Latest / The Evolution of Evil - True Crime Stories / Interviews with serial killers - True Crime Documentary

Transcript

Interviews with serial killers - True Crime Documentary · The Evolution of Evil - True Crime Stories

0:13
Speaker 1: Tonight, you're going to come face to face with a
0:15
Speaker 1: serial killer, one of the most prolific serial killers.
0:19
Speaker 2: In US history.
0:20
Speaker 1: They don't usually talk to reporters, and in the forty
0:23
Speaker 1: five years of sixty minutes, we've never interviewed one until now.
0:28
Speaker 1: Charles Cullen was a critical care nurse who admits to
0:31
Speaker 1: killing up to forty people.
0:33
Speaker 2: Some suspect it was a lot more.
0:35
Speaker 1: The murders took place over sixteen years in seven different hospitals.
0:39
Speaker 1: There were suspicions at nearly all of them that culin
0:42
Speaker 1: was harming patients, yet none of them passed that information
0:45
Speaker 1: on to subsequent employers. Newspaper headlines called him the Angel
0:50
Speaker 1: of Death. But as you will see, Charles Cullen was
0:53
Speaker 1: no mercy killer. Until we interviewed him a few weeks ago.
0:57
Speaker 1: He'd never spoken publicly about his crimes, never tried to
1:00
Speaker 1: explain why he did it, or even express remorse to
1:04
Speaker 1: the families and victims when he finally faced them in court.
1:08
Speaker 3: This monster didn't even know us or our son, but
1:12
Speaker 3: had the audacity to end his life.
1:14
Speaker 1: I like to tell you a little bit about my
1:16
Speaker 1: mother that you murdered. You don't even have the guts
1:20
Speaker 1: to look this way, do you, Charles? Why don't you
1:22
Speaker 1: look up that up?
1:24
Speaker 4: I like to show you what you did to our children.
1:26
Speaker 1: This is their dad and is coughing.
1:28
Speaker 5: How do you like that?
1:30
Speaker 1: This was the scene seven years ago with the Somerset
1:33
Speaker 1: County Courthouse in New Jersey, as Charles Cullen sat through
1:37
Speaker 1: his sentencing hearing, refusing to speak or even acknowledge the
1:41
Speaker 1: family members of people he had murdered. Even the judge
1:45
Speaker 1: was exasperated.
1:47
Speaker 6: Cullen, I asked you a question, why is it that
1:49
Speaker 6: you have chosen not to address the court?
1:52
Speaker 2: Can you hear me?
1:53
Speaker 7: Mister Cullen?
1:55
Speaker 1: He's kept that silence behind the walls of the New
1:58
Speaker 1: Jersey State Prison in Trenton, where he is in protective custody,
2:02
Speaker 1: to keep him safe from other inmates. Protecting himself from
2:05
Speaker 1: his own demons has been more difficult. We found out
2:09
Speaker 1: when we sat down across from him in a cramped
2:12
Speaker 1: cubicle separated by a thick layer of glass, to talk
2:15
Speaker 1: about the people he's killed.
2:18
Speaker 8: Forty an arbitrary number.
2:21
Speaker 7: Forty is an estimate. I gave a number between thirty
2:24
Speaker 7: and forty. I think I have identified you know, most
2:30
Speaker 7: of them.
2:31
Speaker 8: Look, you pled guilty to murder. You don't use that word.
2:37
Speaker 7: I think that I had a lot of trouble accepting
2:39
Speaker 7: that word for a long time. I accept that that's
2:43
Speaker 7: what it is.
2:44
Speaker 8: Do you consider yourself a serial killer?
2:51
Speaker 7: I mean, I guess it depends upon a person's definition.
2:55
Speaker 7: If it's more than one in it, it's a pattern,
2:58
Speaker 7: I guess then yes.
3:00
Speaker 1: In Cullen's case, all of his victims were patients assigned
3:03
Speaker 1: to hospital units where he worked as a nurse. They
3:06
Speaker 1: ranged an age from twenty one to ninety one. Some
3:10
Speaker 1: were critically ill, others were ready to be discharged when
3:13
Speaker 1: Cullen injected them with drugs that would kill them. It
3:17
Speaker 1: was a pattern that began twenty six years ago. It's
3:20
Speaker 1: a Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston, New Jersey, Colin's very
3:24
Speaker 1: first nursing job.
3:26
Speaker 7: I worked on the burn unit, So I mean there
3:28
Speaker 7: was a lot of pain, a lot of suffering, and
3:33
Speaker 7: I didn't cope with that as well as I thought
3:35
Speaker 7: I would.
3:36
Speaker 1: And that was the first place that she gave so
3:39
Speaker 1: in medication and caused them to die. The patient was
3:43
Speaker 1: John Yengo, a judge from New Jersey who was suffering
3:46
Speaker 1: from a severe case of sunburn until Cullen injected him
3:49
Speaker 1: with a fatal overdose of lightocane.
3:52
Speaker 8: Do you remember the person?
3:55
Speaker 7: I mean, I remember one, and that's the only person
3:58
Speaker 7: I've been able to identify, But.
4:00
Speaker 1: There could have been more. Saint Barnabas didn't know about
4:03
Speaker 1: the patient Culin murdered, but it did suspect him of
4:06
Speaker 1: trying to kill or harm half a dozen other patients
4:09
Speaker 1: by randomly and repeatedly poisoning bags of sailine solutions.
4:14
Speaker 6: Someone was spiking ivy bags with insulin in the storeroom.
4:17
Speaker 1: Charles Graber a New York writer as well as a
4:20
Speaker 1: former medical student and researcher. He spent seven years investigating
4:24
Speaker 1: Cullin's murders for a new book called The Good Nurse.
4:28
Speaker 1: Graber says a number of patients at Saint Barnabas went
4:30
Speaker 1: into insulin shock and nearly died.
4:33
Speaker 6: He was the main suspect for poisoning random bags of saline.
4:38
Speaker 6: He if you talk to the investigators there, they'll tell
4:41
Speaker 6: you Colin was our man. We knew he was dirty.
