Warning: This article contains spoilers forThe Good Nurse.
When you get sick, you go to a hospital to get better.
It’s that simple: Patients inherently trust that the doctors and nurses there will help them.
Eddie Redmayne and Jessica Chastain in ‘The Good Nurse’.Courtesy of TIFF
But what makes it even more shocking is that it actually happened in real life.
Are Amy Loughren and Charlie Cullen real people?
He continued killing patients until he left the hospital four years later when officials started investigating contaminated IV bags.
JoJo Whilden / Netflix
But he was never charged with any crimes.
At least five different hospitals knew what Cullen was doing and did nothing to stop him.
“Watching the movie gave me permission to be proud of myself,“Loughren told PEOPLE.
JoJo Whilden / Netflix
“I showed up as a mom.
I showed up as a nurse.
I showed up as a friend.
The only reason Charlie is not still murdering is because of my friendship with him.”
What about the identity of the victims?
We weren’t in those rooms.
I didn’t meet the victims' families to really understand who these people were.
So frankly, I would feel a bit dirty [using their identities].
And most people could not give consent because they were dead.
Or sometimes the families didn’t know.
In the case of a lot of Charlie’s victims, the families still don’t know.”
How did Loughren catch Cullen?
It only took her six months to stop a 16-year killing spree.
She eventually became a confidential informant to help police gain enough evidence to arrest Cullen in 2003.
That scene where she wears a wire and confronts him about his crimes in the diner?
Thanks to her efforts, he is currently serving 11 consecutive life sentences and faces another six life sentences.
Did he really murder that many people?
But it’s even worse than that.
He eventually became known as the “Angel of Death.”
“I thought that people weren’t suffering anymore,” he said during the interview.
“So in a sense, I thought I was helping.”
But he never revealed why he started killing patients in the first place.
“There is no justification,” he said.
“The only thing I can say is that I felt overwhelmed at the time.
It felt like I needed to do something, and I did.
And that’s not an answer to anything.”
Did Loughren really suffer from a life-threatening heart condition?
Where is Cullen now?
The Good Nurseis now playing in select theaters and begins streaming Oct. 26 on Netflix.
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