He managed to get away with it for over thirty years. Never a suspicion, never an accusation. Then technological advances surprised him, shining a spotlight on one of the scariest cases of necrophilia of all time. Let’s talk about David Fuller – also known as the “Morgue Monster” – the British killer was sentenced to life in prison for the murders of two young women in 1987 and the sexual abuse of at least 100 women’s corpses between 2008 and 2020 while working as an electrician at the health facility.
A life between light and shadow
David Fuller was born on September 4, 1954. Little is known about his childhood and adolescence, very little, apart from some already worrying episodes such as the habit of burn on any type of object, almost a constant in the biographies of serial killers. The love life was particularly lively even at a young age – with a total of three wives and three children Problems with the law. In 1973, in his early twenties, he was arrested for a series of burglaries. The same thing happened four years later, in 1977. But Fuller was lucky: in both cases he managed to avoid prison and was not fingerprinted. A detail that will allow him to get away with it for over three decades.
After a first marriage that broke up after a short time, David Fuller meets Sally and decides to marry again. He works multiple jobs and makes ends meet any way he can. One of his many jobs included working as a photographer for the London rock band Cutting Crew, which he and his wife accompanied on their long tour in 1985. His favorite hobbies are bird watching, cycling and photography. But there is one dark side by Fuller, who no one knows and who will explode shortly afterwards, in 1987 to be precise.
The murders
This year, David Fuller committed a double murder within five months that shocked the United Kingdom. The first victim is Wendy Knell, manager of a SupaSnaps store in Turnbridge Wells, Kent. The future “morgue monster” is a big regular at the exercise because that’s where he takes his photos to develop them. And he develops a sick obsession with his owner. One day in June, Fuller attacks her in her studio apartment on Guildford Road: first he strangles her and then abuses her lifeless body. Her boyfriend will find her body on June 23rd: naked in bed amid huge bloodstains.
Five months later, on November 24th to be exact, David Fuller does it again. After meeting her more than once at the Buster Brown restaurant, where she worked as a waitress, the man attacked the twenty-year-old Caroline Pierce outside his home in Grosvenor Park. Same procedure as the first murder: first strangulation, then sex with the corpse. Unlike the Knell case, Fuller decides to dispose of the victim’s body by dumping it in a ditch on a country road in Romney, an area he knows well thanks to his long bike rides. Police connect the two cases, which have gained notoriety as the “living room murders.” But despite the investigation and the enormous resources made available, the authorities are unable to find any significant clues.
The resumption of cases
David Fuller therefore gets away unpunished and decides to devote himself entirely to his family. He lives with his family in Hethfield, East Sussex, and is considered a hard worker. After separating from Sally – thanks to a few extramarital affairs, including one with a nurse that lasted two years – the man married his third wife, Mala, in Barbados in 1999. After various jobs, he found work as an electrician in hospitals caring for the residents of Kent and Sussex. But what turns Fuller’s existence on its head thirty years after the events is the improvement in technology and forensic analysis techniques.
David Fuller is actually connected to the Knell and Pierce murdersDNA test. In 2020, authorities are taking back some old cases and trying to see if new technologies can make a difference. When they stumble upon the double murder, the agents examine the available samples and obtain DNA. No match in the police databases, but investigators don’t give up and test dozens of Turnbridge Wells residents. Among the many tests, there is an affinity for the killer’s DNA: he is David Fuller’s brother. And it’s not that difficult to connect it to the crimes, quite the opposite.
The shocking discovery
Police find evidence of the Knell Pierce case in his home – from SupaSnaps footage to a diary documenting visits to the Buster Brown restaurant – and David Fuller is arrested. But not only. In fact, investigators discovered thousands of images and videos linked to sex crimes. And only in this phase do they necrophiliac acts von Fuller: Yes, because among the confiscated videos are sex sequences with corpses in the morgues of the hospitals where he worked.
Police attention therefore turned to Kent and Sussex Hospital, where David Fuller had served from 1989 to 2010, and to Turnbridge Wells Hospital, where he worked until the day of his arrest. The investigators’ discovery is shocking: Fuller had free access to the morgues thanks to a swipe card he used to work as an electrician. He knew exactly which areas were covered by surveillance cameras and which were not, but what framed him vividly was his private collection with detailed records of names and ages. A tedious job that at least allows the authorities to identify them 101 bodies (aged between 9 and 100 years) were injured.
After denying any wrongdoing in the two murders and the necrophilia episodes, David Fuller pleaded guilty in the Knell-Pierce cases and to violating 44 corpses between 2008 and November 2020. He was sentenced in December 2021lifelong prison sentence. He was subsequently convicted again in December 2022 for mishandling another 23 bodies.
The storm over the hospital company
In November 2023, a real storm broke out around the British hospital company Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells. The investigations actually caused a stir Errors, negligence and non-existent controls This allowed David Fuller to operate undisturbed in the Hospital Trust’s morgues. “Opportunities to challenge Fuller’s employment practices were missed,” said chairman Sir Jonathan Michael. But not only. The investigation found that the murderer had access to the morgues 444 times in just one year, without anyone ever calling him to account for these entries. A case that adds to the long list of scandals in the British healthcare system.