4:44
Speaker 6: They couldn't prove anything. It's all circumstantial.
4:47
Speaker 8: They fire him.
4:48
Speaker 5: He moved on.
4:49
Speaker 1: When Cullin left the hospital. The insulin overdoses stocked at St.
4:53
Speaker 7: Barnabas. They could have had my license investigative and probably
4:58
Speaker 7: revoked at that point in time.
5:00
Speaker 8: Should they have? Should they add?
5:02
Speaker 7: Yes?
5:02
Speaker 1: But instead of ending Charles Cullen's nursing career, Saint Barnabas
5:06
Speaker 1: marked the beginning of a sixteen year killing spree. Cullin
5:11
Speaker 1: would work at eight other hospitals and be suspected of
5:14
Speaker 1: harming patients at six of them, but those suspicions never
5:18
Speaker 1: reached subsequent employers, and Cullen continued to murder patients with
5:23
Speaker 1: virtually impunity. In nineteen ninety three, prosecutors investigated Cullin for
5:28
Speaker 1: murdering ninety one year old Helen Dean. An autopsy tested
5:33
Speaker 1: for nearly one hundred medications, but not the one Cullen
5:36
Speaker 1: used to kill her. A powerful drug called the jockst
5:40
Speaker 1: or Ditch for short. It was Cullin's first weapon of choice.
5:44
Speaker 8: Why did you like ditch ditch? You know?
5:48
Speaker 7: Was it a very powerful cardiac medication?
5:52
Speaker 8: What does it do to someone?
5:54
Speaker 7: In small amounts, it slows the heartbreat down. In larger amounts,
5:59
Speaker 7: it can call what's called complete heart block and then
6:03
Speaker 7: the heart is very irregular, and you know it can
6:09
Speaker 7: cause death. It does cause death in large amounts.
6:12
Speaker 1: It was also readily available in critical care units, and
6:16
Speaker 1: Cullen figured out ways to conceal his digoxin withdrawals from
6:19
Speaker 1: an automatic drug dispensary system called Pixies, which required nurses
6:24
Speaker 1: to type in the name of the patient and the
6:26
Speaker 1: drug to be administered.
6:28
Speaker 7: I wouldn't go in under ditch. I would go under
6:31
Speaker 7: tile and all for another medication that would be in
6:35
Speaker 7: the same drawer. So you know, there was no record
6:39
Speaker 7: of me going in for ditch other than the fact
6:42
Speaker 7: that you know it was in the same drawer.
6:44
Speaker 8: How did you choose who you were going to give
6:48
Speaker 8: this medication to.
6:49
Speaker 7: It's difficult for me to go back in time and
6:52
Speaker 7: think about what things were running through my mind at
6:55
Speaker 7: the time.
6:56
Speaker 8: Was it personal?
6:57
Speaker 7: No? No.
6:58
Speaker 8: Did you get pleasure out of it? Satisfaction?
7:01
Speaker 9: No?
7:01
Speaker 7: I mean I thought that that people weren't suffering anymore, so,
7:08
Speaker 7: in a sense, I thought I was.
7:12
Speaker 8: Helping.
7:14
Speaker 1: Culin suggested several times that his actions were merciful, but
7:17
Speaker 1: the evidence doesn't support it. Sixty year old Eleanor Stecker
7:22
Speaker 1: an asthma patient was recovering and in no pain when
7:25
Speaker 1: Culin administered a fatal de Jockson overdose. College student Michael Straenko,
7:31
Speaker 1: who suffered from an autoimmune disease, was recovering from what
7:34
Speaker 1: his parents called routine surgery to remove his spleen.
7:38
Speaker 10: My heart, it aches for my son, It bleeds.
7:42
Speaker 1: For my son.
7:44
Speaker 3: We vividly remember Charles Cullen walking into the waiting room.
7:49
Speaker 3: He looked us right in the eye and stated how
7:52
Speaker 3: Michael was gravely ill and people don't make it. And
7:55
Speaker 3: my wife's told Culin, that's enough. You could leave.
7:58
Speaker 2: Now.
8:00
Speaker 3: We're haunted by the memory of Charles Collin coming to
8:02
Speaker 3: the waiting groom to get our reaction.
8:04
Speaker 1: There were people that you caused to die who were
8:08
Speaker 1: not near death and not suffering that much.
8:17
Speaker 8: You know.
8:19
Speaker 7: Again, you know, I mean, Michael here isn't to justify
8:26
Speaker 7: you know, what I did to There is no justification.
8:31
Speaker 7: I just think that the only thing I can say
8:37
Speaker 7: is that I felt overwhelmed at the time.
8:40
Speaker 11: Can you give us anything, Can you give the families anything,
8:44
Speaker 11: any explanation for how this happened and why this happened?
8:52
Speaker 7: Like I said, I can't. I just can't say that
8:57
Speaker 7: it was more or less, you know, felt like I
9:01
Speaker 7: needed to do something and I did, And that's not
9:09
Speaker 7: an answer to anything.
9:13
Speaker 1: Charles Cullen was the youngest of eight children and grew
9:16
Speaker 1: up poor on this street in West Orange, New Jersey.
9:19
Speaker 1: Protected by his mother. Cullin was seventeen when she died.
9:23
Speaker 1: He tried to kill himself. He spent six years in
9:26
Speaker 1: the Navy, most of them as a missile technician on
9:29
Speaker 1: a nuclear submarine. He was miserable, felt bullied, tried to
9:34
Speaker 1: kill himself again. After receiving a general discharge, he decided
9:38
Speaker 1: to take up nursing. He got married and started a family,
9:42
Speaker 1: but it all went sour. A messy divorce, custody battles, bankruptcy,
9:48
Speaker 1: heavy drinking, more half hearted suicide attempts, and trips to
9:52
Speaker 1: the psychiatric ward. That was Charles Cullen's state of mind
9:56
Speaker 1: when he was killing people. And on the night he
9:58
Speaker 1: finally confessed to the murders.
10:01
Speaker 12: I tried to kill myself throughout my life because I
10:09
Speaker 12: never really liked who I was, said I was worthy
10:16
Speaker 12: of anything.
