The wife of a double-murderer who sexually assaulted at least 100 corpses in his hospital has spoken out for first time. She said she had to end their marriage as she “couldn’t continue”
Mala Fuller, 50, exclusively told MailOnline: ‘I’m not with him. I couldn’t carry on in that relationship. I’m too upset to even think about what was going on, I couldn’t live with it. You can’t imagine how distraught I am.’
After three decades of confusion, police finally came to an agreement with David Fuller regarding the murders in Tunbridge Wells (Kent) in 1987.
But detectives quickly discovered that this 67-year-old oddball was hiding a double-life, and had been abusing corpses.
Mala, a Trinidadian, moved out of the home she had lived in with Fuller in Heathfield (East Sussex) for the past 20-years four months ago.
She sobbed: ‘I could not stay in that house knowing what he did and what went on in there. I wanted to be alone and want to live my life alone.’
Neighbors revealed that Mala had just told them that her marriage to Fuller was over a few weeks after Fuller’s arrest in December.
One said: ‘She made it clear that she wasn’t going to continue with him but how could any sane person?
‘Mala’s sister has been helping her through this very difficult time. She had to stay in the house until she found alternative accommodation but as soon as she could, she got out and I don’t blame her.
‘Nobody can stay married to a monster like that.’
Today, Kent Police said they will never know how many women and girls Fuller violated – but admit it could be hundreds more, and released contact centre details in anticipation of an avalanche of calls from family members.
David Fuller, who pleaded guilty in 1987 to the murders of Wendy Knell (25), and Caroline Pierce (20) in two separate attacks.
Kent Police officers discover a notebook listing mortuary victims during a search of David Fuller’s office
The pervert kept an extensive diary of his sex attacks, written in his own handwriting. It was kept secretly in the house he shared with his wife.
Azra (left), 24, was one of his victims. He abused her at TunbridgeWells Hospital after she fell from a bridge in July 2020. Fears about how many bodies he may’ve abused have been raised by her mother Nevres (right).
Fuller, 67, admitted killing Wendy Knell, 25, (left) and Caroline Pierce, 20, (right) in 1987 in what became known as the ‘Bedsit Murders’ – one of Britain’s longest unsolved murder cases
Kent Police issued CCTV footage of David Fuller being interrogated, before he pleaded guilty in Tunbridge Wells to the murders of Wendy Knell (25), and Caroline Pierce (20) in separate attacks in Tunbridge wells, Kent in 1987.
Ministers and relatives of Fuller victims of abuse have demanded to know why the electrician was allowed continue his sickening acts over many decades of work for the NHS.
But officers say they may reach a stage when they cannot identify all of his victims – one of whom was Azra Kemal, 24, who was abused by Fuller at Tunbridge Wells Hospital after she died following a fall from a bridge in July 2020.
Nevres Kemal, her mother, has expressed concern over the number of bodies Fuller may be a victim of. She told Sky News that Fuller had entered the autopsy and morgue areas thousands of times. Not hundreds, but thousands.
Fuller was found with hidden computer hard drives, CDs and floppy discs. These contained 14 million images of sex offenses. Fuller also had footage of him sexually assaulting dead bodies at two morgues.
Detectives discovered hard drives attached to the back of a chest drawer, along with diaries that contained details of his victims. His oldest victim was 100-years-old, and his youngest victim was only nine years.
Local Conservative MP Greg Clark, for Tunbridge Wells, said a public inquiry into how Fuller carried out hundreds of sex attacks was required, adding that the investigation launched by the local NHS trust was ‘Not sufficient’.
Today, police established a contact number at 0800 051527 after Fuller changed his pleas to confess to the murder of two young women.
MailOnline was informed by the force that it had spoken to all the families of the victims and that the public could not assist with further identification at this stage. However, support services are available through the number.
Kent Police detectives have so far identified 81 victims in the mortuary. However, the investigation is ongoing and anyone with any information is asked to call the number or complete the online form by clicking here.
Fuller admitted killing Wendy Knell, 25, and Caroline Pierce, 20, in 1987 in what became known as the ‘Bedsit Murders’ – one of Britain’s longest unsolved murder cases.
He was still working for the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust when revolutionary DNA profiling techniques led police investigating the historic murders to his home in Heathfield, East Sussex, on December 3 last year.
Investigators discovered a cache of photos hidden in a box, along with thousands of videos and images digitally. This revealed one of Britain’s most serious healthcare scandals.
Fuller had spent at most 12 years abusing corpses at the Kent, Sussex, and Tunbridge Wells mortuaries.
The hoarder kept meticulously written diaries detailing his abuse and thousands of images of himself having sex on corpses.
