An electrician who thought he had got away with the murders of two young women 34 years ago is facing the rest of his life in jail after new DNA techniques finally identified him.
David Fuller, 67, pleaded guilty to murdering Wendy Knell, 25, and Caroline Pierce, 20, in two separate attacks in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, in 1987, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said.
Fuller changed his pleas on Thursday, four days into his trial at Maidstone Crown Court which heard he had sexually assaulted the two women after killing them.
Image: Wendy Knell was murdered in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, in 1987
And in a shocking discovery after his arrest last December, police found that Fuller had for many years been sexually assaulting dozens of female corpses in the morgue of the hospital where he was employed.
He admitted assaulting nearly 80 dead bodies, many of which he filmed, but detectives believe there may have been hundreds more victims in the three decades he worked at the hospital.
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The hospital victims ranged from a girl aged nine to a 100-year-old woman.
Fuller was described in court as a “controlled sexual deviant who preyed on young women and derived sexual gratification from the violation of their dead bodies”.
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After a judge lifted a reporting ban Fuller, married with a son, can now be revealed as one of Britain’s most prolific sex offenders.
A police source said: “The extent and scale of his offending is likely to be unprecedented in this country.”
Police have spent £2 million marshalling an army of 317 family liaison officers, drawn from 27 UK forces, to track down the relatives of his hospital victims and break the news to them.
Fuller’s second wife Mala, who was a nurse at the hospital, was in court last month with his son and brother and others when the full details of his crimes were revealed.
One woman was shaking and in tears, another left the courtroom and appeared visibly distressed.
In that hearing, he admitted 32 charges of sexually assaulting dead bodies, taking indecent photographs of a child, possessing extreme pornographic images and voyeurism.
Initially, he had denied killing the two young women but later told his lawyers he admitted it but with diminished responsibility.
Image: The flat on Guildford Road where Ms Knell was killed
Today he changed his murder pleas to guilty.
His first murder victim was Ms Knell, the manager of Supa Snaps where Fuller took his photographs to be developed in Tunbridge Wells, Kent.
Her boyfriend found her naked body in a bedsit in the town in June 1987. It was her father Bill’s birthday. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled.
Her widowed mother Pam Knell, 84, told Sky News: “I remember the phone call from the police. And then I had to tell my husband to go over, to sort it out. It was mad. I don’t know.”
Image: Wendy Knell was the manager of Supa Snaps where Fuller took his photographs to be developed in Tunbridge Wells, Kent
She added: “I didn’t remember for a long time. I used to find myself at the bottom of the garden in the middle of the night, by myself, crying my eyes out.
“Wendy was a lovely, spirited girl and a good daughter. She had just started a new life, living away from us, but she didn’t have much of one, did she?
“I never thought they would catch him and I was frightened of any man coming close to me. I hope he is locked up for a long time. At least he won’t be able to do it again if he’s in prison, will he?”
Image: Caroline Pierce was murdered by Fuller five months after he killed Wendy Knell
In a statement after Fuller entered his guilty plea, MS Knell’s family said: “Although the guilty plea won’t change anything deep down as the pain and loss will always be there, it’s good knowing he will not be in a position to hurt or cause any more pain.”
Five months after killing Wendy, Fuller abducted Ms Pierce outside her bedsit home. She was a waitress at Buster Brown’s restaurant which he had visited.
Her body, naked apart from a pair of tights, was discovered by a farm worker in a flooded drain 40 miles away in Romney, an area Fuller knew from cycling trips.
Kent detectives investigated for many weeks, but forensic samples were poor and with no established DNA database to help identify the killer, the operation was scaled back.
Image: Ms Pierce was abducted by Fuller outside her home at 27 Grosvenor Road
What became known as “the bedsit murders” remained unsolved, even though a DNA sample from Wendy’s body was enhanced by forensic scientists in 1999.
In 2019, a re-investigation was boosted by an enhanced DNA sample from Caroline’s tights, though the breakthrough came from the sample from Wendy’s body.
Image: Fuller was linked to the crimes through a DNA sample
Checks on the national DNA base, which was set up in 1995, showed a close match to 90 people and gradually detectives were able to whittle down the numbers and identify a relative of Fuller – and then Fuller himself.
