♪ captioning funded by cbs and ford-- built for the road ahead. >> kroft: in 45 years of "60 minutes," we have never interviewed a serial killer until now. do you consider yourself a serial killer? >> i mean, i guess it depends upon a person's definition. if it's more than one and it's a pattern, i guess then, yes. >> kroft: not only is he a serial killer, he is one of the most prolific serial killers in u.s. history. charles cullen admits to as many as 40 murders, though some suspect it's a lot more. they took place over 16 years in seven different hospitals where

cullen, a critical care nurse, gave unsuspecting patients lethal doses of powerful drugs. >> we'll never know how many people charlie cullen killed. >> kroft: how many do you think? >> i would be very surprised as pretty much anyone i've spoken to with any knowledge of this case if it was not in the hundreds, multiple hundreds. >> horses can feel your nerves. they can feel your excitement and relax which will help them relax. you know, you can make like a smooching noise which will get them to kind of spurt forward. >> simon: what kind of noise? >> i'm not going to make the noise on "60 minutes." >> simon: i was hoping you would. >> i have limits. >> rosy napravnik has won! >> simon: and this coming saturday, rosy napravnik, the hottest jockey in america, will test her limits when she makes a run for the roses at the kentucky derby. >> i'm steve kroft.

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>> kroft: tonight, you're going to come face-to-face with a serial killer, one of the most prolific serial killers in u.s. history. they don't usually talk to reporters, and, in the 45 years of "60 minutes," we've never interviewed one-- until now. 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 a few weeks 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 didn't even know us or our son but had the audacity to end his life. >> richard stoeker: i'd like to tell you a little about my mother that you murdered. you don't even have dguyou? >> clara hardgrove: charles, why don't you look up at us? i'd 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: he's kept that silence behind the walls of the new jersey state prin 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 he's 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 don't use

that word. >> cullen: i think that i had a word a trouble acceptthat i accept thaat >> kroft: do you consider yourself a serial killer? >> cullen: i mean, i guess it depends upon a person's definition. if it's more than one and it's a pattern, i guess, then, yes. >> kroft: in cullen's 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, cullen's 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 didn't 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 that's the only person i've been able to identify. >> kroft: but there could have been more. st. barnabas didn't 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 cullen's murders for a new book called "the good nurse." graeber says a number of patients at st. barnabas went into insulin shock and nearly >> graeber w

suspect for poisoning random bags of saline. if you talked to the investigators there, they'll tell you, "cullen was our man. we knew he was dirty." they couldn't prove anything. it's 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 could've 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 cullen's nursing career, st. barnabas marked the beginning of a 16-year 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 91-year-old 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 cullen's 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 what's 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 wouldn't 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 you're going to give this medication to? >> cullen: it's 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 weren't suffering anymore. so, in a sense, i thought i was helping. >> kroft: cullen suggested several times that his actions were merciful, but the evidence doesn't support it. 60-year-old 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.leed 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 don't make it. and my wife told cullen, "that's enough. you can leave now." we're 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 isn't 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 can't... i just can't say that. it was more or less, you know, it felt like i needed to do something, and i... i did. and that's 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 half-hearted suicide attempts and trips to the psychiatric ward-- that was charles cullen's 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 didn't 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," "passive-aggressive" and "anti-social" on psychiatric reports. >> graeber: he sees himself as a victim, and, as a victim, he's 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 wouldn't the hospitals do some background checks? >> graeber: well, partially because they weren't required to and partially because there was a nursing shortage on. charlie cullen looked good. by the end of his career, he was a 16-year veteran. he had recommendations. and for a hospital to ask too much or say too much became a liability. you can't 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. luke's university hospital in bethlehem, pennsylvania, he had been fired or forced to resom fign fre 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. luke's. nurses were suspicious, there were rumors about his past, and cullen was caught red-handed stealing lethal drugs. but instead of calling the police, st. luke's brought in a lawyer to confront cullen. do you think that they knew what you were doing at st. luke's? >> 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. luke's. there's no reason that i should've been a practicing nurse after that. >> kroft: they offered you some kind of a deal? >> cullen: they said, "if you resign, we'll 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 it's 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. luke's 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. he would murder another 13 people there, but it would be his final stop. that story when we come back. i'm a conservative investor. i invest in what i know. i turned 65 last week. i'm getting married. planning a life. there are risks, sure. but, there's no reward without it. i want to be prepared for the long haul. i see a world bursting with opportunities. india,

