The focus of today’s show takes his place in the serial killer hall of infamy mostly
for one reason: His death count. This man murdered many, make no mistake about it, though
if we counted nasty dictators such as Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot or the champion
of body counts, Mao Zedong, his number doesn’t look too high. But they didn’t cause the
deaths of millions with their own hands. Then you’ve got professional executioners such
as the Russian-born Vasily Mikhailovich Blokhin, who executed tens of thousands in the early
20th century, and that was with his own hands. Still, we don’t often class executioners
as serial killers. Today we’ll focus on one of the most prolific killers in the hands-on
department and certainly the busiest serial killer of all time in the USA, in this episode
of the Infographics Show, Charles Edmund Cullen: The Angel of Death.
Before we get into the who, what, where, when, and how of this serial killer, let’s have
a quick look at the people that own the spots on the world’s most prolific serial killer
in history list. We should add the disclaimer that the exact number of deaths is not always
certain. Often put in the top five is a former British
doctor named Harold Shipman, aka, Doctor Death. It’s thought that between 1975 and 1998
he killed somewhere between 200 and 250 people with injections of diamorphine (which is the
same as heroin).
Then you’ve got a triumvirate of Colombians. There’s Daniel Camargo, who in the 70s and
80s raped and killed around 180 women and children. He took the mantle from Pedro López,
aka, “The Monster of the Andes”, who in the 60s and 70s is said to have murdered more
than 350 young girls. It’s thought he’s wandering around Colombia or Peru today after
being released from prison in 1998. Then you have the child-killer, torturer and rapist,
Luis Garavito (aka The Beast), who killed just as many people in Colombia and nearby
nations in the 90s. After these guys there are many serial killers around the world with
a 50-100 person body count.
We will also give a special mention to Elizabeth Bathory, a Hungarian woman who it’s said
killed around 650 people in the 16th century. According to reports she brutally tortured
and killed mainly children in her Transylvanian castle and sometimes bathed in their blood,
hence her nickname the Blood Countess. This is no myth, although the story could have
been slightly exaggerated over time. Over 300 people testified about her wicked deeds
and a large number of skeletons and body parts were found around her castle during the investigation.
So, what about our man Mr. Cullen? Well, while there might be only around 30 confirmed murders,
many people familiar with the case say that Cullen possibly killed over 400 people, which
would put him ahead of the others we just mentioned. You could say, though, that he
wasn’t as brutal as someone who swiped soon-to-be-tortured-and-killed kids from the street, but we’ll leave that
for you to decide. We say this, because like Doctor Death, he killed his victims by administering
already sick hospitalized patients with an overdose of drugs. He could do this because
he worked as a nurse. Now let’s have a look at what may have caused this killer to act
so violently.
He was born on February 22, 1960 and was the youngest of 8 children. He grew up in West
Orange, New Jersey, where he has said he had a terrible childhood filled with unhappiness.
He has stated that even as a 9 year old kid, he tried to kill himself by making a dangerous
drink from chemicals in his chemistry set. In a statement after his arrest, he talked
about this suicide attempt. “You know, maybe if I was nine years old and would have had
to die that day, all these lives, including my family, wouldn’t be affected in this
way.”
Why did he do this? Well, some sources tell us Cullen was raped as a young kid by his
father, but that seems unlikely as his dad died when he was just 7 months old. This is
probably not reliable information. The more reliable New York Times said in 2003 that
details of Cullen’s background are sketchy, but it’s certain that he did try and commit
suicide at various points in his life. There were up to 20 attempts some media tell us,
due to his depression and lack of self-worth. In interviews after his arrest, neighbors
said he was socially awkward and strange. Bios tell us he had few friends, and being
skinny and awkward, he was bullied. He spent a lot of time alone, but had a good enough
brain to understand the books of Fyodor Dostoevsky, which he was reportedly fascinated by. We
might remember that the protagonist in the novel “Crime and Punishment” kills, and
at times tries to justify it. Other blogs – not as reliable as big news media – told
us two of Cullen’s siblings died during childhood. All in all, you have a poor family
and a lot of tragedy.
We know that the family lived in poverty with just their mom, who relied on welfare payments.
