‘Bedsit killer’ had sex with EIGHTY dead bodies it can be revealed as he admits two murders in 1987 

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A hospital electrician sexually assaulted at least eighty dead bodies in morgues as he remained free for thirty years after murdering two women, it was revealed today.

Married hoarder David Fuller finally admitted the murder of Wendy Knell and Caroline Pierce in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, in 1987 after the crime mystified police for three decades.

But Fuller was caught after a DNA breakthrough achieved by analysing genetic material found at the crime scenes and searching criminal databases for relatives.

The electrician was totally unknown to police but officers discovered a partial DNA match in one of his relatives after combing through a list of 1,000 people on the database who could be related to the killer.

After investigating Fuller, who had 1,000 extreme images of sexual abuse in his possession, officers arrested him at his home in Heathfield, East Sussex, where he lived with his family, in the early hours of December 3 2020. 

Footage of the arrest released by Kent Police today shows Fuller – who was still working for Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust at the time – opening the door to officers, to which he declares: ‘Oh, blimey.’

The 67-year-old who was married three times, was seen by locals as a harmless oddball, but hid a double-life of deviant abuse of corpses.

The pervert kept a detailed diary of his sex assaults, penned in his own handwriting and secreted in the home he shared with his wife. 

But he was finally unmasked last year and his offending – described today by the CPS as ‘a kind no British court has seen before’ – was brought into the daylight. 

Home Secretary Priti Patel said she hoped the victims’ families can ‘find some solace in seeing justice finally done’.

Describing the case as ‘shocking’, she added: ‘The sickening nature of the crimes committed will understandably cause public revulsion and concern.’  

Fuller initially denied the murders of Ms Knell and Ms Pierce, but dramatically changed his plea to guilty. 

The pair are understood to be the first women he sexually assaulted, but police could have little idea what horrors their search of his family home would uncover.

A den in his property hid a cache of hard drives and pictures showing he carried out ‘acts of sexual penetration of female corpses’ .

Detectives also found the diary detailing the age of the 80 dead bodies he defiled and when he had abused them, often on film.

Police think there could have been hundreds more victims in his 30-year career. The youngest dead person he defiled was just nine and the oldest 100.

The CPS said today the investigation into him was still open in case any further victims were uncovered.

Spokeswoman Libby Clark said: ‘David Fuller’s deeply distressing crimes are unlike any other I have encountered in my career and unprecedented in British legal history.

‘This highly dangerous man has inflicted unimaginable suffering on countless families and he has only admitted his long-held secrets when confronted with overwhelming evidence.

‘Fuller, with his uncontrolled sense of sexual entitlement, treated Wendy Knell and Caroline Pierce with extreme depravity. Both women were simply at home or returning from work when he ambushed them.

‘Their families never gave up on achieving justice even when all hope seemed lost. My thoughts are with them today and all the families of women and girls whose lives have been cut short by senseless violence.

‘Fuller’s appalling crimes did not end with these killings and he went on to abuse his position of trust as a hospital electrician in the most grotesque manner imaginable.

‘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.’

It would be DNA evidence that irrefutably linked him to the heinous crimes and end his three decades of crimes.

Investigators believe he would have ‘undoubtedly’ carried on offending if he had not been identified. 

Bodily fluids he left on Ms Knell’s duvet and Ms Pierce’s tights matched with DNA police had on their database from one of his brothers.

That family member was ruled out, but Fuller’s activities at the relevant times led detectives to his door.

He was arrested for the murders of Ms Knell and Ms Pierce at his home in Heathfield, East Sussex, where he lived with his family, in the early hours of December 3, 2020.

Police read out a statement on behalf of Ms Knell’s family outside Maidstone Crown Court this afternoon after he changed his plea to admit murdering them.

They said: ‘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.

‘We now know, and sadly it’s much worse than we could have ever imagined.

‘Hopefully we can now start to grieve and move past the pain, and remember her as the beautiful, kind, generous, caring, funny girl she was, who had a smile and kind word for everyone – a daughter, a sister, an auntie and good friend to many people.’

Ms Knell, the manager of a Supasnaps photography shop in Camden Road, was dropped off at her ground floor flat in Guildford Road by her boyfriend at around 11pm on June 22.

He found her body in the bedsit just before 11.30am the following day after breaking in when she failed to show up for work. She was naked, covered with a duvet.

