‘The Good Nurse’: The Real Amy Loughren Hasn’t Visited Charles Cullen in Prison Since He Found Out She Was an Informant
Netflix recently released The Good Nurse about serial killer Charles Cullen. The true crime drama is based on the 2013 book by Charles Graeber called The Good Nurse: A True Story of Medicine, Madness, and Murder.
Starring Jessica Chastain and Eddie Redmayne, the movie focuses on the woman who helped catch Cullen, Amy Loughren. Like the rest of Cullen’s story, his relationship with Loughren is more complicated than you may expect.
Charles Cullen got away with murder for a long time
Cullen has been convicted for the murders of 29 people. But according to the LA Times, he might be responsible for as many as 400 deaths. Reportedly, Cullen used his expertise and position as a nurse to administer lethal medications to his patients.
Shockingly, when hospitals he worked for suspected him of stealing medications or being responsible for patient deaths, they would quietly fire him instead of working with the authorities to have him charged for his crimes.
That finally ended with the help of his fellow nurse, Amy Loughren. When law enforcement officers approached her with their suspicions about Cullen, she remembered some of his behavior that unsettled her. After seeing their evidence against him, she agreed to help them get evidence of his crimes. She wore a recording device and met with him to get a confession on tape.
Amy Loughren and Charles Cullen were close friends
There’s a reason Loughren was able to get Cullen to share such shocking information. The two nurses weren’t just colleagues; they were good friends. According to NJ, they became close during the long hours they worked together at Somerset Medical Center. He even supported her as she struggled to get medical care for a dangerous heart condition.
When Loughren discovered what Cullen was doing, it was difficult for her to do the right thing, not because of their friendship, but because she realized how dangerous he is.
“When I was 100% certain that he was not a mercy killer, that he was a cold-blooded murderer, I had to get past my own terror and my own fear that he might actually murder me or murder my children,” she explained.
But she faced that fear and helped send him to prison. Despite this, she visited him behind bars until the book came out. Until he read it, Cullen wasn’t aware of her part in building a case against him. At that point, he stopped responding to her letters, and the visits ceased.
Both Loughren and Cullen learned something from the book that inspired ‘The Good Nurse’
Cullen may have discovered more about his former friend from the book about his crimes. But she also realized something about him. “I learned a lot about my friend Charlie and it scared the hell out of me after I read the book, because I really didn’t know,” she said.
Between her conversations with him and the information in the book, she has an idea about what drove him to kill: a form of OCD that took a very dark turn. “I think it was just an extreme and an obsession for him. He felt a compulsion to kill. That compulsion started very early on in his childhood … But he started poisoning people before he was even a teenager.”
Despite everything that happened, Cullen still seems to have some respect for Loughren. According to the New York Post, he won’t criticize his former friend. “She is a good nurse,” he insists.