Police say they will never know how many women and girls David Fuller (pictured) violated – but admit it could be hundreds more
Fuller was brought to justice after he was convicted of murdering two women and was a corpse defiler.
Police searched Fuller’s home and found a diary containing corpses that he had abused. As Fuller’s graveyard is discovered, a yellow-gloved police officer holds the notebook.
Police have found that he had sexual activity in his past with at least 100 dead women. 81 of them have been identified. However, police suspect that there could have been more victims.
Other shocking developments:
- Fuller’s oldest victim was 100 years old, while his youngest victim was just nine years old.
- A mother whose daughter was raped by Fuller in a hospital moruary stated that this must never happen again.
- Sir Jonathan Michael is a fellow at The Royal College of Physicians and will lead an investigation into Fuller’s crimes, and what could have been done in order to prevent them.
- NHS England has written trusts asking them to urgently review mortuary safety;
- Sajid Javid, Health Secretary, said that he was “profoundly shaken” by the “unspeakable nature” of these offences.
Kent Police’s investigation into Fuller was led by DCI Ian Beasley. He said that it quickly became apparent that the UK’s scale and extent of the offending was unprecedented. We have never seen anything like it.
After Fuller’s plead guilty to 51 charges including 44 related to the necrophilia in a hearing held on October 8, more than 150 family liaison officers notified the families of the victims simultaneously.
Libby Clark of the Crown Prosecution Service stated: ‘No British court ever saw abuse on such a scale against the dead before, and I have no doubt he’d still be offending to the present day if it weren’t for this painstaking investigation, and prosecution.
Pictured: David Fuller’s NHS security badge
Fuller was arrested after police discovered a variety of evidence, including a distinct shoe print in blood.
David Fuller is pictured wearing the shoes later linked by detectives to one murder in 1987
Twice-married Fuller, aged 67, was regarded by locals to be a harmless oddball. However, Fuller hid a double-life that included deviant abuse of corpses.
Ms. Knell was the manager at Supasnaps in Camden Road. She was dropped off at her Guildford Road flat by her boyfriend around 11pm on June 22, 1987.
Ms. Pierce was found dead by a farmer who drove a tractor in the field’s edge on December 15th, some 40 miles away in an unfilled dyke close to St Mary in the Marsh. Except for a pair if tights, she was naked.
Fuller worked from 1989 to 2010, when he transferred to Tunbridge Wells Hospital.
After David Fuller defiled the body of her daughter, a mother feels grief and revulsion.
Yesterday, a woman whose daughter’s body had been defiled by David Fuller complained that it should never happen again.
The twisted hospital electrician sneaked into Tunbridge Wells, Kent, three times to sexually assault Azra Kemal (24), who had fallen from a bridge.
Horribly, the attacks occurred just hours before and right after Nevres Kemal (her grief-stricken mother) had visited her daughter. She stroked her hair to bid her farewell and then went on to attack her second and third attackers.
She said that she had spent two hours with her in the mortuary. And that gave me some comfort. Little did I know that my daughter had been abused before that day and that evening. As I was stroking my daughter’s locks and sleeping on her head, a man… crawled all over her body. I kissed, cuddled, and said my last goodbyes.
Sickening – Azra Kemal was a victim of Fuller
Miss Kemal, a Sky News researcher, was Fuller’s latest victim. His sickening attacks were carried out in July last year.
Her mother – a London social worker – told Sky News: ‘Men and women up and down the country will be appalled by what they are reading.
‘And I remind them that if this was your loved one you would roar with rage – and I am silently roaring. This must never happen again.
He was an electrician and had a swipecard that gave him unsupervised access into all parts of the hospital. Police said that Fuller’s shift was between 11am and 7pm. Mortuary staff typically finished their day at 4pm.
He carried his tools bag with him, making sure that his abuse could not have been picked up by CCTV cameras, which only covered a small portion of the mortuary. Mr Beasley stated that although there was evidence of him moving around in the mortuary, there is no CCTV footage of him interfacing with any of the bodies. All of the evidence is from his own videotaping.
Last night, victims’ families demanded answers from the NHS regarding how Fuller was allowed to access their loved ones’ bodies.
Fuller abused Azra Kemal’s body after she died in July from a fall from a bridge. Sky News spoke to Nevres, her mother. She said that Fuller had swipe cards and cameras because she was a good person. No one checked. It was so easy. He would actually abuse women as porters brought in bodies.
Miles Scott, chief executive of Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust, apologized to the families and said that while he was confident that the mortuary was safe, he was still determined to find ways to improve.
After killing Miss Knell and sexually assaulting Miss Pierce within months of eachother, Fuller evaded prosecution for 33 years. DNA evidence from decades ago linked him to the murders after a relative was arrested and added it to the database.