The bed, duvet and pillows were bloodstained, and her bloodstained head was resting on a towel.

Police could find no signs of forced entry, and neighbours heard nothing through the flat’s thin walls.

Ms Pierce, who worked in popular cafe Buster Browns, also in Camden Road, was attacked and abducted outside her bedsit at the end of a cul-de-sac in Grosvenor Park around five months later, on November 24.

She was last seen at around midnight when she was dropped off by a taxi at her home following a night out with a friend.

Neighbours heard screams coming from the direction of the cemetery next to her flat at the time she is believed to have been abducted.

She was reported missing by her concerned family when she did not turn up for work the next day. 

Her body was found by a farm worker driving a tractor around the edge of a field on December 15, some 40 miles away in a water-filled dyke near St Mary in the Marsh, close to Romney Marsh. She was naked apart from a pair of tights.

Both victims had suffered severe blunt force trauma to the head and both had injuries of compression of the neck by strangulation – either of which could been the cause of death – and both victims had suffered similar injuries during sexual assaults.

There is evidence Fuller remained with Ms Knell for some time after her death, while his second victim’s body was not discovered until weeks after her disappearance.

Top pathologist Dr Nat Carey found evidence that the sexual injuries suffered by Ms Knell occurred at the time of death or after death.

Prosecutors believe the killings may have been motivated by his sexual interest in the women after death.

At Ms Knell’s home, police found blood-stained clothing, a blood-stained Millets carrier bag and a distinctive shoe print in blood.

It is not known whether her killer, who could have broken in through an insecure rear window, was laying in wait or came in after she was sleeping.

With DNA profiling still in its infancy, a crude, low-level profile was recovered from the duvet cover on Ms Knell’s bed following her murder.

Samples were taken from many men in the area but no match was found.

In 1999, advances in science meant detectives obtained a full DNA profile but there were no matches on the national DNA database, which was launched in 1995.

A decade later, in 2019, police for the first time forensically linked the killer to Ms Pierce when a partial DNA profile was recovered from her tights, which had been in the water for three weeks more than 30 years earlier.

With still no match, detectives looked for any potential relatives on the DNA database, making a list of 1,000 names.

The list was whittled down to the 90 people most likely to have a familial link to the killer – by being a parent, child or sibling – and they were visited to obtain voluntary DNA samples.

A breakthrough came at the end of November 2020 when a very close match in a possible sibling was found.

Fuller was arrested for the murders of Ms Knell and Ms Pierce at his home in Heathfield, East Sussex, where he lived with his family, in the early hours of December 3 2020.

Detectives said he did not look surprised, but he denied any involvement and said he had no knowledge of the case or the area where the women lived.

A DNA comparison with the sample recovered from Ms Knell’s home was an exact match.

DNA found on her duvet, pillowcase, and towel, as well as intimate samples, was found by scientists to be a billion times more likely to have come from him than anyone else.

Tests on the DNA from Ms Pierce’s tights showed it was 160,000 times more likely to have come from Fuller than anyone else.

A fingerprint in Ms Knell’s blood, recovered from the Millets carrier bag found on the floor behind the headboard of her bed, was also matched to Fuller.

And the shoe print found on a blouse in her blood matched a white Clarks Sportstrek trainer, which family photos recovered from Fuller’s home showed him wearing in the 1980s.

Paperwork proved he lived in Tunbridge Wells, where he worked as an electrician, at the time of the murders, while both sets of his grandparents lived near Romney, where Ms Pierce was found.

He had holidayed there both as a child and an adult and was a keen birdwatcher, who visited the marshland area to pursue his hobby, while one of the routes of a cycling club he was a member of went directly past the dyke she was dumped in.

Fuller was convicted of ‘creeper-type’ domestic burglaries often involving break-ins through rear windows in the 1970s.

He pleaded guilty to three domestic burglaries at Portsmouth Crown Court, with 23 other offences taken into consideration, in 1973 and a further offence in 1977, with three other offences taken into consideration, but he was never jailed.

Described by police as a ‘hoarder’, his 1980s diaries showed he had visited Buster Browns, while the semi-professional photographer also had Supasnaps sleeves in his home.

The victims’ family members were said to be in ‘genuine shock’ when they were told of Fuller’s arrest and said they ‘thought this day would never come’.