I murdered judge, says killer nurse
A former nurse who claims to have killed more than 40 patients at United States hospitals in New Jersey and Pennsylvania has pleaded guilty to murdering a judge in 1988.
Charles Cullen, 44, admitted he killed Jersey City Municipal Judge John Yengo by putting lidocaine, a heart medicine, in his intravenous drip. The drug made his heart stop.
Yesterday’s admission makes the judge Cullen’s earliest known victim. Yengo died at St Barnabas Hospital in Livingston, a year after Cullen graduated from nursing school.
Cullen has now admitted killing 24 patients and trying to kill five others, mostly by injecting them with heart drugs.
His lawyer said Cullen believed that his victims were terminally ill and that it was dehumanising to prolong people’s lives by artificial means.
The judge’s daughter, Suzy Yengo, said her father entered the hospital after medicine he was taking triggered an allergic reaction to the sun. He was 72.
“I was always suspicious because it happened so quickly,” Yengo said. “Without knowing anything different, I assumed it was God’s will. Clearly it wasn’t.”
Cullen agreed to help investigators identify his victims in exchange for a promise they would not seek the death penalty. He will not be eligible for parole for at least 127 years.