Fuller was surprised to see officers at his house when he was arrested and said: “Oh blimey.”
Fuller had previously admitted responsibility for the deaths with ‘diminished responsibility’ at Maidstone Crown Court – but until yesterday he had denied murder. Miss Knell’s bloodstained body was found in her flat on June 23, 1987, after Fuller – a convicted burglar – had climbed in through the window, before beating and strangling her to death.
Miss Pierce was also abducted from her home on the 24th of November that year.
Three weeks later, the body of Miss Knell, naked except for a pair if tights, was found in a water-filled well near Romney Marsh. Pam Knell, the mother of Miss Knell, who lost her husband Bill without ever seeing justice, stated that she hoped Fuller’s conviction would allow her family to grieve.
She said that for 34 years, her family, police and the media have focused on Wendy’s fate, trying to discover who did it and how Wendy spent her final moments of life.
“Sadly, it’s worse than we ever imagined.”
“Hopefully we can now grieve and move on from the pain… but the timing has meant that our father is not here to share it as he died four years earlier. It broke his heart that he didn’t find out before he died.
Priti Patel, Home Secretary, expressed her deepest sympathies to all those who were affected by Fuller’s crimes.
Greg Clark, Tunbridge Wells MP, said this morning on BBC Radio 4’s Today: ‘It is absolutely shocking. It was shocking enough to see two murders of young women, but to find out that more than 100 bodies, and possibly many more, have been desecrated in such a way is devastating.
He confirmed that he had written Mr Javid and Mrs Patel asking for a public investigation to ensure that Fuller’s depraved acts of violence never happen again. Clark said that the NHS probe was “not sufficient” and added that: “To be clear, it is without precedent. There has never been a case in Britain where the scale and number of abuses of dead bodies was revealed in this manner.
“And it raises so many important questions about the security of mortuaries, not just in the two local hospital but for all hospitals in the country. One of those hospitals is modern and state-of the-art with top security systems. It can happen anywhere, so it is possible for it to happen.
“And I believe it’s now required – along with obviously seeing Fuller in jail for what will be his rest of life – that you move on to ask serious and pertinent questions about how this could have happened, and that we prove that it can never happen again.
“And that is beyond resources and beyond the capabilities of a single hospital trust. This calls for a public inquiry. I, along with my neighbouring MPs, have written to the Home Secretary and the Health Secretary asking them to immediately set this up.
Fuller will be sentenced at an unknown date.
A special place Hell for one of The most popular places in Britain Criminals of the most horrible nature
By Barbara Davies for the Daily Mail
Police, who have sifted through millions of images on Fuller’s computers and hard drives, have not yet been able to identify all of his victims. Pictured: Fuller
Bill and Pamela Knell were gifted a bottle by a friend to celebrate Wendy’s death in 1987. They tossed it away in frustration after only a few years.
Pamela stated that she didn’t want her family to die knowing the truth.
Bill Knell, who was brokenhearted and died from cancer in 2017, did not know who strangled his daughter, 25-years-old, or sexually assaulted her. Pamela, now in her eighties and frail, was present at Maidstone Crown Court yesterday, to hear electrician David Fuller finally confess that he murdered Wendy Pierce and Caroline Pierce.
As Wendy, Caroline, 20, was also killed and sexually assaulted. Fuller then dumped her body in a field where he had just weeks earlier, with other members of his cycling group. They lived in separate ground-floor flats in Tunbridge Wells in Kent, where they were living alone. Their deaths were called the “Bedsit Murders” and became one the longest double homicide cases in the UK.
In fact, it is now that Fuller’s murder trial at 67 years old has come to an abrupt halt with his guilty plea. The full story of one the most horrific killers in British history can be told.
For having taken the lives of two young women in their prime, Fuller went on to commit further crimes of almost unimaginable evil – raping and sexually molesting the bodies of at least 100 women and girls in mortuaries to which he had access as a hospital electrician.
His oldest victim was 100 and his youngest, nine. He recorded his perverse acts, took photographs of his victims’ identities bracelets and mortuary log entry entries, and filmed them. He recorded their names, and searched social media for additional information.
He kept meticulous files of those he violated in an upstairs room at his East Sussex home in Heathfield. This office was guarded by CCTV.
Although police have scanned through millions of images on Fuller’s computers and hard drives, they have not been able to identify all of his victims. Aside from the horror of all this – with the jury at Maidstone Crown Court being offered counselling – police believe Fuller’s crimes may go way beyond the 51 counts of necrophilia for which he pleaded guilty, stretching back to the pre-digital era before he was able to use digital cameras to record images of his crimes.
Many families who lost loved ones at the Tunbridge Wells Hospital and Kent and Sussex Hospitals where Fuller worked will be haunted by the idea that they might have been his victims.
