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Fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more. Kroft tonight, youre going to come facetoface with a serial killer, one of the most prolific in u. S. History. Serial killers dont usually talk to reporters. In fact, this story, which first ran in april, was the first time in the 45 years of 60 minutes that we ever interviewed one. Charles cullen was a Critical Care nurse who admits to killing up to 40 people. Some suspect it was a lot more. The murders took place over 16 years in seven different hospitals. There were suspicions at nearly all of them that cullen was harming patients, yet none of them passed that information on to subsequent employers. Newspaper headlines called him the angel of death, but, as you will see, Charles Cullen was no mercy killer. Until we interviewed him four months ago, he had never spoken publicly about his crimes, never tried to explain why he did it or even express remorse to the families of victims when he finally faced them in court. Thomas strenko this monster didnt even know us or our son but had the audacity to end his life. Richard stoeker id like to tell you a little about my mother that you murdered. You dont even have the guts to look this way, do you . Clara hardgrove charles, why dont you look up at us . Id like to show you what you did to our children. This is their dad in his coffin. How do you like that . Kroft this was the scene seven years ago at the Somerset County courthouse in new jersey as Charles Cullen sat through his sentencing hearing, refusing to speak or even acknowledge the family members of people he had murdered. Even the judge was exasperated. Judge Paul Armstrong mr. Cullen, i asked you a question. Why is it that you have chosen not to address the court . Can you hear me, mr. Cullen . Kroft hes kept that silence behind the walls of the new jersey state prison in trenton, where he is in protective custody to keep him safe from other inmates. Protecting himself from his own demons has been more difficult, as we found out when we sat down across from him in a cramped cubicle separated by a thick layer of glass to talk about the people hes killed. Is 40 an arbitrary number . Cullen 40 is an estimate. I gave a number between 30 and 40. I think i have identified, you know, most of them. Kroft look, you pled guilty to murder, but you dont use that word. Cullen i think that i had a lot of trouble accepting that word for a long time. I accept that thats what it is. Kroft do you consider yourself a serial killer . Cullen i mean, i guess it depends upon a persons definition. If its more than one and its a pattern, i guess, then, yes. Kroft in cullens case, all his victims were patients assigned to hospital units where he worked as a nurse. They ranged in age from 21 to 91. Some were critically ill. Others were ready to be discharged when cullen injected them with drugs that would kill them. It was a pattern that began 26 years ago at st. Barnabas Medical Center in livingston, new jersey, cullens very first nursing job. Cullen i worked on the burn unit, so, i mean, there was a lot of pain, a lot of suffering. And i didnt cope with that as well as i thought i would. Kroft and that was the first place that you gave someone medication that caused them to die . Cullen yes. Kroft the patient was john yengo, a judge from new jersey who was suffering from a severe case of sunburn until cullen injected him with a fatal overdose of lidocaine. Do you remember the person . Cullen i mean, i remember one, and thats the only person ive been able to identify. Kroft but there could have been more. St. Barnabas didnt know about the patient cullen murdered, but it did suspect him of trying to kill or harm a half dozen other patients by randomly and repeatedly poisoning bags of saline solution. Charles graebar someone was spiking i. V. Bags with insulin in the store room. Kroft Charles Graeber, a new york writer as well as a former medical student and researcher, has spent seven years investigating cullens murders for a new book called the good nurse. Graeber says a number of patients at st. Barnabas went into insulin shock and nearly died. Graeber he was the main suspect for poisoning random bags of saline. If you talked to the investigators there, theyll tell you, cullen was our man. We knew he was dirty. They couldnt prove anything. Its all circumstantial. Kroft they fire him . Graeber he moved on. Kroft when cullen left the hospital, the insulin overdoses stopped. Cullen at st. Barnabas, they couldve had my license investigated and probably revoked at that point in time. Kroft should they have . Cullen should they have . Yes. Kroft but instead of ending Charles Cullens nursing career, st. Barnabas marked the beginning of a 16year killing spree. Cullen would work at eight other hospitals and be suspected of harming patients at six of them, but those suspicions never reached subsequent employers and cullen continued to murder patients with virtual impunity. In 1993, prosecutors investigated cullen for murdering 91yearold helen dean. An autopsy tested for nearly 100 medications but not the one cullen used to kill her, a powerful drug called digoxin, or dig for short. It was cullens first weapon of choice. Why did you like dig . Cullen dig, you