Why did ‘The Good Nurse’ kill his patients?

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GUEST: CHARLES GRAEBER

A nurse is serving 11 life sentences in a New Jersey state prison for 29 counts of murder that took place in eight hospitals and one nursing home. Charles Cullen preyed on patients during 16 years of his years working in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and ten years ago confessed to murdering approximately 40 people, pleading guilty to 13 murders and two attempted murders. Asked in an interview this spring why a nurse would deliberately poison his patients the so-called “Angel of Death” said, “I thought that people weren’t suffering anymore. So, in a sense, I thought I was helping.” How did investigators get Cullen to finally admit his crimes? Why did Cullen kill his victims? What did hospital administrators know at the time of these deaths? Journalist CHARLES GRAEBER spent six years interviewing Cullen and those surrounding the murders. His new book is “The Good Nurse: A True Story of Medicine, Madness and Murder.”

(AP Photo/Mike Derer, Pool)

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