10:18
Speaker 6: It was never about anyone but Charlie Collin. He did
10:23
Speaker 6: what he did because of his own needs, his own compulsions.
10:27
Speaker 1: Author Charles Graeber interviewed Colin more than a dozen times
10:30
Speaker 1: for his book, and he remembers seeing words like paranoid,
10:34
Speaker 1: major depression, hostile, passive, aggressive, and anti social on psychiatric reports.
10:40
Speaker 6: He sees himself as a victim, and as a victim,
10:44
Speaker 6: he's entitled to lash out in any way. He wants
10:48
Speaker 6: to make things right. If that means killing patients, it
10:53
Speaker 6: just anything justifies his Victimodey.
10:58
Speaker 1: You said at one point that you thought it was
11:01
Speaker 1: about power and control.
11:02
Speaker 6: What do you mean If the rest of his life
11:04
Speaker 6: was spinning out of control, if he was losing custody,
11:08
Speaker 6: if he was feeling depressed, if his love life was
11:12
Speaker 6: in the toilet, he could poison patience, He could save patients,
11:17
Speaker 6: He could make decisions. He had an arena in which
11:20
Speaker 6: he mattered and where his actions had definite consequence.
11:25
Speaker 1: Here you have a person who tried to kill himself
11:30
Speaker 1: at least twenty times, who was in and out of
11:33
Speaker 1: psych wards, and on some occasions walked right out of
11:37
Speaker 1: the psych ward and write into a job as a
11:39
Speaker 1: critical care nurse.
11:41
Speaker 6: Right He actually took a call asking him back on
11:44
Speaker 6: shift from a psych ward.
11:46
Speaker 1: Why wouldn't the hospitals do some background.
11:48
Speaker 6: Checks well, partially because they weren't required to, and partially
11:52
Speaker 6: because there was a nursing shortage on Charlie Collen looked
11:56
Speaker 6: good by the end of his career. He was a
11:57
Speaker 6: sixteen year veteran. He had recommendations, and for a hospital
12:02
Speaker 6: to ask too much or say too much became a liability.
12:06
Speaker 6: You can't penalize a nurse for seeking counseling, for seeking treatment,
12:10
Speaker 6: for going to a rehab center successfully, and so because
12:16
Speaker 6: of that, Charlie hid in those shadows.
12:18
Speaker 1: When Colin was hired at Saint Luke's University Hospital in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania,
12:23
Speaker 1: he'd been fired or forced to resign from five other hospitals,
12:27
Speaker 1: yet none of this was in his file with the
12:29
Speaker 1: state Nursing Board. By his own count, Colin had already
12:33
Speaker 1: murdered eleven people and he would kill at least five more.
12:37
Speaker 1: At Saint Luke's, nurses were suspicious, there were rumors about
12:41
Speaker 1: his past, and Culin was caught red handed stealing lethal drugs,
12:46
Speaker 1: but instead of calling the police, Saint Luke's brought in
12:49
Speaker 1: a lawyer to confront Colin.
12:51
Speaker 8: Do you think that they knew what you were doing
12:53
Speaker 8: at Saint Luke's.
12:54
Speaker 7: I think that they had a strong suspicion.
12:56
Speaker 8: Did you expect to get caught?
13:00
Speaker 7: Well, I think you can say I was caught at
13:04
Speaker 7: Saint Parnabus and I was caught at Saint Luke's. There's
13:07
Speaker 7: no reason that I should have been in practicing nurse.
13:10
Speaker 8: After that, they offered you some kind of a deal.
13:12
Speaker 7: They said, if you resign, we'll give you neutral references,
13:17
Speaker 7: and I decided to go with that.
13:20
Speaker 1: What is it about this system and about hospitals that
13:26
Speaker 1: no one went to the police. No one really wanted
13:29
Speaker 1: to find out what was going on.
13:32
Speaker 8: They gave you an opportunity to leave.
13:34
Speaker 7: I think because it's a matter of worrying about lawsuits.
13:39
Speaker 7: If they pointed out that there was a problem, We're
13:42
Speaker 7: going to be found liable for millions of dollars. So
13:45
Speaker 7: they guess they just saw it was a lot easier
13:48
Speaker 7: to not put themselves in a position of getting sued.
13:53
Speaker 1: After Charles Cullen was escorted out the door of Saint
13:56
Speaker 1: Luke's Hospital with no consequences, one of the nurses called
13:59
Speaker 1: a friend that the Pennsylvania State Police with her suspicions.
14:02
Speaker 2: And an investigation was begun.
14:05
Speaker 1: By then, Cullen had already found another job at the
14:08
Speaker 1: Somerset Medical Center in New Jersey. He would murder another
14:11
Speaker 1: thirteen people there, but it would be his final stop.
14:14
Speaker 2: That story when we come back.
14:23
Speaker 1: In September two thousand and two, when Charles Cullen was
14:27
Speaker 1: hired as a critical care nurse at New Jersey's Somerset
14:30
Speaker 1: Medical Center. The hospital knew nothing about his dark past,
14:34
Speaker 1: and didn't know that he'd been fired or forced to
14:36
Speaker 1: resign at a half a dozen hospitals, or that he'd
14:39
Speaker 1: been investigated by authorities for harming patients. And there was
14:42
Speaker 1: no reason to suspect that Culin had murdered five patients
14:46
Speaker 1: at his last job.
14:47
Speaker 2: He was able to move from.
14:48
Speaker 1: Hospital to hospital without so much as a bad reference.
14:52
Speaker 1: Colin would kill another thirteen people at Somerset in thirteen months,
14:56
Speaker 1: and try and kill three more before two detectives, eight
15:00
Speaker 1: bureaucrat and a female nurse finally connected the dots.
15:05
Speaker 8: You're under suspicion at Saint Luke's.
15:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, you went off to Somerset and kept doing exactly
15:13
Speaker 1: the same things, And it looks like to me that
15:18
Speaker 1: you wanted to get caught.
15:20
Speaker 8: I don't know. You don't know.