know, it was a very powerful cardiac medication. Kroft what does it do to someone . Cullen in small amounts, it slows the heart rate down. In larger amounts, it can cause whats called complete heart block. And then, the heart is very irregular. And, you know, it can cause death. It does cause death in large amounts. Kroft it was also readily available in Critical Care units, and cullen figured out ways to conceal his digoxin withdrawals from an automatic drug dispensary system called pyxis, which required nurses to type in the name of the patient and the drug to be administered. Cullen i wouldnt go in for dig. I would go under tylenol or another medication that would be in the same drawer. So, you know, there was no record of me going in for dig other than the fact that, you know, it was in the same drawer. Kroft how did you choose who youre going to give this medication to . Cullen its difficult for me to go back in time and think about what things were running through my mind at the time. Kroft was it personal . Cullen no, no. Kroft did you get pleasure out of it . Satisfaction . Cullen no. I thought that, that people werent suffering anymore. So, in a sense, i thought i was helping. Kroft cullen suggested several times that his actions were merciful, but the evidence doesnt support it. 60yearold elenor stoecker, an asthma patient, was recovering and in no pain when cullen administered a fatal digoxin overdose. College student michael strenko, who suffered from an auto immune disease, was recovering from what his parents called routine surgery to remove his spleen. Mary strenko my heart, it aches for my son. It bleeds for my son. Thomas strenko we vividly remember Charles Cullen walking into the waiting room. He looked us right in the eye and stated how michael was gravely ill and people dont make it. And my wife told cullen, thats enough. You can leave now. Were haunted by the memory of Charles Cullen coming to the waiting room to get our reaction. Kroft there were people that you caused to die who were not near death and not suffering that much. Cullen you know, again, you know, i mean, my goal here isnt to justify. You know, what i did there is no justification. I just think that the only thing i can say is that i felt overwhelmed at the time. Kroft can you give us anything . Can you give the families anything . Any explanation for how this happened and why this happened . Cullen like i said, i. I cant. I just cant say that. It was more or less, you know, it felt like i needed to do something, and i. I did. And thats not an answer to anything. Kroft Charles Cullen was the youngest of eight children and grew up poor on this street in west orange, new jersey, protected by his mother. Cullen was 17 when she died. He tried to kill himself. He spent six years in the navy, most of them as a missile technician on a nuclear submarine. He was miserable, felt bullied, tried to kill himself again. After receiving a general discharge, he decided to take up nursing. He got married and started a family, but it all went sour. A messy divorce, custody battles, bankruptcy, heavy drinking, more halfhearted suicide attempts and trips to the psychiatric ward that was Charles Cullens state of mind when he was killing people and on the night he finally confessed to the murders. Cullen i tried to kill myself throughout my life because i never really liked being who i was. Because i didnt think i was worthy of anything. Graeber it was never about anyone but Charlie Cullen. He did what he did because of his own needs, his own compulsions. Kroft author Charles Graeber interviewed cullen more than a dozen times for his book, and he remembers seeing words like paranoid, major depression, hostile, passiveaggressive and antisocial on psychiatric reports. Graeber he sees himself as a victim, and, as a victim, hes entitled to lash out in any way he wants to make things right. If that means killing patients, anything justifies his victimhood. Kroft you said at one point that you thought it was about power and control. What do you mean . Graeber if the rest of his life was spinning out of control if he was losing custody, if he was feeling depressed, if his love life was in the toilet he could poison patients, he could save patients, he could make decisions. He had an arena in which he mattered and where his actions had definite consequences. Kroft here you have a person who tried to kill himself at least 20 times, who is in and out of psych wards, and, on some occasions, walked right out of the psych ward and right into a job as a Critical Care nurse. Graeber right, he actually took a call asking him back on shift from a psych ward. Kroft why wouldnt the hospitals do some background checks . Graeber well, partially because they werent required to and partially because there was a nursing shortage on. Charlie cullen looked good. By the end of his career, he was a 16year veteran. He had recommendations. And for a hospital to ask too much or say too much became a liability. You cant penalize a nurse for seeking counseling, for seeking treatment, for going to a rehab center successfully. And so, because of that, charlie hid in those shadows. Kroft when cullen was hired at st. Lukes University Hospital in bethlehem, pennsylvania, he had been fired or forced to resign from