Sword and Scale Nightmares: Peeping David

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On December 3, 2020, 67-year-old David Fuller heard three gentle knocks

on the door of his Heathfield, England, home. David's wife and teenage son were in the other

room, so he rose from the couch and answered the knock. Without much of a hello, multiple police

officers tenderly pushed their way into David's living room. In a manner so soft,

it could only be European. Distress radiated from David as he sat down, touching his face and

looking all around while avoiding the eyes of the officer in charge. Interestingly,

as the officer told Fuller he was under arrest for murder, David let out a sigh of relief

and visibly relaxed. The look on David's face could only mean, oh, thank God,

because David had a far worse secret than being a killer.

Welcome to Sword and Scale Nightmares, true crime for bedtime, where nightmare begins now.

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David Fuller was born on September 4, 1954, in Deal, Kent, England. As a child, David knew he was

different than the other boys his age. Like an itch, he couldn't scratch something inside David

burned. David began exploring ways to get this monkey off his back, starting with

stealing bicycles. With each bike Fuller stole, he felt a little bit of weight lift off his shoulders

for a while, so his behaviors escalated. By the time Fuller was a teenager, he gained a

reputation for arson. With each act, David realized he was getting closer and closer to

feeding the beast inside of him, but he hadn't solved the problem yet. In his 20s, David found

a new way to alleviate his urges, voyeurism. Voyeurism is gaining sexual pleasure from watching

others naked or engaged in sexual activity. The most important aspect of voyeurism is that the

victims remain oblivious to being observed. David would find a woman or couple that interested him

and break into their house. David would hide inside the home for hours listening and watching them.

After the first break in, David's compulsion dissipated for a while,

but that duration became shorter and shorter. As Fuller continued to push his limits,

the risk increased until he eventually got caught, which the police labeled a string of

creeper burglaries. Despite David's felonious tendencies, he lived a very average life.

David worked as an electrician at a naval yard, married and had some children. He even had a few

affairs. David also developed an obsession with documenting his life. Over the years,

he collected 2,200 storage discs, countless memory cards, 30 phones, and 34,000 photographs.

David also kept a diary of his day-to-day activities, birdwatching and riding with his bicycle club.

Through David's record keeping, we know what happened in June 1987.

One morning, David takes his photographs to get developed at Super Snaps in his old neighborhood.

He notices the short-haired brunette working behind the counter with a name tag that reads

Wendy K. As that familiar itch creeps up the back of his neck, David decides Wendy is the one.

David follows Wendy around for a few weeks until one night it feels right.

On June 22, 1987, David waits in the darkness outside the photo store for Wendy's shift to end,

and when she climbs onto her big red-headed boyfriend Ian's motorcycle, he follows them home.

Wendy is living in a bed-sit, a one-bedroom apartment consisting of a combined bedroom

and kitchen. Wendy kisses Ian goodbye and walks inside alone as the flame inside David

grows out of control. While Wendy changes into her nightgown and tucks herself into bed,

David lets himself into her apartment. David waits for Wendy to fall asleep and then

stands at the end of her bed, watching her chest rise and fall with a sleeping breath.

Then David sets the beast inside of him, free. Wendy misses work the next day,

and Ian rides to her apartment to see why. He knocks on the door, but she doesn't answer,

so he moves to the window. Ian sees Wendy naked and lying on a blood-soaked mattress.

Ian yells, Wendy, wake up, but she doesn't move. He forces his way through the window and shakes her,

but it's too late. Ian races to the nearest fire station for help and collapses inside.

25-year-old Wendy Nell was more than the manager of Supa Snaps Photoshop.

Wendy was a beloved daughter, sister, and aunt. Although her previous marriage failed,

Wendy's new relationship was that of a dream, and she was excited to try marriage again.

Then, most of all, Wendy wanted to be a mother. An autopsy revealed that David bashed Wendy's head

in, strangled her, and then sexually assaulted her corpse. The only evidence David left behind

damaged DNA, a bloody partial fingerprint and a bloody shoe print. Wendy's neighbor claimed he

saw a man looking into her window at around 10.30 at night the night she died. He had seen that same

man looking into the same window three nights a week for the last five weeks. Other than the

fact that Wendy had a stalker, the detectives had nothing to use besides that her key ring was missing.

