Killer hospital worker who abused bodies in morgues charged with 16 more sex offences

A hospital worker who murdered two women and abused dead bodies in mortuaries has been charged with 16 further sexual offences, police have said.

Warning: This story contains graphic content

David Fuller was given a whole life sentence last year for the murders of Wendy Knell and Caroline Pierce in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, in 1987.

The electrician also filmed himself abusing corpses, including a nine-year-old girl and a 100-year-old woman, in hospital morgues over 12 years before his arrest in December 2020, a court heard.

Fuller, 67, had pleaded guilty to sexual offences against 78 deceased females at mortuaries in Tunbridge Wells Hospital and at the former Kent and Sussex Hospital between 2008 and 2020.

After an investigation led to evidence of 101 victims in the mortuaries, Fuller has been charged with further offences related to the 23 remaining victims, Kent Police said.

Thirteen of the 23 further victims – who were all adult women – have been formally identified but police have been unable to identity the other 10 women, the force added.

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Fuller will appear via video link before Medway Magistrates’ Court on Thursday.

He faces:

• 10 charges under the Sexual Offences Act relating to 10 identified victims

• Two further charges under the Sexual Offences Act relating to three unidentified victims

• Two charges relating to the possession of extreme pornography in connection with 13 identified victims

• Two further charges relating to the possession of extreme pornography in connection with 10 unidentified victims

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An independent inquiry, led by Sir Jonathan Michael, is set to take place into Fuller’s crimes.

The first stage will focus on the necrophiliac’s activities in the hospitals he worked in, while the second will look at the implications of his activities for the country as a whole.

Fuller has admitted abusing nearly 80 corpses, but police believe there are many more victims and dozens of people have contacted a helpline since the shocking details emerged.

He filmed himself carrying out the attacks inside the now-closed Kent and Sussex Hospital and Tunbridge Wells Hospital, in Pembury, where he had worked in electrical maintenance roles since 1989.

His wife Mala, who lived with Fuller for 20 years in Heathfield, East Sussex, left him after his arrest.

The killings of Ms Knell, 25, and 20-year-old Ms Pierce – known as “the bedsit murders” – had remained unsolved for more than three decades until advanced DNA techniques identified Fuller as the killer.

He had also sexually abused the two murder victims after their deaths.

Fuller, who has a son and daughter, had initially admitted the hospital attacks and denied both murders – but he pleaded guilty to the killings on the sixth day of his trial at Maidstone Crown Court.

He also pleaded guilty to 51 other offences, including 44 charges relating to 78 victims in mortuaries between 2008 and November 2020.

They included the sexual penetration of a corpse, possessing an extreme pornographic image involving sexual interference with a corpse and taking indecent images of children.

Fuller was handed a whole life sentence for the murders with a concurrent 12-year term for his other crimes.

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During sentencing, Judge Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb QC told Fuller: “You became a vulture, picking your victims from among the dead from the hidden world of hospital mortuaries, which you were left free to inhabit simply because you had a swipe card.”

Fuller, a keen amateur cameraman, had photographed and filmed himself performing the sex acts and catalogued the images in what one detective called his “diary of debauchery”.

He began recording his sordid crimes in 2008, but had worked at Tunbridge Wells Hospital – and its predecessor the Kent and Sussex Hospital – since 1989, so detectives fear he may have assaulted hundreds more bodies.

Kent Police had to enlist more than 300 family liaison officers from more than half of the UK’s forces to break the news to the relatives of the deceased.

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