Interviews with serial killers | 60 Minutes Full Episodes

tonight you're going to come face to face with a serial killer one of the most prolific serial killers in US history they don't usually talk to reporters and in the 45 years of 60 minutes we've never interviewed one until now Charles Cullen was a critical care nurs who admits to killing up to 40 people some suspect it was a lot more the murders took place over 16 years in seven different hospitals there were suspicions at nearly all of them that Colin was harming patients yet none of them passed that information on to subsequent employers newspaper headlines called him the angel of death but as you will see Charles Cullen was no mercy killer until we interviewed him a few weeks ago he'd never spoken publicly about his crimes never tried to explain why he did it or even express remorse to the families of victims when he finally faced them in court this monster didn't even know us or our son but had the audacity to end his life i' like to tell you a little bit about my mother that you murdered you don't even have the guts to look this way do you Charles why don't you look up at us I'd like to show you what you did to our children this is their dad and his coffin how do you like that would you like this was the scene seven years ago at the Somerset County Courthouse in New Jersey as Charles Cullen sat through his sentencing hearing refusing to speak or even acknowledge the family members of people he had murdered even the judge was exasperated Mr Cullen I asked you a question why is it that you have chosen not to address the coure can you hear me Mr Cullen he's kept that silence Behind the Walls of the New Jersey state prison in Trenton where he is in protective custody to keep him safe from other inmates protecting himself from his own demons has been more difficult we found out when we sat down across from him in a cramped cubicle separated by a thick layer of glass to talk about the people he's killed is 40 an arbitrary number 40 is an estimate I gave a number between 30 and 40 I think I have identified you know uh most of them look you you you plad guilty to murder you don't use that word I think that I had a lot of trouble accepting that word for a long time um I accept that that's what it is do you consider yourself a serial killer I mean I guess it depends upon a person's definition if it's more than one and it's a pattern I guess then yeah yes in Cullen's case all of his victims were patients assigned to hospital units where he worked as a nurse they ranged an age from 21 to 91 some were critically ill others were ready to be discharged when Cullen injected them with drugs that would kill them it was a pattern that began 26 years ago at St Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston New Jersey Colin's very first nursing job I worked on the burn unit so I mean there was a lot of pain a lot of suffering and I didn't cope with that as well as I thought I would and that was the first place that sh gave someone medication that caused them to Die the patient was John yo a judge from New Jersey who was suffering from a severe case of sunburn until Cullen injected him with a fatal overdose of Lidocaine do you remember the person uh I mean I remember one and that's the only person I've been able to identify but there could have been more St Barnabas didn't know about the patient Cullen murdered but it did suspect him of trying to kill or harm a half a dozen other patients by randomly and repeatedly poisoning bags of saline solution someone was spiking IV bags with insulin in the store room Charles Graber a New York writer as well as a former medical student and researcher has spent seven years investigating Cullen's murders for a new book called the good nurse Graber says a number of patients at St Barnabas went into insulin shock and nearly died he was the main suspect for poisoning random bags of saline he if you if you talk to the investigators there they'll tell you Cullen was our man we knew he was dirty they couldn't prove anything it's all circumstantial they fire him he moved on when Cullen left the hospital the insulin overdoses stopped at St Barnabas day could have had my license investigated and probably revoked at that point in time time should they have should they have yes but instead of ending Charles Cullen's nursing career St Barnabas marked the beginning of a 16-year killing spree Cullen would work at eight other hospitals and be suspected of harming patients at six of them but those suspicions never reached subsequent employers and cullin continued to murder patients with virtually impunity in 1993 prosecutors investigated Cullen for murdering 9 1-year-old Helen Dean an autopsy tested for nearly 100 medications but not the one Cullen used to kill her a powerful drug called the joxa or dig for short it was Cullen's first weapon of choice why did you like ditch ditch you know was an was a very powerful cardiac medication what does it do to someone in small amounts it slows the heart rate down in larger amounts it it can cause what's called complete heart block and then the heart is very irregular and you know it can cause death it does cause death in large amounts it was also readily available in critical care units and Cullen figured out ways to conceal his dioxin withdrawals from an automatic drug dispensary system called pixus which required nurses to type in the name of the patient and the drug to be administered I wouldn't go in dit I would go under Tylenol or another medication that would be in the same drawer so um you know there was no