The Good Nurse Revisits The Takedown Of A Prolific Serial Killer

Currently the number one movie on Netflix UK, The Good Nurse tells the terrifying tale of nurse Amy Loughren, who discovers her colleague Charles Cullen is killing patients in cold blood. Featuring Oscar winners Jessica Chastain (Loughren) and Eddie Redmayne (Cullen), the well-received film is based on the book of the same name, penned by journalist Charles Graeber. But is The Good Nurse based on a true story?

The story is indeed true. Cullen murdered a confirmed 29 victims while working in hospitals between 1988 to 2003. However, he admitted to murdering 40 patients, and some experts believe his actual murder count may be in the hundreds.

In the early 2000s, Loughren shared night shifts with Cullen at Somerset Medical Centre in New Jersey. She still struggles with the fact that she was friends with a murderer, before eventually helping to take him down. “I struggled with the guilt of missing him [Cullen]. I struggled with the guilt of not seeing that that friendship also had a monstrous dark side,” Loughren told the BBC.

“And I didn't want to see it. I wanted to believe that he was a mercy killer so that I could still care about him. And he wasn't a mercy killer. He was a cold-blooded murderer. And for me to not have seen that, I really did struggle." The 57-year-old added that she is kinder to herself now, having “literally risked everything to make sure he was behind bars.”

Cullen, now 62, was sentenced to eleven consecutive life sentences in March 2006. In a deal with the authorities, he agreed to cooperate with the investigations in exchange for avoiding the death penalty. He is currently incarcerated at the New Jersey State Prison.

Despite continued concerns over his practices, Cullen was able to move to several different hospitals over his 16-year killing spree. Speaking on the impact of that failure, Redmayne told BBC: “As a consequence of Cullen's case, whenever someone is reported, their records now have to be kept for seven years. The fact that that wasn't already happening… it's astonishing."