There is something in the compost heap and you put it there. Like radioactive waste, it emanates as if seeking detection, seeking yours too. That sense of dread, atavistic, anathema. You wonder how this came to pass, but know only that the finger is pointed at you. You think it could be disinterred and buried elsewhere, better hid, but you can’t hide from it within. Waking brings immediate relief. The dream is dissipating. Then you are frantic, rack your memory, way back, desperately checking there is nothing substantiate. Nothing, lest such awful memories can be buried. But could you have buried it? No, it was just a dream. That strange dream about the compost heap. Relief is palpable. Innocence restored.
Dennis Nilsen is dreaming. He is a child again, and he is walking hand in hand with his beloved Grandfather, around the scenic coast about their family home in Scotland. It is an endorphin bathed halcyon, an amnion he hopes never to leave. The alcohol is wearing off now, giving way to hangover, and here is that stench of rotting lovers’ remains. Ejected back into the nightmare that is his waking life, he cries and whimpers for all those he has killed and his long-dead innocence. Only death can release him from this, but he has to live, if only so that others must die.
After being called by a plumber who found suspicious material blocking the drains, the Police officers came to search his flat, they could smell rotting flesh. They asked Dennis if there were any other body parts here, to which he replied: "It's a long story; it goes back a long time. I'll tell you everything. I want to get it off my chest. Not here — at the police station".
Staring out of the window of the police car, he was asked how many? "15 or 16, since 1978" he replied.
Dennis didn’t look right from the start. Mothers unconditionally love them, but even they will concede when the fruits of their wombs are not exactly what one would have wished for, even if they know they picked poor breeding material. And that unfortunate outcome was Dennis. He was just going to have to make do with what life offered him, not the other way around. And what life offered him wasn’t likely to be much, not more than his working-class background might have been expected to accord, not more than someone as unprepossessing as he deserved. Catch as catch can. Whatever Dennis’s mother’s thought about her darling boy, it is unlikely to have ever encompassed necrophilia and murder; because people shouldn’t do those things. Even then mothers might have considered homosexuality as a blight. Most likely, she thought him just another of God’s lambs, a strange one maybe, but a lamb nonetheless.
His childhood was unremarkable. It was noted that he had witnessed his beloved Grandfather’s corpse pre-burial and that this had somehow sent him into a fixation with death which later became conflated and confused with sex. Perhaps. But death isn’t really that disturbing, even for a youngster, not when an old person gives up the ghost, in fact it is often a relief. Anyway, Dennis had another problem in the pipeline, that he was a nascent homosexual at a time when society was deeply hostile to this. When this orientation came about isn’t clear, but surely by age 15, he must have known that he wasn’t really interested in the girls, even if he thought he should be, and that being gay was not going to be easy in wider society, let alone the small-minded community he came from. Like many homosexuals of the time and culture, he may have hoped he would be cured, just for the simple life. A lot to trouble a young mind.
Unsurprisingly then Dennis wanted out of his little hearth. He wanted to explore the wider world. His first real departure from childhood and into the adult world was at a canning factory; just the sort of working life he might have assumed he was destined for. Had he the little ambition as many people his age from his socio-economic background, he might have stayed here until retirement. But Dennis did have some nous, and he became aware of opportunities in the British Army. Such an exciting world for a small town boy; danger and adventure perhaps, but it was far flung traveling opportunities that would have appealed to many a less than macho soul, from a town you probably hadn’t heard of.
Still a teenager he applied, passed the basic exams and was accepted for training, which commenced at St. Omer Barracks in Aldershot, Hampshire. Whatever ambitions he really had in this institution, he was not a battlefield killing machine, and whomever selected him must have realised this early on. But there were other opportunities, for those who some of the more brutish and cruel might have assumed were ‘fairies’; for who would join the army to work in a capacity that did not involve killing the enemy? Musicians, laundry workers, cooks, etc. Dennis would be accepted as a cook. Being a homosexual in a force that did not acknowledge their right to enlist, he, along with the others (for surely there were), had to keep his head down, a low profile, lest he be savagely beaten by the more brutal squaddies, discharged (maybe dishonourably). It was a hostile environment for sure for homosexuals, the enemy nominally on the same side.
