Charles Cullen was born in West Orange, New Jersey to a working-class Irish Catholic family, the last of eight children. His father Edmond, a bus driver, was 56 when Charles was born, and died on September 17, 1960 when Charles was just seven-months-old. Cullen has described his childhood as "miserable" and being constantly bullied by his sisters' boyfriends and his schoolmates. When he was nine, he made the first of many suicide attempts by drinking chemicals from a chemistry set. Later, while working as a nurse, Cullen claimed to have fantasized about stealing drugs from the hospital where he worked and using them to end his life.