(Adnkronos) – The crimes committed by David Fuller, a killer who also abused the corpses of dozens of women and girls in English mortuaries, could happen again, a British inquiry has found.
The final report of the inquiry, which concerns the crimes committed by Fuller, also found that “current arrangements for the regulation and oversight of post-mortem care are patchy, ineffective and, in significant areas, completely absent”.
The maintenance worker sexually abused the bodies of more than 100 women and girls aged between nine and 100 while working at the now-closed Kent and Sussex Hospital and Tunbridge Wells Hospital, between 2005 and 2020. Speaking at the publication of the report today, chairman Jonathan Michael said the inquiry was the first time the “safety and dignity” of people after death had been examined so comprehensively.
Michael said the weaknesses that allowed Fuller to offend for so long were not confined to the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust, where the killer worked. “I have found examples in other hospital and non-hospital settings across the country. The safety and dignity of people after death are not embedded in the governance arrangements of many organisations that care for the deceased,” Michael said.
“I have therefore concluded that current arrangements for the regulation and oversight of post-mortem care are patchy, ineffective and, in significant areas, completely absent,” he added.
“I have asked myself,” he continued, “whether the appalling crimes committed by David Fuller could happen again. I have concluded that yes, it is entirely possible that these crimes could happen again, particularly in those sectors lacking any form of statutory regulation.”
Fuller was already serving a life sentence for the sexually motivated murders of Wendy Knell, 25, and Caroline Pierce, 20, in two separate attacks in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, in 1987, when police discovered his mortuary abuse.
In November 2023, the first phase of the inquiry, which looked at his employer, the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust, found Fuller had been able to offend for 15 years undetected because of “serious failures” at the hospitals where he worked. Michael said the government “must” introduce statutory regulation to protect the “safety and dignity” of people after death.
He said “many organisations fail to assess systemic risks or to ‘think the unthinkable'”. There was also “poor focus” on who was accessing the mortuary – Fuller went to the morgue 444 times in one year, which went “unnoticed and unchecked”, the inquiry found.
