Portsmouth murderer David Fuller from North End sentenced to 'spend every day of the rest of his life in prison'

Hospital electrician David Fuller, 67, had previously pleaded guilty to murdering Wendy Knell, 25, and Caroline Pierce, 20, in two separate attacks in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, in 1987.

He evaded justice for more than 30 years – going on to sexually abuse more than 100 corpses of girls as young as nine and women as old as 100 in hospital morgues – before a breakthrough in DNA evidence led to his arrest last December.

Fuller pleaded guilty to 51 other offences, including 44 charges relating to 78 victims in mortuaries between 2008 and November 2020.

Now the murderer, who grew up in Angerstein Road in Portsmouth, has been handed a whole life sentence for the murders with a concurrent 12-year term for his other crimes.

Fuller was convicted of ‘creeper-type’ domestic burglaries often involving break-ins through rear windows in the 1970s.

He pleaded guilty to three domestic burglaries at Portsmouth Crown Court, with 23 other offences taken into consideration, in 1973 and a further offence in 1977, with three other offences taken into consideration, but he was never jailed.

Speaking at Maidstone Crown Court today, Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb QC told Fuller he had spent 45 years living ‘an outwardly mild and ordinary life’ – but was hiding ‘acts of the deepest darkness’.

The judge said: ‘Having killed two young women who were full of the promise of life you became a vulture, picking your victims from among the dead, within the hidden world of hospital mortuaries which you were left free to inhabit, simply because you had a swipe card.

‘The depravity of what you did reveals that your conscience is seared; calloused over.

‘The sentence I am about to pass means you will spend every day of the rest of your life in prison.’

Fuller sat in the dock with his head bowed in court, which heard dozens of impact statements from the relatives of his victims.

The mother of the nine-year-old girl faced Fuller in court as she said she felt his acts would ‘haunt’ her for the rest of her life.

She said: ‘I have nothing, no way of closure, how will I make it up to her? How will I stand by her side now, and how will I nurse that little body that has been ruined and disrespected by that vile man?

‘I am standing up for her now in front of him.’

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A statement from the family of the 100-year-old woman said: ‘My mother should have been safe at the mortuary and clearly she was not.

‘She should never have had to have such an awful thing done to her.

‘We have to live with this for the rest of our lives and I know we will all struggle with it.’

Oliver Saxby QC, defending, said that Fuller ‘regrets’ his actions.

The defending barrister said: ‘He has caused untold pain and suffering to many, many people, and he knows it and he regrets that.’

The government has promised to look at the maximum sentence for necrophilia, which is currently two years in jail, and it has announced an independent inquiry into how Fuller went undetected.

A message from the Editor, Mark Waldron

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