five other hospitals, yet none of this was in his file with the state nursing board. By his own count, cullen had already murdered 11 people, and he would kill at least five more at st. Lukes. Nurses were suspicious, there were rumors about his past, and cullen was caught redhanded stealing lethal drugs. But instead of calling the police, st. Lukes brought in a lawyer to confront cullen. Do you think that they knew what you were doing at st. Lukes . Cullen i think that they had a strong suspicion. Kroft did you expect to get caught . Cullen well, i think you can say i was caught at st. Barnabas, and i was caught at st. Lukes. Theres no reason that i shouldve been a practicing nurse after that. Kroft they offered you some kind of a deal . Cullen they said, if you resign, well give you neutral references, and i decided to go with that. Kroft what is it about this system and about hospitals that no one went to the police, no one really wanted to find out what was going on . They gave you an opportunity to leave. Cullen i think because its a matter of worrying about lawsuits. If they pointed out that there was a problem, they were going to be found liable for millions of dollars. They just saw it as a lot easier to not put themselves in a position of getting sued. Kroft after Charles Cullen was escorted out the door of st. Lukes hospital with no consequences, one of the nurses called a friend at the Pennsylvania State police with her suspicions, and an investigation was begun. By then, cullen had already found another job at the somerset Medical Center in new jersey. 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[ birds chirping ] okay bye bye [ female announcer ] help satisfy your hunger longer with special k protein bars and shakes. Willpower. What will you gain when you lose . Thats 50 off lenses protein bars and shakes. Its the lenscrafters semi annual sale including bifocals, no lines even sunglasses made with your prescription so hurry in, 50 off lenses wont last forever. Lenscrafters kroft in september 2002, when Charles Cullen was hired as a Critical Care nurse at new jerseys somerset Medical Center, the hospital knew nothing about his dark past. It didnt know that he had been fired or forced to resign at a half a dozen hospitals, or that hed been investigated by authorities for harming patients. And there was no reason to suspect that cullen had murdered five patients at his last job. As we first reported in april, he was able to move from hospital to hospital without so much as a bad reference. Cullen would kill another 13 people at somerset in 13 months and try and kill three more before two detectives, a state official and a female nurse finally connected the dots. You were under suspicion at st. Lukes, yet you went off to somerset and kept doing exactly the same things. And it looks like, to me, that you wanted to get caught. Cullen i dont know. Kroft you dont know . Cullen because, you know, youre right. I mean, i continued, but i was also. I was also careful. I was also. Deny it any time anybody would ask me. Kroft it was the suspicious death of a Roman Catholic priest named florian gall that set in motion the events that would eventually expose Charles Cullen. Reverend gall had died unexpectedly overnight while recovering from pneumonia, and the hospital discovered high levels of the heart drug digoxin in his blood. It was the second unexplained overdose in two weeks. Dr. Marcus the blood levels were astronomical. They were way higher than you would ever shoot for by using the drug therapeutically. Kroft dr. Steven marcus is the director of new jerseys poison control center. He heard about the digoxin overdoses when a pharmacist at somerset called his Office Asking for help with some dosage calculations. The pharmacist also confided that two more patients in the same unit had turned up with abnormally high levels of insulin. Whats going through your mind . Dr. Marcus my number one, two and three thought was that there was something malicious going on in the institution. Kroft in july of 2003, marcus set up an urgent Conference Call with the hospitals medical director, dr. William cors, and taped the conversation in which he told the hospital to notify the authorities. Dr. Marcus this is a police matter. Dr. Cors what were wrestling with is, you know, throwing the whole institution into chaos versus, you know, responsibility to, you know, protect patients from further harm. And we have been trying to investigate this to get some more information before we made any kind of rush to, you know, judgment. Dr. Marcus if there is somebody out there that is purposely doing this to individuals at your hospital, we have a legal obligation to report this. Dr. Cors okay. Kroft somerset Medical Center would eventually notify authorities, but it would take them three long months. Do you know how many patients died between those. Dr. Marcus no, i. I dont know the number. But i do know that there were some patients that died in between that, yes. Kroft five. Dr. Marcus that we know of. Kroft but those. Dr. Marcus those five deaths will. Ill. Ill remember them the rest of my life. Sorry. Kroft they didnt have to happen. Dr. Marcus right. They. They should have been preventable, yes. Kroft it was october before Somerset County detectives