In the summer of 1964, Dennis passed his initial catering exam and was officially assigned to the 1st Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers in Osnabrück, West Germany, where he served as a private. He described himself and his colleagues, as a "hard-working, boozy lot", and he would describe those days as the happiest of his life. Here was camaraderie, a purpose in life, for someone awkward like him. Ironically it was probably better for a young homosexual here than in civvy street; here he was in the Army, outside he might be many things to those who would prey upon them. In here with his comrades, Dennis could be quirky, if not out. He would drink to great excess and lark around, pretending he was passed out, maybe dead. He liked the attention from his colleagues, liked their grave concern for his wellbeing. No doubt he could only take this rouse so far before he was rumbled and repudiated, but there was something about pretending to be dead that he liked. Not exactly the stuff of future necrophilia one would have imagined, but in hindsight perhaps.
This army life could take you anywhere it must have seemed, and it wasn’t all about conflict, certainly not as a cook. For someone who wanted the adventure without the threat to life and limb, the sense of purpose in a respected institution, it was a good life. There was also the prospect of sex, but this was overwhelmingly a boon for heterosexuals, who could visit the fleshpots, which, almost always seemed to cater the Army boys, as if for their benefit. Not such good pickings for homosexuals, but things were not necessarily as they might have seemed. Yes, there were the homosexuals in the Army, but they kept themselves to themselves in the workplace; but there were Army destinations where homosexuality was practiced, maybe fairly freely, or in tight secrecy. If Dennis wanted to find a lover or a tryst, on his leave abroad, he would have to do some careful searching.
If Dennis was looking for love, then Aden, South Yemen was about the least propitious place imaginable. It was 1967, and the Emergency, the unwinding of relics of Crown Dominion. Whatever the Yemenis thought about homosexuality, how they punished it, and they most certainly did, Dennis was, again, likely more worried about people on his own side. Here he served as a cook in the Al Mansoura prison, appropriated as an army barracks. He was relatively safe from the outer enemy here, this a low-level conflict, but British servicemen died, ambushes bombings, some engagements. It was thrilling to be near such action, but you didn’t want to venture out too far, in these hostile lands, unless maybe you were looking for some kind of adventure.
It is not entirely clear what transpired, but on one occasion, Dennis did go out a little beyond the safety zone and might have intimated homosexual interests, though he cannot have possibly thought this wise (did the Army warn them about the environment here and sex? Maybe for the heteros, but surely not the ‘queers’). Maybe he was drunk. Maybe he craved violence. He certainly found the wrong person. He was bundled into the boot of a taxi by the Arab driver, whose hostility towards him may have been because he was British Army, suspected homosexual, who knows. He was driven out into the desert. In the boot, he must have thought his days were numbered, or that at best, he would be savagely beaten, robbed of course, maybe even raped. Maybe he wanted to be subjected to all but murder. However, he envisioned this intensely disturbing experience, his sense of self-preservation kicked in and he located a jack handle. Upon being sprung from the boot, he beat his captor unconscious.
This was a dangerous place then even for a cook. Deaths of young men were not great in numbers, but mounting. Young men dying in battle had been long romanticized. Dennis had some feelings about that back then; out here then he had a copy of a 19th-century oil painting entitled The Raft of the Medusa, which depicted dead youths on the battlefield, an older man exalting of the limp, nude body of one of them in the general scene of carnage, in what might be described as homoerotic. He later recalled a most vivid fantasy, of a slender, attractive young blonde soldier who had been recently killed in battle and a faceless "dirty, grey-haired old man" who would wash the body before engaging in intercourse with the spread eagled corpse. This was where he was at. He was thinking about sex with dead people. It was early doors; but there was plenty of time for his mind to warp along this route, and develop inclinations, and find ways to requite his morbid love.
