Late UK TV star Savile said to have sexually abused dead bodies

LONDON - Jimmy Savile, the late BBC TV presenter revealed two years ago to have been one of Britain's most prolific sex offenders, might have sexually abused dead bodies in a hospital where he worked as a volunteer, health investigators said on Thursday.

In 2012 police said Savile, one of the Britain's best-known celebrities in the 1970s and 1980s, had sexually abused hundreds of victims, mainly youngsters, at hospitals and at BBC premises over six decades until his death aged 84 in 2011.

A series of reports covering 28 hospitals where he had worked released showed Savile had used his fame and charitable work to get unsupervised access to patients, raping and sexually abusing boys, girls, men and women aged between five and 75 in wards, corridors and offices.

In one of the most shocking disclosures, it was reported that Savile, who had publicly spoken of his fascination with the dead, had sexually abused bodies in the mortuary of Leeds General Infirmary in northern England, taking advantage of his role as a volunteer porter. "The allegations about his behaviour in the mortuary are incredibly harrowing and disturbing," Sue Proctor, who led the investigation at Leeds, told reporters.

She said Savile, a one-time professional wrestler who became famous as a pioneering DJ in the 1960s, gave the account of his actions at the mortuary to a student nurse who worked at a different hospital. "It was a quiet night and Savile was talking to this student nurse about what happened when it was quiet at Leeds general Infirmary and said that he went to the mortuary at night and played with the bodies, and committed sex acts on them," Proctor said.