Is Netflix’s ‘The Good Nurse’ a true story? What we know about serial killer Charles Cullen

Netflix’s ‘The Good Nurse’ has viewers hooked on the true story of Charles Cullen, a New Jersey nurse convicted of murdering dozens of patients before his arrest in 2003.

The show stars Jessica Chastain, as Amy Loughren, a co-worker of Cullen, who helped the police in their investigation, and Eddie Redmayne as the killer himself.

What is known about Charles Cullen?

Cullen was born into a large family (he is the youngest of eight siblings) in West Orange, New Jersey in 1960. He described his upbringing as “miserable,” with his father dying before he turned one and his mother passing away in a car accident when he was a senior in high school. He later went on to join the US Navy in 1978 and received a medical discharge in 1984.

Cullen decides to become a nurse

It is at that point in his life that he decides to go to nursing school back in New Jersey. Cullen is married in 1987, but the relationship only lasted around five years as his wife grew concerned about his violent behavior, particularly towards animals. She asks for a restraining order in 1993, which over fears that he may try and attack her and their two daughters.

The murder begin

Later investigations would find that Cullen began to murder patients as early in his career as 1988.

His first job out of nursing school was in the burn unit at Saint Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston, New Jersey. After his arrest, he admitted to two murders at the hospital, but investigators believe it to be possible that he committed more.

Over the next decade, Cullen worked at many hospitals around the state, committing murders at each one. Because medicine was a paper-based profession, no one took note of the connection between mysterious deaths and Cullen’s behaviors and actions.

Finally caught...

It was not until he took a job at Somerset Medical Center that law enforcement (and technology) caught up with Cullen. New computer systems created a digital footprint of Cullen’s actions, and alarm bells began to ring when he was caught accessing rooms and treatments for those who were not his patients.

Cullens was finally caught in 2003 after a new nurse Amy Loughren joined him on the night shift was Somerset. After a patient, Florian Gal, suddenly died of a heart attack, the hospital called the police to conduct an investigation into any signs of foul play. However, it was Loughren who began to notice certain red flags in Cullen’s behavior, which she later brought to the police overseeing the investigation.

Cullen was arrested, but police had still not collected enough evidence to book him. That is when they proposed to Loughren the idea of meeting with Cullen while wearing a wire. During their meeting at a diner, Cullen did not explicitly admit to the murders, but nevertheless, his words were enough to make a case for his arrest.

The true number of Cullen’s victims remains unknown, with some believing the count could be as high as four hundred. At the age of sixty-two, he is imprisoned in New Jersey, serving eighteen consecutive life sentences.