His last stint in the army was in Berlin, a place quite culturally diverse, if not exactly liberal; but certainly, liberal compared to Yemen and, for that matter most of the world. Here was a place where the pickings for homosexuals were ostensibly quite good, if one looked in the right places. It might have helped if Dennis had found other homosexuals in the Army, but likely both he and they were too shy to engage and share mutual interests. Whatever he and his comrades might have availed themselves of in the respective scenes, heavy drinking was par for the course. It could be a great hedonistic escapade, here in a city where most things were on offer. And it seems Dennis did partake of the seedier offerings, but his assignation was with a female prostitute, which he bragged about to the boys, but which he later remarked of the intercourse as "over-rated" and "depressing".
After some service in the Shetland Islands where he ended his military career with the rank of corporal in 1972, he moved back to his family for a while. Here his homosexuality was made apparent and it was made clear to him that this wasn’t quite what they had in mind, that it would be best if he left. Unsurprisingly, he sought somewhere much more tolerant, and it was to London that homosexuals flocked for some semblance of community, if not for the attraction it held to young aspiring people in general.
London wasn’t quite San Francisco, that mecca for small town America’s hated gays, but it was the best they had in Britain. Parts of it were becoming de facto gay, really a few parts of Soho. Some drinking venues further afield were maybe furtively ‘Gay’, but only Soho could be boast a street or two that might be considered the ‘Gayzone’. It was April 1973 when Dennis came here and he was quite well positioned to get a basic job given his time in the army, even if it was as a cook in civilian life, he had what was wanted. But he opted for the Metropolitan Police force. He was posted to Willesden Green (then a new force) as a junior constable. Here was another highly disciplinarian institution, with great camaraderie perhaps, but again one where homosexuality wasn’t really welcome then along with people of color. But here was that order, to keep his mind in check. He was into heavy drinking, and he had burgeoning thoughts that you couldn’t admit to a medical professional without risking being thrown into a madhouse. In this capacity, he did perform satisfactorily; but it was just a another stepping stone. He was becoming an alcoholic but a functioning one. There was the terrible loneliness to douse. There must have been thoughts of depravity burning, seemingly unquenchable.
In December 1974, he resigned from the police force. Another line of work now, a junior Civil Servant, in an undemanding department; a job far less demanding for an alcoholic. The Job Centre was where almost anyone with basic administrative skills could get a job, that it was a wonder they did not recruit from the people they helped find work, while releasing their dole payments. It wasn’t a place that anyone with any great ambition would want to work, unless perhaps they were in the process of trying to shame themselves into a better approach to the wider workplace. Here were the losers of both sides of the desk, with substance abuse, though considerably worse with the unemployed. Here was Dennis, whose primary role was to find employment for unskilled laborers, who might have been grateful for his help, unless they learnt he was a ‘queer’, then maybe decidedly not so. Whether he was conscientious in this capacity is open to debate. He did show quite an enthusiasm for the work and the workplace, was active in the trade union movement, was pretty punctual given his alcoholism, and did quite a lot of overtime. This then was his workplace for the foreseeable future, no more chopping and changing. Anyway, he had far more important concerns; because work wasn’t anything really when you considered what else there was to get up to in life. And what was it he wanted to get up to at this stage? He wanted love.
He lived at 80 Teignmouth Rd in Cricklewood (North London). In the evenings, he frequented pubs and bars in the vicinity, and in them he was looking for fellow gays, lovers. It was slim pickings for sure (Soho was still the ‘Gay District’), but if he did encounter a fellow, it was highly likely that they would recognize a kindred spirit, at least the obvious part. But he was a very shy young man. He did not know how to approach confident, comfortable gay men and initiate even a conversation. Which might have been because he had incipient desires to kill them, at least in theory. If his thoughts were growing this way, he might have suspected it showed. Instead, he would have to look for the homosexual waifs and strays, of which, to his great delight, there were plenty in London, for that city was really the only place they could go for succor. Such people had overriding needs, were likely to accept an awkward character like him when faced with such cold comfort.
