Charles Cullen’s break-in at Michelle Tomlinson’s apartment on March 23, 1993, turned his unwanted pursuit of a former romantic interest into a criminal case. After repeatedly circling her home, he smashed a glass door and entered while Michelle and her son slept. The next morning he confessed to her by telephone, describing the intrusion as concern for her safety; police soon issued a warrant for his arrest. The episode joined surveillance, a violation of the home, and Cullen’s attempt to cast himself as both offender and rescuer.

From rejection to surveillance

Cullen’s pursuit intensified after he told Michelle he loved her and she withdrew from him at work. He called her home repeatedly, but reached only her answering machine. Then Jerry, Michelle’s on-again, off-again partner, called Cullen and told him to leave her alone. Jerry also said Michelle was deeply upset. Cullen did not accept this as a boundary. He interpreted her distress as evidence that she needed him, even though she had stopped responding and Jerry had explicitly asked him to stay away.

On March 23, Cullen drove to the condominium where Michelle lived and began checking the building. He passed the address, turned through the surrounding streets, and circled back to look again from different angles. On later trips he saw Michelle’s car in the driveway and a light on, but no one at the window. The repeated drives, each taking at least forty minutes, did not answer the question he had made central: why she was not answering him. Instead, they became a form of surveillance, with each return giving him another opportunity to look for signs of her presence.

Cullen went back and forth between his apartment and Michelle’s building, checking his answering machine and leaving another message. When he returned late at night, rain was coming through the fog. He parked with the car lights off, crossed the lawn in wet work shoes, and looked through the glass. Seeing no movement in the kitchen and a flashing answering-machine light, he tried the locked door with a brick. When nothing happened after the noise, he entered.

Inside the apartment

Cullen wiped his sneakers on the kitchen rugs, leaving bits of broken glass, and listened in the dark. He climbed the stairs and opened the bedroom door. Michelle and her son were asleep inside. The scene was presented through Cullen’s own interpretation of the intrusion: he regarded watching a sleeping person as tender and imagined his presence as a kind of protective attention. That private account sharply contrasts with the actual circumstances: Michelle had not invited him in, the door had been broken, and she and her child were unaware that he was there.

After leaving, Cullen drove to a minimart, bought a large coffee, and waited by a pay phone until sunrise. When Michelle answered, she told him that someone had broken into her apartment, smashed the glass, and entered while she and her son slept. She described the experience as feeling like a kind of rape. Her account makes the consequences of the break-in clear: what Cullen privately framed as checking on her was, for her, a frightening violation of her home and safety.

Cullen then disclosed that he was responsible. He told Michelle he knew she and Jerry were back together and that he was not supposed to bother her. He said he had broken into her home, explaining that he wanted to make sure she was all right and had not attempted suicide. Michelle did not answer. Cullen told her he felt somewhat crazy and said he would understand if she called the police, presenting that offer as proof of his sincerity. The confession did not undo the intrusion; it confirmed that the person she had feared was Cullen, and that he had entered while she and her son were asleep.

Warrant and attempted surrender

After the call, Cullen returned home and waited for the telephone to ring. An officer from the Palmer County Police informed him that a warrant had been issued for C. Cullen, described as five foot eight, 150 pounds, with brown hair and a mustache. Cullen acknowledged that the warrant was for him and promised to go directly to the police station. His readiness to surrender did not mean he had accepted the gravity of what he had done. He imagined combining his arrest with a suicidal gesture: if he collapsed in a jail cell, he expected to be seen and saved, becoming both criminal and victim in the same scene.

Before driving to the station, Cullen took Xanax prescribed by a doctor at the psychiatric ward and Darvocets he had taken from his wife after her gallbladder operation, twenty pills in all. He treated the timing as part of a performance in which he would arrive at the station and later be overcome by the drugs. The episode thus extended beyond the break-in itself: after violating Michelle’s home and disclosing his responsibility, he used the impending arrest as the setting for another act of self-endangerment.

Criminal and personal aftermath

The break-in formed part of a broader legal and domestic crisis. Cullen’s estranged wife, Adrianne, had decided to pursue divorce because she feared that what had happened to their dog, Queenie, could happen to their children. She insisted on obtaining divorce papers before gallbladder surgery at the hospital where Cullen worked, and her father accompanied her and barred Cullen from visiting her after the operation. These events do not establish that Cullen intended to harm Michelle or her child, but they show that fear of his conduct had entered his family life as well as his relationship with Michelle.

Cullen was charged with stalking, breaking and entering, trespass, and harassment. He initially tried to represent himself, then struggled to obtain a public defender and hired a lawyer who quit after three days, describing Cullen as too difficult to represent. On August 10, he pleaded guilty to the lesser charges of harassment and defiant trespass. He received a fine and probation, but no jail time. The legal resolution did not erase the episode’s central reversal: Cullen had framed intrusion as care, yet Michelle’s fear and the police warrant made the boundary he had crossed unmistakable.