seems to have no shortage of true crime content in recent weeks, from “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” to“The Watcher.“ Next up? “The Good Nurse.”
The film, adapted from journalist Charles Graeber’s 2013 book, “The Good Nurse: A True Story of Medicine, Madness, and Murder,” follows Amy Loughren (Jessica Chastain), a nurse who discovers one of her coworkers has been killing patients for the past 16 years. Authorities present her with their evidence, and she agrees to help apprehend her fellow nurse, Charles Cullen.
Cullen was arrested in 2003 for first-degree murder and attempted murder, The New York Times reported in 2003. He pleaded guilty to killing nearly 30 patients during his 16 years in health care.
“I don’t want to be represented, I don’t wish to contest the charges, I plead guilty,” Cullen said in court in 2003, per the Times.
After his arrest in 2003, Cullen explained his methodology to investigators, per Graeber’s book: He spiked IV bags with medicine, like insulin, to deliberately sicken patients, according to Graeber.
Cullen worked at multiple hospitals in New Jersey and Pennsylvania over the course of his 16-year career, despite being fired or forced out from several different facilities, the Associated Press reported in 2003. “He’s had problems at every institution in some fashion,” prosecutor John Morganelli told “60 Minutes.”
Authorities caught up to him while he was working at Somerset Health Center in Somerville, New Jersey, according to the AP. While working there, he befriended fellow night shift nurse Loughren, as Loughren herself said in an interview with Glamour.
Loughren said a pair of detectives approached her in 2003 about a mysterious string of deaths in the hospital. When they shared evidence linking the deaths to Cullen, Loughren told Glamour that “it was like everything shut down.”
“I completely disassociated from reality because I could not process it,” she said. It was such an intense emotion that I couldn’t even grasp it.”
Investigators asked Loughren to talk with Cullen while wearing a recording device in hopes of obtaining a confession, Loughren told “60 Minutes”. She went to lunch with Cullen in December 2003, where she confronted him about the deaths and offered to go with him to the police station to confess.
Loughren recounted the exchange to People. “He sat straight up. The color of his eyes changed. He put a smirk on his face and said, ‘I’m going to go down fighting,’” Loughren said.
Where is Charles Cullen now?
In court, Cullen pleaded guilty to killing 29 patients, though he estimated to authorities he had 40 victims, the AP reported. He was convicted of the murders and sentenced to 11 consecutive life sentences in 2006, without the possibility of parole.
Cullen spoke in an interview with “60 Minutes” in 2013 about the murders. “I thought that people aren’t suffering anymore, so in a sense, I thought I was helping,” he said.
“My goal here isn’t to justify,” Cullen said, when journalist Steve Kroft remarked that some of his patients were terminal and others weren’t. “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.”
Cullen is currently incarcerated at the New Jersey State Prison in Trenton.
TODAY has reached out for comment.