By November 1975 Dennis had worked out his quarry and some of the places to find them. There was no real prospect of a dream companion, but there were people, and one was a 20-year-old named David Gallichan whom he found while he was being threatened outside a pub by two other men. He intervened in the altercation and the grateful youth was easily persuaded to come back to his room, no doubt tempted by promises of alcohol at the very least. In this room, the two men spent the evening drinking and talking, and Gallichan, revealed his homosexuality, that he had recently moved to London from Weston-super-Mare, was unemployed, and resided in a hostel. He was a sorry sight, not far from homelessness and prostitution.
Whatever transpired, things between Dennis and his newfound friend must have gone well, as when they awoke from their confessional binge the following morning, they agreed to reside together here and even planned to move elsewhere in a larger residence. These developments were very fast paced and would have been quite at odds with most sensible people. But David wasn’t sensible and he had nothing else to fall back on.
Several days later, the pair found a ground floor flat at 195, Melrose Avenue, also in Cricklewood. Dennis could afford this step up with his salary and a modest inheritance from his deceased father, whom he had suspected had disowned him due to his homosexuality. He negotiated a deal with the landlord whereby they would have exclusive use of the garden at the rear of the property. The lovers moved in and over the following months, they redecorated and furnished it. Gallichan did much of this, while Dennis went to work. Dennis later recollected that, although sexually attracted to Gallichan, the pair seldom had intercourse. (Gallichan was later to inform police that he was sexually "uninterested" in Dennis.)
It seems that the couple were initially content with this domestic setup, but within a year the relationship between the two began to strain. They slept in separate beds, and both began to bring home casual sexual partners. The older Dennis became a bullying presence, capable of threatening to evict the non-paying Gallichan. They were soon arguing with increasing frequency. Dennis later stated that, following a heated argument in May 1977, he had demanded Gallichan leave the residence.
Dennis was alone. He did form brief relationships with several other young men over the following 18 months, but none of them lasted more than a few weeks, and none of the individuals expressed any intention of living with Dennis on a permanent basis. He longed for a proper companion, someone who would never betray him, never leave. But it seemed that despite his efforts, hospitality, people were wont to leave him, to go to greener pastures, more attractive prospects. That was life, he was a loser.
By late 1978, he was living a sad, solitary existence. He later confessed to having developed an increasing conviction that he was unfit to live with. Throughout 1978, he had devoted an ever-increasing amount of his time, effort and assiduity into his work, but most evenings would be spent consuming spirits/lager at home as he listened to music. It must have seemed that he was condemned to this miserable lonely existence, a celibate. But he wasn’t going to settle for that. He would find his lovers. He would learn to do it in a different way. The problem of finding them wasn’t great; it was making them stay. You could make them stay, forever. Or if not forever, for as long as you liked. It required a vastly different philosophy, but it was one he already possessed, if he put his mind to it.
At some point, Dennis had decided he was going to kill men and keep them as necrophile lovers. It might not have been an easy decision, but the pain of loneliness was excruciating and he must have felt he had little or no choice. Or maybe he was just a murderer who had come to beginning of his career, crossed the Rubicon. By now, he was living a double life, as a functioning alcoholic and a functioning employee. He must have been spending a great deal of time thinking about finding people to take home and keep there even if against their will. It might have seemed a miserable existence objectively, but apart from the hangovers and tedium of work, there were thrilling times to be had, if he could get his act together. And soon he would.