15:23
Speaker 7: Because you know you're right. I mean, I continued, but
15:28
Speaker 7: I was also I was also careful. I was also
15:33
Speaker 7: deny any time anybody would have asked me.
15:37
Speaker 1: It was the suspicious death of a Roman Catholic priest
15:40
Speaker 1: named Florian Gaull that set in motion the events that
15:43
Speaker 1: would eventually expose Charles Cullen. Reverend gall had died unexpectedly
15:48
Speaker 1: overnight while recovering from pneumonia, and the hospital discovered high
15:52
Speaker 1: levels of the heart drug to Jockson in his blood.
15:55
Speaker 1: It was the second unexplained overdose in two weeks.
15:59
Speaker 13: The bloodline were astronomical. They're way higher than you would
16:04
Speaker 13: ever shoot for by using the drug therapeutically.
16:08
Speaker 1: Doctor Stephen Marcus is the director of New Jersey's Poison
16:12
Speaker 1: Control Center. He heard about the de Jockson overdoses when
16:15
Speaker 1: a pharmacist at Somerset called his office asking for help
16:19
Speaker 1: with some dosage calculations. The pharmacist also confided that two
16:24
Speaker 1: more patients in the same unit had turned up with
16:26
Speaker 1: abnormally high levels of insulin.
16:29
Speaker 2: What's going through your mind?
16:30
Speaker 13: My number one, two and three thought was that there
16:33
Speaker 13: was something malicious going on in the institution.
16:36
Speaker 1: In July of two thousand and three, Marcus set up
16:39
Speaker 1: an urgent conference call with the hospital's medical director, doctor
16:42
Speaker 1: William Cores, and taped the conversation, in which he told
16:46
Speaker 1: the hospital to notify the authorities, the police matter.
16:50
Speaker 14: What we're wrestling with is, you know, throwing the whole
16:54
Speaker 14: institution and the chaos versus responsibility to wintact pace from
17:00
Speaker 14: further harm. And we have been trying to investigate this
17:05
Speaker 14: to get the more information before we made any kind
17:08
Speaker 14: of brush to you know, judgment.
17:11
Speaker 11: If there is somebody out there that is purposely doing
17:15
Speaker 11: this to.
17:16
Speaker 14: Individuals at your hospital, we have a legal obligation to
17:19
Speaker 14: report this.
17:21
Speaker 5: Okay.
17:23
Speaker 1: Somerset Medical Center would eventually notify authorities, but it would
17:26
Speaker 1: take the three long months. Do you know how many
17:30
Speaker 1: patients died between those.
17:33
Speaker 13: No, I don't know the number, but I do know
17:35
Speaker 13: that there were some patients that died in between them.
17:38
Speaker 13: Five that we know of those, But those five deaths
17:44
Speaker 13: will I'll remember them of the rest of my life.
17:48
Speaker 8: Sorry, they didn't have to happen.
17:53
Speaker 2: They should have been preventable.
17:56
Speaker 1: Yes, it was October before Somerset County Detectives Tim Braun
18:00
Speaker 1: and Daniel Baldwin finally met with hospital officials. They were
18:04
Speaker 1: told about a half a dozen incidents in the critical
18:07
Speaker 1: care unit. No one used the word homicide.
18:11
Speaker 15: They had dropped a couple names on us with regards
18:13
Speaker 15: to their own internal investigation that they claimed to have
18:16
Speaker 15: conducted for several months, and they did provide us two
18:21
Speaker 15: names in particular, but did not identify them as any
18:26
Speaker 15: type of suspect or anything like that.
18:29
Speaker 8: One of them was Charles Colin.
18:31
Speaker 1: Yes, the detectives ran a routine background check on Charles
18:36
Speaker 1: Colin and discovered that he'd been arrested for stalking a
18:39
Speaker 1: female nurse and breaking into her apartment in eastern Pennsylvania.
18:44
Speaker 1: The file there also contained a posted note saying that
18:48
Speaker 1: the Pennsylvania State Police had called just a few weeks
18:51
Speaker 1: earlier asking similar questions. Detective Baldwin called the trooper who
18:56
Speaker 1: made the inquiry and hit Petert.
18:58
Speaker 4: After learn speaking with the trooper, he informed me that
19:01
Speaker 4: his agency had conducted an investigation armister Colin with a
19:05
Speaker 4: suspicion that he was murdering patients in Pennsylvania as well,
19:11
Speaker 4: that he was using the joction to murder.
19:13
Speaker 8: Patients, and you found this out with making two phone calls. Yes,
19:18
Speaker 8: that was it. Do you think you had your man, yes.
19:20
Speaker 1: Yes, But the detectives knew that proving it would be difficult.
19:24
Speaker 1: A number of law enforcement agencies had tried and failed.
19:28
Speaker 8: How helpful was the hospital in this investigation?
19:33
Speaker 15: How helpful was the hospital? They were very helpful by
19:37
Speaker 15: answering court issued subpoenas, and that was the extent of
19:41
Speaker 15: their cooperation.
19:43
Speaker 1: When the detectives asked to see computerized records from the
19:46
Speaker 1: automated drug dispensary and the critical care unit, they say
19:50
Speaker 1: the hospital told them that it was impossible because the
19:53
Speaker 1: drug dispensing machine only stored records for thirty days. They
19:58
Speaker 1: learned otherwise from the machines manufacture.
20:01
Speaker 2: They lied to you, Yes they did.
20:05
Speaker 1: They didn't want to give you records that turned out
20:07
Speaker 1: to be crucial to your investigation.
20:10
Speaker 15: Yes, that's correct.
20:12
Speaker 8: Do you think they tried to obstruct your investigation?
20:16
Speaker 15: They didn't try to help it, that's for sure.
20:19
Speaker 1: When the detectives informed Somerset that Charles Cullen was the
20:22
Speaker 1: target of their investigation, the hospital fired him, not for
20:26
Speaker 1: harming patients, for lying on his job application. Did you
20:30
Speaker 1: get the sense at Somerset, for example, that any of
20:33
Speaker 1: your colleagues, any of the nurses, any of the doctors,
20:36
Speaker 1: knew what was going on.