tim braun and Daniel Baldwin finally met with hospital officials. They were told about a half dozen incidents in the Critical Care unit. No one used the word homicide. Braun they had dropped a couple names on us with regards to their own internal investigation that they claim to have conducted for several months. And they did provide us two names in particular but did not identify them as any type of suspect or anything like that. Kroft one of them was Charles Cullen . Baldwin yes. Right. Kroft the detectives ran a routine background check on Charles Cullen and discovered that he had been arrested for stalking a female nurse and breaking into her apartment in easton, pennsylvania. The file there also contained a postit note saying that the Pennsylvania State police had called just a few weeks earlier asking similar questions. Detective baldwin called the trooper who made the inquiry and hit pay dirt. Baldwin after speaking with the trooper, he informed me that his agency had conducted an investigation on mr. Cullen with the suspicion that he was murdering patients in pennsylvania, as well, that he was using digoxin to murder patients. Kroft and you found this out making two phone calls . Baldwin yes, basically. Braun that. That was it. Kroft did you think you had your man . Baldwin yes. Braun yes. Kroft but the detectives knew that proving it would be difficult. A number of Law Enforcement agencies had tried and failed. How helpful was the hospital in this investigation . Braun how helpful was the hospital . They were very helpful by answering courtissued subpoenas. That was the extent of their cooperation. Kroft when the detectives asked to see computerized records from the automated drug dispensary in the Critical Care unit, they say the hospital told them that wasnt possible because drug dispensing machines only stored records for 30 days. They learned otherwise from the machines manufacturer. They lied to you . Braun yes, they did. Kroft they didnt want to give you records that turned out to be crucial to your investigation. Braun yes. Thats. Thats correct. Kroft you think they tried to obstruct your investigation . Braun they didnt try to help it, thats for sure. Kroft when the detectives informed somerset that Charles Cullen was the target of their investigation, the hospital fired him not for harming patients; for lying on his job application. Did you get the sense at somerset, for example, that any of your colleagues, any of nurses, any of the doctors knew what was going on . Cullen no. I mean, until, you know, of the day i was fired, i mean, nobody gave me any indication that anybody was suspicious. I mean, the weird thing about Somerset Hospital was, is that they were planning on firing me the night before, so they let me work one more shift knowing that they were going to fire me the next day. So, they let me work an additional shift with the suspicion that i had harmed patients, which i. You know, was kind of a bizarre thing to do. Kroft did you harm anybody that night . Cullen no. Kroft with cullen gone and the Medical Center uncooperative, detectives braun and baldwin decided they needed an ally inside the hospital to help them gather evidence to make their case. They decided to approach amy ridgway, a Critical Care nurse who worked with cullen on the night shift and was his best friend at the hospital. Ridgway he was always early, always on time, crisp, and sat down and was very serious about getting to work. Kroft did you consider him to be a good nurse . Ridgway i did. Kroft when the detectives first interviewed ridgway, she was hostile and upset that cullen had been fired, so they decided to show her the evidence they had gathered the pyxis records showing cullens drug withdrawals from the dispensary and his real employment history. What did you tell her, do you remember . Baldwin i just told her that he was released from several facilities. There were allegations about him at other facilities for doing similar things that that were going on at somerset Medical Center. I guess, at that point, she realized it couldnt be a coincidence. Kroft and she offered to help . Baldwin yes. Ridgway danny pushed this piece of paper across the table to me, and it was the pyxis printouts. And i was devastated. I knew. I knew he was murdering people. Kroft how did you know that . Ridgway there were so many withdrawals of lethal medications. Theres no reason, no reason except, if you want to kill someone. Kroft were you angry . Ridgway i was sad for my patients. I was. So many things were going through my mind. I was sad i didnt see it. I felt betrayed by my own intuition. Kroft amy ridgway, who later persuaded cullen to do the interview with us, spent days analyzing medical records for the detectives and schooled them on a computerized record system that would help reconstruct cullens activities on specific days. She recorded phone conversations with cullen and wore a wire at a meeting in this restaurant the same day a newspaper article reported that he was being investigated for killing patients. Ridgway i said, i know youre guilty, i know you did this, and yet im still here. Ill take you down to the station. Well go together. And he changed. His face just changed. Kroft and what did he say . Ridgway he said, i want to go down fighting. I