After a double murderer sexually abusing at least 100 corpses in the hospitals where he worked, a major security review of the NHS has been launched.

Police say they will never know how many women and girls David Fuller violated – but admit it could be hundreds more.

Ministers and relatives of Fuller victims demanded to be informed about the circumstances in which Fuller was allowed continue his sickening acts over the years he worked for the NHS.

After he changed his pleas to confess to the murder of two young women, it is clear that he was committing a terrible crime.

Police say they will never know how many women and girls David Fuller (pictured) violated – but admit it could be hundreds more

Police say they will never know how many women and girls David Fuller (pictured) violated – but admit it could be hundreds more

Fuller, 67, 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. Horrified detectives found a hidden cache of printed photos along with thousands of digital images and videos that exposed one of Britain’s biggest healthcare scandals.

Fuller spent at least 12 year abusing corpses in Kent, Sussex, Tunbridge Wells hospitals.

The hoarder kept detailed, handwritten diaries about his abuse as well as thousands of images and videos of him having sex with corpses.

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.

Fuller, 67, admitted killing Wendy Knell, 25, (pictured) and Caroline Pierce, 20, in 1987 in what became known as the ‘Bedsit Murders’ – one of Britain’s longest unsolved murder cases

Caroline Pierce

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

Other shocking developments:

  • Fuller’s oldest victim was 100 and his youngest was aged just nine;
  • A mother whose daughter’s body was defiled by Fuller in a hospital mortuary said: ‘This must never happen again’;
  • Sir Jonathan Michael, a fellow at the Royal College of Physicians, will lead an investigation into Fuller’s crimes and what could have been done to prevent them;
  • NHS England wrote to trusts to request that they urgently review mortuary security.
  • Health Secretary Sajid Javid said he was ‘profoundly shaken by the unspeakable nature of these offences’.

DCI Ian Beasley, who led Kent Police’s investigation into Fuller, said: ‘It quickly became clear that the extent and scale of offending was likely to be unprecedented in the UK. We have never seen anything like this.’

After Fuller’s plead guilty to 51 charges including 44 relating the necrophilia at an October 8 hearing, more than 150 family liaison officials informed the families of the victims simultaneously.

Libby Clark, of the Crown Prosecution Service, said: ‘No British court has ever seen abuse on this scale against the dead before and I have no doubt he would still be offending to this day had it not been for this painstaking investigation and prosecution.’

Pictured: David Fuller's NHS security badge

Pictured: David Fuller’s NHS security badge

Fuller had spent at least 12 years abusing corpses in the mortuaries of Kent and Sussex and Tunbridge Wells hospitals (stock image)

Fuller spent at least 12+ years abusing corpses at the Kent, Sussex, and Tunbridge Wells hospitals (stock photo)

Fuller worked from 1989 to 2010, when he transferred to Tunbridge Wells Hospital.

As an electrician, he was granted unsupervised access to all hospital areas via a swipe card. Mortuary staff usually finished for the day at 4pm, while Fuller’s shift was from 11am to 7pm, police said.

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 said: ‘We have evidence of him moving around the mortuary but no CCTV of him interacting with any of the bodies. All the evidence is from his own filming.’

Last night, the victims’ families demanded answers by the NHS about how Fuller was permitted to access the bodies of their loved one.

Azra Kemal’s body was abused by Fuller after the 24-year-old died following a fall from a bridge in July last year. Her mother, Nevres, told Sky News: ‘We have swipe cards and cameras for a reason. No one checked. It was so straightforward. He would actually abuse women while porters were bringing in bodies.’

A mum’s grief and revulsion 

A woman whose daughter’s body was defiled by David Fuller pleaded yesterday: ‘This must never happen again.’

The sexy hospital electrician slipped into Tunbridge Wells Hospital in Kent three time to sexually abuse Azra, 24, after she fell from a bridge.

Horribly, the first attack occurred just hours after Nevres Kemal, her grieving mother, had visited her daughter and stroked it to say goodbye.

She said: ‘I had spent two hours in the mortuary sleeping with her. That provided some comfort. I did not know that my daughter had been sexually assaulted before that day and in the evening. So, while I’m stroking my daughter’s hair, sleeping on her hair, a man had… crawled all over her skin. And there’s me kissing and cuddling and saying my last goodbyes.’

Sickening: Azra Kemal was one of Fuller’s victims

Sickening: Azra Kemal was one of Fuller’s victims

Miss Kemal, who worked as a researcher for Sky News, was one of Fuller’s most recent victims. His sickening assaults were carried out in July of 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. We need to respect the dead and this must never happen again.’

Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust chief executive Miles Scott last night apologised to the families of Fuller’s victims and said, while he was confident the mortuary was now safe, he was determined to learn if there were ways to improve.

After sexually assaulting Miss Knell, Fuller was able to evade justice for 33 more years. Then, decades-old DNA evidence connected him to the murders when a relative was arrested.

When he was arrested, Fuller seemed surprised to see officers at his home, saying: ‘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, her naked body was found in a water-filled dyke close to Romney Marsh. Miss Knell’s mother, Pam, whose husband Bill died in 2017 without seeing justice, said she hoped Fuller’s conviction would finally allow her family to grieve.

‘For 34 years, we as a family, the police and press have been focusing on what actually happened to Wendy, wanting to know who did it and how she spent her last moments alive,’ she said.

‘Sadly it’s much worse than we could have ever imagined.