20:38
Speaker 7: No, I mean, until you know I was fired, I mean,
20:45
Speaker 7: nobody gave me any indication that anybody was suspicious. I mean,
20:50
Speaker 7: the weird thing about Somerset Hospital was is that they
20:53
Speaker 7: were planning on firing me the night before, so they
20:56
Speaker 7: let me work one more shift knowing that they were
20:58
Speaker 7: going to fire me the next day. So they let
21:00
Speaker 7: me work an additional shift with the suspicion that I
21:04
Speaker 7: had harmed patients, which is kind of bizarre thing to do.
21:09
Speaker 8: Did you harm anybody that night?
21:10
Speaker 4: No.
21:11
Speaker 1: With Colin gone and the medical center uncooperative, detectives Brawn
21:16
Speaker 1: and Baldwin decided they needed an ally inside the hospital
21:19
Speaker 1: to help them gather evidence to make their case. They
21:22
Speaker 1: decided to approach Amy Ridgeway, a critical care nurse who
21:26
Speaker 1: worked with Culin on the night shift and was his
21:29
Speaker 1: best friend at the hospital.
21:31
Speaker 16: He was always early, always on time, crisp and sat
21:35
Speaker 16: down and was very serious about getting to work.
21:38
Speaker 8: Did you consider him to be a good nurse?
21:41
Speaker 5: I did.
21:42
Speaker 1: When the detectives first interviewed Ridgeway, she was hostile and
21:46
Speaker 1: upset that Culin had been fired, so they decided to
21:49
Speaker 1: show her the evidence that they had gathered, the Pixis
21:52
Speaker 1: record showing Cullen's drug withdrawals from the dispensary and his
21:56
Speaker 1: real employment history.
21:58
Speaker 8: Would you tell her? Do you remember?
22:00
Speaker 4: I just told her that he was released from several facilities.
22:03
Speaker 4: There were allegations about him at other facilities for doing
22:06
Speaker 4: similar things that were going on at Somerset Medical Center.
22:09
Speaker 4: Because at that point she realized this couldn't be a coincidence,
22:13
Speaker 4: and she offered to help.
22:14
Speaker 16: Yes, Danny pushed this piece of paper across the table
22:19
Speaker 16: to me, and it was the Pixis print outs. And
22:29
Speaker 16: I was devastated. I knew, I knew he was murdering people.
22:35
Speaker 3: How did you know that there were so.
22:40
Speaker 16: Many withdrawals of lethal medications. There's no reason, no reason
22:47
Speaker 16: except if you want to kill someone.
22:49
Speaker 2: Were you angry?
22:51
Speaker 16: I was sad for my patients. I was so many
22:55
Speaker 16: things were going through my mind. I was sad I
22:59
Speaker 16: didn't see it. I felt betrayed by my own intuition.
23:04
Speaker 1: Amy Ridgway, who later persuaded Colin to do the interview
23:08
Speaker 1: with us, spent days analyzing medical records for the detectives
23:12
Speaker 1: and schooled them on a computerized record system that would
23:16
Speaker 1: help reconstruct Colin's activities on specific days. She recorded phone
23:21
Speaker 1: conversations with Colin and wore a wire at a meeting
23:24
Speaker 1: in this restaurant. The same day, a newspaper article reported
23:28
Speaker 1: that he was being investigated for killing patients.
23:31
Speaker 16: I said, I know you're guilty. I know I know
23:37
Speaker 16: you did this, and yet I'm still here. I'll take
23:43
Speaker 16: you down to the station. We'll go together. And he
23:47
Speaker 16: changed his face, just changed.
23:52
Speaker 8: And what did he say.
23:54
Speaker 16: He said, I want to go down fighting. I want
23:59
Speaker 16: to go down fighting.
24:01
Speaker 1: Colin told us he suspected that the police were listening in.
24:05
Speaker 7: I knew that Amy had helped the police. I strongly
24:09
Speaker 7: suspected that she was wired when she was asking me
24:14
Speaker 7: those questions. So you know, you know, that didn't stop
24:20
Speaker 7: me having the same opinion of Amy, which is that
24:22
Speaker 7: she's a good nurse, that she's caring nurse, and that
24:25
Speaker 7: she did it because she felt it was the right
24:27
Speaker 7: thing to do.
24:28
Speaker 1: He was arrested right after that meeting on what police
24:31
Speaker 1: now admit was mostly circumstantial evidence. What they needed was
24:35
Speaker 1: a confession but Colin refused to say anything, so once
24:40
Speaker 1: again the police turned to Amy Ridgway for help. What
24:43
Speaker 1: did you say to get him to confess?
24:45
Speaker 16: I wasn't. I wasn't very honest with him, and there's
24:52
Speaker 16: a part of me I still feel guilty about that.
24:55
Speaker 16: I was manipulating him a bit. I told him. I
25:02
Speaker 16: told him the investigators were also looking at me, and
25:08
Speaker 16: how could he think that I wasn't somehow going to
25:11
Speaker 16: be implicated. I remember saying to him, so, who was
25:19
Speaker 16: your first first victim? And was it a long time ago?
25:25
Speaker 16: Was it recent? And he started to talk. He said
25:31
Speaker 16: it was a long time ago.
25:32
Speaker 7: I believe it was with a medication to drop the
25:35
Speaker 7: blood pressure.
25:36
Speaker 1: Collins's formal confession with the detectives would last seven hours.
25:41
Speaker 6: We'll never know how many people Charlie Collin killed.
25:43
Speaker 1: Charles Graber spent seven years investigating the case for his
25:47
Speaker 1: book The Good Nurse.
25:49
Speaker 6: It's very difficult going back. There's no paperwork, there are
25:52
Speaker 6: no bodies to e. Zoom Is working over sixteen years
25:56
Speaker 6: in St. Barbabas alone, He later told investigators, ghosting three
26:00
Speaker 6: or four people a week, he didn't always o their outcomes.
26:03
Speaker 8: How many do you think I would be.
