UK Necrophiliac Killer 'Avoided Eye Contact, Kept Blinds Shut, Washed Car Often', Claim Witnesses

On 4 November David Fuller admitted to murdering Wendy Knell, 25, and Caroline Pierce, 20, almost 35 years ago, while also pleading guilty to 51 further charges, including the sexual assault of dozens of female corpses at two mortuaries in Kent and East Sussex, where he had used his role as an electrician to gain access.

As police sources believe 'Bedsit Murders' perpetrator David Fuller could have been responsible for more slaughtered victims and thousands more women defiled in morgues where he worked, his ex-wife Gill Palmer was cited by The Sun as saying she was still in “shock” over the horrendous revelations.

“It’s too horrific. I can’t even take it in myself yet. It’s not right on so many levels. It’s just not right. My children can’t talk about it. They’re not in a good frame of mind. What came out has been a total shock. It’s their father you’re talking about. They didn’t know the man. I didn’t know the man,” said Palmer.

Gill Palmer married the man now known to have been a die-hard necrophiliac in 1972. The couple, who divorced in the 1980s, had children Michael, 46, and Sharon, 49.

Mala Fuller, the third wife of the man who managed to get away with his crimes for over three decades until a DNA breakthrough helped cold-case detectives solve the case, was cited as saying:

“I’m not with him. I couldn’t carry on in that relationship. I’m too upset to even think about what was going on, I couldn’t live with it. You can’t imagine how distraught I am.”

It was at the home in Heathfield, East Sussex that Mala Fuller shared with the hospital electrician for 20 years that police found his trove of morgue photographs.

“I couldn’t stay in that house knowing what he did and what went on in there. I wanted to be alone and want to live my life alone,” said Mala Fuller.

According to appalled neighbours cited by the outlet, Fuller had always seemed “odd” and “wouldn’t talk”. The man who they say “refused to make eye contact” reportedly had his blinds ushut for 20 years, even in summer, owned numerous CCTV cameras and frequently drove off in his car at odd hours. Fuller is also described as having washed his car often.

“I rarely said more than a few words to him but he was often out washing his car. Now it gives me a chill down my spine — why was he always washing it? Was he getting rid of evidence? It’s a horrible image that I can’t get out of my mind. Everyone is friendly round here but he was always the odd one out. We often heard him driving off at 2am or 3am and now we know where he was going. He’s worse than a monster, he’s a devil. Pure evil,” one neighbour was cited as saying.

The hospital electrician was also described by a colleague as having been “quiet but pleasant.”

“He’d be given a job and he’d do it. He’d fix a heater or a boiler and that was it. He didn’t really mix but people got on with him. All of his colleagues were shell-shocked. It’s beyond words,” said the unnamed former colleague of the man who abused corpses in mortuaries.

“The Fuller case is still being worked on by a team of detectives who are trying to track down victims’ families. There are fears that his morgue victims could run into the thousands and he could potentially have killed others. He is without question one of the most evil men in UK criminal history,” a police source was cited by the outlet as saying.

‘Morgue Maniac’

On 4 November David Fuller, 67, admitted killing Wendy Knell, 25, and Caroline Pierce, 20, in separate attacks in Tunbridge Wells in 1987. Both women, who lived in one-room bedsits, had been beaten and strangled.

Caroline Pierce, who was killed in Kent in 1987

© Photo : Kent Police / Caroline Pierce

The former hospital electrician and maintenance engineer also pleaded guilty to 51 further charges, including the sexual assault of nearly 80 female corpses at two mortuaries in Kent and East Sussex.

David Fuller has today pled guilty to murdering two women in Tunbridge Wells in 1987.

He had earlier admitted 51 further charges relating to sexual offences, including the sexual assault of females at two mortuaries. https://t.co/XTXdNqIz40https://t.co/ekUg5QMq3Q pic.twitter.com/DqUz84Trg1

— Kent Police (UK) (@kent_police) November 4, 2021

Fuller was able to evade arrest for over three decades until cold-case detectives carried out a review of the national DNA database.

Back in the 1980s, when there was none of the extensive DNA analysis or national database of offender profiles that help identify criminals today, detectives had struggled with forensic evidence in the case.

All they had to work with was a bloody fingerprint on a shopping bag and a footprint on the cuff of a white blouse from Wendy Knell's flat.

After the DNA sample failed to match anyone on the newly-established database in 1999 the trail went cold.

However, in 2019 forensics experts applied a relatively new technique, "familial DNA", to a new method for collecting DNA from a damaged sperm sample.

Then detectives scrutinised a list of those who had lived in the area of the murders and who would have been the right age. The closest partial DNA match belonged to Fuller’s brother, which, in turn, led them to the murderer himself.

David Fuller struck, strangled and sexually assaulted Wendy Knell, 25, and Caroline Pierce, 20, after breaking into their homes in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, months apart in 1987. pic.twitter.com/WUvz2epCgu

— CPS (@CPSUK) November 4, 2021

David Fuller, who trained as an electrician and maintenance man while working in the Portsmouth shipyards, was living with his third wife and teenage son in Heathfield, West Sussex by 2020.

Pictured: David Fuller's NHS security badge pic.twitter.com/8pzeuQQjH9

— Space-reporter-news (@Spacereportern1) November 5, 2021

On 3 December, police arrived to search his house and discovered videos and notes detailing the necrophiliac's crimes at the now-closed Kent and Sussex Hospital and the new Tunbridge Wells Hospital. So far, Kent detectives have formally identified 81 of his mortuary victims.

The footage had been concealed in a bedroom he had converted into an office.

A joint statement from local MPs regarding the utterly despicable David Fuller case. My heart goes out to the victim families this evening & I will do all I can to ensure they get the answers they need & prevent this from ever happening again pic.twitter.com/8L0R7tiNyT

— Tracey Crouch (@tracey_crouch) November 4, 2021

While both Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust have launched an independent probe, a group of MPs has called for a public inquiry into how he could have carried out his crimes for so long. Health Secretary Sajid Javid said the NHS had ­written to all trusts asking for mortuary access to be reviewed.