It was the 30th December 1978, when Dennis encountered Stephen Holmes in the nearby Cricklewood Arms. Holmes was only 14 (though Dennis later claimed he thought him to be 17) and he had failed in a bid to purchase alcohol here. Dennis, already intoxicated, spotted this callow youth and came to his aide, and knowing that he could supply his wants, invited him back to his house for drinking, which he accepted with great alacrity. Child’s play. They drank heavily until they passed out. Then the following morning, Dennis awoke to find Holmes asleep on his bed. In his subsequent written confessions, he stated he was "afraid to wake him in case he left me". After caressing the sleeping youth, Dennis decided Holmes was to "stay with me over the New Year whether he wanted to or not". Reaching for a necktie, Dennis straddled Holmes and he strangled him into unconsciousness, before drowning him in a bucket filled with water. He claimed to have then twice masturbated over the body, before stowing his corpse beneath his floorboards.
Dennis gave the following testimony about this his first killing:
“I eased him into his new bed (beneath the floorboards)…A week later, I wondered whether his body had changed at all or had started to decompose. I disinterred him and pulled the dirt-stained youth up onto the floor. His skin was very dirty. I stripped myself naked and carried him into the bathroom and washed the body. There was practically no discoloration and his skin was pale white. His limbs were more relaxed than when I had put him down there”.
(Reflecting on his killing spree in 1983, Dennis stated that, having killed Holmes: "I caused dreams which caused death ... this is my crime", adding that he had "started down the avenue of death and possession of a new kind of flat mate". Here was that one-way street and one he walked down, as though pushed with great force. In for a penny, in for a pound of flesh.)
Having a slowly decomposing body beneath his floorboards didn’t concern Dennis; though he was primarily after the intact form, the company he craved that wouldn’t leave, at least not until nature had taken its course. Here was a memento mori, a trinket at least. Like the ashes of a loved one. Whatever his feelings were about his first conquest, it wasn’t long before he sought new companions, and why not have as many as he liked. In October 11 1979 he came across a student from Hong Kong named Andrew Ho in a pub in St. Martin's Lane. Andrew was a homosexual and Dennis easily clocked him and lured him to his flat with the promise of sex. Back home it was copious drink and much chat, while Dennis considered how to overpower his guest. He attempted to strangle Ho, but he failed and he managed to flee. Ho reported the incident to the police, who questioned Dennis about the incident, but the Police were satisfied that it was just another homosexual romp that, maybe the pair were perverts and out of control. Likely, they didn’t want to know. Ho was lucky.
At the Job center Dennis toiled away, the drudgery of administrating payments and job opportunities for people who’d fallen on hard times, people who were hopeless, were drug addicts, alcoholics like him. It might have been a depressing place to work, if your life revolved around such a hated workplace, but for Dennis it was just an interlude to his increasingly deranged after work highlife. He had his dead lover to return to and the prospect of many more, to be hunted. Like all career killers, he was thinking about his calling, developing. He would learn to do what he loved.
On the 3 December 1979, Dennis was out and about in the West End pub and encountered a 23-year-old Canadian student named Kenneth Ockenden who had been on a tour of England visiting relatives. He managed to persuade this naïve young man to come along on a tour of several notable London landmarks. He then invited him to his house where there would be alcohol of course. They purchased whisky, rum and beer, sharing the bill. It would be party. (Whether Ockenden was homosexual or realized that Dennis was, is unknown.) After heavy drinking and music Dennis managed to strangle his guest to death, a ligature of earphones, dragging him across the floor with the wire wrapped around his neck. And when his guest was safely dead, he continued to drink and listen to music.
The following day, Dennis went out and purchased a Polaroid camera, and photographed Ockenden's body in various appealing positions. He then lay with his corpse spread eagled above him on his bed as he watched television for several hours. Then it was time for plastic-wrapped Ockenden to join Holmes in the repository. It would be disinterred on a few occasions and seated the body upon his armchair alongside him as he watched television and drank. Ockenden's corpse was then wrapped in a curtain and bid "Goodnight, Ken" before going back below.
