Distraught relatives of victims of a notorious killer branded him “vile” and a “monster” as he was sentenced for the sexual abuse of 23 dead women.
David Fuller, 68, used his position as a hospital electrician to gain access to the mortuaries late at night, spending hours filming and photographing himself defiling at least 101 victims.
The horrific abuse, over the course of 15 years, finally came to light in 2020 when he was arrested for the so-called ‘Bedsit Murders’ of Wendy Knell, 25, and Caroline Pierce, 20 in separate attacks in Tunbridge Wells, Kent in 1987.
Fuller was jailed for the rest of his life last year after admitting the murders and 44 charges relating to the abuse of 78 victims in mortuaries in offending which dated back to 2005.
Dubbed the ‘Morgue Monster’, Fuller has now accepted carrying out more abuse - 12 counts of sexual penetration of a corpse and four counts of possession of extreme pornography between 2007 and 2020.
At the Old Bailey on Wednesday, a series of powerful impact statements from the relatives of his victims were read as Fuller sat just metres away in the dock.
The daughter of one of Fuller’s victims dubbed his actions “sick and twisted”, and said the news that her mother’s body had been defiled for over an hour on the day she died “seared through my body like a knife”.
Addressing Fuller directly, she said: “I hope being aware of the damage you have done and being discovered for the monster you actually are haunts you for the rest of your life.”
The woman, herself a nurse at the same hospital where Fuller worked, said she has been left questioning if she could have prevented the abuse.
“To know that David Fuller was committing crimes while I was in the same building as him, giving the best care for patients, fills me with absolute disgust”, she said.
The father of another victim said he saw his daughter’s body in the morgue after Fuller had committed offences against her.
“I can’t understand why you did this”, he said.
The relative of a 63-year-old victim called Fuller “inhuman and vile”, telling him: “You have taken away from us the last moments with our mum, and replaced them with the most horrific images imaginable.
“I don’t think you will ever understand the total devastation you have caused – you are serving a whole life sentence. So are we.”
The daughter of a 92-year-old World War Two hero who worked at Bletchley Park and who fell victim to Fuller after her death said he “has done the most heinous crimes, something our family must live with daily”.
She added: “David Fuller needs to be in the public eye for the true extent of his offending – he needs to appreciate the scale of what he has done.”
Prosecutor Michael Bisgrove said the fresh charges were brought after police officers spent months combing through thousands of computer files, photo negatives, printed pictures, and CDs recovered from Fuller’s home office.
The court heard ten victims - women aged from 45 to 92 – have now been identified and 13 others could not be identified, bringing the total of Fuller’s victims to 101.
Mr Bisgrove said Fuller painstakingly chronicled and catalogued the abuse he carried out, keeping secret files on his computer and attempting to manipulate some of the videos and images to try to remove scars and improve the picture quality.
One digital folder was titled “best yet”, the court heard, while other files had been labelled “deadly” and “deadliest”.
The images showed Fuller moved bodies, spent hours defiling the victims, and positioned at least one of the dead women in a chair.
Passing sentence over the fresh charges on Wednesday morning, Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb said Fuller had targeted victims “systematically and relentlessly” with “revolting and outrageous acts of the deepest darkness” while living a “mild and ordinary life”.
“It is almost impossible to believe a single man could cause the misery of so many”, she said.
“Your internet history tells a story of a man obsessed with rape and murder”, she said, referring to a favourite web link of Fuller’s including the phrase ‘torture murder snuff video’.
She sentenced Fuller to four years in prison, to be served alongside his whole life sentence.
The judge said the victims, including a woman who flew over the Atlantic, a talented skiier, teachers, and nurses, had lived happy lives with their loved ones.
“Some spent the last part of their lives in suffering through disease and old age”, she said. “They didn’t lose their dignities until you decided to take it from them.”
The judge said Fuller’s crimes have “shaken the trust” of relatives - themselves victims - “in the world and their trust in hospitals”.
A man shouted out “scum” from the public gallery as Fuller was led back to the cells.
Fuller, a father-of-four, spent much of his adult life as an electrician in hospitals serving the residents of Kent and Sussex, and was living out his retirement in a quiet cul-de-sac in Heathfield, East Sussex when his horrific offending first came to light.
Fresh DNA evidence in the ‘Bedsit Murders’ of Ms Knell and Ms Pierce led police to Fuller, who was identified as the prime suspect. And a trawl of electronic devices at his home revealed a trove of images showing sexual offences, including Fuller himself interfering with bodies in hospital morgues.
Victims aged from a nine-year-old girl to a 100-year-old woman.
In December last year, Fuller was handed a whole life prison sentence for the crimes he had admitted. But the police investigation continued, to identify further victims and their families.
Fuller filmed himself abusing corpses in the now-closed Kent and Sussex Hospital and the Tunbridge Wells Hospital, in Pembury, where he had worked as an electrician since 1989.
Following the guilty pleas, Libby Clark of the CPS said: “Fuller’s actions were depraved, disgusting and dehumanising - on a scale that has never been encountered before in legal history.
“It was vital for us to bring these additional charges for the women we could identify, and those we sadly couldn’t, to reflect his offending and bring justice for the families that we can.
“The horrors of this case will no doubt remain with everyone who has worked so tirelessly to bring the case to a close.”
Fuller was convicted in 1973 and 1977 for a series of ‘creeper’ home burglaries, involving break-ins through rear windows, and was spared a jail sentence by a judge at Portsmouth crown court.
Within the space of five months in 1987, he carried out the murders of Ms Knell and Ms Pierce in the streets of Tunbridge Wells that he knew well.
Fuller had met Ms Knell at the SupaSnaps store in the town where she was the manager and he often took in his photographs to be developed.
Her body was discovered at her bedsit in Guildford Road on June 23, 1987, with tests revealing her naked body had been sexually assaulted after the attack and possibly once she was already dead.
On November 24, 1987, Ms Pierce was attacked by Fuller outside her bedsit in Grosvenor Park, and the killer dumped her body around 40 miles away in a country lane ditch.
The Government has announced an independent inquiry into how Fuller went undetected until being arrested on December 3 2020.
Fuller has never explained his crimes and did not put forward any mitigation at Wednesday’s sentencing hearing.
Detective Superintendent Ivan Beasley, from Kent Police, said: “Our absolute and unequivocal priority fom day one has been ensuring justice for every single victim violated by Fuller’s systematic and unimaginably depraved offending.
“Today’s sentencing will mean little to this abhorrent individual, who throughout our investigation has demonstrated no remorse and only a capacity for self-pity.
“His crimes have led to immeasurable suffering and inconceivable trauma to the lives of hundreds of daughters, sons, parnts, and other loved ones of all those he abused.”
He said there is no evidence of further offences by Fuller yet to come to light, after an “unparalled” police investigation going back over 40 years.
