Angels of Death. Emily Webb
in school, Petty Officer Third Class Charles Cullen did not fit in with his navy colleagues who considered the pale, strange teenager a misfit. Cullen was the target of relentless bullying during his time on the nuclear submarine and did not last long on his first assignment. A disturbing incident, which was reported to superiors by Cullen’s shipmates, was when the then-20-year-old was discovered in a stolen hospital gown, gloves and mask, sitting at the missiles control panel of the submarine.
In the 2004 New York Times article ‘Death on the Night Shift’, the authors tracked down men who had served with Cullen on the Wilson and they reminisced about the very strange behaviour of their now-notorious colleague. Petty Officer First Class Michael L Leinen, who discovered Cullen in the strange outfit, said while he did discipline Cullen, the reasons for his medical garb was never explained, though it seemed to hint at his healthcare aspirations.
A transfer from the Wilson saw Cullen on a less stressful assignment on the USS Canopus, a supply ship, but this did not help his depression or suicidal tendencies. Cullen made more suicide attempts between 1981 and 1984 and it was this unstable behaviour that led to his discharge from the navy, after serving six years. Interestingly the Wilson submarine was decommissioned and struck from the Naval Register on 1 September 1994. By this stage, Cullen, now a nurse, had already killed at least three patients.
Just a few months after his navy discharge, Cullen enrolled at the Mountainside Hospital School of Nursing in Montclair, New Jersey. The nursing school was founded in 1892 and its website shows photos of bright, young, shiny nursing students. Trying to imagine the sickly, slight Cullen as once being a student there is a difficult task. The alumni page reminds graduates to ‘save the date’ for a Mountainside Hospital Alumni Association luncheon, a gathering the school’s most notorious student definitely won’t be attending.
Cullen, now 27, completed the three-year course in May 1987 but just a few months before his graduation, his brother James died from a drug overdose. In spite of this traumatic event, that year had more hopeful signs for Cullen than any other time of his life. Not only did he graduate but he also married a computer programmer named Adrienne Taub in July 1987.
Any hope that marriage and the arrival of two daughters would help Cullen out of his depression and maladjustment was short-lived. The marriage was not a success. Cullen had been steadily employed at Saint Barnabas Medical Centre in Livingston, New Jersey, from his graduation until January 1992 when he was fired. Cullen was working in the burns unit of the hospital, where the patients required a very high level of care. It was revealed at his trial that the reasons for his termination were for allegedly tampering with bags of intravenous fluid. The hospital conducted its own internal investigation but police were not contacted at the time.
The couple struggled along until January 1993, when Ms Taub filed for divorce. Cullen admitted to investigators when he was confessing to his crimes that his depression was at its worst that year. Their two daughters were aged four and one.
The year of 1993 was a catalyst year for Cullen. Not only was he served with the divorce papers but his behaviour had become increasingly strange, according to statements his ex-wife made to the judge presiding over the proceedings. The truth was that Ms Taub filed for divorce on the grounds of ‘extreme cruelty’.
The exact nature of Cullen’s behaviour towards his wife was revealed to the public after the Allentown, NJ newspaper the Morning Call, applied for and was granted access to a domestic violence file on him. Many of the incidents were also mentioned in the couple’s divorce file, which had already been released to the press. The New Jersey Supreme Court noted in its 2004 decision that ‘because Mr Cullen is a serial killer there is a legitimate right of the Morning Call and others to have access to the bulk of this file. The reality is there is legitimate public interest…’
Adrienne Taub said in her divorce papers that her husband slept on the living-room couch for three years, was a recluse and never took her out. She also detailed disturbing instances of animal cruelty by Cullen where he would torment the family’s Yorkshire terriers to the extent that she and her daughters would be awoken by the pets’ terrified yelps. New York Daily News reported that a former neighbour said Cullen would often leave his dog tied up outside for hours at a time in extreme weather conditions and that the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals finally rescued the animal. Cullen was mentioned in the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’ (PETA) report Animal Abuse & Human Abuse: Partners in Crime which details research that acts of cruelty to animals are symptomatic of a deep mental disturbance in people and that those, like Cullen (and many other serial killers), who commit acts of cruelty to animals ‘don’t stop there’.
Combined with his failed relationship, Cullen was also drinking heavily, as described by his ex-wife in her statements to the court. He also discontinued the medication he was taking for his depression.
The divorce proceedings, his state of mind and his inability to see his children sent Cullen on a rapid descent. Ms Taub filed at least two domestic violence complaints against her estranged husband in 1993 and also a restraining order. The first complaint was in the January when she claimed that her husband’s state of mind and access to medications in his role as a nurse could put her and her daughters at risk. After each domestic violence complaint that Ms Taub filed, Cullen attempted suicide.
Just over a month after his first attempt in 1993 to die at his own hand, Cullen took the life of a woman who was initially believed to be his first victim, 90-year-old Lucy Mugavero, at the Warren Hospital in Phillipsburg. Mrs Mugavero was killed with an overdose of the heart drug digoxin, which became Cullen’s murder weapon of choice. Digoxin is used to treat the symptoms of congestive heart failure such as shortness of breath and rapid heartbeat. Particular caution is needed when using the drug for elderly patients who often require lower maintenance doses. So for Cullen, the drug provided a quick and easy method of murder in the elderly victims that he killed.
For the Mugavero family, the reason for their loved one’s death only became apparent in 2004. The family had never suspected her death was unnatural until the prosecutor’s office contacted them for a photograph of Lucy Mugavero to show to Cullen.
‘I had closure, but this opens everything back up. It makes it seem as though she died yesterday,’ Philip Mugavero, Lucy’s grandson told the New York Times in 2004.
It turned out that Mrs Mugavero wasn’t actually the first person Cullen killed. The first victim he admitted to murdering (and only Cullen knows how many people he killed) was in 1988. In 2004, as he was facing court in New Jersey for murdering 24 of his former patients and attempting to kill five others, Cullen also confessed to the 1988 murder of retired New Jersey municipal judge John Yengo Sr, 72, with a fatal dose of lidocaine, a local anaesthetic. Mr Yengo had been admitted to the burns unit of Saint Barnabas Medical Center for severe sunburn in the days before his death.
Events escalated for Cullen after he killed Lucy Mugavero. A few weeks after he administered a fatal injection to her, Cullen was arrested for stalking Michelle Tomlinson, a nurse he worked with at Warren Hospital – specifically, for breaking into her home while she and her son slept. The harassment began after Cullen took Ms Tomlinson out to dinner. The New York Daily News reported that as well as breaking into her home, Cullen proposed to her at work and bombarded her with phone calls. Again, Cullen attempted suicide a few days after his arrest. He pleaded guilty to trespass.
The next years of Cullen’s life were marked by more job changes and murders. Everywhere Cullen worked, there was a cloud of suspicion. He left Warren Hospital in December 1993 and it was under suspicion of murder. Cullen had killed 91-year-old Helen Dean, who was recovering from breast cancer surgery, in the September of that year. He administered a lethal dose of digoxin to Mrs Dean as she was about to be discharged from hospital. In fact, Cullen entered her room, asked Mrs Dean’s son Larry to leave and then gave her the injection. Cullen was not even assigned to Mrs Dean’s room and after he left, Mrs Dean and her son complained to other nurses and doctors about the unexpected medication. The next day Mrs Dean died at home from heart failure.
Larry Dean knew his mother’s death was not of natural causes and complained to the county prosecutor’s office. An investigation