Nightmare story of worst serial killer

Author: Charles Graeber

Publisher: Atlantic Books, Allen & Unwin RRP: $29.99

Reviewer: Joanne Marsh THIS is the riveting true story of America’s most prolific serial killer to date. Between 1987 and 2003 an unassuming, middle-class man named Charles Cullen wreaked havoc through some of America’s top hospitals.

Having physically survived a dysfunctional childhood Charles Cullen took all his mental horrors into adulthood.

An early stint in the navy proved unbearable. The rigid, predominately macho environment served to show up his odd ways and Charlie became the focus of even the newest recruits whose goading would produce fits of uncontrollable rage.

Leaving the navy he found a sense of satisfaction in nursing training. As one of the very early male nurse trainees, Charlie was different, but unlike in the navy he was not rebuffed. He relished his status as the only male in the class, and studied hard – finally finding an outlet that made him feel important.

Charlie took his new career seriously and he proved to be an extremely efficient and helpful nurse. But very early in his first nursing job cracks began to appear. As his life outside of work began to spiral out of control, Charlie took to controlling the only thing he could and that was the sick and vulnerable patients at his work.

For 16 years, across nine hospitals, in two states of the US, Charlie Cullen disposed of as many as 400 patients. Many of these patients probably would have died during their time in hospital, but there were many who should have recovered.

His mad genius was in his careful calculations of medications and his ability to evade detection, aided by the stunning inaction of the hospitals which did not want adverse publicity to affect their reputations.

Amazingly, every time Charlie was close to detection, the hospital he worked at would terminate him quietly and most even provided what they termed neutral references which gave out only his dates of tenure. It was enough to keep the hospitals under the radar and gain Charlie employment at other medical facilities.

Charlie was a slippery killer who had worked out the perfect system for murder.

He wasn’t dumb. He knew exactly what he was doing. In fact, many times he laid the trail waiting to be caught. But his trail was supremely subtle and even when there was suspicion no one was prepared to act.

For years patients died and Charlie was saved from incarceration by hospital administrators using internal investigation as their excuse to cover their own backsides.

In the end, it took many months to bring him to justice and then only through the tenacity of two detectives and a nurse whom Charlie had befriended.

Only after he was committed did he start to use the old cliché of saying he was trying to help the dying and those in pain. Until then, he had been happy to distribute his drug cocktails to any patient and has since admitted that he would probably still be doing it if he hadn’t been locked up.

He never counted those he killed – he estimates it’s about 40. The real numbers are guessed at being closer to 400, though this will never be proven.

This story should be a red flag to hospitals worldwide - it is a nightmare which could happen in any country.