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>> kroft: in september 2002, when charles cullen was hired as a critical care nurse at new jersey's somerset medical center, the hospital knew nothing about his dark past. it didn't know that he had been fired or forced to resign at a half a dozen hospitals, or that he'd been investigated by authorities for harming patients.

and there was no reason to suspect that cullen had murdered five patients at his last job. 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 bureaucrat and a female nurse finally connected the dots. you were under suspicion at st. luke's, 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 don't know. >> kroft: you don't know? >> cullen: because, you know, you're 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 jersey's 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. what's 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 hospital's 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 we're 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 don't 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... i'll... i'll remember them the rest of my life. sorry. >> kroft: they didn't 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 post-it 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 court-issued 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 wasn't possible because drug dispensing machines only stored records for 30 days. they learned otherwise from the machine's manufacturer. they lied to you? >> braun: yes, they did. >> kroft: they didn't want to give you records that turned out to be crucial to your investigation. >> braun: yes. that's... that's correct. >> kroft: you think they tried to obstruct your investigation? >> braun: they didn't try to help it, that's 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 cullen's 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 couldn't 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.

there's 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 didn't 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 cullen's 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 you're guilty, i know you did this, and yet i'm still here. i'll take you down to the

station. we'll 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 didn't stop me having the same opinion of amy, which is that she's a good nurse, that she's 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 wasn't very honest with him, and there's 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 wasn't 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: cullen's 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: it's very difficult going back. there is no paperwork, no bodies to exhume. he's working over 16 years. in st. barnabas alone, he later told investigators he was dosing three to four people a week. he didn't always know their outcomes. >> kroft: how many, do you think? >> graeber: 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. >> kroft: you've 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 don't know if i would've stopped. >> go to 60minutesovertime.com for a behind the scenes

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>> simon: the hottest jockey in america may end up winning more races this year than anyone else and has ridden horses that have earned more than $48 million in purse money. what distinguishes this jockey from champions of yesteryear is that she's a woman, and there are not many of that gender in this game. rosie napravnik is 25 years old, was born in new jersey, lives in new orleans, and, next saturday, is a contender to win the kentucky derby at churchill downs.

rosie will be running for the roses. no woman has ever come close to winning there before. but rosie napravnik has been surprising the bookies since she began racing. when she breaks from the gate, jostled by other jockeys, rosie gives as good as she gets in a sport that's long been dominated by men. it's close to a contact sport. rosie is five-foot-two and weighs in at little more than 110 pounds. imagine the strength it takes to dominate that thousand-pound beast cruising at more than 40 miles an hour. just watch the rhythm as that yellow helmet moves. it takes focus, a fine touch and an absolute absence of fear, something rosie napravnik has never known. >> rosie: i don't ever really remember a time when i got

really nervous. >> simon: not even when you're on a horse that's going so fast? >> rosie: no. that's when i'm most comfortable. >> simon: most like yourself? >> rosie: absolutely. >> simon: rosie's statistics are stunning. >> it's pants on fire for rosie napravnik! >> simon: she's won more than 1,500 races since she started competing at the age of 17. this year, she's finished first, second or third nearly 60% of the time. her sister jazz, who trains horses, says it's all about style. >> jazz: there's a special something she has that gets those horses to put in a little extra effort. and she has a special connection that no one can really put words to. >> simon: do you think that a woman can have more finesse with a horse than a man can? >> jazz: absolutely. i think if strength is what men have to their advantage, i think women would have finesse.

>> rosie: horses can feel your nerves, horses can feel excitement, they can feel you relax, which will help them relax. >> simon: relax, but go for it. >> they're off in the kentucky oaks. >> simon: rosie says her biggest success was at last year's kentucky oaks, which is the kentucky derby for fillies. >> they're side by side. >> simon: she was the only woman in the race. the odds against her were 13 to one. >> rosie napravnik, the first female rider to win the kentucky oaks! >> simon: so, when she crossed the finish line almost a length ahead of number two, her friends and fans had not only made a buck, they had stuck it to the skeptics. and to make the occasion even more joyous, her horse was named "believe you can." >> rosie: the moment when i knew i had the race won was like, you know, it was just that fulfilling satisfaction feeling, you know, the greatest moment of my career.

