The Morgue Monster: Britain's Most Disturbing Crime

David Fuller, a hospital electrician working at two major medical facilities in southeast England, committed crimes so disturbing that authorities initially struggled to comprehend their scope. Arrested in 2020, Fuller was linked through DNA evidence to the murders of Wendy Knell and Caroline Pierce, killed in 1987 during what became known as the "Bedsit Murders." But this connection to deaths 33 years in the past would uncover something far darker: a systematic pattern of abuse spanning at least 15 years.

Between 2005 and 2020, Fuller gained access to the morgues at Kent and Sussex Hospital and Tunbridge Wells Hospital in Pembury through his position as an electrician. His all-access card provided unrestricted entry to the facilities where he worked. What investigators discovered during their investigation was staggering: evidence of the abuse of at least 101 women and girls, ranging in age from 9 to 100 years old.

The scale of Fuller's crimes became apparent only when police seized materials from his home. Officers recovered 818,051 images and 504 videos documenting his abuse of bodies. Fuller had methodically recorded his crimes and maintained what became known as a "little black book"—a record containing the names of his victims. The existence of this documentation meant that investigators could identify specific individuals whose bodies had been violated, adding another layer of trauma for families who had already experienced the loss of their loved ones.

For three decades, the murders of Knell and Pierce had remained unsolved cold cases. The breakthrough came in 2007 when DNA technology advanced sufficiently to link the two crimes, but it would take another 13 years before Fuller's arrest in 2020 finally brought the perpetrator to justice. The delay in identifying him—despite his employment at hospitals for years after the murders—raises troubling questions about investigative procedures and information-sharing protocols.