‘The Good Nurse’ True Story: Where Is Charlie Cullen Now?

After you watch The Good Nurse on Netflix, you may think twice before putting your life in the hands of a hospital.

Starring Jessica Chastain and Eddie Redmayne, The Good Nurse is based on the true story of Charles Cullen, a serial killer who confessed to intentionally killing 40 patients during his 16-year career as a nurse in New Jersey and Pennslyvania. Starting in 1987, Cullen worked at ten different hospitals, before he was finally arrested in 2003. The actual number of Cullen’s victims is believed to be much higher, possibly as many as 400.

The Good Nurse movie—which was directed by Tobias Lindholm, with a screenplay by Krysty Wilson-Cairns—is adapted from the 2013 non-fiction book of the same by Charles Graeber. According to an interview with NPR, Graeber spent six years investigating the Cullen case and even interviewed Cullen in prison. Graeber chronicled Cullen’s troubled life, crimes, and most crucially, why it took so long for him to be stopped. Graeber concluded that hospital after hospital suspected Cullen was harming patients but failed to take measures beyond firing him, in order to protect the hospital from liability.

Read on to learn more about The Good Nurse true story, including how accurate The Good Nurse movie is and where Charles Cullen from The Good Nurse is now.

WHO IS CHARLIE CULLEN FROM THE GOOD NURSE?

Cullen’s first nursing job was at Saint Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston, New Jersey, which he got right out of nursing school in 1987. In 1991, hospital staff started to notice an influx of patients crashing in the ICU ward and CCU wards, specifically in patients who were hooked to an IV bag that supposedly contained saline.

“The patient became a magical diabetic and where they were on this terrible diabetic roller-coaster ride,” author Charles Graeber told NPR in a 2013 interview. “And then eventually they’d get so bad that they’d unhook them from the lines and rush them in for more emergency procedures, and once they unhooked the lines, everything changed. They were fine again.”

The hospital staff realized that some of the IV bags stored in the medical closet contained insulin where they weren’t supposed to, causing terrible reactions in the patients. Cullen was a strong suspect, but no one is able to prove Cullen was the perpetrator. Eventually, he was taken off of the Saint Barnabas Medical Center shifts—essentially fired, in 1992— but faced no legal consequences.

It wasn’t hard for Cullen to get another job. In fact, according to a 2003 report from The New York Times, thanks to nursing staff shortages, he was able to get nine more nursing jobs over the next 11 years, though not without troubles. His wife filed for divorce in 1993, claiming Cullen hadn’t spoken to her in years and physically abused their dogs. He also stalked and harassed a coworker at Warren Hospital, which led to felony charges when he broke into her house.

After spending two months in a psychiatric hospital, he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor trespassing and was sentenced to a year’s probation. That same year, he was actually accused of murder. According to the same Times report, a 91-year-old woman said that “a male nurse not assigned to her ward entered her room, told her son, Larry, to leave, and gave her an injection no doctor had ordered. ‘He stuck me,’ she told her son when he returned.”

The woman died the next day. The family pressed charges but after a hospital investigation that was “inconclusive,” the prosecutor’s office dropped the case. This pattern more or less continued for a decade, with hospitals continuing to cover up for Cullen’s suspicious behavior. It wasn’t until his employment at Somerset Medical Center in 2003 that it all caught up with him.

WHAT IS THE GOOD NURSE TRUE STORY?

The pattern began again when Cullen began working at Somerset Medical Center in 2003, which is where The Good Nurse movie picks up the story.

“A number of patients were coding mysteriously,” author Charles Graeber told NPR. “Most were digoxin deaths, digoxin being a heart drug like foxglove; it regulates heart rhythm. Others were insulin deaths. They were on the same ward.” One part of the story that was cut from the movie was the involvement of Dr. Bruce Ruck and Dr. Steven Marcus from New Jersey Poison Control, who pressured Somerset Medical Center not to drag their feet on the investigation.

The Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office launched an investigation, with detectives Tim Braun (played by Noah Emmerich in the movie) and Danny Baldwin (played by Nnamdi Asomugha) taking the lead. Braun and Baldwin were given the run-around from the hospital, and were given a mere 4-page document as the total of the hospital’s internal investigation.

The detectives asked for records from the hospital’s “Pyxis machine”—which would have all the data on the victims who died and the nurses who attended to them—but were told that the records weren’t kept longer than two months. Eventually, the detectives called the company who owned the Pyxis machines and were told that, to the contrary, all the data was stored forever. Finally obtaining that information is what helped law enforcement finally extract a confession from Cullen, and finally, put him behind bars. His most recent murders were also able to be autopsied, alongside the proof of the computerized data.

But, as Graeber told NPR, “We’ll never know how many people Charlie Cullen ultimately killed. Charlie Cullen doesn’t know how many people he killed. He initially could recall 40, and also said there was a large part of his life that was a fog, during which he would have no ability to recall.”

HOW ACCURATE IS THE GOOD NURSE TO THE TRUE STORY?

In order to give Jessica Chastain her time to shine, The Good Nurse exaggerates the role of Amy Loughren. She was not the one to pull the confession from Cullen, as we see in the film. That said, she was a real person who really was friends with Cullen. And she really did help detectives by monitoring Cullen and told them that she observed him ordering and canceling drugs from the dispenser many times more than is normal. And, crucially, she defied orders from her boss to only speak to the detectives through a hospital lawyer.

According to Graeber’s book, she hung up with the hospital official, turned to the detectives, and said: “O.K. Turn on your tape recorder, boys, and tell me what you want to know.”

WHERE IS CHARLES CULLEN FROM THE GOOD NURSE NOW?

Cullen ultimately pled guilty to the murder of 29 people, to avoid a death sentence, and was later convicted of 8 more murders in civil courts. He is serving 18 consecutive life sentences in New Jersey State Prison, where he will not be eligible for parole until 2403. At the age of 62 years old, he will almost certainly die in prison.