>> simon: but it wasn't an easy ride getting there. horse racing had been stamped "men only" for more than a century. when you started out, did the jockeys... male jockeys say, "how great. welcome to the club?" >> rosie: not always. they gave me a pretty hard time. >> simon: how did they give you a hard time? >> rosie: they would try to intimidate me in the races, put me in a tight spot up against the rail or in between two horses. you know, it's something that i've had to go through more than once. >> simon: go through and go down. >> we have a horse down. >> simon: rosie's had five major spills. one of the worst was at delaware park, when her horse stumbled and fell, and she tried to roll away from the horse behind her but didn't make it. >> rosie: what happened was, i... i fell off the horse, and i rolled right in front of another horse who ended up breaking my leg. so, i've tried to learn from my experiences.

>> simon: she's also broken her back, her collarbone, her left arm, and she snapped her wrist in two. she has a metal rod in her leg and a plate in her arm. did you ever think, "well, maybe i should try something else?" >> rosie: no, i've never thought that. >> simon: you are insane. you do realize that? >> rosie: well, i'll tell you, any athlete that has an injury, no matter what sport they're in, normally just wants to know when they can get back to doing their sport. >> simon: oh, come on, give me a break. >> rosie: well, it's a passion. >> simon: what else could it be but a passion for speed and for winning? rosie's got both, and they've taken her to where she is today. but the kentucky derby, like the super bowl, is a world of its own. rosie has been there before. two years ago, she finished ninth, the best a woman has ever done in this race. so, it wouldn't be overstating it to say that this is a pretty big deal for rosie? >> pletcher: i would say it's a huge deal.

>> simon: todd pletcher has been america's top-earning horse trainer for three years. last year, he put rosie on his budding superstar, shanghai bobby. rosie and bobby won five races in a row, and bobby became the two-year-old champion of the year, an early favorite to win the kentucky derby along with his favorite jockey, rosie. >> pletcher: for any rider to... to get to that level is quite an accomplishment. but especially for... for a girl, in... you know, in a profession that's largely male- dominated. >> simon: yes, you heard him right. horse racing may be the only profession in america where a mature 25-year-old woman is still called a girl. no glass ceiling here; more like concrete. barbara jo rubin-- b.j. for short-- was one of the first female jockeys. she started out 44 years ago. how bad was it when you started? >> rubin: a lot of trainers wouldn't let me even come under their shed row. you know, it was bad luck. >> simon: did they say why? >> rubin: yes, it was bad luck, and they wanted me out of there.

>> simon: and they got her out of there. she ended up racing in the bahamas because male jockeys in florida threatened to shut down the track if she competed. the boycott collapsed eventually. but even when b.j. became the first woman to win a race in the states, the chauvinists kept on shouting. >> rubin: a lot of them would boo at me and tell me to go home, make babies, get out of there. it was not a woman's place to be on the racetrack. >> simon: that was more than 40 years ago, and times have changed, but how much? some of the boys in the stands still refuse to shut up. what do they say? >> rosie: "go home and have a baby. go home and stay in the kitchen." >> simon: it's one thing to ignore hecklers, but what about the people who put her in the saddle? >> rosie: there still are owners and trainers that don't want to ride a female. the only way that i deal with that is, you know, to try to

beat that person in a race, beat that trainer or owner in a race. >> simon: and since winning is all that matters, she says, what difference does it make if your name is rosie or ralph? >> rosie: most of the time, i feel like i'm just one of the guys. >> simon: horse racing is one of the few sports where men and women compete against each other, which means you can throw manners out the window. look, ordinarily, it's very uncouth for a guy to ask a woman her weight, but what's your weight? >> rosie: right now, i weigh 113 pounds. >> simon: that about right? >> rosie: that's exactly right. >> simon: it's exactly right? >> rosie: uh-huh. >> simon: do you have to pay attention to stay exactly there? >> rosie: i step on the scale multiple times a day. we... as jockeys, we step on the scale before and after every single race. i also step on the scale when i first wake up in the morning. i step on the scale when i get home from work in the morning. i step on the scale before i go to the racetrack. i step on the scale when i get to the racetrack. i step on the scale all day long throughout the races. and then i step on the scale before i go home when i leave the jocks' room.

