SOMERVILLE, N.J. — A nurse with a history of job dismissals was charged Monday with killing a patient and trying to murder another with drugs at a central New Jersey hospital, and a prosecutor quoted the nurse as saying that he had slain 30 to 40 patients over 16 years "to alleviate pain and suffering."
Investigators said that the suspect, Charles Cullen, 43, of Bethlehem, Pa., made his statements about serial killings freely over the weekend. He appeared before a judge here on Monday and was held on $1 million bail.
"I don't want to be represented, I don't wish to contest the charges, I plead guilty," the solemn-faced defendant told the court after waiving a reading of the charges: first-degree murder and first-degree attempted murder, which could lead to the death penalty.
Judge Paul W. Armstrong of Superior Court tried to cut him off, noting that pleas were not required at a first hearing.
"I don't plan to fight this," he declared, and was led away.
The case touched off widespread investigations — by nine hospitals and a nursing home in New Jersey and Pennsylvania where Cullen had worked, and by seven prosecutors in the two states.
While prosecutors said there was no way to know whether the suspect's statements were true, the case appeared to hold the potential to become a gruesome paragon of its genre: serial murders by nurses, some in the name of mercy killing, that have stunned the nation from time to time.
Although Cullen had been fired or forced to resign from at least three health care centers, no complaints about his competence or questions over his handling of patients and potentially lethal drugs were reported to medical licensing boards in New Jersey or Pennsylvania.
Moreover, information about his performance and the dismissals was never forwarded to his successive employers, a circumstance that enabled him to move from one hospital to another with an ease that evidently concealed a pattern of problems.
Officials noted that, even now, Cullen was fully licensed by the state nursing boards to practice in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
Cullen, a divorced Navy veteran and the father of two children, is accused of murdering a critically ill 68-year-old Roman Catholic official, the Rev. Florian J. Gall, the vicar of Hunterdon County, N.J., with an overdose of a heart medication.
Cullen is also accused of the attempted murder of a 40-year-old Basking Ridge, N.J., woman.