Barely six weeks have passed since Edward was informed that his 100-year-old mother had become David Fuller’s oldest victim; she was one of at least 100 women and girls the electrician raped or sexually abused while they lay unattended in a hospital morgue.
Her 72-year old son has spoken in her prayers every night since she was told the shocking, confusing news.
‘I say to her, “We’re going to get justice for you and all the others, Mum”,’ he said in an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail.
Edward, whose name we have changed to protect his late mother’s identity, is one of several devastated relatives whose loved ones Fuller defiled that have spoken to the Mail this week.
‘She was lying there, unable to defend herself. It’s impossible to take in that something so evil could have happened to her.’
What form of justice should Fuller’s evil Fuller deregulate the relatives of those who have lost their loved ones?
Yesterday, the 67 year-old received a life sentence for Wendy Knell’s 1987 murders and Caroline Pierce was sentenced to 12 years for sexually and physically abusing more than 100 women and girls.
While 67-year-old David Fuller (pictured) was handed a whole life sentence for the 1987 murders of Wendy Knell and Caroline Pierce, the punishment he was given for raping and sexually abusing at least 100 dead women and girls was just 12 years
Amanda Miah (above), whose mother Sonia was abused by Fuller after she died aged 54, in 2018, told ITV’s Meridian News: ‘I have the picture of my mum behind the glass and I thought she was safe. And she was just violated.’
His outraged family knows that although he may spend his entire life in prison, it’s not because of the horrific acts he committed on the loved ones.
‘You raped my baby,’ said one mother yesterday, as she addressed the killer during a victim impact statement at Maidstone Crown Court.
‘She couldn’t say no to the dirty 66-year-old man who was abusing her body. I feel guilty I left her there.’
The extent of Fuller’s wicked depravity was laid bare as she recalled her daily visits to her nine-year-old daughter after she tragically died of natural causes.
She did her hair, dressed her, and gave her toys.
Fuller, who snuck into the post-mortem area after her mother left, saw these treasured, intimate items while filming his disgusting acts of sexual violence against the daughter.
‘David, you know who I am because you read the letter I wrote to my baby,’ she said. ‘I will not enjoy my life again. Although her death was unjust and deeply hurtful, it was something I was beginning to accept. This unnatural sick pain I will never get over.’
Yesterday, she was one of the grieving and traumatized families that addressed the court.
As well as demanding an overhaul in the law – the maximum sentence for necrophilia in the UK is just two years – his victims’ families now fear that a promised government inquiry will also be a whitewash.
Many had put their hopes on justice through a full-scale statutory public investigation to find the truth about the most egregious cases of legal necrophilia. They were informed that they would be actively involved.
They have not been reached despite assurances made by Sajid Javid, Health Secretary, in Parliament, that they would be consulted.
Although the inquiry is open to the public, the non-statutory status of the inquiry means that families don’t have the automatic right of participation, nor the right for legal representation.
A DNA breakthrough last year finally cracked one of Britain’s longest unsolved murder cases, identifying Fuller as the killer of Wendy Knell, (right) 25, and Caroline Pierce, 20, who were beaten, strangled and then sexually assaulted in 1987 in Tunbridge Wells
While searching Fuller’s home in Heathfield, East Sussex, police found hard drives containing ‘a library of unimaginable sexual depravity’. The 14 million images included videos showing Fuller abusing dead bodies at Kent and Sussex Hospitals in Tunbridge Wells.
They are not eligible for legal aid and have been denied financial assistance through the Department of Health. Yet Fuller received £46,000 in legal aid for his case.
Another concern is the selection of an ex-head of the NHS to head the inquiry into Fuller’s access to locked, secure hospital mortuaries for 12-year periods.
‘This doesn’t feel like justice,’ said Edward. ‘We are victims here too but we weren’t able to have our day in court.’
He survived the most devastating bombings during the Blitz. His mother was born in 1910, just shy of 101 when she died.
But what remains is her horrific death at Tunbridge Wells Hospital, Kent, just days before she was to be buried in 2011. ‘Hearing what he had done was like a knife to my heart,’ said Edward.
David Fuller’s hospital access card that allowed him to enter the mortuaries from which he committed his cruelty on approximately 100 corpses
A DNA breakthrough last year finally cracked one of Britain’s longest unsolved murder cases, identifying Fuller as the killer of Miss Knell, 25, and Miss Pierce, 20, who were beaten, strangled and then sexually assaulted in 1987 in Tunbridge Wells.
They were also known as “Bedsit Murders”. While searching his home in Heathfield, East Sussex, police found hard drives containing ‘a library of unimaginable sexual depravity’.
It was 14,000,000 indecent photos, with videos of him abusing corpses at Mortuaries at Tunbridge Wells’ Kent and Sussex Hospital. This hospital closed in 1989 and replaced by Tunbridge Wells Hospital.
Amanda Miah, whose mother Sonia was abused by Fuller after she died aged 54, in 2018, told ITV’s Meridian News: ‘I have the picture of my mum behind the glass and I thought she was safe. And she was just violated.’
Talking exclusively to the Mail, Sarah, who discovered eight weeks ago that her mother had also been one of Fuller’s victims, shares Edward’s frustrations.
‘A public inquiry was our way of trying to get some justice,’ said Sarah. ‘To know now that it’s not necessarily going to be as transparent as a full public inquiry, I’m mad about that. It is a terrible crime, and I would like to see the law regarding sentencing change.
‘We have heard so much about violent offences against women. Whether we are alive or dead, the offences should be the same.’
She is filled with ‘violent anger’ towards Fuller, who raped her mother on the very day that she died, suddenly, of natural causes.
Sarah is aware that Fuller assaulted her mother 24 minutes ago in Tunbridge Wells Hospital’s post-mortem area.
Sarah is still haunted by the memory of what she said to other family members after her mother’s lifeless body was taken there by paramedics who had tried to save her life.
‘I said, “She’ll be safe now. They’ll look after her”,’ she said. ‘In the midst of the shock and horror of losing her out of the blue, I consoled myself with the thought that she was in safe hands.
They have not been reached despite assurances made by Sajid Javid, Health Secretary, in Parliament last month that they would be consulted
“But, while I was grieving with my family and sitting there, he was doing this to her. She’d hardly taken her last breath.’
Another distraught relative told the Mail that Fuller had ‘stolen everything, all my memories from me. I’ve got nothing left to give.’
But he said that because no one from the inquiry had been in touch, ‘I feel as though the whole inquiry is going to be a whitewash’.
In a statement yesterday, Mr Javid insisted: ‘We have made good progress in establishing the independent inquiry’.
He said its chairman, Sir Jonathan Michael, ‘has developed draft terms of reference and will engage with families on them in the new year before they are published’.
He did not mention the question of legal representation or aid.