Former TV presenter said he posed with bodies in lewd positions and stole glass eyes, Broadmoor nurse tells investigators
Jimmy Savile was said to have been best friends with the chief mortician of Leeds general infirmary. Photograph: Ray Tang /Rex
Jimmy Savile told hospital staff he interfered with patients’ corpses, taking grotesque photographs and stealing glass eyes for jewellery, over two decades at the mortuary of Leeds general infirmary.
The late Top of the Pops presenter had free access to the mortuary from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s, an official investigation has found, concluding that Savile’s interest in the deceased was “not within accepted boundaries”.
One former Broadmoor nurse told investigators that Savile claimed to have performed sex acts on bodies and “mucked about” in the mortuary, posing in photographs with the deceased after placing them in lewd positions.
The former nurse said: “He [Savile] was saying that they used to put the bodies together, male and female, and he also said that they took photographs and also that he got involved in some of the photographs … I was a little bit upset because I had no concept, in those days, of necrophilia. Several of the Broadmoor patients would have been diagnosed with that, but I didn’t fully understand what it meant, and partway through I just wandered off.
“[Savile] talked about gamaroosh … It means oral sex … that he [Savile], he would go down on them and gamaroosh and muck about.”
Proving once again that the Brits have a lot to teach us about sex scandals. They really do them up right, so to speak. This is a lot more entertaining than a few emailed penis pix.