To most of those who knew him, Dennis Nilsen was a quiet well-mannered guy. He worked for a short while as a police officer. He also managed to find a fondness for alcohol. He only managed to have one relationship with a woman but was unable to have sexual relations with her.
As a young child, Dennis lived with his alcoholic father and strict Scottish mother until the age of four when his parents got divorced after many years of constant fighting. Five years later, his mother re-married and Dennis was sent off to his grandparents in what was obviously a rejection from his stepfather. A few years later, his grandfather passed away and after a series of sad events, his grandmother sent him back to his mother. His stepfather still did not accept him, and made him feel unwelcome. They also tried to force strict religious values into him, giving him several lectures about seeing another person's flesh.
Nilsen would later tell investigators about the event which he feels traumatized him bad enough to account for his later criminal behavior. When he was six years old, his grandfather died. (Dennis was very close to his grandfather.) Without explanations of any sort, his mother took him to view the body. This left him with a great sense of loss.
Dennis Nilsen did not have any form of sexual relations while growing up, although he says he knew he was gay. There had been one time he looked at his brother while he was sleeping (apparently without his shirt on) but was too nervous to touch.
In 1961, Nilsen enlisted in the British Army where he worked as a cook. Perhaps this is how he learned his art of butchery? He turned heavily to alcohol trying to escape his loneliness, his feelings of homosexuality, and boredom. He tried to keep others at a far distance. It was during his army years (when he had a private room) that he would lie down so that he could see his entire reflection (except his head) in a mirror. This seemed to excite him - fantasizing about " another " man.
Around the same time, he met and became friends with another young man (who was not gay) who allowed him to photograph him while he played dead. When Dennis' new found friend had to move away, Dennis was devastated.
He became a police officer in 1972 but quickly found out that job was not for him. He did, however, become completely fascinated by an autopsy he just happened to have observed.
Shortly after this, he met a young man who he took back to his apartment. After the boy fell asleep, Dennis pulled out his camera and started taking pictures of his sleeping friend. The man awoke, and began fighting with Nilsen. He succomed to bruises so bad he had to be taken to the hospital. Authorities interviewed Nilsen but released him.
Nilsen began having a few minor relationships with guys, but found that he had a problem with how superficial and transient they were. He felt he needed something more meaningful, but had a rather difficult time finding someone who wanted to make a commitment.
Dennis was still posing himself in the mirror so he couldn't see his head while arousing himself. He would imagine the image in the mirror was dead - a quality he equated somehow with perfection. A few time, he would dress his body up and make it look like it was the victim of a murder, what with fake blood and all.
In 1975, Dennis Nilsen met David Gallichan (who later denied their relationship was gay) and together they moved into a ground floor flat with a garden at 195 Melrose Place. They bought a puppy named Bleep and two cats. Before long, however, the two men discovered they could not live together, and Nilsen forced Gallichan to move out. This also devastated Nilsen who began to drink heavily after Gillichan moved out. As he wrote about his, he said, " Loneliness is a long unbearable pain ". A year and a half later, Nilsen began his killing career.
Dennis Nilsen, who would later be called The British Jeffrey Dahmer, met his first victim in a London gay bar and took him back to his home on Melrose Place. The two men shared a few drinks before jumping into bed. While his new friend was asleep, Dennis began rubbing his hands over his friends body. Both men became aroused. Fearing his friend would leave, Dennis picked up a necktie off the floor and tied it around his friend's neck, strangling him. Both men became alive as the struggle for life began. Before long, they were on the floor.
When the man had passed out (but was not dead) Dennis ran to the kitchen where he filled a bucket with water. Using a chair for leverage, he stuck his victim's head into the water to drown him, splashing water all over the bedroom carpet. It didn't take long for the man to die. The victim was then sat down in the chair. Dennis appeared to be in a state of shock. He sat down after making some coffee, and while smoking cigarettes and thinking about what to do next, he shook. Finally he covered the windows and lifted the man over his shoulders to take him into the bathroom where he bathed him before taking him back into the bedroom and putting him in bed. Dennis recalled later that he was not repulsed by the corpse, but rather he thought it looked beautiful.
