A double murderer who sexually assaulted dozens of corpses in hospital mortuaries is facing a life sentence.
David Fuller, 67, beat and strangled Wendy Knell, 25, and Caroline Pierce, 20, to death before sexually assaulting them in two separate attacks in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, in 1987.
He was caught 33 years later after a DNA breakthrough and a search of his home revealed he had recorded himself abusing bodies in the mortuaries of hospitals over more than a decade.
Fuller pleaded guilty to murdering Ms Knell and Ms Pierce days into his Maidstone Crown Court trial after previously admitting manslaughter by diminished responsibility.
He also pleaded guilty to 51 other offences, including 44 charges relating to 78 identified victims, including three children, in mortuaries between 2008 and November 2020.
They include the sexual penetration of a corpse, possessing an extreme pornographic image involving sexual interference with a corpse and taking indecent images of children.
Fuller filmed himself carrying out the attacks inside the now-closed Kent and Sussex Hospital and the Tunbridge Wells Hospital, in Pembury, where he worked in electrical maintenance roles since 1989.
Investigators have so far detected around 100 potential victims but admitted all their identities may never be known.
CCTV issued by Kent Police of David Fuller being questioned
Kent Police
The Government has announced an independent inquiry into how Fuller went undetected and promised to look at the maximum sentence for necrophilia, which is currently two years in jail.
Fuller faces mandatory life sentences for the murders and could be handed a whole life order when Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb QC passes sentence on Wednesday.
Ms Knell was found dead in her apartment in Guildford Road on June 23, 1987, while Ms Pierce was snatched five months later outside her home in Grosvenor Park, on November 24.
Her naked body was discovered in a water-filled dyke at St Mary-in-the-Marsh on December 15.
Fuller was arrested for what have been dubbed the “Bedsit Murders” on December 3 last year following new analysis of decades-old DNA evidence, which linked him to the killings.
Images of him attacking corpses were discovered when officers searched his three-bedroom semi-detached home in the town of Heathfield, East Sussex, where he lived with his family.
