TRENTON, NJ – Charles Cullen, 53, is currently serving eleven life sentences in a New Jersey State Prison in Trenton for 29 counts of murder. It is very likely he has killed hundreds of individuals, making him one of the most prolific serial killers in New Jersey, and perhaps United States, history. For sixteen years, Cullen, a nurse, was injecting drugs into patients ­– seemingly at random – ultimately causing their deaths. It wasn’t until one of his closest friends and colleagues, Amy Loughren, became a confidential informant that his spree ended.
Loughren, whose name may sound familiar, was Norwich High School’s Homecoming Queen in 1983, and subsequently graduated from NHS that summer.
New York Times Bestselling Author Charles Graeber spent seven years of his life investigating the story of Cullen and recently released a book – The Good Nurse: A True Story of Murder, Madness and Medicine – which was first to divulge Amy’s identity as the informant that ultimately stopped Cullen’s killing.
“Some people are crazy for serial killer stories. I’m not one of those, but I am interested in people - the choices they make, how they behave when they think they can get away with it,” said Graeber. “When I first heard about Charlie Cullen, the story was that he was a crazy nurse who took the idea of mercy too far, and played God.”
Cullen began his nursing career at Saint Barnabas in Livingston, NJ, where he killed a number of patients by injecting them with drugs he stole and stockpiled. From there, Cullen worked at eight different hospitals and one nursing home, according to Graeber. Cullen was able to easily find work at other hospitals because – even though hospital administrators were suspicious of foul play or drug mishandling – he was fired or asked to resign and given neutral references. No legal action was taken.
Said Graeber, “There was so much worry about liability, lawsuits, that ultimately, the most important concern – for human lives – suffered.”
Amy, now Amy Ridgway, left Norwich following graduation and attended the St. Elizabeth College of Nursing. She graduated college in 1988 and began working at Somerset Medical Center in Somerville, NJ, in 2002, when she met Cullen.
“We met at work and became friends pretty much right away,” said Ridgway, who added they didn’t do much together outside the realm of work. “We were ‘work best friends.’”
According to Amy, Cullen shared everything with her, or so she thought.
Cullen was fired from Somerset around Halloween of 2003, said Ridgway, who added she was furious at the time. She immediately called to find out why he was terminated and was told it was for “lying” on his job application.
“Why, after one and a half years, would you fire someone for that? I was really upset,” stated Ridgway. A week later, she added, she heard they were investigating a number of deaths and Cullen was a person of interest. “I thought it was a witch-hunt.”
Ridgway – according to Graeber – was Cullen’s biggest defender.
Ridgway was then interviewed by detectives investigating the deaths surrounding Cullen. The hospital had requested a representative of the administration be present in all interviews, and the prosecutor’s office agreed, frustrating the detectives.
“They didn’t think that was the best way to get someone to open up and be honest, having their boss, their boss’ boss maybe, there in the room. It’s natural and understandable,” added Graeber.
According to Ridgway, hospital administrator Mary Lund left the room when she was being interviewed by the detectives. When she had done so, Detective Danny Baldwin pushed a piece of paper toward her in secret.
“Literally my entire world stopped. It was just like the movies,” said Amy. “How do you even process that?”
Graeber added, “I don’t know if she was absolutely sure what it all meant at that moment, only that what she saw on the page wasn’t right. Later, Amy told me, she still questioned herself, not knowing whether she was framing a friend, or helping to catch a killer. But in that moment, when she saw the paper, her life changed.”
According to Ridgway, the content on the page contained proof that Cullen was taking out excessive amounts of medications that she described could only be used to “stockpile or kill.”
There was no real method to Cullen’s madness – his victims were not necessarily terminal; some were young patients ready to be discharged after routine surgeries. A common drug he would administer a lethal dose of was Digoxin, a heart medication.
“Those people died on my watch and I didn’t see it,” said Amy, who then worked with detectives and agreed to wear a wire, able to get a confession out of her friend Cullen. “I was given the opportunity to make it right. I continue to be grateful for that opportunity.”
Said Amy regarding her visits with Cullen while working on Graeber’s book, “I see who he is as my friend Charlie still. I still care for him because I forgive him, which is hard for others to understand. I don’t pick and choose forgiveness. There is no asterisk next to the word forgiveness to me.” Now a wife and mother of two grown children, Ridgway is studying to become a Nurse Practitioner in Holistic Medicine, and is a practicing Buddhist. She added it has been challenging for her to have the world see the person she used to be, but Graeber “got it right.”
Graeber maintained, “Amy was remarkable in opening up her life, even the chapters of herself which were almost a different person from who she is now. That took a lot of bravery, being that honest. But Amy’s a brave person.”
The book highlighting the entire story – The Good Nurse: A True Story of Murder, Madness and Medicine – is available at amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, and indiebound.com.
Said Graeber, “The mission of the book is to show the truth, and a remarkable story; stranger than any movie, and more important because it’s true. It’s also important for people to see that nurses are the real heroes here. Not just the one, but the others who also came forward. And, as importantly, not to let the actions of one man cloud the fact that millions of nurses dedicate their lives caring for ours. Certainly, that’s what I came away with.”