It is easy to believe that some of your work colleagues have problems related to alcohol, money, relationships, even compelling to. But to imagine they might be a murderer requires quite a leap of imagination; then there is what Dennis was getting up to and what was to follow. Hard to imagine indeed. Dennis can hardly have imagined he’d be doing these things early on, but here he was, a necrophile killer, and Civil Servant. His colleagues likely would have noticed that he was often hungover, maybe irritable, at times dysfunctional. Despite his problems, in 1979, he did manage to get promoted in rank to Executive Officer, which meant that he managed people and got paid quite a bit more. More responsibility at the work place, but that wasn’t going to hinder his recreational activities.
Like all successful careers, they grow in scope and reward. Time was ticking now for Dennis. Dead people, though they may have been the less desirable members of society, are eventually sought after and enquiries made that might lead back to the perpetrator. Dennis may have been acutely aware that apprehension was on the cards, or maybe he was oblivious from drink and lust to care too much. Maybe he wanted to be apprehended at times. His next victim was 16-year-old Martyn Duffey, from Birkenhead, another errant youth, engaged in some kind of catering training, here in London without his parent’s knowledge. Duffey had slept rough near Euston Station for a while. It was here that Dennis chanced upon him as he returned from a union conference in Southport. It was the 17th of May 1980, and poor Duffey was both exhausted and hungry, and gladly accepted Nilsen's offer of a meal and a bed for the evening. The alcohol flowed and it must have seemed to Duffey that this man in a suit was kindly. He passed out or fell asleep and Dennis tied a ligature around his neck, then simultaneously sat on his chest and tightened with a "great force". Dennis held this grip until Duffey became unconscious; he then dragged the youth into his kitchen and drowned him in his sink before bathing with the body which he recollected as being "the youngest-looking I had ever seen".
Duffey's body became another plaything, repeatedly kissed, treated to all manner of sexual ministrations. For two days, the body was stowed in a cupboard, before Dennis noted the youth's body had become bloated; therefore, "he went straight under the floorboards" with his companions. In the warmer months that odor had risen and it wasn’t only Dennis that was aware of it. Insects had come here too and made merry with the flesh. He would still disinter the corpses but now he found the larvae had arrived. There would be maggots crawling. Dennis tried his best to ameliorate this by spraying insecticide, as well as deodorant beneath the floorboards. He had had enough of these decaying lovers. He created a funeral pyre in the yard. This wasn’t exactly a bombsite; the neighbors were treated to an ungodly, fuel-augmented immolation. An event that could not go unnoticed or unreported to the police in this day.
Before the end of 1980, Dennis was to kill a further five victims and attempt to murder one other. He recollected killing each one in some detail, but it was strangulation that was his M.O. Some of them went quickly and without a fuss, some wrestled with him to the last gasp. He was creating a new retinue of companions. He was also adding dissection to his activities with them, and why not, new perversions, new ways to enjoy the bodies of his dead lovers. The odor of rotting flesh was becoming the household scent. Something that a necrophile can surely get used to and probably come to like.
In the summer of 1981 Dennis’s landlord decided to renovate, and asked him to vacate Melrose Avenue. Dennis was initially resistant to the proposal, but accepted an offer of £1,000. He would move into an attic flat at 23D Cranley Gardens in the Muswell Hill district of north London on 5 October 1981. The day before he vacated the property, he burnt the dissected bodies of the last five victims he had killed at this address upon a second and final bonfire. Again, he ensured the bonfire was a roaring inferno, crowned with an old car tire to disguise the smell of burning flesh.
At Cranley Gardens, there was a new character in Dennis’s life, his mongrel dog Bleep. Things were different here, there was no access to a garden, not for the dog, nor to burn victims’ remains and no space beneath the floorboards. It must have given him pause for thought, and maybe that is why, for almost two months, any acquaintances he encountered and lured to his flat were not assaulted in any manner. But that couldn’t last. On the 23rd November, 1981 he did attempt to strangle a 19-year-old student named Paul Nobbs. And in March 1982, Dennis encountered a 23-year-old named John Howlett as he drank in a pub located close to Leicester Square. Howlett was lured to his flat on the promise of continuing drinking with him. Both Dennis and Howlett drank as they watched a film, before Howlett walked into the front room and fell asleep in the bed. One hour later, Dennis unsuccessfully attempted to rouse Howlett, then sat on the edge of the bed drinking rum as he stared at him, before deciding to kill him. Following a ferocious struggle in which Howlett himself attempted to strangle Dennis, Dennis strangled him into unconsciousness with an upholstery strap before returning to his living room, shaking from the "stress of the struggle" in which he had believed he would be overpowered. On three occasions over the following ten minutes, Dennis unsuccessfully attempted to kill this victim after noting he had resumed breathing, before deciding to fill his bathtub with water whence he drowned him.