In the 1980s, there was no cellphone GPS to track and no CCTV cameras to watch. Hell, the DNA

database of offenders didn't even come around until eight years after Wendy's murder. This

investigation was as cold as Wendy's cadaver. David had a profound epiphany during his night

with Wendy, starting with what the animal inside of him wanted. The murder wasn't about the killing,

slaying Wendy was strenuous, exhausting, and messy. David enjoyed the power he had over the girl once

she was dead. David realized there was no stronger feeling than his control over Wendy's carcass

and the demon inside him demanded another.

Music

Customers are rushing to your store. Do you have a point of sale system you can trust or is it

a real POS if you know what I mean? You need Shopify for retail. Did you know Shopify powers

selling in person too? Shopify POS is your command center for your retail store. From accepting

payments to managing inventory, Shopify has everything you need to sell in person. With

Shopify, you get a powerhouse selling partner that effortlessly unites your in-person and online

sales into one source of truth. Track every sale across your business in one place and know exactly

what's in stock. Connect with customers in line and online. Shopify helps you drive store traffic

with plug-and-play tools built from marketing campaigns from TikTok to Instagram and beyond.

Get hardware that fits your business. Take payments by smartphone, transform your tablet

into a point of sale system, or use Shopify's POS Go mobile device for a battle-tested solution.

Plus, Shopify's award-winning help is there to support your success every step of the way.

Do retail right with Shopify. Sign up for a $1 a month trial period at Shopify.com

slash sword and scale all lowercase. Go to Shopify.com slash sword and scale to take your retail

business to the next level today. Shopify.com slash sword and scale all lowercase and no spaces.

Shopify.com slash sword and scale.

Five months after murdering Wendy Nell, David sits in Buster Brown's restaurant and notices

a waitress. Her short brunette hair catches David's eye and her beautiful young face keeps his

attention. The wide-eyed 20-year-old waitress is wearing a name tag that reads Caroline,

but it might as well have said pray. For a few weeks, David becomes a frequent flyer

at Buster Brown's and the Bush's outside Caroline's apartment.

Like Wendy, Caroline lives in a bedside. In late October, David becomes light-headed with adrenaline

and wanders into the light. Caroline notices David and reports a prowler to the police.

David startles Caroline to the core so she installs locks on her windows,

stopping his first attempt to let himself in. On the night of November 24, 1987,

Caroline's neighbors hear a woman screaming on her front steps and then Caroline is gone.

Police were notified of Caroline's disappearance that very night.

Similar to Wendy Nell, Caroline's neighbors report it seeing a man peeping through her blinds for

a month prior. In fact, three different women report seeing David that month.

Three weeks later, a farmer discovered Caroline Pierce's body in Romney Marsh,

more than 40 miles from her home. David chose the water-filled ditch after admiring its remote

location during a bike ride with his club. Caroline's skin was almost translucent,

exposing the purple decaying flesh underneath. David had bashed Caroline's head like he had

done with Wendy and then strangled her. Just as he had done to Wendy, David sexually assaulted

Caroline's corpse. For some odd reason, David put Caroline's tights back on when he was done

and then placed her half-naked body in a fetal position. Once again, David left nothing

of evidentiary value behind, but he did take Caroline's key ring. The community named Caroline

and Wendy's deaths the Bedsit Murders. Before the Bedsit Murders, Tunbridge Wells was festive,

bustling and cheerful. After the murders, though, fear tore through the community like a hurricane.

Women no longer walked the streets alone. Once night fell, the borough became a ghost town.

Fuller alone changed the entire atmosphere of the city. David's learning curve was

exponential during the two murders. Just as David learned what he needed, he also learned what he

hated. David loathed murder. Murder is exhausting physically and mentally. The problem with the

beast was that there was no reasoning with it once it broke its cage in search of something to eat.

For a year, David fought off his urges and explored new ways to get what he wanted.

Then, in 1989, like a gift from the devil, Fuller was offered a job. The Kent and Sussex Hospital

needed a maintenance man, and although David was perfect for the job, the job was perfect

for David. You see, Kent and Sussex Hospital had a morgue in the basement, and as their new

maintenance man, David had an all-access pass. Late one night after the day staff leave for home,

David wanders to the hospital morgue. He makes a note of the security cameras,

more importantly where the blind spots are at. Luck is on David's side because not a single camera

watched over the morgue's exam room. David makes his way to the freezer which houses the

hospital's dead. He doesn't know how many bodies the freezer contains, but David feels

their presence through the cold steel. The power David feels standing there alone

makes his toes curl with nerves, as he thinks not yet. If nothing else, David is patient.