and then i step on the scale right before i go to bed at night. >> simon: the scale never lies, a problem for many of us. but rosie knew what her truth was from the very beginning. her first horses were show ponies, but she didn't want prancing. she wanted speed on a pony called sweet sensation. >> it looks like it's going to be sweet sensation. >> simon: another sweet sensation is wealth, but, unlike many in the horsey set, rosie's family didn't have wealth. her mother, cindy, ran a stable to pay the bills. i guess this all started with pony races? >> cindy: yes, it did. i never saw anything so small go so fast. but when she came off the track, she was beaming, the pony was happy, everybody was happy. we're like, "oh my gosh." and she goes, "mom, i want to win the triple crown races." >> simon: and she was how old then? >> cindy: she was seven.

>> simon: rosie and her sister, jazz, cleaned stalls in their mother's stable to help pay for their horses. the girls' father, charles, was what horse people call a farrier, a blacksmith, went from farm to farm, hammering out horse shoes, trimming hooves. he's still at it today-- that is, when he isn't watching his kid race. why is she so good at what she does? >> charles: i think she's an athlete. i think she's a natural horsewoman. you know, she's 25 years old, but she's been riding for 26 years, because when her mother was pregnant with her, her mother was riding. >> jazz: we had a little motto between the two of us, and it was, "you're never good enough until you're the best." and to see her currently the leading rider in the country, as far as by the number of wins she's had this year, is so exciting. >> simon: sort of mind-blowing, isn't it? >> jazz: it... it is a little bit. >> charles: it is. >> jazz: it is a little bit. >> simon: and so much of it is

in the mind. rosie says she is more relaxed, more herself when she is on a horse than at any other time. that's why she spends so much time riding when she doesn't have to. after her morning gallop on a thoroughbred, she goes back to the track on her pony, sugar, just to hang out and to be with her husband, joe, who's a trainer. rosie told us she loves what she does because she loves her horses, and she knows how to talk to them. can you describe what it means to communicate well? >> rosie: they feel all the aids that we call them. you know, reins are an aid. your voice is an aid. you know, you can make like a smooching noise, which will get them to kind of spurt forward. >> simon: what kind of noise? >> rosie: i'm not going to make that noise on "60 minutes." >> simon: i was hoping you would. >> rosie: i have limits. >> simon: so do her horses. rosie's big hope for the derby, shanghai bobby, has been having a tough year. he was undefeated as a two-year- old, but, this year, he and rosie finished second in a race at gulfstream park.

two months later, at the florida derby, bobby came in fifth and was diagnosed with a bone fracture. he won't be running at churchill downs. >> rosie: i think, you know, you have to learn in... in our industry that if you dwell on every loss, you're going to do a lot of dwelling. >> simon: the best description of racing is probably that old one-- you win some, you lose some. just don't lose too often. >> rosie: i guess it's a humbling sense of that... just because i'm at the top right now doesn't mean that i'll remain there. >> simon: does it worry you? >> rosie: it's just a competitive state of mind. i mean, this game is very, very up and down. you know, jockeys go into slumps, trainers go into slumps. >> simon: but rosie has become a queen in the sport of kings, and she'll be riding another horse in kentucky by the name of mylute. >> here comes mylute charging on the outside. >> simon: last month, he came in a close second in the louisiana

derby. at the kentucky derby, he's far from a favorite. but, then again, many a gambler has gone home with empty pockets after betting against rosie. is there anything in life better than winning a race? >> rosie: there's lots of great things in life, but there's nothing like winning a race. >> and now your cbs sports update presented by viagra. in first-round nba playoff action, the celtics scwansdered a 20-point second-half lead but held on the beat the knicks in overtime. jason terry scored nine clutch points and boston avoided elimination. playing today without injured dwyane wade, the heat closed out a four-game sweep in milwaukee. miami will now move on the play the winner of the bulls-nets series. more more sports news and information, go cbssports.com.

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