Double murderer David Fuller admits further mortuary sexual abuse
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Version 0 of 1. Fuller pleads guilty to 16 offences relating to dead women in Kent mortuaries between 2007 and 2020 The double murderer David Fuller has admitted sexually abusing 23 dead women in hospital mortuaries. The 68-year-old pleaded guilty at Croydon crown court on Thursday to 12 counts of sexual penetration of a corpse and four counts of possession of extreme pornography between 2007 and 2020. Fuller, who beat and strangled Wendy Knell, 25, and Caroline Pierce, 20, to death before sexually assaulting them in two separate attacks in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, in 1987, was sentenced to a whole-life term last year. He had pleaded guilty to murdering Knell and Pierce, as well as 51 other offences, including 44 charges relating to 78 victims in mortuaries between 2008 and November 2020. Fuller filmed himself abusing corpses in the now closed Kent and Sussex hospital and in Tunbridge Wells hospital in Pembury, where he had worked as an electrician since 1989. Kent police said an investigation had led to evidence relating to a total of 101 victims, and the latest charges related to the 23 remaining victims, all of whom were deceased adult women. Ten have not been identified. Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb said Fuller, who appeared in court by video link from HMP Frankland, must appear in person when she sentenced him in the week starting 5 December, probably at the Old Bailey. Prosecutor Michael Bisgrove said victim personal statements were being prepared. “There are many family members of the victims who would like to attend court in one way or another, some of whom who would wish to read their victim personal statements to the court,” he said. The government has announced an independent inquiry into how Fuller went undetected until being arrested for what have been called the “bedsit murders” on 3 December 2020, after new analysis of decades-old DNA evidence. Knell was found dead in her Guildford Road flat on 23 June 1987, while Pierce was snatched five months later on 24 November outside her home in Grosvenor Park. Her naked body was discovered in a water-filled dyke in the Kent village of St Mary in the Marsh on 15 December. Police discovered a library of images of Fuller attacking corpses when officers searched his three-bedroom semi-detached home in the town of Heathfield, East Sussex, where he lived with his family. The victims included a nine-year-old girl, two 16-year-olds and a 100-year-old woman. |