He knows it only takes one slip up to ruin a dream come true. David notes the staff's schedules,

how long and often the morgue is empty. He can't push his luck. Every moment spent inside needs

careful calculation. David puts on a metaphorical mask that says, I'm just like you. I can flirt,

hold a conversation, and even be a friend. Even though he's married, David starts

relationships with the nurses. One night, David enters the morgue as he's done a hundred times

before. This time he opens the freezer and slides a body out. David examines her, runs his fingers

over her skin, and that familiar light-headed feeling rushes over him. She is defenseless,

and he must have her. As David slides the body back where it belongs, he decides

he will be back. David uses his all-access pass to have his way with the residents of the hospital

morgue for the next 22 years. When the hospital closes in 2011, David transfers to the Tunbridge

Wells Hospital in Pembury and continues his necrophilic escapade. In 2020, when the police

finally arrest David for the murders of Caroline Pierce and Wendy Nell, we learn precisely what he

did to these dead women for three decades.

For the 33 years after David murdered Wendy Nell and Caroline Pierce, detectives worked to solve

the case. In 1999, they could test DNA found at the scenes but had no match. 20 years and 2.5

million pounds later, investigators developed a technique to pull DNA from a damaged sperm cell.

David left on Caroline's tights. The detectives compared that DNA to familial DNA,

which brought their suspect down to a workable number. Using a limited age range, they narrowed

it down to the closest living relative, David's brother. When police arrived at David's doorstep,

they noticed the large number of security cameras watching over its exterior.

David went peacefully, claiming he had no involvement in the murders. However, David's

meticulously kept diary revealed his frequent visits to Buster Brown's where Caroline worked.

His photographs showed him lying in a patch of grass near where he left her, while wearing the

same pair of shoes that left the bloody footprint on one of Wendy's blouses. David

developed those photographs at Super Snaps, where Wendy worked. Police recovered David's

computers, hundreds of hard drives, thousands of storage disks, phones, memory cards, and photographs,

but something disgusting was hiding just out of view. While ripping David's apartment apart,

a detective noticed a kitchen cabinet oddly positioned against the wall, as if it didn't fit

flush. As they pried the cupboard free, they discovered a hidden stash, screwed to the back

of the cabinet was a container, filled with four hard drives. On those hard drives were

818,051 images and 504 videos, along with several files with titles like Necrolord, Register,

Deadly, Deadliest, and Best Yet. The opening scene of each video took place in the morgues of either

the Kent and Sussex or Tunbridge Wells Hospital, and starred David as the main character. The

supporting actress in each video was a dead woman, between the ages of 9 and 100. Between 2008

and 2020, David filmed himself raping the corpses of over a hundred women,

often going back to the same body for multiple days. This massive collection made David's stash

the most extensive compilation of child porn ever discovered in West Sussex.

David's films were so intricate that the detectives could read the patient's information

off the wristbands that still embraced their cold wrists. They were able to cross-reference

the metadata on the videos with the morgue record, but they barely needed to because David

kept a little black book containing most of the victim's names. But to this day,

10 victims still remain unidentified. In 2007, Wendy Nell's father gave an interview saying,

one day someone's going to ring that door and say, we've caught him, and there will be a celebration.

By God, there will be, especially if he goes down for a very, very long time.

Mr. Nell died before police knocked on his door. Wendy's remaining family addressed the news saying,

for 34 years we as a family, the police and press have been focusing on what actually

happened to Wendy, wanting to know who did it and how she spent her last moments alive.

We now know, and sadly, it's much worse than we could have ever imagined.

Hopefully, we can now start to grieve and move past the pain and start to remember her as the

beautiful, kind, generous, caring, funny girl she was, who had a smile and kind word for everyone,

a daughter, a sister, an auntie, and good friend to many people.

Although the time past has meant our dad is not here to share this moment,

as we lost him four years ago, it broke his heart that he never found out before he died.

Yet, he has been with us every step of the way until now,

or deeply sad, he's not with us today. Caroline's mother made a similar heartbreaking statement.

My daughter Caroline was a typical teenager, just coming out of a rebellious stage.

