Michael Jackson, once hailed the King of Pop, died in Los Angeles on June 25, 2009, the eve of his 51st birthday. The official cause of his death was recorded as a fatal overdose of a combination of the powerful, hospital-grade anesthetic propofol and the anti-anxiety drug lorzepam. After the autopsy, the Los Angeles County Coroner concluded that the superstar’s death was a homicide.
Biomedical Tissue Services was his company’s name; being a modern-day grave robber was more his game. Dr. Michael Mastromarino was a successful oral surgeon with a practice in New Jersey. He had a beautiful home, a wife, and 2 sons. He coauthored a prominent book on dental implants, Smile: How Dental Implants Can Transform Your Life. He was highly regarded in his field. How did this seemingly successful man later become known as the Organ Grinder and the Brooklyn Bone Snatcher?
After midnight, near the end of a 7-hour-long police interrogation that began on December 14, 2003, Charles Cullen said, “I did not want (people) to see me as this, what I am.” Somerset County detective Timothy Braun then asked him, “What are you, Charles?” The 43-year-old nurse replied, “A man, person, who was trusted and had responsibility for a lot of people dying…I hate myself for it ’cause I don’t believe I had the right, but I couldn’t stop, I couldn’t.” No, he couldn’t, and incredibly, neither could the medical establishment stop his reign of terror at the time.
Meet Kristen Heather Gilbert, a smart, accomplished RN, but a troubled soul.
In her youth, Kristen Strickland was known as a pathological liar. According to friends and neighbors, she often made the unfounded claim that she was a distant relative of the infamous ax murderer Lizzie Borden. Ex-boyfriends described Kristen as strange and controlling, eventually exhibiting a pattern of verbal and physical abuse toward them. For attention, she would fake suicide attempts, or when angry, she would tamper with her boyfriends’ cars or physically attack them, scratching them with her nails.
Harold Frederick Shipman was one of the most prolific serial killers the world has ever known, and the only doctor in the UK to ever be found guilty of killing patients. The son of a lorry driver, he was born in Nottingham, England, in 1946. Shipman was very close to his mother, who died of lung cancer when he was 17 years old. In the latter stages of her disease, a doctor would administer morphine to her at home. Eerily, his mother’s death occurred in a manner that was similar to what Shipman would later use in many of his murders.
