What Happened to Charles Cullen and Where Is He Now?

The Good Nurse tells the true story of how medical professional Amy Loughren helped police catch her friend and co-worker Charles Cullen, who had murdered several patients at hospitals in New Jersey.

The film, directed by Tobias Lindholm, stars Eddie Redmayne and Jessica Chastain as Cullen and Loughren. Netflix viewers will no doubt wonder exactly what happened to the real-life pair.

What Happened to Charles Cullen and Where Is He Now?

The Good Nurse is based on a book by Charles Graeber, which explores Cullen's crimes—committed in nine hospitals between 1988 and 2003—and Loughren's mission to bring him to justice.

Graeber's book (unlike the film) also delves into Cullen's early life. Both his parents died young: his father when Cullen was just seven months old and his mother when he was in his senior year in high school. He served in the U.S. Navy and was given a medical discharge in 1984. Cullen then trained as a nurse and, in 1986, began his career at the Saint Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston.

In 1987, he married Adrianne Baum but, by 1993, she had filed a restraining order against him to protect her and their two daughters—a subject that is discussed by Cullen and Loughren during the film.

Scriptwriter Krysty Wilson-Cairns spoke to Newsweek about the process of adapting the story, saying Graeber's book was "all-encompassing" but it was Loughren's role that really stood out to her.

"In the last third of the book you had Amy—you reach her story. I remember thinking, working-class, single mom struggling, [this] is the last person that should have to take on this role of catching a serial killer," Wilson-Cairns said. "It should be the hospital system, it should be the cops, all these people. And it's her, it's left to her and, in a way, she's the only one that can do it.

"The story, for me, it's always been Amy. That was the story I pitched, that was the story that Darren Aronofsky's company bought ... Before I met him, I was like, 'Oh, God, what if he wants to tell a different version of this book?' But I was very lucky, we were so aligned. There was always going to be Amy's story."

Lindholm also told Newsweek that reading Wilson-Cairns' script and Graeber's book made him realize "that this story we had was not just a serial killer story."

He said: "We had a story about a true hero. We have story about a mom, we had a story about a struggling, lonely mom with two kids working in the social sector trying to take care of other people, while struggling to take care of herself and her kids, and that inspired me to get involved.

"The thing about this story is that it's not really a fascinating story about Charlie Cullen. It's a story that raises a very simple question: why didn't we stop him? How could this happen? And in that way, it elevated what could just be a dark true-crime piece into something that has a comment and it has a point about the society we live in."

Cullen's killings began at Saint Barnabas Medical Center in 1988, when he injected IV bags with drugs such as digoxin and insulin.

In 2002, he took a job at Somerset Medical Center in Somerville, where he met Loughren. While working there, he made more attempts to kill patients. He also drew suspicion for accessing the medical records of patients he was not looking after and for ordering drugs such as insulin from the hospital's dispensary before immediately cancelling them.

In The Good Nurse, Redmayne's Cullen explains that if a nurse cancels the order quickly enough the dispensary would still release the drug, but on paper it would look as if the medication had never been given.

The film never shows Cullen injecting drugs into IV bags. Instead, we see Loughren search the storeroom and test every IV bag to see if any had been tampered with.

Lindholm said: "I felt that we needed to share Amy's experience and she never saw him do this, so if we had shown the audience how he did it, and then kept it a secret from her, she would look kind of naive and I wanted to defend her all the way.

"The only reason that she didn't see this was because the system kept it under the surface for so long. So, it was never a question. The big question was, how do we do it and still make it exciting? How do we make sure that that we do fear this character, Charlie Cullen? How do we make sure that the audience realizes that something's going on?

"And that was the work where Eddie and Jessica and I really had to find the truth in the scenes and understand the thriller aspect of this movie, because often when you do these cliché thriller scenes where you kind of overdramatize a show too much to make sure that the audience gets it, you're also leaving reality. It never plays out like that.

"So, it was much more about demasking our own perception of a thriller and then going behind it."

Following a suspicious death in August 2003, the Somerset Medical Center was warned that a nurse was thought to be killing patients, but they delayed contacting police until October that year. Shortly after the investigation began, Cullen was fired for lying on his résumé.

When the police began investigating Cullen, Loughren became involved. She coaxed Cullen to confess and he was eventually arrested.

The real Loughren told Newsweek that the film accurately depicted the police investigation, saying she felt she was only a small part of the process.

Loughren said: "What I was so proud of with Tobias' take on everything was the interactions between me and the detectives [Danny Baldwin and Tim Braun], because I was such a small part of that team. I was a small part of that ensemble.

"They worked so hard on this investigation and I was a tiny piece, and he did show that. He showed how hard they were working and how much they really did want to protect me as well, that they were concerned about me. And that to me is my favourite part, my favourite part is watching Nnamdi [Asomugha] become Detective Danny Baldwin.

"Nnamdi is much more intense than the real Danny Baldwin. Danny Baldwin is actually very, very gentle in his speech and his demeanor. Nnamdi plays out the quintessential protective hero and I love that he does it that way."

On December 12, 2003 Cullen was arrested and charged with one count of murder and another count of attempted murder. He later confessed to several more killings.

Cullen was given 11 life sentences in March 2006 for the killing of 29 patients. At his second sentencing hearing a week later, he made multiple outbursts, The New York Times reported at the time. The judge gave him six more life terms.

Authorities believe Cullen was behind the deaths of up to 400 patients. He is incarcerated in New Jersey State Prison.

The Good Nurse is out on Netflix now.