record of me going in for a dig other than the fact that you know it was in the same drawer how did you choose who you were going to give this medication to it's difficult for me to go back in time and think about what things were running through my mind at the time was it personal no no did you get pleasure out of it satisfaction no I mean I I I thought that that people weren't suffering anymore so in a sense I thought I was helping Cullen suggested several times that his actions were merciful but the evidence doesn't support it 60-year-old ellanor ster an asthma patient was recovering and in no pain when Cullen administered a fatal dejon overdose College student Michael streno who suffered from an autoimmune disease was recovering from what his parents called routine surgery to remove his spleen my heart it achs for my son it bleeds for my son we vividly remember Charles Cullen walking into the waiting room he looked us right in the eye and stated how Michael was Gravely ill and people don't make it and my wife told Cullen that's enough you could leave now we're haunted by the memory of Charles cullin coming to the waiting room to get our reaction there were people that you caused to die who were not near death and not suffering that much you know um again you know I mean my goal here isn't to justify you know what I did there is no justification um I just think that the only thing I can say is that I felt overwhelmed at the time can you give us anything can you give the families anything any explanation for how this happened and why this happened uh like I said I I can't I just can say that it was more or less you know felt like I needed to do something and I I did and that's not a answer to anything Charles Cullen was the youngest of eight children and grew up poor on this street in West Orange New Jersey protected by his mother Cullen was 17 when she died he tried to kill himself he spent six years in the Navy most of them is a missile Tech techician on a nuclear submarine he was miserable felt bullied tried to kill himself again after receiving a general discharge he decided to take up nursing he got married and started a family but it all went sour a messy divorce custody battles bankruptcy heavy drinking more half-hearted suicide attempts and trips to the psychiatric ward that was Charles Cullen's State of Mind when he was killing people and on the night he finally confessed to the murders I tried to kill myself throughout my life because I never really liked being who I was cuz I didn't think I was worthy of anything it was never about anyone but Charlie cin he did what he did because of his own needs his own compulsions author Charles Graber interviewed call more than a dozen times for his book and he remembers seeing words like paranoid major depression hostile passive aggressive and antisocial on psychiatric reports he sees himself as a victim and as a victim he's entitled to lash out in any way he wants uh to uh to make things right uh if that means killing patients it just anything justifies his victimhood you said at one point point that um you thought it was about power and control what do you mean if the rest of his life was spinning out of control if he was losing custody if he was feeling depressed if his love life was in the toilet he could poison patients he could save patients he could make decisions he had an arena in which he mattered and where his actions had definite consequence here you have a a a person who tried to kill himself at least 20 times who was in and out of Psych Wars and on some occasions walked right of the psych ward and right into a job as a critical care nurse right he actually took a call asking him back on shift from a psych ward why wouldn't the hospitals do some background checks well partially because they weren't required to and partially because there was a nursing shortage on Charlie Cullen looked good by the end of his career he was a 16-year veteran he had recommendations and for a hospital to ask too much or say too much became a liability you can't penalize a nurse for seeking counseling for seeking treatment for going to a rehab center successfully um and so because of that Charlie hidden those Shadows when cullin was hired at St Luke's University Hospital in Bethlehem Pennsylvania he'd been fired or forced to resign from five other hospitals yet none of this was in his file with the state nursing board by his own count Colin had already murdered 11 people and he would kill at least five more at St Luke's nurses were suspicious there were rumors about his past and Cullen was caught red-handed stealing lethal drugs but instead of calling the police St Luke's brought in a lawyer to confront cullin do you think that they knew what you were doing at St Luke's I think that they had a strong suspicion did you expect to get caught uh well I I think you can say I was caught at St Barnabas and I was caught at St Luke's there's no reason that I should have been a practicing nurse after that they offered you some kind of a deal they said if you resign we'll give you neutral references and I decided to go with that what is it about this system and about hospitals that no one went to the police no one really wanted to find out what was going on they gave you an opportunity to leave I think because it's it's a matter of worrying about lawsuits if they pointed out that there was a problem we're going to be found liable for millions of dollars so they I iess say just so it is a lot easier to not put themselves in a position of getting sued after Charles Cullen was escorted out the door of