Posted on 06/27/2005 8:04:07 AM PDT by phoenix_004
Killer nurse Charles Cullen on Monday admitted murdering five patients while he was working at Hunterdon Medical Center, bringing to 29 the victims whom the state's worst serial killer has confessed to slaying in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
Cullen pleaded guilty to the murders in state Superior Court.
He also has acknowledged trying to kill five patients during more than a decade in hospitals and nursing facilities in the two states.
He has told investigators he might have killed as many as 40 people, which would make him one of the nation's most prolific mass murderers. Cullen had previously denied killing anyone at Hunterdon Medical Center. As part of a plea bargain with prosecutors that enabled him to avoid the death penalty, Cullen has been cooperating with investigators in reviewing scores of suspicious deaths that occurred during his tenure at various hospitals to determine whether he had killed any other patients.
Cullen worked at Hunterdon's critical care unit from April 1994 until October 1996.
In most of the cases in which he admitted causing patient deaths, Cullen gave them an overdose of heart medication, usually digoxin.
He has admitted killing patients at Somerset Medical Center in Somerville; Warren Hospital in Phillipsburg; St. Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston and Morristown Memorial Hospital, as well as facilities in Easton, Salisbury Township and Fountain Hills, Pa.
He was arrested in December 2003.
He was able to move from hospital to hospital, despite suspicions he was killing patients, because the institutions did not report their fears to authorities.
In one instance, Somerset Medical Center waited four months to notify authorities about its suspicions about Cullen, enabling him to kill five more patients there.
The hospital spoke with officials from the state's poison control center who bluntly warned them they had a serial killer on their hands, and urged the medical center to contact police.
Somerset said it believed the proper next step was to alert the state health department about possible laboratory irregularities regarding patient deaths there.
Euthanasia. There will be more.
Who's his lawyer, George Felos?
Sounds like they put their fear of bad press and lawsuits ahead of the lives of people.
Also sounds like they wil have to face their fear of the civil court system. In spades...
Part of the problem is that there is no real "hospital nursing staff" that is totally regular. Many nurses work
12 hour days, and only about 3 of those per week. They rarely work for more than 2 days in a row. It is grueling, mentally, and physically. So you get lots of "floats" (i.e. nurses who work in different units on different days), "per diems" who will work just for the day, and then you get
"registry" nurses. Lots of nurses can hide their insidious plans ducking in and out of those staffing models.
Then, these type of killer nurses work with critically ill patients who are in bad shape anyway. This way when their patient dies, it looks like it could be due to deteriorating condition of the patient. But fortunately, most of the "regular" nurses note that "so and so's" patient died "kinda suspiciously" and they usually put that in their memory, and they watch. But the perp just goes somewhere else before it gets too hot, and then the incidents are written off as happenstance....
Some ways to decrease the chance of this is to get "stable staffing" where everyone knows everyone else, and to have a high degree of suspicion for new workers, and also to have a computerized record of every medication dispensed, so that it can be traced to who took what, and when, and are there any doctors orders for that....
Then, when you get the perp, just euthanize him/her, or leave them alone in a room with the patients families....
The perp will beg for euthanasia at that time.
That is very important in quality control for all aspects of health care. This "floating" system does nothing for good standards.
This article says nothing about motive. What drives someone in such crimes? Maybe a sense of power?
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