We agreed to meet for lunch after months, but now it became the most horrific part of my life

and a nightmare that continues to this day. I have had to endure 34 years of not knowing why

anyone would do this. I never forgot racing across Kent, having to identify the damaged

body of my own flesh and blood. I can still recall the horror of seeing her body and what happened to

her. She didn't deserve being taken away from her family. She doesn't deserve what this animal did

to her. She must have been terrified when she died. Life has never been the same again.

Christmas time, no get-togethers, no grandchildren. Mother's days are a bitter reminder of when

Caroline's funeral was held. Anniversary's, her birthday, the day her body was found,

goes on the same day every year. If I hear Abba playing, I must leave her risk of breaking down

in tears. Her grandparents never had grandchildren. The happiness went out of their lives when their

daughter was murdered. Once the police notified Wendy and Caroline's families, the hard part began.

The now and Pierce families had waited years for that knock on the door,

but the hundred families of David's other victims had no idea what was coming.

Upon hearing what David did to their defenseless, deceased loved ones, one hysterical family member

took their own life. When the mother of Azra Kemmel, David's 24-year-old victim,

learned what happened to her daughter, she grabbed a kitchen knife and rushed to the police station.

As she approached, police officers appeared out of nowhere in every direction. The officers threw

her to the ground and handcuffed her. Mrs. Kemmel told them, the rage. My only thought was,

he's not going to get away with this. I'd just been told he's raped her in the hospital

when she was dead. It was incomprehensible. I felt I had to take things into my own hands,

find him, punish him. I'm her mother. If I'd found him, I'm 99.99% sure I'd have put that knife

straight through his heart, because he'd put a knife through mine. The thought of him

violating her, touching her hair, touching her skin. In court, the mother of Fuller's youngest

nine-year-old victim addressed him directly, saying, David, you know who I am because you

read the letter I wrote to my baby. You raped my baby. She couldn't say no to the dirty 66-year-old

man who was abusing her body. I feel guilty. I left her there. I will not enjoy my life again.

In 2021, David pleaded not guilty to the murders of Wendy Nell and Caroline Price.

David denied the murders on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

The state's prosecutors argued that Fuller killed and sexually assaulted the women to satisfy

his desire for sexual gratification through observation and identification of vulnerable

women, gaining control of them and then indulging his depraved sexual predilections.

Four days into the trial, David admitted to murdering the women and pleaded guilty to 51

other offenses, including 44 charges related to the rape of 78 of his identified victims.

The judge sentenced Fuller to life in prison for the two murders and 12 years for the mortuary

offenses. In October of 2021, they charged David with an additional 16 crimes committed

in the hospital morgues, including 12 counts of sexual penetration of a corpse

and four counts of possession of extreme pornography. David pleaded guilty again

and awaits sentencing from inside the HMP Franklin prison. The families of David's mortuary victims

sued Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust for what went on inside their hospitals.

The company has agreed to pay and while most of the 80 families will receive between $25,000

and $30,000, a small group will receive over six figures. David began working at the hospital in

1989, long before he could record his sadistic acts. Theoretically, including the 19 unrecorded

years, Fuller's victim count could have doubled. You've heard the devastation that followed when

the families learned of David's acts. Those families had a sense of closure. David's exposure

ripped apart their healing wounds and created even deeper ones, which raises an interesting question.

If you were the family member of one of David's unidentified victims,

would you even want to know the truth?

If you enjoyed the show, please consider joining plus at swordandscale.com

slash plus. But if you can't, consider leaving us a positive review on your preferred listening

platform. Sweet dreams and good night.

Customers are rushing to your store. Do you have a point of sale system you can trust or is it

a real POS? If you know what I mean. You need Shopify for retail. Did you know Shopify powers

selling in person too? Shopify POS is your command center for your retail store. From accepting

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you get a powerhouse selling partner that effortlessly unites your in-person and online sales

into one source of truth. Track every sale across your business in one place and know exactly what's

in stock. Connect with customers in line and online. Shopify helps you drive store traffic with

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that fits your business. Take payments by smartphone, transform your tablet into a point of sale system,

or use Shopify's POS Go mobile device for a battle-tested solution. Plus Shopify's award-winning

help is there to support your success every step of the way. Do retail right with Shopify?

Sign up for a $1 a month trial period at Shopify.com slash sword and scale. All lowercase. Go to

Shopify.com slash sword and scale to take your retail business to the next level today.

Shopify.com slash sword and scale. All lowercase and no spaces. Shopify.com slash sword and scale.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.