St Luke's hospital with no consequences one of the the nurses called a friend at the Pennsylvania State Police with her suspicions and an investigation was begun by then Cullen had already found another job at the Somerset Medical Center in New Jersey he would murder another 13 people there but it would be his final stop that story when we come back in September 2002 when Charles Cullen was hired as a critical care nurse at New Jersey Somerset Medical Center the hospital knew nothing about his dark past it didn't know that he'd been fired or forced to resign at a half a dozen hospitals or that he'd been investigated by authorities for harming patients and there was no reason to suspect that Cullen had murdered five patients at his last job he was able to move from hospital to hospital without so much as a bad reference Colin would kill another 13 people at Somerset in 13 months and try and kill three more before two detectives a state bureaucrat and a female nurse finally connected the dots you were under suspicion at St Luke's yet you went off to Somerset and kept doing exactly the same things and it looks like to me that you wanted to get caught I don't know you don't know because you know you're right I mean I continued but I was also I was also careful I was also deny any time anybody would have asked me it was the suspicious death of a Roman Catholic priest named Florian Gaul that set in motion the events that would eventually expose Charles Cullen Reverend Gaul had died unexpectedly overnight while recovering from pneumonia and the hospital discovered high levels of the heart drug dejin in his blood it was the second unexplained overdose in 2 weeks the blood levels were astronomical U they're way higher uh than you would ever shoot for uh by using the drug therapeutically Dr Steven Marcus is the director of New Jersey's Poison Control Center he heard about the deox and overdoses when a pharmacist at Somerset called his office asking for help with some dosage calculations the pharmacist also confided that two more patients in the same unit had turned up with abnormally high levels of ins excellent what's going through your mind my number one two and three thought was that there was something malicious going on in the institution in July of 2003 Marcus set up an urgent conference call with the hospital's medical director Dr William Kors and taped the conversation in which he told the hospital to notify the authorities this is a police matter what we're wrestling with is um you know throwing the whole institution into chaos versus uh you know responsibility to to you know protect patients from further harm and um we have been trying to investigate this to get some more information before we made any kind of rush to you know judgment if there is somebody out there that is purposely doing this to to individuals at your hospital we have a legal obligation to report this okay Somerset Medical Center would eventually notify authorities but it would take them three long months do you know how many patients died between in those no I I don't know the number but I I do know that there were some patients that died in between that five that we know of uh but those but those five deaths will I I'll remember them the rest of my life sorry they didn't have to happen I I they they should have been preventable yes it was October before before Somerset County detectives Tim Brawn and Daniel Baldwin finally met with Hospital officials they were told about a half a dozen incidents in the critical care unit no one used the word homicide they had dropped a couple names on us with regards to their own internal investigation that they claimed to have conducted for uh several months and they did provide us two names in particular uh but did not identify them as any type of suspect or anything like that one of them was Charles Cullen cor correct the detectives ran a routine background check on Charles cullin and discovered that he'd been arrested for stalking a female nurse and breaking into her apartment in eastn Pennsylvania the file there also contained a posted note saying that the Pennsylvania State Police had called just a few weeks earlier asking similar questions detective Baldwin called The Trooper who made the inquiry and hit per after learn speaking with the trooper he informed me that his agency had conducted an investigation on Mr Cullen with a suspicion that he was um murdering patients in Pennsylvania as well that he was using dection to to murder patients and you found this out with making two phone calls yes basically that that was it do you think you had your man yes yes but the detectives knew that proving it would be difficult a number of law enforcement agencies had tried and failed how helpful was the hospital in this investigation how helpful was the hospital they were very helpful by answering Court issued subpoenas uh that was the extent of their cooperation when the detectives asked to see computerized records from the automated drug dispensary and the critical care unit they say the hospital told them that it wasn't possible because the drug dispensing machine only stored records for 30 days they learned learned otherwise from the machines manufacturer they lied to you yes they did they didn't want to give you records that turned out to be crucial to your investigation yes that's that's correct you think they tried to obstruct your investigation they didn't try to help it that's for sure when the detectives informed Somerset that Charles Cullen was the target of their investigation the hospital fired him not for harming