26:06
Speaker 6: I would be very surprised, as would pretty much everyone
26:09
Speaker 6: I've spoken to with any knowledge of this case if
26:12
Speaker 6: it was not in the hundreds, multiple hundreds.
26:16
Speaker 8: You've been in here a while nine years. You knew
26:20
Speaker 8: it was wrong? Yes, I did at the time, at
26:24
Speaker 8: the time and later, are you sorry what you did? Yes?
26:33
Speaker 7: But like I said, I don't know if I would
26:35
Speaker 7: have stopped.
26:45
Speaker 10: Tonight, you're going to hear about the man the FBI
26:47
Speaker 10: is now calling the most prolific serial killer in the
26:51
Speaker 10: history of the United States. His name is Samuel Little,
26:55
Speaker 10: and over the last year and a half, he has
26:57
Speaker 10: confessed to ninety three murders. That's more than were committed
27:00
Speaker 10: by Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer combined.
27:04
Speaker 5: No one would have known.
27:05
Speaker 10: The scale of Little's crimes if not for a Texas
27:07
Speaker 10: ranger who had a hunch Little had never confessed to
27:11
Speaker 10: anyone about anything, But over the course of seven hundred
27:14
Speaker 10: hours of interviews, ranger James Holland coaxed the seventy nine
27:18
Speaker 10: year old into revealing his life's work. The confessions have
27:22
Speaker 10: enabled investigators across the country to solve dozens of cold cases,
27:27
Speaker 10: but Holland needs help to match up the rest. It's
27:30
Speaker 10: why the Texas Ranger is telling us the story of
27:33
Speaker 10: how he got America's deadliest serial killer to confess. With
27:39
Speaker 10: a swagger that would make John Wayne envious. Texas Ranger
27:43
Speaker 10: James Holland arrived this summer at the California State Prison.
27:48
Speaker 10: He was escorted to the interview room for another round
27:51
Speaker 10: with Samuel Little, the killer who went undetected for nearly
27:55
Speaker 10: half a century. Don't be fooled by his grandfatherly appearance.
28:02
Speaker 9: I got a numerous verbs of women in my life.
28:09
Speaker 10: Oh, fifty years, ninety three murders in nineteen States from
28:15
Speaker 10: nineteen seventy to two thousand and five. Now near the
28:19
Speaker 10: end of his own life and out of appeals, Little
28:22
Speaker 10: has been spilling his secrets to Ranger Holland over the
28:25
Speaker 10: course of several interviews since May of last year.
28:28
Speaker 7: Where did you kill the most?
28:31
Speaker 9: Oh, so, that's easy, Florida in California?
28:35
Speaker 8: What city did you kill the most? In Miami and
28:38
Speaker 8: Los Angeles?
28:39
Speaker 7: And how mad you kill in Los Angeles?
28:41
Speaker 8: Los Angeles? Approximately twenty so?
28:45
Speaker 5: How did he skip by so long?
28:48
Speaker 17: He was so good at what he did? You know,
28:50
Speaker 17: how did you get away with that?
28:51
Speaker 8: Sammy? Did the crime?
28:52
Speaker 17: Left town?
28:54
Speaker 10: The drifter from Ohio prayed upon the fringes of society, prostitutes,
28:59
Speaker 10: drug addic women. He believed the police wouldn't work too
29:03
Speaker 10: hard to find. The ranger says Little was a cunning
29:06
Speaker 10: killer who sized up his victims and his surroundings.
29:10
Speaker 17: The first thing I picked up on is how wicked
29:12
Speaker 17: smart he was. This guy smarked, Oh, like genius.
29:15
Speaker 5: Yeah, why do you say that?
29:16
Speaker 14: Oh?
29:16
Speaker 17: Well, number one, you know the photographic memory, his memory
29:19
Speaker 17: for details, And we're like, Sammy, tell me what's around her.
29:23
Speaker 17: There's three tombstones over there, there's a Calichi road, drive
29:26
Speaker 17: down a quarter mile. There's a white Baptist church that
29:29
Speaker 17: needs to be whitewashed. Phenomenal.
29:32
Speaker 10: For example, Little remembered unusual arches close to the spot
29:36
Speaker 10: where he killed a woman outside of Miami. Sure enough,
29:40
Speaker 10: when Miami detectives investigated, they saw the arches. Little had
29:44
Speaker 10: strangled Miriam Chapman near those arches in nineteen seventy six.
29:49
Speaker 5: You never felt like he sent you on some wild
29:52
Speaker 5: goose chase.
29:53
Speaker 17: No, nothing he has ever said has been proven to
29:56
Speaker 17: be wrong or false. We've been able to prove up
29:59
Speaker 17: almost everything, mister Little.
30:01
Speaker 10: Because of Little's confessions, judges and prosecutors nationwide have been
30:06
Speaker 10: able to close long standing cases.
30:09
Speaker 8: What is your plate to the charge of murder?
30:12
Speaker 9: Yimy?
30:13
Speaker 10: Here was Little, via a video link from his prison
30:16
Speaker 10: in August, pleading guilty to two stranglings in Cincinnati. In
30:21
Speaker 10: just over a year, fifty cold cases that had been
30:24
Speaker 10: dormant for decades have been solved due to the detailed
30:28
Speaker 10: confessions Little provided to the ranger.
30:31
Speaker 8: Tell me about.
30:32
Speaker 17: North Little Rock, Tell me what that girl looked like?
30:36
Speaker 8: Hey booked team, he had a gap twenty.
30:41
Speaker 10: Little grows disturbingly animated as he describes how he strangled
30:45
Speaker 10: his victims.
30:46
Speaker 17: She fightful life, you know, fightful my pleasure.
30:50
Speaker 8: Yeah.
30:51
Speaker 5: So how do you reach a serial killer? How do
30:53
Speaker 5: you get them to talk?
30:54
Speaker 17: You avoid the things that normally work for investigators.
30:58
Speaker 5: What do you mean by that?
30:59
Speaker 17: You avoid things like, you know, remorse, enclosure for the family.
31:04
Speaker 5: Because they don't have remorse and they don't care about closure.