want to go down fighting. Kroft cullen told us he suspected that the police were listening in. Cullen i knew that amy had helped the police. I strongly suspected that she was wired when she was asking me those questions. So, you know, that didnt stop me having the same opinion of amy, which is that shes a good nurse, that shes a caring nurse, and that she did it because she felt it was the right thing to do. Kroft he was arrested right after that meeting on what police admit was mostly circumstantial evidence. What they needed was a confession, but cullen refused to say anything. So, once again, the police turned to amy ridgway for help. What did you say to get him to confess . Ridgway i wasnt very honest with him, and theres a part of me i still feel guilty about that. I was. I was manipulating him a bit. I told him. I told him the investigators were also looking at me, and how could he think that i wasnt somehow going to be implicated . I remember saying to him, so, who was. Who was your first victim . And was it a long time ago . Was it recent . And he started to talk. He said it was a long time ago. Cullen i believe it was with a medication to drop the Blood Pressure. Kroft cullens formal confession with the detectives would last seven hours. Graeber we will never know how many people Charlie Cullen killed. Kroft Charles Graeber spent seven years investigating the case for his book, the good nurse. Graebar its very difficult going back. There is no paperwork, no bodies to exhume. Hes working over 16 years. In st. Barnabas alone, he later told investigators he was dosing three to four people a week. He didnt always know their outcomes. Kroft how many, do you think . Graeber i would be very surprised, as would pretty much everyone ive spoken to with any knowledge of this case, if it was not in the hundreds, multiple hundreds. Kroft youve been in here a while. Cullen nine years. Kroft you knew it was wrong . Cullen yes, i did. Kroft at the time . Cullen at the time and later. Kroft are you sorry, what you did . Cullen yes, but, like i said, i dont know if i wouldve stopped. And now a cbs sports update presented by pacific life. In baseball, Justin Verlander didnt allow a hit until the seventh inning, leading detroit to 50 win over texas. Verlander improves to 106 on the season. Elsewhere, cris davis hits an mlbleading 37th home run as baltimore beats toronto 74, and the twins win a series in the bronx for the First Time Since 2001. They defeat the yankees 104. For more sports news and information, go to cbssports. Com. T imagine that retiring some day is even an option for sean and me. Howd you get comfortable enough to know you could really do it . Well, planning, of course. And we got a lot of good advice. A few years ago, your mom and i put some money into a pacific life fixed annuity. It guarantees us an income for the rest of our lives, whether Social Security is all there or not. Hey, hey [ laughs ] [ male announcer ] to learn more about a guaranteed Lifetime Income from pacific life, visit pacificlife. Com. Its deliciously dark, just before dawn. Its welcoming the sunrise with a taste of vanilla biscotti. With folgers gourmet selections, you can enjoy a variety of roasts and flavors from one perfectly brewed kcup or a freshly brewed carafe. Turn any day gourmet with folgers gourmet selections. With folgers gourmet selections. Hey, buddy . Oh, hey, flo. You want to see something cool . Snapshot, from progressive. My Insurance Company told me not to talk to people like you. You always do what they tell you . No. Try it, and see what your good driving can save you. You dont even have to switch. Unless youre scared. Im not scared, its. You know we can still see you. No, you cant. Pretty sure we can. Try snapshot today no pressure. [ male announcer ] funny thing about Home Improvement its contagious. Lowes. Never stop improving. ,, its contagious. Could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance. Yep, Everybody Knows that. Well, did you know some owls arent that wise . Dont forget im having brunch with meghan tomorrow. Who . Meghan, my coworker. Who . Seriously . Youve met her like three times. Who . sighs geico. Fifteen minutes could save you. Well, you know. Stahl not since the dinosaurs disappeared have animals been going extinct as fast as they are now. Entire species vanish every year. And while our hearts are moved by the plight of the biggest whales or elephants; the fiercest tigers, even sharks; and certainly the cutest, like pandas, what about the slowest . The turtle, and its landloving cousin the tortoise, have been plodding along, slow and steady, for more than 200 million years. But their hard shells are little protection from human predators and a booming illegal animal trade. It may be too late to save many of them, but, as we reported last december, they have found an unlikely protector in a man named eric goode. Some of new york citys hottest hotels, restaurants and bars are owned by eric goode. Eric goode hello. I need to say hello to people i havent said hello to. Hi. Stahl thats made him rich and comfortable with the glitterati and fashionistas. But behind the scenes, he caters to a far less glamorous clientele endangered turtles and tortoises. How did the whole interest, if not obsession, with