A former hospital worker who murdered two women and used his access to a mortuary to attack more than 100 corpses has been jailed for life, with grieving parents and partners giving harrowing accounts of the anguish he caused.

David Fuller, 67, pleaded guilty last month to murdering two women in 1987 in Kent, changing his plea midway through his trial.

He was jailed at Maidstone crown court on Wednesday and was told by the judge, Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb, that he was never to be released because his offending was so extreme and serious.

Fuller murdered Wendy Knell, 25, and Caroline Pierce, 20, in separate attacks in Tunbridge Wells in 1987.

New analysis of decades-old DNA evidence led police to search his home last year, where they also found a shocking library of images of him abusing dead women. When his home was raided police discovered 4m images of sexual abuse. Most were downloaded from the internet, but Fuller had also recorded himself abusing scores of bodies.

Fuller’s necrophiliac attacks are believed to be the most extensive offending of their kind in British legal history.

The government has agreed to an independent but non-statutory inquiry into how Fuller was able to offend for so long and on such a scale.

He used his job as a hospital electrician to enter the mortuary of two Tunbridge Wells hospitals, where over 12 years he raped and sexually abused 102 dead bodies.

In his attacks on the dead the youngest female was a girl aged nine, the oldest a woman aged 100, the court heard, starting in 2008 and stretching to 2020.

The prosecutor Duncan Atkinson QC said about 20 victims were yet to be identified, while 82 had been. “David Fuller systematically and repeatedly sexually abused the bodies of dead women and girls,” Atkinson said.

In interviews after his arrests, Fuller claimed not to have derived sexual pleasure. He recorded the abuse, taking video and photos, then catalogued them according to types of attack. Some recordings had the name of victims, one folder was entitled “best yet”.

The court heard a Tens machine that normally offers pain relief via electrical stimulation was recovered from Fuller’s home when it was raided by police.

For most of Wednesday morning, Maidstone crown court heard accounts of the searing emotional toll caused by his crimes. It heard accounts from those who were told their loved ones had been violated by Fuller after their death.

The mother of his youngest victim appeared in court to face Fuller, telling of the “catastrophic pain” he caused, and said: “You raped my baby … to me this is rape in the most unimaginable way.”

The mother added: “She could not say no to the dirty … man, who abused her body.”

“It makes my skin crawl, it really does break my heart.”

She told how after her child’s death, she had brushed her blonde hair, and felt guilt because she left her in a place she believed was safe.

Others told how they felt crushed after being told by police. The court heard accounts of people left anxious, as virtual recluses, betrayed, and in some cases on medication.

The father of one of those attacked said: “I can’t sleep, I can’t eat, I cannot get these thoughts and images out of my head.

“You have proved in your depravity, that monsters are very real.”

Some came to court in person, some had their statements read by the prosecutor, and others asked for their statements to be read by the judge in private.

Another person whose loved one was attacked said: “In a world where women are not safe when they are alive, they are not safe when they are dead.”

The father of an 18-year-old victim said:”Fuller has taken our little girl’s innocence and destroyed our souls. I am consumed with anger.”

One husband who lost his wife said: “David, when you are serving your time behind bars, think carefully about what you have done and thank your lucky stars that I’m not sharing a cell with you.”

Fuller researched many of his victims after the attacks via Facebook. There was no CCTV in the part of the mortuary in which the attacks took place.

Knell was found dead with severe injuries in her apartment in Guildford Road on 23 June 1987. Pierce was killed five months later, on 24 November, outside her home in Grosvenor Park.

Neighbours described hearing screams from her flat on the night in question.

She was reported missing, and her body was later discovered in a water-filled dyke at St Mary-in-the-Marsh on 15 December 1987. DNA evidence from both women’s bodies linked Fuller to their killings.

Fuller was arrested for murder on 3 December 2020 after new analysis of the DNA evidence.