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Nurse Pleads Out of Death Penalty

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Times Staff Writer

A former critical care nurse who claimed to have given as many as 40 patients lethal injections pleaded guilty Thursday to 13 murders in order to avoid the death penalty.

Under the terms of the plea agreement, Charles Cullen, 44, would provide “truthful, full and complete cooperation” with authorities in their continuing investigation. Cullen also admitted to two counts of attempted murder and agreed to plead guilty in another murder in Pennsylvania.

Soon after he was arrested in December, Cullen told detectives that he had killed dozens of people during his 16 years as a nurse.

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He faces two consecutive life terms in prison, with no possibility of parole. No sentencing date has been set, but plans called for Cullen to be imprisoned in New Jersey.

“Is the plea agreement acceptable to you?” Somerset County Superior Court Judge Paul W. Armstrong asked Thursday.

“Yes, your honor,” Cullen answered.

In a calm voice, Cullen -- dressed in a sport shirt and khaki pants, also answered “yes” to questions posed by his lawyer, Johnnie Mask, about how he had killed his victims at the Somerset Medical Center.

The pattern was the same: Cullen admitted to injecting a variety of drugs into the patients and said that he sometimes tried to hide the fact that he took medications and syringes from the hospital’s supply system.

Some of the victims’ relatives wept when the names of the dead were read aloud in court.

Prosecutors said the case probably represented the largest mass murder in New Jersey history.

Over the years, Cullen worked in several hospitals in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. He was fired from five nursing jobs and resigned from two others. Prosecutors said he sometimes filed false applications in order to find new employment.

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He was arrested Dec. 12 on charges of killing Father Florian J. Gall, 68, with an overdose of the heart medication digoxin and of attempting to kill Jin Kyung Han, 40, also a Somerset patient. In that case, staff members managed to administer an antidote.

The hospital has turned over to prosecutors records of approximately 137 deaths that occurred in its critical care unit while Cullen was on duty or soon afterward. He was employed at the medical center from Sept. 9, 2002 through Oct. 31, 2003.

“This is just the beginning,” said New Jersey Atty. Gen. Peter C. Harvey at a news conference after the plea procedure was completed.

Asked whether he believed the nurse was exaggerating about the number of patients he had killed, Harvey replied: “We do think there could be as many as 40.”

Wayne J. Forrest, the Somerset County prosecutor, said authorities were not prepared to discuss a motive.

In the hallway outside the courtroom, family members wondered what had prompted the murders.

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“I would like to talk to him,” said Claire Hardgrove, whose 38-year-old son, Christopher, was killed in August. “I would ask him why he did this. He was supposedly some angel of mercy to keep people from suffering. He should look around the courtroom. We all suffer.”

Kristina Toth, whose father, Ottomar Schramm, was killed by Cullen at a Pennsylvania hospital in 1998, said the nurse’s demeanor in court had upset her.

“I felt he was a crazy person,” she said, “but the way he acted in court, he knew everything he was saying.”

So far, victims’ families have filed more than a dozen civil suits against hospitals where Cullen had worked.

Under the terms of the plea agreement, prosecutors could seek the death penalty in future cases if Cullen failed to cooperate.

“This agreement allows New Jersey and Pennsylvania prosecutors to expand their investigations,” Harvey said. “We need to debrief him and find out how he was able to accomplish what he accomplished.”

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