The Most Prolific Serial Killer In American History ― The Angel Of Death "Charles Cullen"

Charles Edmund Cullen (born February 22, 1960) is an American serial killer who has admitted to killing up to 40 patients in his 16-year career as a nurse in New Jersey.

His childhood was largely unhappy, and his mind was troubled and unstable right from childhood. His father Edmond, a bus driver, was 56 when Charles was born, and he died on September 17, 1960, when Charles was only seven months old. Cullen was bullied throughout his schooling. 

Charles Edmund Cullen was still a young child when he attempted suicide for the first time by drinking chemicals. 

Cullen's mother, Florence Cullen, was died in a car accident on 6 December 1977 at the age of 60 when Charles was in high school. After losing his mother in a car accident, Cullen got out of high school and joined the Navy. Here he trained as a ballistic missile technician.

Where he served aboard the submarine USS Woodrow Wilson. He rose to the rank of a petty officer, but he was unable to cope with underwater life. He was often harassed or bullied by his colleagues. Cullen was subjected to disciplinary action when he was spotted by an officer wearing surgical mask gloves, and scrubs, rather than his uniform, while performing a missile control duty. The Navy decided to reassign Cullen to a low-pressure job on the USS Canopus supply ship. 

After being transferred to the USS Canopus supply ship, Cullen attempted to commit suicide. During this time, his mental health became increasingly unstable, and he had been assigned to the Navy Psychiatric Department several times over the next few years. In 1984, he received a medical discharge for undisclosed reasons.

Cullen joined the nursing school after resigning from the Navy. He worked as a nurse in several hospitals. Cullen killed several patients in these hospitals by giving them an overdose of medicines or by unprescribed medication.

After being discharged from the Navy, Cullen joined the nursing school, and after graduated in 1986, he began working at the St. Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston. During that time, he met Adrianne Baum, and later married her. Shortly after the birth of his first daughter, his first known victim was killed by lethal injection. This occurred while working at Saint Barnabas Hospital. Cullen also confessed to killing several other patients while working there.

After resigning from his job at St. Barnabas, Charles Cullen joined the Warren Hospital in Phillipsburg. While working there, he killed three elderly women with overdoses of the heart medication digoxin

Cullen's next job was at the Hunterdon Medical Center in Flemington. He confessed to killing five patients at the hospital between January and September 1996, with an overdose of digoxin. Later, he worked with Morristown Memorial Hospital, but was soon fired for poor performance.  

In February 1998, Cullen was hired by the Liberty Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, where Cullen was accused of giving unscheduled medicines to patients and was also caught in other suspicious activities, due to which he was fired from the Liberty Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. Here, Cullen was also found guilty of one patient's death. 

After leaving Liberty, Cullen Cullen worked at Easton Hospital, Pennsylvania, from November 1998 to March 1999. where, he killed another patient with digoxin, but due to lack of evidence, no action was taken against him.

In March 1999, Charles Cullen was hired by the 'Lehigh Valley Hospital.' Where he committed one murder and tried another while working there. After resigned from Lehigh Valley Hospital, Cullen joined St. Luke's Hospital, Bethlehem. He killed five patients while working at the hospital's cardiac care unit.

In January 2000, Cullen once again attempted suicide by lighting a charcoal grill in his bathtub, hoping to succumb to carbon monoxide poisoning.

For 16 years, Cullen's crimes have gone unnoticed until his colleagues at the 'St.' Luke's became suspicious when they saw vials of medicines in a disposal bin, which were not valuable outside the hospital. Later, an investigation showed that Cullen had taken the medicines, and he was forced to resign in June 2002.

In September 2002, Cullen joined the Somerset Medical Center in Somerville, New Jersey. Where Cullen killed at least thirteen patients and tried to kill at least one more by mid-2003 using digoxin, insulin, and epinephrine. As the incidence of crimes increased, authorities became suspicious. 

In July 2003, the Executive Director of the New Jersey Poison Information and Education System warned Somerset officials that at least four suspected overdoses indicated the possibility of an employee killing patients. The hospital delayed contact with the authorities until October. By then, Cullen had killed at least another five patients and tried to kill a sixth.

When a patient died of low blood sugar in Somerset in October 2003, the hospital alerted the New Jersey State Police. That patient was the final victim of Cullen's life. With the help of a co-worker, the police collected evidence of Cullen's crimes. After a month of investigation, he was arrested in December 2003. After his arrest, Cullen confessed to his previous crimes, forty in total.

In court proceedings, he claimed that he committed crimes to put an end to the suffering of the patients, but the investigation showed that not all of his victims were terminal patients. His claim that he wanted to save the patients from suffering was refuted by the court. Charles Cullen has been found guilty of murders. Currently, he has been serving life imprisonment without parole.

Cullen confessed to killing 30-40 patients, mostly elderly or sick, in New Jersey from 1984 to 2003, but according to experts estimate, Cullen might ultimately be responsible for 400 deaths, making him the most prolific serial killer in recorded history.