The Bedsit Murderer: David Fuller

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In nineteen eighty seven, two women
were killed in the English town of Royal

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Turnbridge Wells, twenty year old Caroline
Pierce and twenty five year old Wendy Nell,

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who were both sexually assaulted and strangled
to death after an unidentified assailant broke

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into their homes. The attacks were
seemingly random and investigators found themselves at a

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dead end. Eventually, the case
seemed to go cold. As forensic technology

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becomes better, faster, and cheaper, this story becomes more and more common.

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DNA provides a link to cases that
went cold decades ago, providing justice

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that the victims family had long since
given up on. In the case of

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the Kent Bedsit murders, the DNA
profile of the killer was officially created in

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two thousand seven, confirming what the
detectives on the case had always believed.

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Whoever the killer was, the same
man was responsible for both crimes. Law

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enforcement now had a DNA profile,
but they were only able to compare it

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to the samples of DNA that they
already had in their system. If the

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killer didn't have a recent criminal record, there was no way to find a

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match. Year by year, DNA
technology became more and more useful, and

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finally, in twenty nineteen, the
Bedsit murders case was reviewed and the DNA

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evidence collected from the crime scene was
reanalyzed. Forensic experts used familial DNA technology

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to identify people who were possibly related
to the killer, and people across the

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country were sent to visit all of
these potential relatives, hoping that they would

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give consent to giving a DNA sample. One of the people whose door the

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police knocked on was a man named
David Fuller. Interestingly, David did have

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a criminal record. As a young
man in the early seventies, he carried

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out a string of burglaries where he
entered houses by climbing through the windows.

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A sample of David's DNA was collected
and, along with the rest of the

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samples, it was compared to the
DNA profile of the Bedsit murderer. Unlike

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the rest of the DNA samples,
David Fuller's was an exact match to the

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killer. This was the indisputable proof
that the police needed to arrest David,

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and on the third of December,
the perpetrator of the Bedsit murders was finally

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behind bars. But when investigators began
to search David's home, they realized how

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he had spent the years since he
committed the murders, and that he was

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even more sick and twisted than they
thought. As soon as David was arrested,

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a highly trained search team was deployed
to comb through his home. They

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were looking for any evidence that linked
him to the Bedsit murders, as well

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as any sign that he had committed
any further crimes. The more hidden the

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evidence was, the more the search
team were interested in finding it. And

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by far the thing that David had
gone to the most links to hide was

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the box of hard drives that had
been carefully hidden in the back of the

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chest of drawers in his wardrobe.
Shortly after the Bedsit murders, David had

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gotten a job working maintenance at the
Kent and Sussex Hospital and worked there for

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more than twenty years. Afterward,
he switched to another hospital, Pimbury,

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where he worked as a maintenance supervisor. These jobs gave him a swipe card

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that allowed him to access the hospital's
highly secure areas, and in particular,

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it allowed him unsupervised, uncontrolled access
to the mortuary. On those hidden hard

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drives, David kept an obsessive,
meticulous record of the main crime he had

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spent his life committing, necrophilia.
Most of David's victims had not been killed

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by him, like the bedsit murders. Instead, he had memorized the visual

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fields of the CCTV cameras in the
hospital. He used the blind spots in

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the camera's footage to sneak into the
mortuary after hours and sexually abused the corpses

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of girls and women. He had
used his digital camera to film footage of

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himself abusing a disturbing amount of dead
human bodies. A total of one hundred

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one victims were confirmed, although authorities
suspected that David had committed necrophilia many more

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times than that. After he returned
home from work. David would then carefully

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transfer the footage onto the hard drives, which he kept hidden in the back

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of his wardrobe. The earliest footage
that investigators found was stated back to two

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thousand and five. The most recent
offense had taken place less than a week

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before he was arrested. David had
organized the necrophilia footage by researching the name

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and age of every victim, even
searching social media to find the accounts of

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the corpses that he abused. David
only abused female corpses, but apart from

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that, he didn't seem to have
a particular victim profile. The oldest that

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he committed necrophilia with had died at
the age of one hundred. The youngest

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corpse was a little girl who had
only been nine years old when she passed

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away. When David abused the corpses, he showed no signs of remorse or

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respect for them or their grieving loved
ones. He committed this act whenever he

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could, often molesting the corpses very
soon after their passing or before their family