It carried on in this fashion with at least two more victims who were treated to the same induction, elimination and post mortem attentions, with many variations no doubt. But now there was a problem with disposal; the flat was getting overcrowded with the decomposing. The bodies were being dissected and stored in various places, the bathtub, fridge, cupboards. It couldn’t go on this way. Had he thought like some of the oldschool killers, he might have considered ways of dissolving the bodies in the bathtub, but that would have been a seriously difficult task, involving procuring gallons of concentrated acid, which may have aroused suspicion. He resorted to flushing the dissected remains down his toilet. Exactly what he did is unknown, but he did confess to boiling the flesh on body parts, including skulls to render it easier to remove and cut into suitable pieces for disposal. This was an arduous task which must have taken far too much time, allowing more flesh to rot.
Of course, drains aren’t meant to take large chunks of meat, certainly not bones and will easily block. As more of his victims’ remains went down, the drains began to block, at least temporarily (in fact he did manage to get quite a bit of flesh and some bones into the greater sewerage system), and the decomposing flesh began to smell to the attention of other tenants who might have conferred with Dennis about it, as they are wont to do, but unlikely they considered the macabre cause. Perversely, Dennis wrote a letter of complaint to the estate agents about the situation. He was making a grave mistake, but maybe he had come to the end of his sanity, with dissected human remains still in his bathtub and elsewhere and no way of really getting rid of them, it was likely endgame if the drains were checked.
On February 8th 1983 the Dyno-Rod plumbing company were sent around in response to the complaints made by Dennis and other tenants of 23 Cranley Gardens. An employee named Michael Cattran, was the one to open the drain and in it he discovered it was packed with a flesh-like substance and numerous small bones. Cattran suspected he knew what those bones were and reported this to his supervisor. However, as he had arrived at the property at dusk, Cattran and his supervisor agreed to postpone further investigation into the blockage until the following morning. Prior to leaving the property, Dennis and a fellow tenant named Jim Allcock convened with Cattran to discuss the source of the substance. Upon hearing Cattran exclaim how similar the substance was in appearance to human flesh, Dennis replied: "It looks to me like someone has been flushing down their Kentucky Fried Chicken."
At 7:30 a.m. the following morning, Cattran and his supervisor returned, by which time the drain had been cleared. This aroused the suspicions of both. Cattran did discover some scraps of flesh and four bones in a pipe leading from the drain up to the flat Dennis occupied. To both Cattran and his supervisor, the bones looked as if they originated from a human hand. Both men immediately called the police who, upon closer inspection, discovered further small bones and scraps of what looked to the naked eye like either human or animal flesh in the same pipe leading up from the main drain. These remains were taken to the mortuary at Hornsey, where pathologist Professor David Bowen advised police that the remains were indeed human, and that one particular piece of flesh he concluded had been from a human neck bore a ligature mark.
Upon learning from fellow tenants of 23 Cranley Gardens that the tenant of the top floor flat from where the human remains had been flushed was one Dennis Nilsen, and that he worked in a Job Centre in Kentish Town, Detective Chief Inspector Peter Jay and two colleagues opted to wait outside 23 Cranley Gardens until Dennis returned home from work. DCI Jay introduced himself and his colleagues; explaining they had come to enquire about the blockage in the drains from his flat. Dennis asked why the police would be interested in his drains and also if the two officers present with Jay were health inspectors. In response, Jay informed Dennis the other two individuals were also police officers and requested access to his flat to discuss the matter further.