turtles and tortoises begin . Goode as a child at six. Stahl at six . Goode i was given a small hermans tortoise, and that created a budding interest in the natural world, and in reptiles and snakes and lizards, and in my hardshelled friends that i just fell in love with. And so it was a progression. Stahl its an obsession that takes him as far from the glitz of the new york scene as imaginable. He wades through swamps, turns over rocks, wrangles exotic snakes and other reptiles, as he searches for his first love. Goode what a beautiful tortoise. This is our first psammobates tentorius trimeni. Stahl turtles and tortoises trace back before the dinosaurs. But now, today, about half of the over 300 species are headed toward extinction, largely because of habitat loss and an insatiable market for them, particularly in asia, as food, medicine, rare collectors items, and pets. How big a business is the turtletortoise trade . Goode china alone is probably in the hundreds of millions of dollars. This trade flourishes because the payoff is huge and the chance of getting prosecuted and incarcerated are very low. Stahl if youre going to be in something illicit, this is the safest or one of the safest. Goode and thats a tragedy. Stahl eric goode is spending a Million Dollars a year of his own money to fight the trade in places like madagascar, an island off the coast of africa, thats vastly undeveloped. Goode people are so poor, some of these villages make less than a dollar a day, or its basically subsistence living. And there just simply isnt the political will of the country to really enforce, you know, whats going on with their natural heritage, whether its tortoises or other wildlife. Stahl fly over madagascar and you can see why conservationists say its bleeding to death rivers run red with soil erosion from logging and slashandburn agriculture that have wiped out animal habitats and 90 of the countrys forests. And yet, because of its isolation, madagascar is a paradise of plants and animals found nowhere else, like the wideeyed lemurs, chameleons that sparkle with color, geckos that hide in plain sight, more than 200 kinds of frogs, and five species of rare turtles and tortoises. Eric was taking us on a trek to find the fastestdisappearing animal in madagascar, the plowshare tortoise, whose shrinking habitat is so deep in the wilderness, its only accessible by boat. Goode this tortoise is one of the worlds most endangered animals. It is the worlds most endangered tortoise. And it has an incredibly high price on its head. Asian countries love gold and this is a gold tortoise. And so literally, these are like gold bricks that one can pick up and sell. Stahl we were following the path the poachers take, landing on a deserted beach, and off we went on a long hike. We walked through scrub brush in blazing heat for almost an hour. Goode if the sun gets too high up, they just disappear. Stahl the once plentiful plowshare population here, he says, could be down to as few as 300 adults. Goode and this is where the guards are based. Stahl goode has helped hire around 40 locals to go out and find the tortoises before the poachers do. Angelo we have to be on a team of many people. Goode different lines, 30 feet apart. Angelo yeah. Goode all right, lets go. Stahl we lined up the way police do when they search for a missing person, and by midday, with a lot of help, we got lucky. Angelo they found one stahl oh, look at that. Goode wow stahl how did you ever find it . Goode wow. Oh, its a beautiful female, so this is a just a perfect, perfect female. This tortoise is a crown jewel. This is a beautiful animal. Stahl look at her. Goode and you see this, this incredible domed shell thats unique with this tortoise. Nothing has. No turtle has this shell, like an army helmet. This is a very, very valuable tortoise. Stahl based on his own research, goode says a tortoise like this could sell for 60,000 in asia. To try and stop the trafficking, he and his colleagues have begun doing the unthinkable. Its a drill. Oh, my god. Goode yeah. He has to be very careful not to hit the bone because then well draw blood. So hes going just that very carefully 16th of an inch into the shell. Stahl they want to leave an indelible gash, a scar, that makes the tortoises undesirable to collectors. I have to tell you watching angelo do this, its painful. It is painful to watch. Goode yeah. No, its very hard. But i think were at a point where were down to so few animals, theres so few of these tortoises left, that we have to really take extreme measures. Stahl scarring the shells of these animals, defacing them, etching is that working . Can you tell yet . Goode it is too soon to know if thats working. It breaks your heart to have to do that to this beautiful, beautiful shell. I mean, you can compare it maybe to chainsawing off a Rhinoceros Horn to save a rhino. I mean, how horrible is that . Stahl to show us what hes up against, eric took us to a market in a small city called mahajunga, where we saw, with our hidden camera, shells of endangered tortoises out in the open on display for sale. And soon, we were being offered live tortoises. So what is this . Goode this is a spider tortoise from southern madagascar. This is critically endangered. And the chinese sometimes just puncture the