patients for lying on job application did you get the sense at at Somerset for example that any of your colleagues any of the nurses any of the doctors knew what was going on no I mean until you know uh the day I was fired I mean nobody gave me any indication that anybody was suspicious I mean the weird thing about Somerset Hospital was is that they were planning on firing me the night before so they let me work one more shift knowing that they were going to fire me the next day so they let me work an additional shift with the suspicion that I had harmed patients which I you know it's kind of bizarre thing to do did you harm anybody that night no with Colin gone and the medical center uncooperative detectives braw and Baldwin decided they needed an ally inside the hospital to help them gather evidence to make their case they decided to approach Amy Ridgeway a critical care nurse who worked with Cullen on the night shift and was his best friend at the hospital he was always early always on time crisp and sat down and was very serious about getting to work did you consider him to be a good nurse I did when the detectives first interviewed Ridgeway she was hostile and upset that Cullen had been fired so they decided to show her the evidence that they had gathered the pixus record showing Cullen's drug withdrawals from the dispensary and his real employment history what did you tell her do you remember I just told her that he was released from several facilities there were allegations about him at other facilities for doing similar things that were going on at Somerset Medical Center and I guess at that point she realized this couldn't be a coincidence and she offered to help yes Danny pushed this piece of paper across the table to me and it was the pixus printouts and and I was devastated I knew I knew he was murdering people how did you know that there were so many withdrawals of lethal medications there's no reason no reason except if if you want to kill someone were you angry I was sad for my patience I was um so many things were going through my mind I was sad dad I didn't see it I felt betrayed by my own intuition Amy Ridgeway who later persuaded Cullen to do the interview with us spent days analyzing medical records for the detectives and schooled them on a computerized record system that would help reconstruct Cullen's activities on specific days she recorded phone conversations with Colin and wore a wire at a meeting in this restaurant the same day a newspaper article reported that he was being investigated for killing patients I said I know you're guilty I know I I know you did this and yet I'm still here I'll I'll take you down to the station we'll we'll go together and he changed his face just changed and what did he say he said I want to go down fighting I want to go down fighting Colin told us he suspected that the police were listening in I knew that Amy had helped the police I strongly suspected that she was wired when she was asking me those questions so uh you know uh you know that didn't stop me having the same opinion of Amy which is that she's a good nurse that she's a caring nurse and that she did it because she felt it was the right thing to do do he was arrested right after that meeting on what police now admit was mostly circumstantial evidence what they needed was a confession but Cullen refused to say anything so once again the police turned to Amy Ridgeway for help what did you say to get him to confess I I wasn't I wasn't very honest with him and there's a part of me I still feel guilty about that I was I was manipulating him a bit I told him I told him the investigators were also looking at me and how could he think that I wasn't somehow going to be implicated I remember saying to him so who was who was your first first victim and was it a long time ago was it recent and he started to talk he said it was a long time ago I believe it was with a medication to drop the blood pressure Cullen's formal confession with the detectives would last 7 hours we'll never know how many people Charlie Cullen killed Charles Graber spent seven years investigating the case for his book The good nurse it's very difficult going back there's no paperwork there there are no bodies to exume is working over 16 years in St Barnabas alone he later told investigators he was ghosting three to four people a week he didn't always know their outcomes how many do you think I would be I would be very surprised as would pretty much everyone I've spoken to with any knowledge of of this case if it was not in the hundreds multiple hundreds you've been in here a while nine years you knew it was wrong yes I did at the time at the time and and later are you sorry what you did yes um but like I said I don't know if I would have stopped tonight you're going to hear about the man the FBI is now calling the most prolific serial killer in the history of the United States his name is Samuel little and over the last year and a half he has confessed to 93 murders that's more than were committed by Ted Bundy and Jeffrey dmer combined no one would have known the scale of Little's crimes if not for a Texas Ranger who had a hunch little had never confessed to anyone about anything but over the course of 700 hours of interviews Ranger James Holland coaxed the 79-year-old into revealing his life's work the confessions have enabled investigators across the country to solve dozens of cold cases but PA needs help to match up the rest it's why the Texas Ranger is telling us the story of how he got America's deadliest serial killer to confess with a Swagger that