The Good Nurse
A True Story of Medicine, Madness, and Murder
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
The Netflix movie starring Academy Award-winners Eddie Redmayne and Jessica Chastain—based on this “stunning book...that should and does bring to mind In Cold Blood”—takes you inside the mind of America's most prolific serial killer, whose 16-year long "nursing" career left as many as 400 dead. (New York Times)
After his December 2003 arrest, nurse Charlie Cullen was quickly dubbed “The Angel of Death” by the media. But he was no mercy killer nor a simple monster. Cullen was, at times, a trusted colleague, a beloved father, and a best friend. He was also perhaps the most prolific serial killer in American history, implicated in the deaths of as many as 400 patients.
Cullen’s murderous career spanned sixteen years and nine hospitals. Now, in a riveting piece of investigative journalism, Charles Graeber uncovers how Cullen gamed the system, and tells the unbelievable true story of the confidential informant asked to risk her life and career to betray a friend and finally stop a serial killer. Based on extensive never-before-seen evidence and years of exclusive jailhouse conversations with Cullen himself, THE GOOD NURSE is a mesmerizing and irresistibly paced portrait of medicine and madness. This book will make you look at hospitals and the people who work in them in an entirely different way.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Taking advantage of his exclusive access to serial killer Charles Cullen, journalist Graeber makes the most of the dramatic story of a nurse who began killing patients in 1991, and who eluded prosecution for over a decade. Experts estimate that he may have murdered up to 300 people before his arrest in 2003. Without excusing or condoning Cullen's crimes, the author presents a picture of the killer's horrific childhood, which may provide an explanation for his descent into violence a journey that began with animal cruelty and emotional withdrawal from his increasingly frightened wife. Cullen began tampering with IV bags at St. Barnabas Hospital in New Jersey, and patients on the road to recovery, or who were at least stable, started dropping like flies. Incredibly, Cullen was able to move from one nursing job to another even after being forced out of employment because of suspicions that he was responsible for the deaths. Graeber doesn't pull punches his description of the effects of insulin poisoning are chilling, and he needn't resort to hyperbole to damn the hospital administrators who failed to take it upon themselves to stop Cullen from claiming more lives. A deeply unsettling addition to the true crime genre.