When police called on him at his home in Heathfield, East Sussex, he denied knowing the two women, but he was arrested and his DNA matched the killer’s. His fingerprint matched one in blood on a plastic bag found in Wendy’s bedsit.
In a search of Fuller’s house detectives discovered hidden computer hard drives, 1,300 videos and CDs, 34,000 photographs and hundreds of hard and floppy discs, containing what they described as distressing images of sex offences. In all, there were 14 million images.
Image: Fuller had a swipe-card for entry to the hospital mortuary which he used to gain access when staff went home
They included footage of Fuller sexually assaulting dead bodies in the morgue at the now-closed Kent and Sussex Hospital and the new 500-bed Tunbridge Wells hospital in Pembury, which replaced it in 2011.
The Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust has launched an independent investigation into his hospital crimes to discover why he wasn’t detected.
His job as an electrician and maintenance engineer gave him access to all areas of the buildings.
He had a swipe-card for entry to the mortuary, where staff clocked off three hours before his own regular shift ended.
One CCTV image showed him in part of the morgue looking at refrigerators where bodies were stored. The room where autopsies were carried out did not have a security camera, to maintain the dignity of the bodies.
The stored images go back only to 2008, but as Fuller had worked at the hospital since 1989 detectives believe there could be hundreds more victims.
Image: The hospital room where autopsies were carried out did not have a security camera
Fuller, who had a previous and old conviction for burglary, will learn his fate at a later date.
He faces a mandatory life sentence, but because he killed two victims, sexually attacked them and tried to conceal his crimes, he could be jailed for the rest of his life without the chance of parole.
Health Secretary Sajid Javid said the NHS had written to all health trusts asking for mortuary access and post-mortem activities to be reviewed in the wake of the case.
An independent review is already under way at the trust where Fuller worked and the Human Tissue Authority has also been asked for advice on whether rules need to be changed.
Home Secretary Priti Patel: “This is a shocking case and my heartfelt sympathies go out to the families of all those who may have been affected.
“The sickening nature of the crimes committed will understandably cause public revulsion and concern.
“As Kent Police have made clear, anyone potentially impacted has been contacted directly by specialist officers.”
Libby Clark, of the Crown Prosecution Service, 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.”
She added: “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.”
A professional footballer has been jailed for causing the death of a cyclist in a car crash.
Mansfield Town forward Lucas Akins crashed into Adrian Daniel in his Mercedes G350 in Huddersfield on 17 March 2022, while taking his daughter to a piano lesson.
Leeds Crown Court heard that Mr Daniel, 33, suffered catastrophic head injuries and died 10 days later.
Akins, 36, played in Mansfield’s 0-0 draw with Wigan on 4 March, hours after pleading guilty at Leeds Crown Court to death by careless or inconsiderate driving.
The footballer has continued to play for Mansfield since the incident.
Judge Alex Menary said on Thursday that he had considered imposing a suspended sentence, but had concluded that only an immediate sentence of 14 months’ imprisonment was appropriate.
Image: Mansfield Town’s Akins. Pic: George Wass/PPAUK/Shutterstock
A spokesperson for Mansfield Town FC said it “acknowledges” the court’s decision and offered the club’s “sincere and deepest condolences to the family of Adrian Daniel at this difficult time”.
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“The club is considering its position with regards to Lucas and will be making no further comment at this stage,” the spokesperson added.
‘Like hell’
Prosecuting, Carmel Pearson said it was a “difficult junction to emerge from” but that the defendant “did not stop at the give-way sign”.
Savanna Daniel, Mr Daniel’s wife, told the court it had been “like hell and a nightmare [she is] not waking up from”.
“There was no reason for Adrian to be killed that way,” she said, adding it was “too simple a collision to have taken a life”.
Image: Adrian Daniel. Pic: West Yorkshire Police/PA
Mrs Daniel said she did not want Akins’s children growing up without their father as she did not want “any more lives to be destroyed from this”, but she criticised the defendant for failing to plead guilty at an earlier stage.
Tim Pole, representing Akins, said he was “fundamentally a decent, honest and hard-working individual”.
