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AC/AAAngel of DeathAC/AA serial killer nurse Charles Cullen will make his first television interview Sunday in which he tells 60 Minutes' Steve Kroft he is sorry for murdering scores of patients, but he isnAC/AAt sure he would have stopped if he hadnAC/AAt been caught. Cullen is the first serial killer to appear on 60 MINUTES in its 45 years on the air and says he murdered between 30 and 40 victims.

(60 Minutes)

In his first televised interview since his conviction seven years ago, serial killer Charles Cullen, the nurse convicted of killing 22 patients, says he knew what he was doing was wrong, “but I don’t know if I would have stopped.”

In a one-hour interview with “60 Minutes” anchor Steve Kroft last month, scheduled to air Sunday at 7 p.m. on CBS, Cullen said he was sorry for murdering his victims.

Cullen has been held in state prison in Trenton since his arrest in 2003 for the killings of the hospital patients, most of them poisoned with the heart drug digoxin.

In a taped confession to detectives after his arrest after his arrest, portions of which will be aired for the first time, he admitted to killing between 30 and 45 people over the course of 16 years at seven hospitals in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

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Cullen was first arrested on suspicion that he murdered patients at Som­erset Medical Center. But it was merely the last stop in a career that began at Saint Barnabas Medical Center in 1987 and took him through Warren Hospital, Hunterdon Medical Center, Morristown Medical Center, Lehigh Valley Hospital in Al­lentown, Pa., and St. Luke’s Hospital in Bethlehem, Pa., even though he was fired from or forced out of at least six fa­cilities.

He eventually pleaded guilty to murdering 29 patients at hospitals in New Jersey and Pennsylvania and attempting to kill six others. See a video of those proceedings here.

He is serving a life sentence as part of an agreement with prosecutors to help them identify his victims. An author interviewed for the show says that the number of Cullen’s victims may be significantly higher than previously known.

Charles Graeber, the author of the newly released book, "The Good Nurse," which investigated the killings, said Cullen told investigators he had "dosed" three or four people a week while working at Saint Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston, but didn't know their outcomes.

“I would be very surprised, as would pretty much everyone I’ve spoken to with any knowledge of this case, if it was not in the hundreds, multiple hundreds,” Graeber said.

The segment will also air the first televised interviews with key figures “most responsible,” according to the network, for arresting Cullen, including the detectives from the Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office, Tim Braun and Danny Baldwin, said to have solved the case.

In an excerpt of the interview, when asked if he was sorry, Cullen replied with downcast, moistened eyes: “Yes. But like I said, I don’t know if I would have stopped (killing).”

When asked by Kroft what his motivation was, Cullen said he was easing pain.

“I thought that people weren’t suffering anymore. So, in a sense, I thought I was helping,” he said.

And when asked for an explanation to give families of victims, Cullen said, “It felt like I needed to do something and I did. And that’s not an answer to anything.”

COMPLETE COVERAGE OF THE CHARLES CULLEN CASE