A serial killer gets away with it for 16 years – today on Fresh Air

    It’s hard to imagine what could motivate a hospital nurse to systematically kill dozens of patients by injecting them with lethal doses of medication.

    But that’s not the most troubling question raised by the case of serial killer Charlie Cullen, who may have murdered hundreds of people in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

    More disturbing is why the staff at so many hospitals believed Cullen was harming patients and pressured him to leave, but didn’t inform regulators or take other actions that might have stopped him.

    Cullen moved from one hospital to the next for 16 years, killing patients as he went.

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    But it gets worse.

    On today’s Fresh Air, journalist Charles Graeber talks about the Cullen case, and his book, “The Good Nurse,” which he spent six years reporting.

    According to Graeber’s account, when detectives finally starting boring in on Cullen’s crimes at the Somerset Medical Center in New Jersey, hospital administrators and their representatives not only failed to provide critical information. They actually gave detectives false information which impeded the investigation.

    Graeber tells the chilling story in our interview on Fresh Air today. The program airs at 3 and 7 on WHYY. If you’re listening outside the Philadelphia area, find a station here. And you can always listen and download from the Fresh Air website.

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