Nurse confesses

last updated 8 January 2015

Somerville, N.J.

A nurse charged with murdering a critically ill New Jersey priest told prosecutors this week that he had killed more than 30 “very sick” people since 1987 to end their misery. The confession sparked investigations at nine hospitals and a nursing home in New Jersey and Pennsylvania where the nurse, Charles Cullen, had worked. Investigators exhumed at least one body and reviewed the cases of hundreds of patients who died in Cullen’s care. Cullen resigned from a Pennsylvania hospital in 2002 after he was accused of hiding heart medicine in a bin for used needles. He was arrested when investigators determined that the Very Rev. Florian Gall, who was in Cullen’s care at a New Jersey hospital, had died in June from an overdose of digoxin, a heart medication.