From a nearby hardware store, Dennis purchased an electric knife and a large pot, but he could not bring himself to cut the body up. Instead, he dressed the body in clothes and took a bath. After bathing, he tried to have sex with the corpse, but could not achieve the level of excitement he had earlier. Instead, he pulled the body onto the floor, covered it with a curtain, and fell asleep. After waking up, he watched some television and tried to think about what to do. He removed a few floorboards, and thought about trying to hide the body there, however rigor mortis had set in and made this impossible. It wasn't until the next day that Dennis figured out how to manipulate the stiff body so he could stuff it under the floor. He then covered it up with some boards.
There, the body remained for seven and a half months. Once or twice, Dennis pried the floor apart to look at his victim. Once, finding it very dirty, he bathed with the corpse before placing him back in its resting place. Seven months later, he built a bonfire in his back garden area and burnt the corpse along with some rubber to mask the scent of burning flesh. The ashes were raked into the ground.
His first victim was never identified.
Ten months later, Dennis met Andrew Ho, who followed him home one evening. Ho tried to get Dennis to play bondage games with him but Dennis was not interested. Instead, he looped a necktie around his neck saying he wanted to play a " Dangerous Game ". Ho escaped, notified the police, but nothing came of it.
Dennis Nilsen met his second victim over lunch on December 3, 1979. After lunch, the two men embarked on a tour of London before Nilsen took him back to his Melrose Place home. The man's name was Kenneth Ockendon and he was a tourist from Canada. While the two men had sex, Dennis kept thinking about how his new friend Ken was going to return to Canada the next day. Using the electrical cord from some headphones, Dennis strangled Kenneth and dragged his body across the floor toward the bathroom. He stopped along the way to listen to some music. When he was done with that, he bathed the body and returned it to his bed where he slept with it through the night. The next morning, he shoved it into a cupboard before heading off to work.
The next day, Dennis took the body out of the cupboard and cleaned it up some more before posing it in various positions so he could photograph it. After having sex with the corpse, he placed the victim's body under the floor boards as he had his first victim. On several occasions he would take the body out so he could talk to it and watch television with it.
On May 13, 1980, Nilsen met sixteen year old Martyn Duffey, a homeless boy who accepted Nilsen's offer to spend the night. After a couple of beers, Nilsen and Duffey went to bed where Nilsen strangled Duffey until he passed out. He filled the kitchen sink with water to drown his victim. Next, in the bathroom he bathed with the corpse. Duffey went into the cupboard for two weeks before heading to the area underneath the floorboards.
Twenty-seven year old male prostitute Billy Southerland was next. Nilsen says he doesn't remember much about what happened. He says he just remembers waking up next to Billy's dead body.
Malcolm Barlow was twenty-seven years old when he lost his life to Dennis Nilsen. For whatever reason (the man was a pathological liar and had other mental problems) he hung out on Dennis doorstep. Dennis killed him because he was annoyed. Barlow's fate was the same as the rest had been.
Nilsen sprayed the house at least twice a day to get rid of the flies and the odor. Some neighbors complained about the smell, but Nilsen assured them it was just a normal house odor.
By 1981, Dennis Nilsen had killed a grand total of twelve young men in his apartment. Most of his victims were gay, and a few were male prostitutes. Others were unemployed or homeless guys Dennis offered money to. Nilsen claimed he went into a killing trance with each victim. He also claims that on seven occasions he let the men escape because he was able to snap out of it.
In order to dispose of the corpses, he would lock his pets outside in the garden. Then he would strip down to his underwear and bring the corpses onto the kitchen's stone floor. Using a knife he kept in his kitchen he would cut his victims up. A few times he boiled their heads in the pot he acquired after he killed his first victim. He claimed that while in the British Army, he learned how to butcher animals, and he felt his human victims were not that different. The various body parts would then go into a plastic bag, and placed back under the floorboards until he was ready to take their bodies into the rear garden area to burn their remains. Nilsen claims that children would come to watch his fires. He also says that police came through his house when he reported a burglary, and the two detectives were completely unaware that they were standing just over two dead bodies. This amazed Nilsen.
