The TRUE STORY of a MORGUE MONSTER

The TRUE STORY of a MORGUE MONSTER

by Bill Knell

As a writer, I am also an experienced researcher of many diverse topics. The saddest story that I ever had to delve into was the murder of a beloved, twenty-five year old relative named Wendy Knell. She was killed in her apartment on June 23, 1987. Wendy and her family were living in England at the time. The incident became known as “The Bedsit Murder”.

We corresponded and sometimes spoke on the phone. I also occasionally called Pam Knell, her mom, and she always had nothing but praise for her daughter. Wendy was the manager of a photo processing store. She was living in her own bedsit, a one room apartment located in Tunbridge Wells (now Royal Tunbridge Wells) in Kent. She had been through a painful divorce from an abusive husband and was finally moving on with her life.

Wendy met Ian Plass in 1985, a well mannered and caring guy. The two started dating and were out together the evening before her murder. Ian dropped her off around eleven. He was getting ready to ask her to marry him at the time of her death. When she didn't answer his calls and wasn't at work the next day, he became concerned. The same was true of her mom. Pam suggested he immediately check on Wendy because he lived closer. When Ian came to her apartment to see if she was alright, Wendy didn't answer the doorbell and the door was locked from the inside.

Ian noticed that her window facing an alley looked as if it had been forced open. Upset, he entered the apartment through the window. A heart breaking sight immediately confronted him. Wendy was lying dead on the floor. She was nude and partially covered with a comforter. A police officer later said he was “sickened” by the amount of blood and condition of her body.

A coroner stated that Wendy had been murdered by blunt force trauma to the head and strangulation. Then came even more upsetting news. She had been raped after she died. Ian couldn't deal with the loss of Wendy, the abuse of her body and cried for days. Sadly, he passed away before her killer was found.

Caroline Pierce was a twenty year old restaurant manager who lived near Wendy, though the two didn’t know each other or have any connections. Roughly five months after Wendy's murder, on November 24, 1987, she was dropped off at her house by a taxi near midnight. She never made it inside.

After Caroline was reported missing, neighbors told reporters that they heard screams outside her house. Sadly, she disappeared so quickly that no one had enough time to come to her aid. Her body was located less than a month later in Romney Marsh on December 15, 1987. Caroline was in a ditch, on a farm, forty miles from her house. A farm worker discovered the horrific sight. He said she was mostly naked except for some tights and covered in blood. As with Wendy, she had been killed by blunt force trauma to the head and strangulation. Caroline was also raped after her death.

There were several other murders over the next few years in nearby areas that were similar to those of Wendy and Caroline. Due to the limitations forced on English Police by their laws, it was decided that because no connecting evidence existed between all the murders, the others were to be treated as separate cases. This likely slowed down any progress they might have made in the investigations.

In 2007 a cold case review revealed the DNA connection between the murders of Wendy and Caroline. However, the identity of the killer still wasn't known. In 2019 a local, sixty-five year old man named David Fuller was identified as a suspect through a match made from familial DNA. His brother's DNA was on file in the national database for an unknown reason.

Authorities put out a statement saying, “A DNA sample taken from David Fuller was found to be an exact match for the semen and other biological evidence left at both murder scenes.” He was probably a serial killer responsible for other murders in and around the area. There just wasn't enough scientific or physical evidence to make any connections despite the similarities involved. He was arrested in 2020 and convicted in 2021, being given a “whole life” sentence; but that's not the entire story.

Fuller was a retired Supervising Electrician that had worked at both the Kent and Sussex Hospital, and the Tunbridge Wells Hospital. He was married three times. Former spouses all described him as cold, sometimes distant, often angry and verbally abusive. Although he was initially kind and able to hide his true self, in each marriage Fuller did a slow burn acting as though his wives were keeping him from something. They were.

During his arrest and the subsequent search of his home, investigators found incredibly disturbing videos showing him having sex with dead bodies in the hospital morgues. His victims ranged in age from nine to almost one hundred. Hospital surveillance videos were examined and showed him entering the morgues during off hours, using his keys or key cards that allowed him access to anywhere in the facilities.

Again, due to the limitations of English Law, he could only be charged with sixteen incidents of abusing dead bodies based on the evidence collected. However, some local news sources reported that the number of corpses he abused could have been substantially higher. Home Secretary Priti Patel said: "This is a shocking case. The sickening nature of the crimes committed will understandably cause public revulsion and concern.”

Investigators also found that David Fuller had an extensive collection of child pornography. It's believed that some of his photos were of newly dead young corpses brought down to each hospital's morgue. Others actually showed him having intercourse with or abusing the bodies. The news of his sick obsession hit family members related to the dead very hard. Their hearts were broken when some who came to court had to endure watching short segments or stills from the awful videos being presented as evidence.

After his conviction, an extensive inquiry was conducted to find out how this MORGUE MONSTER managed to get away with all he did for so long. The biggest problem was that when some morgue workers suspected someone was messing around with bodies after hours and mentioned their concerns, they were ignored by superiors who felt that there were enough safeguards in place so that things like that could never happen. But that wasn't the end of this sad and sick affair.

A few people who knew Fuller for years (and had photos to prove it) went online and told their own sorted stories anonymously. They all felt that Fuller was very good at hiding his dark side until they had seen it for themselves. One woman said she knew him as a kid and were both the same age. When they were twelve they went swimming together in a quiet pond. She never had trouble with David before, so she wasn't afraid to be alone with him.

Fuller tried pulling off her swimsuit when she refused his request to skinny dip with him. When he didn't succeed in getting her naked, he pushed her head under the water acting like he was going to drown her. At that point she pretended to begin taking off her swimsuit. Instead, she picked up a large rock, hit him in the face with it, and then escaped. He later apologised and she let it go fearing what would happen if she didn't.

Another woman briefly dated Fuller in her teens. She claimed that the one time she had intercourse with him, he made her play dead and forced her to submit to “odd requests”. He wanted her to remain still and stiff so that it would be hard for him to complete the act. That was the last time she ever dated him. It's worth noting that serial killer Ted Bundy did the same thing with his girlfriend, Elizabeth Kendall, who later wrote about it in ‘The Phantom Prince: My Life With Ted Bundy’ Free ebook, Free audio book.

According to investigators and news sources that worked his case, Bundy would kill girls, hide their corpses and have intercourse with them for days.

In a mostly unrelated, but interesting story, it seems that corpse abuse was and is more common than most people think. In school my Sociology teacher told us that in the 1800s it wasn't uncommon to find grave robbers stealing bodies to sell to medical schools and others. It was well documented that some did more than just steal bodies from morgues, funeral homes or fresh graves in cemeteries. They sometimes sexually abused them or worse.

I applaud the British Police Investigators who stuck with and ultimately solved the murder cases of Wendy Knell and Caroline Pierce. In doing so they also exposed the other disturbing crimes of David Fuller bringing to a close his horrific secret life as a murderer, rapist and necrophiliac.