MONSTER who had sex with at least 99 corpses in hospital mortuaries – including children as young as nine – today admitted murdering two women and raping them as they were dying.
David Fuller, 67, bludgeoned Wendy Knell and Caroline Pierce to death in their Kent flats in 1987 in crimes known as the Bedsit Murders.
More than 20 years after the atrocities, he defiled scores of dead women and girls at mortuaries he had access to through his work as a technical supervisor at a hospital.
The youngest victim of his perversions was just nine, while the oldest was 100.
Fuller, of affluent market town Heathfield in East Sussex, initially pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.
However, midway through his trial, he suddenly admitted murdering the women. He will die behind bars.
As a result of his guilty pleas, it can also be reported today that the defendant has already admitted 51 other offences, including 44 charges relating to dead victims.
Charges include the sexual penetration of a corpse, possessing an extreme pornographic image involving sexual interference with a corpse and taking indecent images of children.
One charge alone relates to 25 deceased females.
DEPRAVED ACTS OF A MONSTER
He was only linked to the killings of Wendy and Caroline three decades after their deaths following a series of cold case reviews, Crimewatch appeals and finally a major breakthrough in DNA evidence.
And his offences against deceased women and girls came to light when disgusted cops found four hard drives packed with millions of indecent images and videos of “unimaginable depravity”.
Among them were his own acts of necrophilia, carried out in two mortuaries while he worked for Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust.
Fuller had access to all areas of Kent and Sussex Hospital in Tunbridge Wells, which closed in September 2011, and the replacement Tunbridge Wells Hospital in nearby Pembury.
After the horrific abuse, he used Facebook to track down the people he’d defiled and learn about their lives during a spine-chilling spree of crimes that went on from 2008 to November 2020.
He was still working for the hospital when he was arrested.
Prosecutors say the case is “unprecedented in legal history” and “the stuff of nightmares”.
KILLER WILL DIE IN JAIL
Fuller changed his pleas four days into his trial.
As the murder charges were put to him again, he pulled down his mask and replied “guilty” to both.
The slayings were one of the UK’s longest unsolved double homicide cases.
Both women lived alone in ground-floor flats less than a mile apart in Tunbridge Wells and worked in the town – although they didn’t know each other.
Wendy was found dead in her bloodstained bed on the morning of June 23, 1987.
There were signs of blunt force trauma to her head, and she’d been strangled. Detectives found evidence of a vile sexual assault carried out after her death.
Caroline, 20, went missing after being dropped off by a taxi outside her home on November 24 that year.
Neighbours allegedly heard “high-pitched screams of terror”.
Her naked body was later discovered in a water-filled dyke at St Mary-in-the-Marsh on December 15, 1987.
The court heard a man matching Fuller’s description was seen prowling the Tunbridge Wells area at the time of the killings.
He lived with his then-wife just two miles away from the bedsits where both Caroline and Wendy lived.
On the night Wendy died, a man who looked like Fuller was seen peering at a woman through a window.
Caroline also reported a “prowler” outside her home just a month before she vanished, it was heard.
This afternoon, Wendy’s family spoke of their anguish in a moving statement.
“For 34 years we, as a family, the police and press, have been focusing on what actually happened to Wendy, wanting to know who did it and how she spent her last moments alive,” they said.
“We now know and sadly it is much worse than we could ever have imagined.
DAD DIES WITHOUT SEEING JUSTICE
“Hopefully, we can now start to grieve and move past the pain, and start to remember her as the beautiful, kind, generous, caring, funny girl she was. She had a smile and a kind word for everyone.”
Tragically, Wendy’s father died four years ago without ever knowing who murdered his daughter.
“It broke his heart,” the family said.
“He never found out before he died. Yet he has been with us every step of the way. We are deeply sad he isn’t with us to hear this news today.
“Although the guilty plea won’t change anything deep down as the pain and loss will always be there, it’s good knowing Fuller will not be in a position to hurt or cause any more pain.
“Not just for our family. But for Caroline’s family and friends who’ve been on this same journey with us over all those years and all the other families this man’s affected.
“We feel deep sadness for all of you.”
Under the law, Fuller’s abuse of female corpses carries a maximum of just two years in prison.
But he is likely to face a whole-life prison term for the murders, meaning he will never be freed.
No British court has ever seen abuse on this scale against the dead before… it’s the stuff of nightmares
Prosecutor Duncan Aitkinson QC said specially-trained officers are helping the families of all victims through the “very difficult task” of preparing statements on the impact.
Sentencing will now take place at a later date and Fuller was remanded in custody.
The defendant is believed to be currently held at London’s high security Belmarsh Prison.
Libby Clark of the CPS said today: “David Fuller’s deeply distressing crimes are unlike any other I have encountered in my career and unprecedented in British legal history.
“This highly dangerous man has inflicted unimaginable suffering on countless families and he has only admitted his long-held secrets when confronted with overwhelming evidence.
“Fuller, with his uncontrolled sense of sexual entitlement, treated Wendy Knell and Caroline Pierce with extreme depravity. Both women were simply at home or returning from work when he ambushed them.
“Their families never gave up on achieving justice even when all hope seemed lost. My thoughts are with them today and all the families of women and girls whose lives have been cut short by senseless violence.
“Fuller’s appalling crimes did not end with these killings and he went on to abuse his position of trust as a hospital electrician in the most grotesque manner imaginable.
“No British court has ever seen abuse on this scale against the dead before and I have no doubt he would still be offending to this day had it not been for this painstaking investigation and prosecution.”