would make John Wayne envious Texas Ranger James Holland arrived this summer at the California State Prison he was escorted to the interview room for another round with Samuel little the killer who went undetected for nearly half a century when you come up you don't be fooled by his grandfatherly appearance I got away with numerous murders of women in my life over a span of 50 years mhm 93 murders in 19 States from 1970 to 2005 now near the end of his own life and out of appeals little has been spilling his secrets to Ranger Holland over the course of several interviews since May of last year where did you kill the most oh that's going that's easy Florida and California yeah what city did you kill the most in Miami and Los Angeles how many did you kill in Los Angeles Los Angeles uh approximately 20 so how did he Skip by so long he was so good at what he did you know how did you get away with it Sammy did the crime left town The Drifter from Ohio prayed upon the fringes of Society prostitutes drug addicts women he believed the police wouldn't work too hard to find the ranger says little was a cunning killer who sized up his victims and his surroundings the first thing I picked up on is how Wicked smart he was this guy is oh like genius why say oh well number one you know the photographic memory his memory for details like Sammy tell me what's around her there's three tombstones over there there's a kichi road drive down A4 mile there's a white Baptist Church that needs to be whitewashed phenomenal for example little remembered unusual arches close to the spot where he killed a woman outside of Miami sure enough when Miami detectives investigated they saw the Arches little had strangled Miriam Chapman near those arches in 1976 you never felt like he sent you on some wild goose chase no nothing he has ever said has been proven to be wrong or false we've been able to prove up almost everything he said Mr little because of Little's confessions judges and prosecutors Nationwide have been able to close longstanding cases what is your plead to the charge of murder guilty here was little via a video link from his prison in August pleading guilty to two stranglings in Cincinnati in just over a year 50 cold cases that had been dormant for decades have been solved due to the detailed confessions little provided to the ranger tell me about North Little Rock tell me what that girl look like he had buck teeth he had a gap between the teeth that what little grows disturbingly animated as he describes how he strangled his victims you know she fighting for her life and I'm fighting for my pleasure yeah so how do you reach a cial killer how do you get him to talk you avoid the things that normally work for investigators what do you mean by that you avoid things like um you know remorse and and closure for the family cuz they don't have remorse and they don't care about closure no no it doesn't appeal to them at all I mean you're asking them to open up their soul to the things that are more intimate to them than anything in life why should they do that with you and that's what you're working for the skinny black girl real friendly she she she she would laughing when I was killing them with Sammy there's indications of visualization of when he's thinking about a crime scene he'll start stroking his face and as he's starting to picture a victim you'll see him look out and up and you can tell he has this revolving Carousel of victims and it's just spinning and he's waiting for it to stop at the one that he wants to talk about investigators had discovered that little liked to sketch Ranger Holland gave him art supplies wondering if he might be able to use his remarkable memory to draw his victims and he has wow these are all of his drawings these are all his they're pretty detailed is there one that you looked at and you knew right away oh that's there's a lot of them yeah as soon as we matched it up how many has he sketched there's somewhere around 50 the note on this one's super creepy Sam killed me but I love him uh he writes notes on some of the the drawings tall girl by the highway girl in a strip joint right left in the woods 1972 right yes and we matched that one up you have yes that's a New Orleans murder I can't remember the person who checked me out of the hotel this morning if someone gave me a million dollars to draw her face I couldn't do it the fact that he can still do this right he basically takes a photograph in his mind of exactly what he sees as he leaves them a year and a half ago Ranger Holland had never heard of Sam samel little little was rotting away in this prison at the edge of California's Mojave Desert sentenced to three life terms in 2014 for strangling three women in court prosecutors had labeled little a sexual predator he denied everything and was defiant to the end but the FBI noted that little had somehow skirted charges for violent crimes year after year in state after state in places where women disappeared including Texas that Drew the interest of Ranger James Holland a skilled interviewer who says he's convinced dozens of killers to confess during his career typically when people want you involved in a case they want you there because why virtually every single case that I ever deal with there's no DNA evidence there's no forensics there's no nothing and there was nothing linking Samuel little to additional murders just suspicions the ranger was intrigued by a cold case in Odessa town Texas Denise Brothers was a prostitute working on the wrong side of town then she went missing in 1994 we looked everywhere her son