shell just to eat the liver out of this tortoise. Stahl one of the vendors showed up with something in a plastic bag. What is it . Goode wow. Stahl it was a radiated tortoise, on the endangered species list. Asking price . Just 400. We were even offered a plowshare tortoise, if we paid up front and waited several days. But that wouldve meant breaking madagascar and International Laws against smuggling an endangered animal. How hard was it for you to not take that tortoise and save its life . If you leave it behind, who knows where its going to end up. Goode its incredibly frustrating. This animal is from such a tiny geography. Youd think you could wall it in and protect it. Stahl there is one place in madagascar that is trying to wall them in and protect them behind locks and razor wire this National Park deep in a forest. Are these automatic rifles . Richard lewis they certainly are, yep. Stahl Richard Lewis is with the British Conservation group, durrell, which runs this refuge and Breeding Center. Lewis be careful of the youngsters here. Stahl theyre all over the place. Lewis yeah, just be careful. Stahl oh, heres some. Lewis watch where you step and then come on over. Stahl oh, my word. Lewis these are all adult males. Stahl look at them. Do you know how old they are . Lewis this could be 50 years old, 100 years old, 150, 200 years old. Goode i mean, this is the longestlived animal on the planet. Stahl their longevity is one of the reasons theyre so valuable. Asian collectors believe owning one confers long life on them. The black market trade is now so lucrative that crime syndicates are involved. The center was robbed in the late 1990s in what was called one of the heists of the century. So people actually broke into this compound, the Breeding Center with all the security, and stole. Lewis 75 youngsters and two adults. They stole. At that moment in time, it was half of our. Half of the youngsters wed ever bred. Stahl since then, with the help of eric goode, the population of plowshares here has rebounded. Lewis this is the female enclosure. Goode these girls are responsible for producing 300 offspring, 300 animals that you are looking at in this entire enclosure. Stahl very few people have ever seen them actually produce offspring, even here. But as we were just about to leave, one of the females wandered off, and to everyones surprise, began to dig a nest for laying eggs. Richard, have you ever seen this before . Lewis no. Stahl you have never seen it . Lewis me, personally, no. Its the luck of the draw, as it were. Stahl being a tortoise, the work was very slow and very plodding. Goode its remarkable. You think those legs are just these stubby elephantine feet, but theyre very good at cupping the soil and digging this incredible little hole. Stahl yeah, and she could be what, 60, 70 years old . Goode yeah, 100 years old. Stahl it took her almost an hour, and then gasps goode oh theres the egg. Stahl oh, my god. Goode oh, my god. Stahl is she going to do another one . Goode yup, yup there it goes, there it goes. Number two. This is what you work for. And even more so when the little tortoise, when the hatchling comes out, it is. You feel like youve broken a secret code. Stahl goode wants to emulate this kind of success back in the united states, with not just plowshares but dozens of other species. He has his own Breeding Center in the mountains outside of los angeles that he began with 150 turtles and tortoises given to him for safekeeping by the bronx zoo. Goode they were trucked across the united states, and they were the first guests in my tortoise hotel. Stahl each species is pampered like a guest at one of goodes hotels, with freshcut flowers, salad greens, and a tortoise smoothie blended with organic milk. Goode each species needs a different ecosystem. Like, this tortoise, for example, is from burma, and this is biologically extinct in the wild. And these guys need to be kept warm and very high humidity. Stahl he now has 680 animals from 30 endangered species. Goode this is a turtle from india and bangladesh, maybe a little bit into pakistan. Stahl . And these turtles that, elsewhere, would be on the menu. Goode its called the golden coin turtle, probably one of the top 25 most endangered turtles in the world. Stahl and young galapagos tortoises thatll grow to 400 pounds. Goode these were bred at a zoo in texas and theyve been raised here. Stahl dont come for my toes. But eric goode says he doesnt want any of his guests to stay too long. Goode ideally, wed like to send these animals back to the wild. Stahl why would you send them back . Theres no protection for them back in the wild. Goode it may be too soon to send a lot of them back. Stahl and can you . I mean, lets be realistic. Goode i dont know yet, but i think its important to show that were not just bringing animals into captivity and keeping them there forever. Stahl for now, hes fulfilling his dream by protecting 11 plowshares and trying to breed more. Last year, he hatched 250 other tortoises and turtles. Eric goode is like noah, building a safe haven for, in some cases, the last of these animals on earth. Go to 60minutesovertime. Com for some of the more strange and wonderful sights from our trip to madagascar. 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