Double killer David Fuller should be investigated over a student who disappeared from her bedsit 41 years ago, her parents have said.
Jessie Earl, 22, vanished in strikingly similar circumstances to the two known murder victims of the “Bedsit Killer”.
As with Wendy Knell and Caroline Pierce, art student Jessie was a slim brunette in her early 20s who lived alone.
When Jessie, of Eastbourne, East Sussex, disappeared, Fuller was living 30 miles away in Tunbridge Wells, Kent.
Her father John, 94, a former building surveyor, said: “It should be checked.”
Fuller, 67, evaded responsibility for the killings for 33 years until he was arrested following a DNA breakthrough last year.
Kent Police will now spend a year reviewing unsolved murders, rapes and cases of missing women to see if Fuller could be responsible.
Det Chief Supt Paul Fotheringham said this week: “Given the nature and length of time of his crimes, it is unthinkable he didn’t commit other offences.”
Fuller was sentenced to a full life term this week for the murder of Wendy, 25, and Caroline, 20, and sex attacks on more than 100 dead women in hospitals where he worked in maintenance.
Wendy was found dead in her Tunbridge Wells bedsit, and Caroline was abducted outside her bedsit nearby. Her body was found three weeks later in a ditch in Romney Marsh.
Jessie’s bones were found in a thicket a few miles from her bedsit nine years after she vanished. Her killer appears to have taken trophies, something Fuller did when he killed Wendy and Caroline within months of each other in 1987.
Jessie had been due to return to the family home in Eltham, South East London, on May 16, 1980.
Mum Val, 90, found Jessie’s window was open and there was an unfinished meal. Her watch and a ring were never found.
Val said: “I felt a big hand had lifted her out of her room. The flat looked as though she’d popped out, her keys and purse were on the table.”
Sussex Police classified the death as “suspicious”. An open verdict returned at an inquest was this week quashed by the High Court.