Damen remembers driving around Odessa with his grandparents looking for her a month later Denise brother's body was found at the back of an abandoned parking lot dumped in Brush we're asked to come down and look at the body you had to do that yeah how old were you 14 that sticks with you yeah for 24 years Damian didn't know who killed his mother or why Ranger Holland learned Denise Brothers had been strangled and that Samuel little was in West Texas at the time did Sammy do it I don't know but I felt like there was a you know a reasonable probability that he did it to find out if his Instinct was right the ranger went to California last year to interview little who had always been hostile to law enforcement did I believe he was going to confess complete arrogance on my part absolutely and it for the first couple minutes it really was going quite poorly oh horrible he's raging oh yes little vented in the interview room for 30 minutes that he had been wrongly depicted as a rapist there was no doubt in my mind that Samuel little was not a rapist but I told him he knew it and I knew it that he was killer and uh he stops and he kind of looks at me for a second he didn't seem to mind it and then you could see in his eyes as he's looking away and he falls back as I say the word killer and that appealed to him that's how he defines himself as a killer Yes was there a moment where you said I've got him yeah when he talked about there may be three victims in Texas and that three victims and one of them was in Odessa Texas all of a sudden we turned to each other oh my gosh he's talking about Essa and we grabb our files and start going through and checking what he's talking about and verifying and Christy Palazo of the FBI and Angela Williamson of the Department of Justice analyze violent crimes they were listening to the interview across the hall and had access to the FBI database and the Denise Brothers file you've got the photos of the crime scene in front of you did it match up right away oh yes yeah and he had details yes that hadn't been reported details like what and Denise case you remember that she wore a denture the autopsy confirmed brothers did wear a denture all the details matched Samuel little had killed Denise Brothers Ranger Holland knew he was on to something big he schemed to have little extradited to Texas for a few months so he could talk to him around the clock and extract more confessions I would think Texas with the death penalty is the last place a killer like samle little wants to go you know basically what I told him was I can't can go to the district attorney and I can ask him to take the death penalty off the table and and I believe that he will do that which was especially Brazen since Ranger Holland had never met the district attorney in Odessa Bobby Bland and he said I'd like a letter from you uh on your letterhead saying that you would wave the death penalty and I said well you know that's a pretty tall order just to do blindly so why why did you do it there's a greater good the the strange Ranger that was calling me from California telling me he had a serial killer I put my faith in him the next morning the letter waving the death penalty was in Samuel Little's hands last September the ranger sent a plane to whisk little to Texas where he was housed in the Wise County jail for 48 straight days for hours on end the two men sat in a small room during that time little confessed to 65 of his murders the ranger plied little with pizza and Dr Pepper to keep the stories flowing people will hear this and go why were you treating a serial killer so well what do I say to that I say that we can have one case or we can have 93 cases it was in your best interest for him to be comfortable oh absolutely yes yes so why you why did he finally confess to you at the end of the day um you know maybe samon just liked me do today little is back at the California State Prison we wanted to interview him on camera but state law won't allow it so we asked him to call us he did answering our questions for nearly an hour we wondered why he decided to confess now are you worried that there might be innocent people in jail for some of your crimes probably be numerous people who are in convicted senten on my behalf I see if I can can help get somebody out of jail God will might smile a little bit more on me for most of our call L spoke of his victims they were broke and homeless and they walk right into my f well it was uncomfortable to listen to his graphic stories towards the end of the interview we asked him to reflect on the depths of his crimes I don't think there was another person that did well I'd like it to do I think the only one in the world and that's not honor that is a curse with Little's old age failing health and a fear that his memory could slip there is urgency to figure out who and where the rest of his victims are it's kind of like never ending you have to continue you have to to finish it Ranger Holland's been encouraging little to keep drawing three new sketches arrived at the Rangers office just last week three new faces lasting in the mind of the most prolific serial killer in American history

Channel: 60 Minutes

Views: 1,124,868

Keywords: serial killer, 60 minutes, true crime, Cullen, samuel little documentary, samuel little interview, charles cullen interview, charles cullen 60 minutes interview, charles cullen court, charles cullen sentencing, charles cullen nurse, charles cullen, serial killers, cbs news

Id: c2xMTTmZpSM

Length: 40min 14sec (2414 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 02 2023