DOUBLE KILLER ABUSED CORPSES
‘Depraved’ hospital electrician filmed himself carrying out attacks in morgues for years, trial is told
AN ELECTRICIAN who admitted killing two young women 34 years ago also had sex with corpses in the mortuaries of two hospitals where he worked, a court was told yesterday.
David Fuller, 67, is accused of murdering Wendy Knell and Caroline Pierce in 1987 in what became known as the ‘bedsit murders’, one of Britain’s longest unsolved double murder cases.
Advances in DNA profiling linked him to the killings more than three decades on and he was arrested last December.
In the loft of his home, police found hard drives containing a digital ‘library of unimaginable sexual depravity’ made up of photographs and videos of Fuller sexually abusing corpses in the hospital mortuaries, the jury was told.
Prosecutor Duncan Atkinson QC said Fuller had worked at Kent and Sussex Hospital from 1989 until 2010, then went on to work at Tunbridge Wells Hospital in Kent.
‘The images and videos can be dated to a period that included his employ
‘Indexed library of obscene activities’
ment at both hospitals,’ he told Maidstone Crown Court.
They included images showing the defendant ‘having sexual intercourse with some of these corpses’ who were ‘females of significantly varying ages’, added Mr Atkinson.
Fuller accessed the mortuaries with his swipe card towards the end of his shift when the regular staff had gone home, the court heard.
He used a compact digital camera to film his actions and also to record personal details of his victims from mortuary logs and identification bracelets.
‘He then uploaded the footage and images to those hard drives carefully concealed at his home, in what was in effect an indexed and systematic library of his obscene activities into folders and sub-folders,’ Mr Atkinson continued.
In addition to the printed photographs of Fuller abusing the corpses, and digital videos and images, police found a camera concealed in a pen which he had used to covertly record a woman in his bathroom, he added.
Fuller has admitted responsibility for the deaths of Miss Knell and Miss Pierce but denies murder, claiming he was suffering from an abnormality of mind so his responsibility is diminished, the jury was told.
Medical evidence indicates he had sex with both bodies after they were dead and Mr Atkinson said his offending in the mortuary proved he sought sexual activity with corpses. ‘It shows the defendant to derive sexual gratification from sexual activity with those who have died,’ he said.
Fuller is accused of sexually assaulting, beating and strangling Miss Knell, 25, a manager at SupaSnaps, and Miss Pierce, 20, a restaurant manager, in Tunbridge Wells five months apart in 1987.
Miss Knell’s body was found in her ground-floor flat on June 23 lying on her bloodstained bed, naked but covered with a duvet.
Miss Pierce went missing on November 24.
Three weeks later, a farmworker found her body naked apart from a pair of tights in a water-filled dyke near Romney Marsh, 40 miles from her home.
There had been reported activity of a ‘prowler’ matching Fuller’s description peering through the windows of women, including Miss Pierce, in the area at the time, Mr Atkinson said.
Fuller, who was convicted of three burglaries in 1973 and was linked to 23 more, had been living in staff accommodation with his wife at nearby Broomhill School at the time.
He is said to have accessed Miss Knell’s flat through a window using a similar method to that used in his burglaries.
Mr Atkinson said Fuller could be ‘irrefutably linked’ by his DNA and a fingerprint discovered in blood on a Millett’s carrier bag found behind Miss Knell’s headboard.
The electrician was also connected to DNA found on Miss Pierce’s tights.
Fuller was arrested on December 3 last year after a breakthrough in DNA evidence found a familial link with his brother, who was already on the police database.
Mr Atkinson said there was no evidence that Fuller had reported any mental health issues in the late 1980s and the first reference to him suffering from depression was made in 2010, when he was having difficulties with his leg. He told jurors they must decide whether or not Fuller was suffering from an abnormality of mind at the time of the killings, and if so what impact that had on his ability to control himself.
‘Since he has raised the issue of his mental functioning, it is for him to prove that his mental functioning was so affected by his condition that what would otherwise be murder is in fact only manslaughter,’ he clarified.
Fuller, who sat in court dressed in a grey sweatshirt, grey trousers and a navy blue facemask, denies two counts of murder.
The trial continues.