Like many serial killers, Cullen’s family was hyper-religious. They were Catholic, so
perhaps Cullen was full of what’s sometimes called Catholic guilt. We know from his sister
that the mother died in a car accident while Cullen was in high school, and this is said
to be a reason why he didn’t complete school. We also know that he joined the U.S. Navy
and served between 1978 and 1984, where he worked on the ballistic missile submarine
called the USS Woodrow Wilson. This is where we have the first signs of him being not a
regular guy. Like in school, he was considered a misfit by the other officers. “Cullen
was the target of relentless bullying during his time on the nuclear submarine and did
not last long on his ﬁrst assignment,” said one news report. Not only was he deemed
strange, but he was found one time to have stolen a hospital gown, gloves and mask from
the medical area, and then was seen wearing them while sitting at the missile control
panel on the submarine. He was reassigned, but during the next few years in the navy,
he would try and commit suicide on more than one occasion. This led to him being discharged.
The young man straight out of the navy went to study nursing at the Mountainside School
of Nursing in New Jersey. He landed his first nursing job at St. Barnabas Medical Center
in Livingston, New Jersey, in 1987. He also got married that year with a woman he would
have two daughters with. Was life getting better for Cullen? It seems not, as he never
lasted that long at any one hospital. Over his 16-year career, he worked in 10 hospitals.
His marriage lasted not much longer than one year, and he lived in a small apartment by
himself. He was also cruel to his pet dog, leaving it tied up outside all day, even in
the winter. The dog was rescued eventually by an animal protection agency. He never had
much money, either, and the police were once called after it was discovered Cullen had
been burning things inside his house to heat the place up. No wife, no money, no happiness,
Cullen, it seems, then began taking his sadness out on others. We should also add that he
was arrested at one point for stalking a female colleague at the hospital. On one occasion
he broke into her house while she was sleeping. After this arrest he tried to commit suicide
yet again and had to take two months off work.
It's said at the many hospitals where he worked he would try and choose the graveyard shifts
in the intensive care units. Here he was left alone and many of the patients in his care
were in a very bad way; not only would it be plausible if they died but they couldn’t
communicate with him or call for help. He often had the run of the ward and he also
had a number of prescription drugs that he could administer to his victims. Patients
were dying, and it was unusual, but the hospitals couldn’t figure out what was going on. It
seems Cullen was under suspicion though, but it seems more for being careless than actually
intentionally killing people. He lost jobs for giving patients drugs at the wrong times
and another time for stealing drugs. But no one ever put two and two together and linked
him to the mysteriously dying patients. Even though he lost a lot of jobs it’s thought
he was not banned from the profession of nursing partly because at the time there was a huge
shortage of nurses.
There would be more suicide attempts and even some love interest in his life, but he kept
on killing. While he worked at Somerset Medical Center in New Jersey in 2003, he killed at
least eight people, until it was found that this strange nurse had been accessing patient
data of people he wasn’t assigned to. He was also taking drugs from the pharmacy that
his patients hadn’t been prescribed, and visiting rooms that contained patients not
assigned to him. Before he was arrested and just before his final victim that he overdosed
on insulin, Cullen killed at least 5 more patients. Authorities finally did add two
and two together and Cullen was put under surveillance.
He was arrested on December 12, 2003 and charged with murder. He soon told the cops he’d
been killing for years at several hospitals, but it’s thought he never gave the correct
number regarding his victims. He told police he had killed them so they wouldn’t suffer
any more. While many of the patients he killed were in great pain and were terminal cases,
many others were on the mend. He also told police that during the murders he was in a
kind of blackout and so he couldn’t recall all the people he had murdered.
In 2006, he got 127 years in prison, which was eighteen consecutive life sentences. He
is currently serving that at New Jersey State Prison.
So, what do you think about this? Should the authorities have caught this guy earlier?
Do you think most serial killers exhibit signs of their murderousness? Perhaps you know someone
who is a budding serial killer in making? Let us know in the comments! Also, be sure
to check out our other video called Worst Punishments In The History of Mankind! Thanks
for watching, and, as always, don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe. See you next
time!