Families Tell Killer He's A 'Monster'

Somber relatives of the victims of New Jersey's worst serial killer clutched photographs and called the former nurse "the monster" at his sentencing hearing Thursday.

"In case he forgot what my mother looked like, look into my eyes now, Mr. Cullen," Richard J. Stoecker told Charles Cullen, who was to be sentenced to life in prison for 22 murders and the attempted murders of three others in New Jersey. "You'll see those same eyes, staring right back at you.

"You don't even have the guts to look this way, do you?"

Stoecker said that while his mother may have been suffering from cancer, she wasn't ready to die (audio).

Thursday's hearing was the first chance for victims' relatives to confront him in court, and about 60 appeared.

Many were also hoping to hear Cullen explain why he committed the crimes, but his public defender has said that was unlikely.

"He will always be known as the monster," Dolores Stasienko, 59, of Kitty Hawk, N.C., said as she held a photo of her father, Giacomino "Jack" Toto, 89, who was murdered in 2003. Stoecker's mother was killed the same year.

Cullen, wearing a black sweater over a gray shirt, sat quietly with his arms folded in front of him after he was brought into the courtroom.

He has admitted to using lethal doses of medications — most often the heart medication digoxin — to kill patients. He told authorities when he was arrested in December 2003 that he killed "very sick" patients, but some of the patients were not critically ill.

He was to be sentenced later for seven murders and three attempted murders in Pennsylvania, and he has told investigators he might have killed as many as 40 people altogether during a nursing career that began in 1987.

Cullen, 46, pleaded guilty as part of an unusual arrangement in which he also agreed to help investigators solve his killings, which stretched across his employment at 10 medical facilities. In exchange, the prosecutors in all seven counties where he worked agreed not to seek the death penalty.

Because of the frailties of his memory and imprecise — and in some cases, destroyed — medical records, it was not clear whether Cullen and authorities have identified all of his victims. Investigations remain open in New Jersey's Morris and Essex counties.

For more than a year, Cullen filed motions attempting to avoid appearing at the sentencing. He recently dropped the effort, telling a judge he wanted a quick sentencing so he could donate a kidney to an acquaintance. Superior Court Judge Paul W. Armstrong said he would allow the transplant.

Twenty lawsuits have been filed against the facilities where Cullen worked.