DEAD entertainer Jimmy Savile committed “truly awful” abuse against patients at hospitals across the country and even boasted about having sex with corpses, new reports revealed yesterday.

Branded as an “opportunistic sexual predator” by investigators, Mr Savile used the NHS and his celebrity status to “exploit and abuse” patients and staff.

Among the most disturbing reports were “macabre accounts” of claims that he performed sexual acts on dead bodies in the mortuary at Leeds General Infirmary (LGI) and at least one other hospital.

Findings of investigations into 28 hospitals, including high-security Broadmoor, were published yesterday.

Investigators heard that Mr Savile claimed to have “interfered with the bodies of deceased patients” at the LGI mortuary, while a patient of Barnet General Hospital overheard nurses discussing how they had seen him have sex with a dead body at another hospital.

Dr Sue Proctor, who led the investigation into Mr Savile’s abuse at the LGI, told a press conference that he claimed that large rings he wore were “made from the glass eyes of dead bodies at the mortuary.”