Fuller was able to get away with his crimes for almost 35 years by maintaining a facade of middle-class domesticity, respectability, and dignity. Fuller was a man of family, a father-of-four, and a loving husband and father to those who knew him.
He was an avid birdwatcher, photographer, and, according to West Kent Cycle Touring Club members, he was a friendly, enthusiastic cyclist before his back problems ended his passion.
He was living at Broomhill Bank School in Tunbridge Wells as a staff member when he murdered Wendy & Caroline. His second wife, Sally, was a house parent.
Today, we can show that Fuller’s criminality can be traced back to 1970s Hampshire when he was still living there. He pleaded guilty to three thefts at Portsmouth Crown Court in 1973 and requested that 23 similar offences be considered.
He was married to his second wife and living in Kent when he killed Wendy and Caroline. He used the same criminal tactics he used to burglarize his potential victims as he did when he was trying to find them.
Caroline and Wendy lived in Tunbridge Wells’s ground-floor bedsits. Reports of a prowler looking in downstairs windows at the time of their deaths were made.
Wendy was the Supasnaps store manager in the town center. On the evening she died – Monday, June 22 – she left work at 5.30pm and, after a visit to a laundrette, went to boyfriend Ian Plass’s house. He gave her a lift on his motorbike home at around 11pm. They said their farewells on the doorstep.
Staff phoned Ian to inform them that she had failed to show up at work the next day. He then went to her flat. Wendy lay on her back, battered, naked and bloody on her bed.
The investigation’s detectives believed Wendy’s killer was lying in wait for Wendy. The killer had taken items from Wendy’s room, including her diary as well as her keys. They have never been found.
Ian Plass died in the meantime, but he left a statement to police that described the horror at finding his girlfriend’s corpse.
“I seem to recall that there was blood. I could see Wendy’s head sticking out the top of the duvet. The duvet covered her entire body. I moved closer and stroked her forehead. I pulled the duvet back to her shoulders. She was lying on her left side, facing the wall.
Caroline Pierce was murdered on Tuesday, November 24, 1987. She was the manager at Buster Browns burger restaurant in Tunbridge.
On the night of her death, she went out with friends and took an Uber back to Grosvenor Road. Staff raised the alarm when she failed to show up for work the next day. Three weeks later, her body was found 40 miles away in a water-filled drainage ditch near Romney Marsh – naked apart from the black tights she’d been wearing. Like Wendy, she was also raped and battered.
The jumper and skirt that she was wearing were never found. Her keys, which were also missing from her handbag, were also not recovered.
Without scientific advances, Fuller may not have been caught. The clock was ticking since the moment Fuller’s family member was arrested and DNA was added to the national database.
The DNA was closely matched to the DNA of the murderer of Wendy and Caroline during a cold-case investigation. Fuller, who was arrested in December 2013, said that he did not know about the case, but that his DNA was an exact match.
Fuller eventually admitted killing both Wendy and Caroline but, claiming he was of ‘abnormal mind’ at the time, refused to plead guilty to murder – until yesterday.
He blamed his obsession in having sex on corpses on a childhood trauma, but there is plenty to show he was capable if normal relationships with women.
One of his former lovers described him as a “normal, loving man”.
Fuller, who was 16 years old, left school to become an apprentice electrician at the Ministry of Defence in Portsmouth. He married Gillian in 1973 and they had 3 children. In court, he claimed that their relationship ended due to her having an affair. He then moved to Tonbridge, Kent and met Sally.
Fuller and Fuller were married in 1982. Fuller described their 17 year marriage as ‘long-lasting and in-depth’. He claimed that the marriage ended when she became a member of his cycling club.
While working as an electrician at Kent & Sussex Hospital, he met Mala, his current wife. They were married in Barbados in 1999, and had a son together. He claimed that their relationship was ‘pretty perfect’ in police interviews.
During a hearing on Oct. 8, his wife was seen sobbing in public gallery. She believed to have learned the full extent of her husband’s crimes that morning.
Fuller, who was being held in custody, sat with his head bowed while officers questioned him over his necrophilia offenses. After a few pauses, Fuller finally spoke in a quiet voice. It was obvious that he couldn’t even describe what he had done. He said, “I am admitting the offenses but I don’t really wish to go into detail,”
Justice has taken a long time for the families of Wendy Knell, Caroline Pierce and Caroline Pierce. Caroline’s family moved to Spain in the past few years. However, Wendy’s loved ones paid an emotional tribute yesterday to Kent Police’s cold-case team.
Fuller has not yet been sentenced. The maximum sentence for the offences Fuller committed in hospital mortuaries is only two years, despite their severity.
The worst possibility is that his true evil may yet be revealed.