Chilling moment ‘morgue monster’ David Fuller’s cache of sick images showing him abusing dead bodies is unearthed in doc
TO his friends, family and even colleagues, he was just an unassuming man with a love of cycling and amateur photography.
Nothing could have prepared them for the double life hospital electrician David Fuller, 68, had been leading for the past 34 years.
Not only was he responsible for two cold case murders, he had raped and sexually abused 101 corpses in his workplace’s morgue since at least 2007.
Now for the first time, body cam footage of unexpecting officers finding Fuller’s thousands of images of him abusing dead bodies will be shown in Sky’s two-part documentary The Monster in the Morgue.
On police footage obtained by the true crime doc, an officer asks another to look at some pictures in Fuller’s cluttered and cramped home office, in Heathfield, East Sussex.
One by one, the police on the scene slowly realise the horror which has unfolded in front of them.
One asks: “Are they ones he’s taken?” while another off-camera officer questions: “Why do they look… dead?”
A female officer asks: “In that first one… Is that real or made up?”
Police pull out a chest of drawers with USBs and floppy disks from a wardrobe – which were found to contain nearly 900,000 sick files of him sexually abusing dead bodies at Tunbridge Wells Hospital’s mortuary.
In a police interview, 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, who worked on the case, said: “My first reaction was complete disbelief.
“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 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.
My first reaction was complete disbelief. This was an ordinary man. He was married, he had kids
DI Shelley Chantler
“And on the other hand he’s out murdering women.”
The files were only discovered in 2020 after Kent Police charged Fuller for the 1987 murders of shop manageress Wendy Knell, 25, and 20-year-old restaurant worker Caroline Pierce.
Callous Fuller had murdered and then raped photo shop manageress Wendy in her bedsit.
He had bludgeoned her then strangled her before sexually assaulting her dead body.
Cold case killings
Five months later, the monster then killed Caroline Pierce and dumped her body in a ditch in Romney Marshes – 40 miles away from Tunbridge Wells.
The two cases went cold but police never gave up in the hunt to find the two women’s killer.
A breakthrough came in 1999 when DNA advanced so that police could take a sample of semen found in Wendy’s bed and Caroline’s tights.
No profile on the database matched their results, but they were able to rule out 500 suspects.
By 2020, police forces were able to use familial DNA to catch criminals.
Finding a family member’s DNA on the national database could throw up new leads and help detectives narrow down their search.
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.”
‘Respected’
One profile had a brother who was living in Tunbridge Wells in 1987 – a hospital sparky called David Fuller.
By then Fuller had become a respected senior electrician at Tunbridge Wells Hospital where he had worked from 1989.
He had married three times – eventually having a child with his third wife Mala, and settling down in nearby Sussex.
Body cam footage shows Fuller calmly reacting to his arrest for the two murders.
It wasn’t until after his initial arrest that officers found his vile images abusing bodies in the mortuary.
The officer who had to go through the images, DS David Shipley of Kent Police’s paedophile unit, described Fuller’s lack of emotion as he would take selfies with a compact digital camera and strip off.
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.
Fuller committed every sexual act that it’s possible to do with a human body
DS David Shipley
“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.”
In contrast to his emotionless videos, during a police interrogation, cowardly Fuller breaks down.
He begged police to spare him from recounting his repulsive crimes.
Hanging his head in shame, he sobbed: “I need to just say something about the whole thing because to go through all this in detail today right now, I’m just totally exhausted.
“I’ve admitted everything. I can’t deal with it.
“Every single thing you are saying to me is killing me off. Honestly, it really is.”
When asked about the age range of his victims, softly spoken Fuller replied: “60, 70 something like that. I can’t remember exactly.
When asked about the youngest he admitted: “Yeah I know what you are gonna say. Nine.”
He added: “I’m admitting the offences but I don’t really want to go into details.”
Tellingly, Fuller seemed to have no remorse for his crimes.
When arrested, police found a post-it note in his pocket with the number 1987 on it.
DI Chantler said: “We suspected that would be a pin number. So every time he used his bank card he would have been transported back to 1987 – the year that he killed Wendy and Caroline.”
His colleague at Tunbridge Wells Hospital explained how Fuller fooled his colleagues and his in plain sight.
Free reign for sick deeds
Ryan Copper said as a senior staff member Fuller was able to access all of the hospital with his pass.
He said: “There was nothing odd about him needing to go do jobs in the mortuary,
“They had a lot of faults on the temperature sensors for the body freezers. They would often ask Dave to have a look at them because I don’t think anyone else knew how they worked or knew how to repair them.
“Dave always worked the late shifts. They were the best times for Dave to carry out his maintenance work because there was no-one there.”
At the hospital, access to the mortuary gave him free reign to commit his sick deeds without having to murder.
He took videos of himself abusing the deceased – including Tania Mackelden, who died at 48 from breast cancer.
Her son Tom told how Fuller had traumatised his family after grieving the loss of their mum.
He said: “For a long time I couldn’t look at pictures of my mum. All I could see was his disgusting vile face. I was having nightmares for weeks and weeks.”
For a long time I couldn’t look at pictures of my mum. All I could see was Fuller’s disgusting vile face. I was having nightmares for weeks and weeks
Tom Mackelden, victim's son
Police theorised that Fuller stopped killing only because he started working at Kent and Sussex Hospital – which later became Tunbridge Wells Hospital.
DC Nikki Hilton who interrogated Fuller said: “I’m a firm believer that he has used his access through the hospital, probably as soon as he got there in 1989.
“And that’s probably why we’ve not seen any more murders because he’s getting his necrophilia fixes through his employment.”
Before his sickening morgue crimes became public he had to face trial for killing Wendy Knell and Caroline Pierce.
But on day three of the trial, after hearing damning evidence, proceedings were stopped so David could plead guilty.
After he was handed two whole life sentences, he was also sentenced to 12 years for mortuary crimes and a conviction of possessing indecent child images.
Watch David Fuller: Monster in the Morgue tonight at 9pm on Sky Documentaries.