The three officers followed Dennis into his flat, where they immediately noted the odour of rotting flesh. Dennis queried further as to why the police would be interested in his drains, to which he was informed the blockage had been caused by human remains. Dennis feigned shock and bewilderment, stating, "Good grief, how awful!" In response, Jay replied: "Don't mess about, where's the rest of the body?" Dennis responded calmly, admitting that the remainder of the body could be found in two plastic bags in a nearby wardrobe, from which DCI Jay and his colleagues noted the overpowering smell of decomposition that emanated.
The officers did not open the cupboard, but asked Dennis if there were any other body parts to be found, to which Dennis replied: "It's a long story; it goes back a long time. I'll tell you everything. I want to get it off my chest. Not here — at the police station". He was then arrested and cautioned on suspicion of murder, before being taken to Hornsey Police Station.
That evening, a Detective Superintendent Chambers accompanied Peter Jay and Professor David Bowen to Cranley Gardens, where the plastic bags were removed from the wardrobe and taken to Hornsey Mortuary. One bag was found to contain two dissected torsos — one of which had been vertically dissected, and a shopping bag containing various internal organs. The second bag contained a human skull almost completely devoid of flesh, a severed head, and a torso with arms attached but hands missing. Both heads were found to have been subjected to moist heat.
In an interview conducted on 10 February, Dennis confessed there were further human remains stowed in a tea chest in his living room, with other remains inside an upturned drawer in his bathroom. The dismembered body parts were the bodies of three men, all of whom he had killed by strangulation using a tie. One victim he could not name; another he knew only as "John the Guardsman", and the third he identified as Stephen Sinclair. He also stated that, beginning in December 1978, he had killed "12 or 13" men at his former address, 195 Melrose Avenue. Nilsen also admitted to having unsuccessfully attempted to kill approximately seven other individuals, who had either escaped or, on one occasion, had been at the brink of death but had been revived and allowed to leave his residence.
A further search for additional remains at 23 Cranley Gardens on 10 February revealed the lower section of a torso and two legs stowed in a bag in the bathroom, and a skull, a section of a torso, and various bones in the tea chest. The same day, Nilsen accompanied police to Melrose Avenue, where he indicated the locations in the rear garden where he had burned the remains of his victims. (Investigators would discover over 1,000 fragments of bone from the garden at Melrose Avenue, many of them blackened and charred by fire.).
On 11th February 1983, Dennis Nilsen was at first officially charged with the murder of Stephen Sinclair. He was found guilty with a majority verdict upon six counts of murder and one of attempted murder, with a unanimous verdict of guilty in relation to the attempted murder of Paul Nobbs. The judge sentenced Nilsen to life imprisonment with a recommendation that he serve a minimum of 25 years' imprisonment.
Imprisonment
Following his conviction, Nilsen was transferred to Wormwood Scrubs prison Category A prisoner. The minimum term of 25 years' to life imprisonment to which Nilsen was sentenced in 1983 was replaced by a whole life tariff by the Home Secretary in December 1994. This ruling ensures Dennis Nilsen will never be released from prison, although Nilsen has repeatedly expressed no desire to obtain freedom — insisting that he fully accepts his punishment.
Dennis Nilsen is known to have killed a minimum of 12 young men and boys between 1978 and 1983, although it is suspected that the true number of victims may be 15. At least nine victims had been killed at 195 Melrose Avenue, with his final three victims being killed at 23 Cranley Gardens. It is unclear how many Dennis killed and he intimated that he didn’t really know, maybe from his alcoholism, maybe from his deranged bloodlust. But maybe Dennis liked to think he kept secrets from the authorities, from the relatives, from society in general. Certainly, there were enough people who went missing to account for many more bodies that might have been successfully burnt or sent down the drains. Most likely, the death toll is somewhere around the mark he stated.
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