31:07
Speaker 17: No, it doesn't appeal to them at all. I mean
31:09
Speaker 17: you're asking them to open up their soul to the
31:14
Speaker 17: things that are more intimate to them than anything in life.
31:17
Speaker 17: Why should they do that with you? And that's what
31:20
Speaker 17: you're working for?
31:23
Speaker 8: Real friendly? She would laughing, Well, I would.
31:29
Speaker 17: Kill with Sammy. There's indications of visualization of when he's
31:35
Speaker 17: thinking about a crime scene. He'll start stroking his face
31:39
Speaker 17: and as he's starting to picture a victim, you'll see
31:43
Speaker 17: him look out and up and you can tell he
31:46
Speaker 17: has this revolving carousel of victims and it's just spinning
31:50
Speaker 17: and he's waiting for it to stop at the one
31:52
Speaker 17: that he wants.
31:53
Speaker 2: To talk about.
31:54
Speaker 10: Investigators had discovered that little like to sketch. Ranger Holland
31:58
Speaker 10: gave him art supplies, wondering if he might be able
32:01
Speaker 10: to use his remarkable memory to draw his victims. Oh
32:06
Speaker 10: and he has.
32:07
Speaker 5: Wow, these are all of his drawings. These are all
32:10
Speaker 5: his They're pretty detailed. Is there one that you looked
32:13
Speaker 5: at and you knew right away? Oh that's there's a.
32:16
Speaker 15: Lot of them.
32:16
Speaker 17: Really, yeahs As.
32:17
Speaker 5: We matched it up, how many is he sketched?
32:19
Speaker 8: Here's somewhe around fifty.
32:21
Speaker 5: The note on this one's super creepy.
32:23
Speaker 17: Sam killed me, but I love him, He writes notes
32:26
Speaker 17: on some of the drawings.
32:28
Speaker 5: Tall girl by the Highway, Right girl on the strip
32:31
Speaker 5: joint right left in the woods, nineteen seventy two.
32:34
Speaker 17: Right, Yes, and we matched that one up. You have, Yes,
32:37
Speaker 17: that's a New Orleans murder.
32:39
Speaker 5: I can't remember the person who checked me out at
32:41
Speaker 5: the hotel this morning. If someone gave me a million
32:43
Speaker 5: dollars to draw face, I couldn't do it. The fact
32:45
Speaker 5: that he can still do.
32:46
Speaker 17: This right, He basically takes a photograph in his mind
32:50
Speaker 17: of exactly what he sees as he leaves them.
32:54
Speaker 10: A year and a half ago, Ranger Holland had never
32:56
Speaker 10: heard of Samuel Little. Little was rotting away in this
33:00
Speaker 10: prison at the edge of California's Mojave Desert, sentenced to
33:03
Speaker 10: three life terms in twenty fourteen for strangling three women.
33:08
Speaker 10: In court, prosecutors had labeled Little a sexual predator. He
33:12
Speaker 10: denied everything and was defiant to the end, but the
33:17
Speaker 10: FBI noted that Little had somehow skirted charges for violent
33:20
Speaker 10: crimes year after year in state after state, in places
33:25
Speaker 10: where women disappeared, including Texas. That drew the interest of
33:30
Speaker 10: Ranger James Holland, a skilled interviewer who says he's convinced
33:34
Speaker 10: dozens of killers to confess during his career.
33:37
Speaker 5: Typically when people want you involved in a case. They
33:40
Speaker 5: want you there because.
33:41
Speaker 17: Why Virtually every single case that I ever deal with,
33:44
Speaker 17: there's no DNA evidence, there's no forensics, there's no nothing.
33:47
Speaker 10: And there was nothing linking Samuel Little to additional murders,
33:51
Speaker 10: just suspicions. The ranger was intrigued by a cold case
33:56
Speaker 10: in Odessa, Texas. Denise Brothers was a prostitute working on
34:00
Speaker 10: the wrong side of town. Then she went missing in
34:03
Speaker 10: nineteen ninety four.
34:05
Speaker 8: We looked everywhere.
34:06
Speaker 10: Her son, Damien, remembers driving around Odessa with his grandparents
34:10
Speaker 10: looking for her. A month later, Denise Brother's body was
34:14
Speaker 10: found at the back of an abandoned parking lot, dumped
34:17
Speaker 10: in brush.
34:18
Speaker 5: Were asked to come down and look at the body.
34:20
Speaker 5: You had to do that, yeah, ol Grean fourteen? That
34:26
Speaker 5: stick sweet?
34:26
Speaker 8: Yeah. Yeah.
34:28
Speaker 10: For twenty four years, Damien didn't know who killed his
34:32
Speaker 10: mother or why. Ranger Holland learned Denise Brothers had been
34:37
Speaker 10: strangled and did Samuel Little was in West Texas at
34:41
Speaker 10: the time.
34:42
Speaker 17: Did Sammy do it? I don't know, but I felt
34:46
Speaker 17: like there was a reasonable probability that.
34:48
Speaker 2: He did it.
34:50
Speaker 10: To find out if his instinct was right, the ranger
34:52
Speaker 10: went to California last year to interview Little, who had
34:56
Speaker 10: always been hostile to law enforcement.
34:58
Speaker 17: Did I believe he was going to confess a complete
35:03
Speaker 17: arrogance on my part? Absolutely, And for the first couple.
35:08
Speaker 5: Of minutes it really was going quite poorly. Oh he's raging.
35:11
Speaker 10: Oh yes, a Little vented in the interview room for
35:15
Speaker 10: thirty minutes that he had been wrongly depicted as a rapist.
35:19
Speaker 17: There was no doubt in my mind that Samuel Little
35:22
Speaker 17: was not a rapist. But I told him he knew it,
35:25
Speaker 17: and I knew it that he was a killer. And
35:29
Speaker 17: he stops and he kind of looks at me for
35:31
Speaker 17: a second. He didn't seem to mind it. And then
35:33
Speaker 17: you could see in his eyes as he's looking away
35:35
Speaker 17: and he falls back as I say the word killer,
35:38
Speaker 17: and that appealed to him. That's how he defines himself.