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arrived for a viewing. Police had
thought that they had finally apprehended the perpetrator

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of the bedst murders, bringing justice
to the families of Caroline Peerce and Wendy

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Nell. In reality, their investigation
into the largest scale necrophilia case in the

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country's history was only just beginning.
On each of the hard drives, there

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were more than five hundred videos as
well as eight hundred thousand pictures, and

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that didn't include the other evidence that
was later found on floppy disks, CDs,

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film negatives, and mobile phones.
Nine dedicated investigators spent a grueling five

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months combing through the physical property they
seized from David's home. It took six

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police officers more than a year to
process the digital evidence file by file in

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an effort to figure out how many
crimes David had committed and who the victims

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had been. While going through the
footage, they realized that David had a

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habit of returning to the same corpse
several times to commit more disgusting acts.

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In October twenty twenty one, David
Fuller pleaded guilty to fifty one criminal offenses.

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At his trial, the daughter of
one of David's victims spoke to him

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directly, telling him that when she
was told about her mother's corpse being abused,

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the pain and emotional upset seared through
her body like a knife. She

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addressed him by name, saying,
David, I want you to know how

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much damage you have caused, how
your sick and twisted behavior has damaged families

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like mine. I'm pleased that you're
now being held accountable for what you did.

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Only seven hours after she died.
David's necrophilia victims were not named in

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court, but the prosecution and families
of the victims told the courtroom about the

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lives of the women that he had
molested in death. They had been skiers,

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nurses, teachers, pilots, World
War Two veterans, happily married wives,

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mothers and grandmothers. They had been
daughters, sisters, and friends.

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In their last moments, many of
them had wanted to continue living. At

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least three of the victims had been
children who should have had their whole lives

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ahead of them. Instead, their
lives had been cut short and their bodies

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had been defiled shortly after their deaths. At the time David committed these acts

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on some of the victims, they
still had defibrillator pads attached or ivy lines

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inserted from where the hospital staff had
tried and failed to save their lives.

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David was found guilty of both the
bedsit murders and the necrophilia charges and sentenced

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to life in prison. A detective
for the Kent Police commented on the verdict,

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saying that it would mean little to
this abhorrent behavior who, throughout our

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investigation had demonstrated no remorse and only
a capacity for self pity. There was

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no way to make David understand the
gravity of what he had done. There

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was no way to rehabilitate a man
who had committed at least two murders and

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then brazenly violated corpses for years without
remorse. The only thing that the judge

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could do was ensured that David never
harmed another person, living or dead.

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During David's sentencing, Missus Justice Chima
Grubb told him, you are sixty eight

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years old. In nineteen seventy three
and nineteen seventy six, you were convicted

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of dozens of burglaries committed by climbing
into homes through windows. You spent the

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subsequent years living a lie, the
facade of a mild and ordinary life.

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While in seclusion, you committed revolting
and outrageous acts of the deepest darkness.

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You have a family who you deceived
over all those years. It's almost impossible

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to believe that a single man can
cause the misery to so many that you

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have done. But you did it, and in consequence, you are paying

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the price that human justice can be
exact the rest of your mortal life in

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prison. That is ten minute Murder
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before we end this episode, I posted

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a poll over the holiday weekend on
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spent an entire day creating a new
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would do longer episodes. I think
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about to run with it until I
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want? What if I just added
a third episode per week to Ten Minute

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Murder consistently? I do it sometimes, but what if I did that more

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consistently. You're always going to get
the two, but what if you got

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a third one. What would people
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did ten Minute Murder but then I
did longer episodes on this other podcast or

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would they like for me to just
add an episode to the current one.

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So I posted the poll, and
people overwhelmingly said to do a third episode

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per week, even after I spent
an entire day creating this logo. But

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I mean, this show would not
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and this is all hypothetical when I
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I don't know if you know this, but it takes time and effort,

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planning and money to make this podcast, but I would like to expand

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it, so adding a third episode
does make more sense. I will.

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I'm not going to completely say that
I'm never going to do another podcast altogether

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in addition to this one where I
do longer episodes. I will one hundred

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percent do that at some point because
I've already made the logo for it.

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But priority will be adding a third
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Okay, and now we are all
up to date. Thank you so much

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for listening to Ten Minute Murder.
See you soon,