As his fired burned down, and he would spot bones (such as the skull) he would pound them into the ash. The ashes were then raked throughout the garden. Five more victims would die later with similar fates, burned in a third fire and raked throughout the garden. When Dennis moved away from the Melrose Place flat, he thought that he would be able to put his growing history of murder behind him somehow. It didn't work - it just gave him new challenges.
When Dennis Nilsen moved into the attic apartment at 23 Cranley Gardens, he says he wanted to stop killing. He, however, was unable to do that. Three more murders would take place in this new home.
Dennis met John Howlett (or John the Guardsman as Nilsen preferred to call him) while drinking in one of London's pubs. Later, when Dennis was drinking alone, John recognized Dennis and struck up a conversation. Later, the two would go back to Dennis' new flat, where the two would talk some more, share a drink, and then get into bed. Dennis says he tried to get the guy to leave before he could do anything, but the man did not want to go. Dennis strangled John the Guardsman with an upholstery strap. After John was unconscious, Dennis realized the man was not dead, so he strangled him again. John was then dragged into the bathroom and drowned. He put the body in a closet while he figured out what to do.
In the end, he decided to cut up the body to flush it down the toilet. Some of the pieces he boiled. Some large bone fragments were thrown into the trash or flung over the garden wall. Others were placed into a bag, seasoned with salt, and stored in a tea chest which was covered by a red curtain.
Dennis Nilsen says he doesn't remember exactly what happened with his next victim. He knows he brought him home and some point cooked him an omelet. The next thing he remembers he is unconscious with a bit of omelet still in his mouth. He says he thought at first that the man just choked, but when he noticed the red marks around the guys throat, he figures he must have strangled him. He left him in the bath for three days before he succomed to a similar fate as John the Guardsman.
The third and final victim was twenty year old Steven Sinclair. Steven followed Nilsen home when he had been standing on a street corner for awhile. Steven shot up drugs while Dennis listened to some music. Steven was strangled with a necktie and some real think string. Dennis says he contemplated all the pain in Steven's life and decided to end it all for him. After strangling Steven, Dennis pulls off his victims shirt, and notices some bandages. He removes the bandages and realizes Steven had recently tried to commit suicide.
Nilsen bathed Sinclair and put him to bed with him. He set up some mirrors so he could have a better view. He later tells how he experienced a unique feeling of one-ness with Steven Sinclair unlike he had with any of his other victims. He turned the corpses head and kissed him after the dog came into the room.
The body of Steven Sinclair was dismembered just like the two before had been. Parts were flushed down the toilet, parts were boiled, parts were thrown out with the trash.
The five people who lived in different apartments but the same building as Dennis Nilsen all complained that they were experiencing some toilet trouble. Nilsen denied he was having any trouble. The tenants on the ground floor called a plumber, but his tools and experience weren't enough to solve the problem. He had to call in a specialist. Nilsen feared his body disposal method may have been causing this, so he chopped up the rest of his final victim, placed what was left of him into plastic bags, and refused to flush the toilet again.
Later that night, Dennis went into the manhole to dispose of the flesh. He thought about replacing it with chicken flesh, but for whatever reason decided against it. He also contemplated suicide, but instead, just stayed in his flat with the partial remains of his final three victims. One of the downstairs tenants saw him and when the work crew arrived the next day without finding what should have been there, they reported what they had seen and their suspicions about their upstairs neighbor. After going back down into the sewer, they found some more rotting meat which they thought could be human.