35:42
Speaker 5: As a killer. Yes, was there a moment where you
35:44
Speaker 5: said I've got him.
35:46
Speaker 9: Yeah.
35:46
Speaker 17: When he talked about there may be three victims in Texas.
35:49
Speaker 10: Three victims, and one of them was in Odessa, Texas.
35:53
Speaker 8: All of a sudden we turned to each other, Oh
35:55
Speaker 8: my gosh, he's talking about Odessa, And we grab our
35:57
Speaker 8: files and start going through and backing when he's talking
36:00
Speaker 8: about and verifying.
36:02
Speaker 10: And Christy Paulizzolo of the FBI and Angela Williamson of
36:06
Speaker 10: the Department of Justice analyze violent crimes. They were listening
36:10
Speaker 10: to the interview across the hall and had access to
36:13
Speaker 10: the FBI database and the Denise Brothers file.
36:17
Speaker 5: You've got the photos of the crime scene in front
36:19
Speaker 5: of you. Did it match up right away?
36:21
Speaker 9: Oh?
36:21
Speaker 5: Yes?
36:21
Speaker 7: Yeah?
36:22
Speaker 5: And he had details. Yes, it hadn't been reported in detail,
36:25
Speaker 5: like what in Denise's case? You remember that she wore
36:27
Speaker 5: a DENTHO.
36:29
Speaker 10: The autopsy confirmed Brothers did wear a denture. All the
36:33
Speaker 10: details matched. Samuel Little had killed Denise Brothers. Ranger Holland
36:39
Speaker 10: knew he was on to something big. He schemed to
36:42
Speaker 10: have Little extra dated to Texas for a few months
36:45
Speaker 10: so he could talk to him around the clock and
36:48
Speaker 10: extract more confessions. I would think Texas, with the death penalty,
36:51
Speaker 10: is the last place a killer like Sanley Little.
36:54
Speaker 5: Wants to go.
36:54
Speaker 7: Yeah.
36:55
Speaker 17: Basically, what I told him was, I can go to
36:57
Speaker 17: the district attorney and I can ask him to take
36:59
Speaker 17: the death penalty all off the table, and I believe
37:02
Speaker 17: that he will do that.
37:03
Speaker 10: Which was especially brazen since Ranger Holland had never met
37:07
Speaker 10: the district attorney in Odessa, Bobby Blind.
37:11
Speaker 18: And he said, I'd like a letter from you on
37:14
Speaker 18: your letter head saying that you would wave the death penalty.
37:17
Speaker 18: And I said, well, you know, that's a pretty tall
37:20
Speaker 18: order just to do.
37:21
Speaker 5: Blindly, So why why did you do it?
37:24
Speaker 15: There's a greater good.
37:25
Speaker 18: The strange ranger that was calling me from California tell
37:29
Speaker 18: me he had a serial killer. I put my faith
37:31
Speaker 18: in him.
37:32
Speaker 10: The next morning, the letter waving the death penalty was
37:35
Speaker 10: in Samuel Little's hands. Last September, the ranger sent a
37:39
Speaker 10: plane to whisk Little to Texas, where he was housed
37:42
Speaker 10: in the Wise County Jail for forty eight straight days.
37:46
Speaker 10: For hours on end, the two men sat in a
37:49
Speaker 10: small room. During that time, Little confessed to sixty five
37:53
Speaker 10: of his murders. The ranger replied Little with pizza and
37:57
Speaker 10: doctor Pepper. To keep the stories flowing.
38:00
Speaker 5: People will hear this and go, why were you treating
38:03
Speaker 5: a serial killer?
38:04
Speaker 2: So?
38:04
Speaker 10: Well?
38:05
Speaker 17: What do I say to that? I say that we
38:08
Speaker 17: can have one case, or we can have ninety three cases.
38:11
Speaker 5: It was in your best interest for him to be comfortable.
38:14
Speaker 17: Oh, absolutely, yes, yes, So.
38:16
Speaker 5: Why why did he finally confess to you.
38:19
Speaker 17: At the end of the day. Yeah, maybe Samon just
38:24
Speaker 17: liked me.
38:26
Speaker 10: Today Little is back at the California State Prison. We
38:30
Speaker 10: wanted to interview him on camera, but state law won't
38:33
Speaker 10: allow it, so we asked him to call us. He did,
38:39
Speaker 10: answering our questions for nearly an hour, and we wondered
38:42
Speaker 10: why he decided to confess. Now, are you worried that
38:46
Speaker 10: there might be innocent people in jail for some of
38:49
Speaker 10: your crimes?
38:50
Speaker 9: Probably the numerous people who are convicted and sent to
38:53
Speaker 9: present on my head, I see back to help me
38:57
Speaker 9: get somebody out of jail. God, I smile a little
39:01
Speaker 9: bit more on me.
39:03
Speaker 10: For most of our call, Little spoke of his victims.
39:06
Speaker 9: He was broken, homeless, and they walked right into my
39:10
Speaker 9: fighter wheel.
39:12
Speaker 10: It was uncomfortable to listen to his graphic stories. Towards
39:16
Speaker 10: the end of the interview, we asked him to reflect
39:18
Speaker 10: on the depths of his crimes.
39:20
Speaker 9: I don't think there's another person that did what I'd
39:23
Speaker 9: like to do. Stop taking only one in the world,
39:27
Speaker 9: and that's that honor. That is a curse.
39:31
Speaker 10: With Little's old age, failing health, and to fear that
39:34
Speaker 10: his memory could slip. There is urgency to figure out
39:38
Speaker 10: who and where the rest of his victims are.
39:41
Speaker 17: It's kind of like never ending. You have to continue,
39:44
Speaker 17: you have to finish it.
39:47
Speaker 10: Ranger Holland's been encouraging little to keep drawing. Three new
39:51
Speaker 10: sketches arrived at the ranger's office just last week, three
39:55
Speaker 10: new faces lasting in the mind of the most prolific
39:58
Speaker 10: serial killer in American history.