'Capturing the Killer Nurse' Director on Decision Not To Meet Charles Cullen

Capturing the Killer Nurse director Tim Travers Hawkins considered organizing an interview with convicted serial killer Charles Cullen, but felt it was important not to give him "a platform" through the documentary, he told Newsweek.

Cullen is currently serving 18 consecutive life sentences for the murder of 29 patients, who he killed while working as a nurse from 1988 to 2003, though authorities believe he is responsible for the deaths of 400 people.

The Netflix documentary explores the investigation into Cullen, what he did during his career as a nurse, and how he was ultimately captured.

'Capturing the Killer Nurse' Director on Decision Not to Meet Charles Cullen

In the documentary, Hawkins spoke to detectives Danny Baldwin and Tim Braun, the nurse who helped catch Cullen, Amy Loughren, and nurses Donna Hargreaves and Pat Medellin, who had also worked with Cullen. Lucille Ball, the sister of one of Cullen's victims, Father Gall, also spoke of her and her family's experiences in the documentary.

For Hawkins, having these people involved in the project was more important than trying to bring Cullen on board, particularly because he felt doing so would not do anything to advance the conversation.

"Of course, we had that conversation," Hawkins said of considering meeting Cullen. "I mean, you kind of have to.

"But, it really emerged through talking to Charles Graeber [the author of The Good Nurse] and through talking to people close to Cullen, who didn't want to appear in the documentary but they were very helpful to us, and through talking to Danny, that [we realized] firstly, it was an extremely remote chance that he would want to participate, and, secondly, that getting anything fresh, new, out of him was not going to happen.

"And having seen the 60 Minutes piece that was done in which they did get an interview on camera with Cullen, to me, he gave me nothing."

Hawkins explained that having "people's accounts of him" as well as his seven-hour confession tape helped them understand him more than a real-life conversation ever would have.

"We felt like, actually, we had enough, and we didn't really want to [talk to him], there wasn't enough of a burning need to give him a platform," the director said.

"If we felt like there was truly some kind of revelation that could come out of it or some way that it could help the story, and help the victims, then perhaps we would have pushed harder, but I really felt that in order to give a platform to a serial killer you have to have a really, really damn good reason, and there wasn't one."

Reflecting on the confession tape, in which Cullen claimed he killed out of a desire to show mercy to his patients, Hawkins said he felt it was simply Cullen putting "forward his own narrative because it's not his truth, I don't think. I think it's what he wanted people to take away from what he did."

"What we've tried to do in the documentary is present his argument, but then really give hard evidence as to why that was not the case," the director said.

"So, whilst we use his voice from the confession tape to build a sense of him, and his point of view of why he's doing what he's doing, I think, by the end, the audience is left with no doubt that he was not in fact motivated by the suffering of others, by any kind of empathy, and nothing could be further from the truth really."

Not 'Exploiting' Charles Cullen's Real-Life Victims

With so many people impacted by Cullen featuring in the documentary, it was important for Hawkins to ensure that those involved were approached in a "very respectful way" and that they felt safe being part of it.

"My producer, Robin Ockleford, was really, really fantastic in reaching out in a very, very respectful way," Hawkins said. "We wanted to be clear from the outset that we weren't trying to tell a sensationalist story, we didn't want to exploit people's grief.

"I think in many ways we benefitted in comparison with other projects that have been made around this story that a certain amount of time had passed and I think people were in more of a reflective space with less immediate grief.

"But we wrote to a lot of the victims' families, of course, their names are public, so it wasn't really hard to find people but we were not pushy and so we only went with people who were really very keen in engaging and telling their story."

Sharing what it was like to speak with the victims, Hawkins said: "I think you just have to be a human being; I think you just have to be open yourself and go in there with that spirit and not with an agenda, just really giving someone the mic and saying, 'please tell us what, what you experienced.'

"So, that really was the approach that we took, and I think that pays off because you end up getting really heartfelt and authentic testimony."

The documentary explores how Cullen was passed on by the hospitals in which he worked and how they did not fully investigate allegations made against him or follow up on suspicions that he was killing patients.

Telling the Full Story

It was important for Hawkins to also highlight the work of nurses who had tried to stop Cullen in the past before Loughren, the nurse who successfully persuaded Cullen to confess to his crimes in 2003. Medellin was one such nurse who had attempted to get hospital authorities to investigate Cullen as she believed he was killing patients, but it came to nothing.

Hawkins reflected: "Pat, case in point, you get the sense of how traumatized she is with the experience, not just of Cullen, of having worked with him and having been in an ICU where he was murdering people, but also with the way that she was treated by the institution.

"And it's not just Pat there's also Lucille Gall, who is the sister of one of the victims, but she's also a nurse and, in some ways, her contribution is also key to what happened in terms of stopping Cullen.

"I think, Larry [Dean], who was the son of one of the victims [Helen Dean], went to prosecutors, and we're talking right back at the beginning of [Cullen's] career in the early '90s. [He] was convinced that his mother had been murdered by Cullen, but again ran up against all sorts of obstructions."

Reflecting on what he hoped viewers took away from the documentary, he went on: "You had people put in this position and some acted in this removed way, a detached way, without really addressing an issue, whereas others really took it upon themselves, and despite a lot of obstructions and adversity, really made sacrifices to bring Cullen to justice.

"I think what's fascinating is how people act differently under these circumstances in really difficult positions, but also this sense of collective effort.

"Although it took a long time for Cullen to get caught, a shockingly long time, there were these red flags and efforts that were made throughout and these traces were left behind, and it was an accumulation of these efforts that finally snowballed into the story of the ultimate capture of the killer nurse with Tim, Danny and Amy."

Hawkins said he hoped viewers understood that "even when you're trying to do the right thing at the time, it can feel like you've come to a dead end, you haven't been able to move the needle," it's important to not feel disheartened.

"Pat certainly felt that way, she felt like she had failed," the director said. "But without Pat, without her efforts, without her leaving little traces within the system that the detectives were able to pick up later, Cullen may still be out there."

Capturing the Killer Nurse is out on Netflix now.