When Nilsen came home from work, three men were waiting for him. One identified himself as a police chief and informed Nilsen that human remains were blocking the sewage drains. Nilsen reportedly asked where the remains came from. The detective replied they could only have come from Nilsen's flat. Nilsen agreed to tell everything down at the station. As Nilsen was telling his story, detectives found the remains of his final three victims in his flat. The detectives realized in the process that they had been given clues, which had they interpreted a little differently, they would have stopped his murderous career even earlier.
Dennis Nilsen told his complete story, and his confession took over thirty hours (spread out over the week.) He pointed them to the location of his other victims, and even took them to his former address on Melrose Place to show them what had happened there. The information flooded out, as if (according to one report) he was trying to purge himself of the guilt and to get rid of every possible memory. He showed absolutely no remorse about any of his killings, speaking in a very matter-of-fact way.
Dennis Nilsen would later write out his own history for a writer named Brian Masters who turned his ramblings into a book. This was the first time anything like this had ever happened, so it gave law enforcement officers and psychologists a totally new perspective. After his trial, Nilsen had received life in prison with a chance of parole after twenty-five years. (By this time Nilsen was almost thirty-eight years old.)
In October 1979, Andrew Ho made a complaint that Nilsen had attacked him however he refused to press charges and admitted he would not testify in court. Therefore, no investigation into his complaint occurred. In retrospect, the biggest reason for this was most likely that Ho had propositioned his services as a prostitute and did not want to be incriminated in those respects.
Within a year, Douglas Stewart said Dennis Nilsen had attacked him. He explained he had fallen asleep in a chair and awoke while Nilsen had attempted to put a necktie around his neck. He fought Nilsen who ordered the man to leave. When the police responded to the man, they noticed both men had been drinking and figured since both men were homosexual, they both had things to hide. Stewart never followed up with his complaint so it went nowhere.
On November 23, 1981 (Nilsen's 38th birthday) he picked up a gay university student Paul Nobbs. Nobbs spent the night and awoke several times throughout the night. When he woke up, he wasn't feeling too well, so he went into the bathroom to freshen up, thinking that may make him feel better. Instead, he notices red marks on his neck. Nilsen claimed he didn't know where those marks had come from and suggested the guy see a doctor - which he did. The doctor told him that those bruises were consistent with someone trying to strangle him. Nobbs refused to file a police report.
On New Years Eve, 1991, Toshimitsu Ozawa was spotted by Nilsen's neighbors as he ran out of the house franticly. Ozawa later flagged down police and told them Nilsen had tried to kill him by coming at him strangely with a necktie between his hands pulled tight. Police refused to investigate.
April, 1982, Nilsen picked up a drag queen named Carl Stotter and took him home. He attempted to strangle Stotter and when that failed, he tried drowning him in the bathtub as he had with a few of his other victims. Several times, Stotter regained consciousness during his attacks. Later, Nilsen told him he must have gotten his neck caught in the zipper of the sleeping bag he had been sleeping under. Upon seeing a doctor he learned his wounds were consistent with severe strangulation. He agreed to see Nilsen again but stood him up without giving a reason. The man also refused to file a police report.
Had the police investigated (or been informed about) any of these incidents, the chances are likely that Dennis Nilsen's death toll would have been much lower. There is also evidence that other potential Nilsen victims also escaped, although it is nearly impossible to locate them.
I am also unsure if British had (or has now) any sort of laws requiring doctors to report possible victims of violent attacks to the local authorities. But it is quite clear, espically in the case of Doug Stewart (and also to a lesser degree the case of Toshimitsu Ozawa) that one of t he major factors regarding why the police did not fully investigate the matter was because of the sexual orientation of the parties involved.
The Killings Continue
The New Home
Caught
Two evenings later, the specialist arrived, and after a brief examination realized the problem was probably somewhere underground. He entered a manhole by the side of the house to investigate the problem. Once inside he smelled something he thought was from something dead. Then he saw some sludge and identified that as bits of human flesh. He reported this to his supervisors. Outside a group of tenants were standing around. The man took Dennis Nilsen and one of his fellow tenants down the manhole to see what he had found.
The Ones Who Got Away
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