A traumatised police officer who investigated the horrific crimes of David Fuller is calling for changes in the law surrounding necrophilia.

Former detective sergeant David Shipley spent a year investigating footage Fuller recorded as he sexually abused 101 dead women and girls over 15 years at Tunbridge Wells hospital, in Pembury, and the now-closed Kent and Sussex Hospital.

Shipley’s own mental health suffered from the work, which left him with nightmarish hallucinations of dead people, but he says he is duty bound to campaign for changes in the law surrounding the crimes he investigated.

Under current laws covering necrophilia, only certain sex acts are classed as crimes - carrying a maximum jail sentence of two years - which meant for almost a third of Fuller’s victims, police could only prosecute him for the indecent images he kept of himself abusing them, rather than the acts themselves.

Mr Shipley, 56, said “You can do awful things to a dead body which as it stands are actually not against the law.

“That needs to change, and the government could have done it in a heartbeat from the moment this was discovered.

“The law needs strengthening to make it absolutely clear - you cannot disrespect the dead in any way, shape or form.”

Fuller’s crimes came to light after DNA evidence identified him as a suspect in the 1987 murders of 25-year-old Wendy Knell and Caroline Pierce, 20 – for which he received two whole life sentences in 2021.

During his arrest in 2020, police discovered the hospital maintenance worker’s collection of videos and pictures chronicling over a decade of mortuary sex offending.

DS Shipley was drafted to investigate the evidence, due to his expertise in victim identification developed over 14 years in Kent Police’s paedophile unit.

“The absolute priority was protecting the murder investigation,” said Shipley. “We couldn’t investigate these murders for 30 years and then lose them on a technicality through news of Fuller’s mortuary offending leaking out.

“I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to handle it, so there was no way I could pass it to a colleague.”

And he added: “I’ve seen awful, awful things in my work but Fuller took me completely by surprise.”

“To begin with, I actually thought, ‘I can do this’. I was dealing with dead bodies, but I knew I was never going to have to speak to their relatives.

“It got more difficult as time went by when among Fuller’s files I discovered folders where he’d researched his victims.

“They went from being a dead body, to a person with a social media presence, and a story about how they died, and photos of them in the prime of their life.

“It brought them back to life in front of me and made it even more difficult to process the material.”

Shipley explained he was plagued with flashbacks and disturbing visions, to the extent he sought help from an in-house police counsellor,

“I was seeing dead people at random times,” he said. “One of the main ways I had of dealing with this sort of work was going on walks with my wife - but they were ruined by seeing dead people all the time, which took away my main therapy.”

Fuller’s murder sentences meant he was already destined to die behind bars, but he received additional sentences of 12 and 16 years for abusing dead victims, and making and possessing porn.

The government pledged to look into sentencing for necrophilia in the aftermath of the case; something which Mr Shipley says needs to happen for the sake of victims and relatives.

“I’m angry about the lack of action, and it’s serving as a block to me putting this behind me,” he said. “At the same time, I feel guilty that I’m trying to force myself to forget, because I am the witness to what happened to them. Someone has to carry that.

“With the law as it stands, there’s nothing stopping horrible things happening to our dearly departed. Until something is done, it’s not right that I forget.”

Mr shipley has also set up a petition for his campaign, calling for Parliament to amend legislation to include all sexual acts committed against the dead.

It had been signed by 176 people as of Wednesday June 28.