Double murderer will die in prison

A DOUBLE murderer who sexually abused more than 100 dead women and girls in hospital mortuaries will never be released from prison.

David Fuller, 67, beat and strangled Wendy Knell, 25, and Caroline Pierce, 20, to death before sexually assaulting them in two separate attacks in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, in 1987.

He also filmed himself abusing at least 102 corpses, including a nine-year-old girl, two 16-year-olds, and a 100-year-old woman over 12 years before his arrest in December 2020.

Fuller attacked his victims in the mortuaries of the now-closed Kent and Sussex Hospital and the Tunbridge Wells Hospital, in Pembury, where he had worked as an electrician since 1989.

He pleaded guilty to murdering

Ms Knell and Ms Pierce days into his Maidstone Crown Court trial after previously admitting manslaughter by diminished responsibility.

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

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

Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb QC told Fuller he had spent 45 years living “an outwardly mild and ordinary life”

“You were described as a man who was good under pressure, while in seclusion you committed acts of the deepest darkness,” the judge said.

“Having killed two young women who were full of the promise of life you became a vulture, picking your victims from among the dead, within the hidden world of hospital mortuaries which you were left free to inhabit, simply because you had a swipe card. The depravity of what you did reveals that your conscience is seared.”

The government has announced an independent inquiry into how Fuller went undetected and promised to look at the maximum sentence for necrophilia, which is currently two years in jail.

Ms Knell was found dead in her apartment in Guildford Road on June 23 1987 while Ms Pierce was snatched five months later on November 24 outside her home in Grosvenor Park.

Her naked body was discovered in a water-filled dyke at St Mary-in-theMarsh on December 15.

Fuller was arrested for what have been dubbed the “Bedsit Murders” on December 3 last year following new analysis of decades-old DNA evidence, which linked him to the killings.

Police know the names of 82 of the victims but a further 20 have not been identified and may never be.