I killed 40 patients, says nurse

POLICE are reopening patient records in two US states following the arrest of a nurse who has said he killed up to 40 terminally ill people under his care.

Charles Cullen, 43, told authorities he administered drug overdoses to put “very sick” patients out of their misery over the last 16 years in nine hospitals and a nursing home in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

“The evidence that we have indicates that may very well be the case,” prosecutor Wayne Forrest said. Cullen was charged with one count each of murder and attempted murder, but more charges could follow.

Investigators are examining records at facilities where Cullen worked as they try to document his claims about the other killings.

One body has already been exhumed to undergo toxicological tests and Forrest said other exhumations were possible.

The case could be one of the biggest hospital murder probes in US history, surpassing that of Robert Diaz, a California nurse convicted of killing 12 patients in 1981.

During a court appearance, Cullen told the judge: “I am going to plead guilty. I don’t plan to fight this.”

Cullen said he did not want a lawyer, and was held on $1 million bail.

Cullen was charged with murder in the death of a Roman Catholic clergyman who was a patient at Somerset Medical Centre. He was also charged with the attempted murder of a 40-year-old woman at the same Somerville hospital.

Prosecutors were notified by Somerset Medical Centre officials after the hospital fired Cullen on October 31.

An internal review had found questionable lab results involving six of Cullen’s patients.

The charges filed yesterday involve the death of Florian Gall, vicar of Hunterdon County in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Metuchen, who died on June 28 at Somerset.

It was later determined that he had died from a lethal and unauthorised dose of the drug digoxin, a heart medication.

The attempted murder charge stems from the discovery on June 16 that a 40-year-old heart and cancer patient had a high level of digoxin. The woman recovered from the overdose and was released from hospital, but died in September.