(upbeat music) - Hi everyone.

I'm Steve Adubato.

We kick off the program with Charles Graeber, the journalist and author of a compelling book called, "The Good Nurse."

And Charles, first of all, welcome.

- Thanks Steve.

- It's a book about Charles Cullen.

I'm gonna read a little bit from the back of the book that puts things in perspective.

This won't be long, I promise.

After his 2003 arrest, registered nurse Charles Cullen was quickly dubbed the Angel of Death by the media.

But Cullen was no mercy killer, nor was he a simple monster.

He was a husband, beloved father, best friend and celebrated caregiver.

Implicated in the deaths of as many as 400 patients, he was perhaps the most prolific serial killer in American history.

Charles, what the heck caused you to be so fascinated by Cullen and when did it start?

- That's a great question.

You know, I wasn't really fascinated with him initially.

I was at first fascinated by the fact that he was in jail attempting to donate a kidney from jail, being prevented from donating that kidney by the very upset family members of his victims who didn't wanna see him playing God from behind bars as he had with their own family.

I thought that was a very strange situation and he wasn't speaking to anybody.

But then he started talking to me.

And once we started talking I understood that the fairly simple story that I'd, that I think the world had understood about a misguided mercy killer that had been caught by a system designed to catch him, it was actually something much more complicated and that began a seven year journey for me.

- And Netflix picked this up.

Netflix film, check that out.

But the book is compelling in a whole, for a whole different set of reasons.

It goes into much greater depth.

You know what I'm curious about as I was watching the Netflix documentary and reading through the book, so Cullen goes from hospital to hospital to hospital to hospital and he's proactively killing patients with poison, correct?

- That's right.

With medicines that he's repurposed as, as poisons, yeah.

- And he worked with several frontline professionals and one of whom, Amy Loughren, which we're gonna talk about in a second, a really good nurse, a great nurse, a real hero, if you will.

Many of the hospitals that he worked in, did they or did they not share the information as to why Cullen was let go from their hospital which could have potentially flagged him much earlier?

- That's right.

He was, you know, the question with Cullen is why wasn't he caught earlier?

- How many hospitals, by the way, over how many years?

- Nine hospitals and a nursing home over a 16 year nursing career.

And he was killing throughout that time.

And each time Cullen was, well, fired or allowed to resign and each time he was given neutral or positive references regardless of what he'd done at those institutions.

And so he would just move down the road or in some cases across the state line between New Jersey and Pennsylvania and start all over again.

- Amy Loughren worked shoulder to shoulder with Cullen, correct?

- That's right.

She did at the last hospital they worked at.

- And liked him?

- Oh yeah.

They were good friends.

Amy Loughren, while she had a relationship with Cullen, she was the one who stepped up and said, "Hey, wait a minute, something's seriously wrong here."

And went to the law enforcement authorities, correct?

- Well, there were whistle-blowers throughout Cullen's career, men and women, mostly women who came forward and said exactly that, there's something wrong.

We're seeing an increasing, an incredible number of codes over our shifts where there were none or very few before.

Something's wrong and this guy's wrong.

It's this guy doing it.

Amy was a little different.

She, you know, worked so closely with him and depended on him so much that she, I think she was blind to it until detectives that were on the case finally- - Right.

- Had to really put the numbers in front of her and say, "Did these look right to you?"

And she was really resistant to betray a friend.

Frankly, she, you know, she's a fierce protector and Cullen is a guy that comes across as needing to be protected.

So she thought she was doing the right thing by her fellow nurse until she realized perhaps she was shielding a serial killer.

And then she needed to figure out for herself what was true.

And if this was true, stop it.

- How much time did you spend with Cullen?

- I spent years interviewing him.

You know, whenever I could get into jail, I followed him to his sentencings.

I ended up seeing him finally in Trenton where he will be for the rest of his life, maximum security there.

So, a lot of time.

- Did he ever, Charles, take responsibility and said, I, and just to simply say to you directly, "I did this, I killed these people."

- No, he would never say kill.

He didn't like to talk about murder.

He thought it was crass that we were interested in murder.

Like we- - Talking about it was crass.

- That's right, we were rubberneckers, you know, we're the ones with bad taste, gawking at an accident.

He did occasionally allude to feeling compelled to intervene or euphemisms like that.

And sometimes if we backed into a specific murder that I knew about, I could get details about that as long as we didn't have to put so careful a name on it.

So, you know, he's a person that needs to see himself as a victim or as a passive element.

He really blamed the system that passed him on over and over and over again.

And he considered himself to many extents to be a symptom of a sick system.

- But both things can be true at the same time, he could have been the most notorious serial killer in the history of the United States and also that the system broke down.

Forget about him for a second.

- That's right.

- To what degree do you believe the quote system broke down of sharing information, which in some cases, some of these hospitals, as I watched the documentary, read in the book, they were concerned about the potential economic implications of disclosing this because who wanted to build a new expansion, who had this new project?

And how could you raise capital if you said that someone was working in your hospital who was killing patients which was in fact the case?

Please.

- I mean, for everybody involved obviously a serial killer nurse on staff is a nightmare from the standpoint of protecting your corporation, that's a real threat to your corporation.

That brings lawsuits, that brings lack of reputation.

And what you see over and over again are administrators in many of the hospitals who were good administrators, just as Charlie Cullen was a good nurse, often they were good administrators in that they did a good job in the very narrow definition of their job which was to protect that institution as lawyers, as risk managers.

But what they didn't do was good.

They didn't do good by the patients that really, ultimately that system is there to protect.

So absolutely, it's a systemic breakdown.

- And in the book and in the documentary that I watched, there were certain officials certain administrators, were stopping others from blowing the whistle.

- Yeah, you know, hospitals are famously terrible at investigating crimes or problems within their own institution.

It's a complicated process anyway.

Medical murder is, you know, it's quiet.

It involves chemistry and paperwork, and you're dealing with people who are in a hospital because they're sick.

So they already have underlying health conditions.

It takes time and these are very cautious institutions.

They perceive like doctors are warriors, they don't perceive like cops.

So what you see is, you know, a culture that also doesn't want to believe they have a problem.

And I believe that's part, you know, there's a lot to be said for that because who in the world ever has their first thought be there's obviously a serial killer afoot and we're employing them.

You know, that's the last place you go.

But even when presented with empirical evidence, even when told by New Jersey Poison Control, you have a police matter, what didn't happen for a long time, it was not kicked up to the next level, was not kicked up to law enforcement, is not voluntarily given over to the DOH or a nursing board or something like that.

- Right.

- Those red flags are very slow to be risen.

- The book is called "The Good Nurse."

The good nurse here again is Amy Loughren.

There's a lot going on here.

Very complex stuff.

Charles Graeber, journalist and author of "The Good Nurse."

It's about a lot more than Charles Cullen.

Thank you so much.

We appreciate it, Charles.

- Thanks Steve.

Thanks for having me on.

- You got it.

Stay with us, we'll be right back.

- [Narrator] One-On-One with Steve Adubato has been a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Funding has been provided by The Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey.

Newark Board of Education.

PSEG Foundation.

PSE&G, NJ Best, New Jersey'’s five-two-nine college savings plan.

The Adler Aphasia Center.

The North Ward Center.

Community FoodBank of New Jersey.

And by Johnson & Johnson.

Promotional support provided by Meadowlands Chamber.

And by NJBIZ.

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