‘Hopefully we can now start to grieve and move past the pain… although the timing has meant our dad is not here to share this moment as we lost him four years ago. It broke his heart he never found out before he died.’

Home Secretary Priti Patel said her heartfelt sympathies went out to all those affected by Fuller’s crimes.

Greg Clark, Tunbridge-Wells MP, wrote to Mr Javid (and Miss Patel) requesting a public investigation.

He said: ‘The families of Fuller’s victims deserve to know two things: How this could have happened; and that it can never, ever happen again.’ Fuller will be sentenced at a later date.

A special place Hell for one of Britain’s most Criminals of the most horrible nature

By Barbara Davies for the Daily Mail

Bill and Pamela Knell were gifted a bottle by a friend to celebrate Wendy’s death in 1987. They had to throw it away after a few more years.

‘We don’t want to die not knowing what happened and who did this,’ Pamela told a newspaper at the time.

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. The two women lived in separate ground-floor flats one mile apart in Tunbridge wells, Kent. Their deaths were dubbed the ‘Bedsit Murders’ and became one of the UK’s longest double homicide cases.

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

 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

Indeed, it is only now that 67-year-old Fuller’s murder trial has come to a dramatic halt with his guilty plea, that the full story of one of the most hideous killers in British history can begin to 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 years old, and his youngest was only nine. He filmed his perverted acts, and took photographs of his victims’ identity bracelets and mortuary log entries. He recorded their names, and searched social media for additional information.

He kept meticulous records of all the violations he committed in an upstairs office in his Heathfield, East Sussex home. The prolific hoarder also secured it with CCTV.

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. 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 have lost loved one at the Tunbridge Wells Hospital and Kent and Sussex Hospitals, where Fuller worked, will be haunted to think that they might have become Fuller’s victims.

Wendy Knell

Caroline Pierce

Wendy Knell (left) and Caroline Pierce (right), whose deaths were dubbed the ‘Bedsit Murders’ and became one of the UK’s longest double homicide cases

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 reveal that beneath this veneer of respectability, Fuller’s offending can be traced back to the 1970s when he was living in Hampshire. In 1973, he pleaded guilty at Portsmouth Crown Court to three burglaries 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 methods he used as a burglar to locate his potential victims.

Caroline and Wendy lived in Tunbridge wells in ground-floor apartments in poorly lit streets. Reports of a prowler looking in downstairs windows at the time of their deaths were made.

The hoarder kept detailed handwritten diaries of his abuse, along with thousands of videos and images of himself having sex with the corpses organised into folders

The hoarder kept meticulously written diaries detailing his abuse and thousands of images of himself having sex on corpses. 

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 ride home on his motorbike at 11:15 and they said their goodbyes on the front lawn.

When she failed to turn up to work the next day, staff called Ian who came to her home. Wendy lay naked on her bed, bloodied, and battered.

Detectives leading the investigation believed Wendy’s killer had been lying in wait for her. The killer had taken items, including her diary. These items were never recovered.

Ian Plass has since died, but in a witness statement he gave to police, which was read out in court this week, he described the horror of finding his girlfriend’s body.

‘I recall there was blood somewhere. I could see Wendy’s head sticking out from the top of the duvet. The duvet covered the rest of her body. I moved closer and stroked her forehead. I pulled the duvet back to her shoulders. She was laying on her left side and facing the wall.’

Caroline Pierce was shot to death on Tuesday, November 24, 1988. She was the manager at Buster Browns burger restaurant in Tunbridge.

Fuller (pictured) 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

Fuller (pictured) 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 

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. She had been raped, strangled, and battered just like Wendy.

The jumper and skirt that she was wearing were never found. She also lost her keys, which were in her handbag.

Fuller might never have been caught, if it wasn’t for scientific advances. The clock was ticking since the moment Fuller’s family member was arrested and DNA was added to the national database.

During a cold-case review of Wendy and Caroline’s murders, the DNA was found to be a close match to that left the killer of both women. Fuller was arrested last December and said that he didn’t know anything about the case, but that his DNA was a 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 former lover described him as a ‘normal, loving man’.

Fuller graduated from high school at 16 and worked as an apprentice electrician for the Ministry of Defence, Portsmouth. He married Gillian in 1972, and they had three kids. He claimed in court that the relationship ended after she had an affair. He then moved from Kent to Tonbridge and met Sally.

They married in 1982, and Fuller described their 17-year marriage as ‘long-lasting, in-depth and nice’. 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. In police interviews, he claimed their relationship was ‘pretty perfect’.

During a hearing on Oct. 8, his wife was seen sobbing in public gallery. It is believed she learned the extent of her husband’s crimes only that morning.

Fuller was apathetic in custody, sitting with his head down as officers interrogated him about his necrophilia crime. When he answered, speaking in a quiet voice after lengthy pauses, it became clear he couldn’t bear to describe what he had done. ‘I am admitting the offences but I don’t really want to go into detail,’ he said.

Justice has taken a long time for the families of Wendy Knell, Caroline Pierce and Caroline Pierce. Caroline’s family are believed to have moved to Spain several years ago, but yesterday, on the steps of Maidstone Crown Court, Wendy’s family paid an emotional tribute to Kent Police’s cold cases team.

Fuller is still awaiting sentencing. Despite their horrific nature, Fuller’s hospital mortuary offenses carry a maximum sentence only of two years.

The worst possibility is that his true evil may yet be revealed.