“I want to publicly apologise on his behalf,” he said.
Mr Pole added that Akins understood Mrs Daniel’s “frustration and anger” over the time it took him to plead guilty.
Handing down his sentence, the judge accepted that Akins’s remorse was genuine but by not admitting to the offence at an earlier stage, he had prolonged Mrs Daniel’s “heartache and grief”.
After the sentencing, Mrs Daniel said “three years of hell” had come to a close, in a statement via West Yorkshire Police.
She said Akins had made a “farce” of the justice system and that his failure to plead guilty sooner “makes a mockery of any remorse that Akins offers for his actions”.
Akins, who has played for Mansfield Town since 2022 and was previously with clubs including Huddersfield Town, Tranmere Rovers and Burton Albion, was also suspended from driving for 12 months.
Much of the UK will bask in warm, sunny conditions at the start of next week, with inland temperatures up to 10C higher than average, but it’s a mixed picture before then.
The first half of spring brought warmth and sunshine for many, but the last 10 days have been more changeable.
Some areas of Ireland, Northern Ireland, southwest Wales, and southwest England have seen much-needed rainfall, whereas parts of northern Britain have observed very little.
Image: Warm, sunny conditions, such as those in Harrogate on Thursday, are expected at the start of next week. Pic: PA
Tyne and Wear in northeast England has recorded just 7% of its average April rainfall, whereas Cornwall in the southwest of the country has already seen 156%.
And the Milford Haven rain gauge in Wales has seen over twice its average April rainfall.
There’ll be more rain over the next few days, mainly in the West, but it looks like high pressure will settle things down from Sunday.
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Temperatures will rise too, becoming widely above average on Monday and Tuesday.
Highs of 22C (72F) to 24C (75F) can be expected.
The highest temperature of the year so far is 24C (75F), seen at Northolt in northwest London on Saturday 12 April.
The settled conditions will bring plenty of sunshine, with UV levels expected to be around moderate.
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It’ll be dry for runners and spectators, with sunny spells and light winds.
Competitors in the Manchester Marathon on Sunday will face similar conditions to London’s runners; it should be dry with sunny spells. The temperature first thing will be around 9C (48F), but it’ll warm up with a high of about 19C (66F).
England’s schools are under fresh scrutiny after government data revealed a sizeable increase in both suspensions and permanent exclusions.
According to the Department for Education, almost 300,000 pupils were suspended during the spring term of 2023/24, an increase of 12% recorded in spring 2022/23.
Suspensions have nearly doubled since spring 2019, surging 93% from 153,465 back then.
Meanwhile, permanent exclusions were also higher and went from 3,039 to 3,107, a 2% rise.
At Lewis Hamilton’s charity Mission 44, chief executive Jason Arthur said: “We are continuing to see the number of children losing learning due to suspensions and exclusions grow year on year – especially for vulnerable learners who face disadvantage or discrimination.”
The reasons for both the suspensions and permanent exclusions were “persistent disruptive behaviour” but many voices from the education sector say the figures tell a deeper story about post‑pandemic pressures.
Mr Arthur said: “Persistent disruptive behaviour continues to be the most common reason – yet taking children out of the classroom often only addresses the symptom and not the underlying causes of poor behaviour.”
Campaigners and unions have also reacted with concern. Head of the Association of School and College Leaders Pepe Di’Iasio warned: “Young people only have one chance at a good education … missing classroom time damages their future.”
He urged ministers to back “early intervention strategies” rather than rely on exclusions as a quick fix.
Paul Whiteman, from the National Association of Head Teachers, echoed the plea, highlighting how poverty, the cost of living crisis and lingering pandemic fallout were fuelling bad behaviour.
He stressed that schools “need funded, specialist help” to tackle the root causes.
Charity director Steve Haines said: “Over 295,000 suspensions is a stark warning: our schools aren’t set up to support all students. Disadvantaged youngsters are four times more likely to be suspended.”
The Education Minister Stephen Morgan acknowledged the “broken system,” vowing that the government’s “Plan for Change” will roll out mental‑health professionals in every school, boost SEND support and expand free breakfast clubs –measures he says will curb the “underlying causes of poor behaviour”.