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This is the moment police discover a necrophiliac killer’s sick cache of images that show him sexually abusing dead victims at the morgues where he worked.
David Fuller, 68, murdered Wendy Knell, 25, and Caroline Pierce, 20, in 1987, before going on to sexually abuse 101 corpses at his workplaces from at least 2007.
The father-of-four was not linked to the murders until 2020, which led investigators to search his home and uncover almost 900,000 files of him abusing corpses of females aged between nine and 100.
The crimes were committed at the now-closed Kent and Sussex Hospital and the Tunbridge Wells Hospital, in Pembury, where Fuller had worked in maintenance since 1989.
The moment police officers uncover the shocking images has been shown for the first time in Sky’s true crime documentary David Fuller: Monster in the Morgue.
Bodycam footage shows cops searching Fuller’s cramped home office in Heathfield, East Sussex, when they stumble on some pictures.
Kent Police’s DI Shelley Chantler said her first reaction while working the case was ‘complete disbelief’ (Pictured: Fuller)
‘Why do they look… dead?’ Horrifying moment police stumble upon ‘morgue monster’ David Fuller’s sick catalogue of abuse images
One asks: ‘Are they ones he’s taken?’ while another off-camera officer says: ‘Why do they look… dead?’
A female officer then asks: ‘In that first one… Is that real or made up?’
The team then find a drawer filled with USBs and floppy disks at the bottom of a wardrobe. They would later discover they contained almost 900,000 files of him abusing bodies at the Tunbridge Wells mortuary.
While being interviewed, Fuller later tells detectives: ‘I’m not insane. I may have some sort of residual personality problems, which you know I’ve gone a completely almost Christian life and a deadliest life altogether at the same time with no crossovers… It’s just two different personalities.’
Kent Police’s DI Shelley Chantler said her first reaction while working the case was ‘complete disbelief.’
She said: ‘This was an ordinary man. He was married, he had kids.
‘It’s difficult to get your head round that any human could even think to do that and then they discovered some more.’
She added: ‘It’s like he’s two people in one. He leads a normal life going about his own daily business. And on the other hand he’s out murdering women.’
An examination of Fuller’s computer hard drive at his home revealed 818,051 images and 504 videos of his abuse as well as evidence of his ‘persistent interest in rape, abuse and murder of women’.
Fuller’s victims included nurses, teachers, a pilot, a skier, a war veteran, wives and mothers who had nurtured families. Many were still wearing defibrillators and catheters at the time Fuller abused their bodies.
Among those whose bodies were abused by Fuller was a 92-year-old Second World War hero who worked at Bletchley Park. Her daughter previously said he ‘has done the most heinous crimes, something our family must live with daily’.
An examination of Fuller’s computer hard drive at his home revealed 818,051 images and 504 videos of his abuse as well as evidence of his ‘persistent interest in rape, abuse and murder of women’ (Pictured: Raid of Fuller’s office captured on police bodycam)
David Fuller escaped justice for over 30 years after murdering Wendy Knell, 25, and Caroline Pierce, 20, in Tunbridge Wells in 1987. He went on to abuse at least 101 dead bodies at morgues
In the Sky documentary, police find a drawer filled with USBs and floppy disks at the bottom of a wardrobe. They would later discover they contained almost 900,000 files of him abusing bodies at the Tunbridge Wells mortuary
In 2020, Fuller admitted murdering Wendy Knell, 25, and Caroline Pierce, 20, in 1987 after he brutally bludgeoned and strangled them to death.
Both women, who lived alone in bedsits in Tunbridge Wells in Kent, were then sexually assaulted by the former hospital electrician as they were either dying or post-death.
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Miss Knell’s body was discovered in her bed on June 23, 1987, while Miss Pierce, who was attacked just feet from her front door on November 24, was found three weeks later on December 15 wearing just a pair of tights, in a field 38 miles away in Romney, Kent.
Their horrific deaths – dubbed the Bedsit Murders – became one of the UK’s longest unsolved double homicide cases.
Three-times wed Fuller was finally arrested on December 3, 2020, after a major breakthrough in DNA science identified a familial link to a relative on the national database.
DI Chantler said: ‘What was returned to us was lists of other profiles that potentially could be relatives of the killer. And we essentially profiled them.
‘We did all this research and whittled our list down to 90 people.’
One profile had a brother living in the area of the murders in 1987, which would turn out to be then-respected hospital electrician David Fuller. Two murder charges quickly followed.
Fuller was part of a Kent cycling club in the 1980s. One of their routes travelled directly past where victim Caroline Pierce’s body was found in 1987
Wendy Knell (left) and Caroline Pierce (right) were beaten and strangled by Fuller before being sexually assaulted
But detectives only realised the true extent of his crimes when they uncovered what was described by prosecutor Duncan Atkinson KC as ‘a library of unimaginable sexual depravity’ concealed in a hide at his home.
DS David Shipley, of Kent Police’s paedophile investigation team, was tasked with analysing the pictures and videos.
He said: ‘Fuller committed every sexual act that it’s possible to do with a human body.
‘There was a complete lack of emotion being shown by him.
‘It seems to me that there’s no thought whatsoever for the fact that it is somebody’s loved one.
‘It’s still a person – they may be dead but they are still a person. There wasn’t an ounce of humanity demonstrated by him at any point.’
Fuller’s victims, some of whom the 68-year-old violated more than once, included three who were under 18 at the time of death. Several others were said to be over 85 years old.
He then used mortuary records to log their details in his own notebooks, and even looked up some of his victims on Facebook.
Also on the hard drives were a staggering four million indecent images of children – mostly downloaded from the internet.
Fuller, from Heathfield, East Sussex, initially denied the historic murders on the grounds of diminished responsibility before unexpectedly changing his pleas to guilty amid dramatic scenes on the fourth day of his trial.
The depraved killer was subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment with no possibility of parole.
At the time of the sentencing, 81 of the mortuary victims had been identified.
However, due to difficulties in identifying all the corpses he abused and fearing there may have been hundreds of others going back to when Fuller’s hospital employment record began, Kent Police set up a call centre at the conclusion of the trial to deal with any public concerns.
The Government also announced an independent public inquiry would be held, while NHS England ordered all hospitals to review their security.
Following Fuller’s conviction, the Kent and Essex Serious Crime Directorate were able to identify a total of 101 victims.
