Many serial killers struggle with their sexual identities, but this one took his fear of abandonment and sexual struggles out on others…
Dennis Nilsen / Picture Credit: Real Crime on YouTube
Who was Dennis Nilsen?
Dennis Nilsen was a serial killer born in Scotland.
He recognised he had gay desires, but was uncomfortable with these feelings, so he essentially acted out by murdering other men and dismembering them.
Nilsen’s killings occurred from 1978 to 1983.
He murdered around 15 young men, according to his confession.
When Nilsen was arrested in 1983, it became apparent to police that if they had linked a series of reported incidents from lucky escapees in the past five years, Nilsen’s killing spree may have been stopped substantially sooner.
Early life/adulthood
Nilsen was born on November 23rd, 1945, in Fraserburgh, Scotland.
His parents’ marriage was not a happy one, so Nilsen, along with his mother and siblings, lived with his maternal grandfather, who Nilsen loved.
Nilsen stated that when his grandfather died (Nilsen was six), the trauma of this death and seeing his grandfather’s body at the funeral led to his later behavioural psychopathology.
Nilsen became lonely after his mother remarried and had four children.
At 16, Nilsen enlisted in the Army. He became a cook and worked as a butcher, learning the skills that would serve him well in later years.
Nilsen’s first official brush with police was in 1973, when a young man named David Painter, whom Nilsen met through his job as a recruitment interviewer, claimed that Nilsen took photos of him while he slept.
Nilsen was brought in for questioning, but was eventually released without charge.
In 1975, Nilsen moved into a North London apartment with a man called David Gallichan. Gallichan denied that he and Nilsen were in a homosexual relationship.
This cohabitation lasted around two years, and when Gallichan left, Nilsen spiralled down towards alcoholism and loneliness, which culminated in his first murder 18 months later.
Crimes
Nilsen met his first victim in a pub in December 1978.
He invited the young man back to his apartment and they spent the night together.
The following morning, seemingly due to his anxiety about being abandoned, Nilsen strangled the young man with a tie before drowning him in a bucket of water, in an attempt to stop him from leaving.
Nilsen then took the body into the bathroom to wash it, then put it back onto his bed, later saying that he found the corpse beautiful.
After sleeping with the body next to him, Nilsen proceeded to hide the young man’s corpse under the floorboards for seven months, after which he removed it, burning the rotting remains in his back garden.
Nilsen had another close call with police when a young student accused him of attempting to strangle him during a session of bondage-play. Despite the claims, Nilsen was not charged.
Nilsen met his second victim, Canadian tourist Kenneth Ockendon, at a pub in December 1979.
Following a day of sightseeing together, the pair ended up at Nilsen’s apartment. Once again, Nilsen yielded to his fear of abandonment and strangled Ockendon to death with an electrical cable.
He cleaned the body as he did with his first victim, then shared the bed with his second victim overnight.
Nilsen took photos of the body, engaged in sexual activities with it, then placed it under the floorboards.
The Killer would, however, remove Ockendon’s body and talk to the corpse, as if he were still alive.
Around five months later, Nilsen met his third victim, Martyn Duffey, a homeless 16-year-old.
He invited young Duffey to stay the night at his place one night in May, 1980.
As with his first victim, Duffey was strangled and drowned. Nilsen then brought him back to bed and performed sexual acts over the corpse.
Duffey was kept in a closet for weeks before joining Ockendon under the floorboards.
Nilsen’s next victim (this would be his fourth), was prostitute Billy Sutherland, 27. Sutherland followed Nilsen home one night and was strangled.
By 1981, Nilsen had killed 12 men in his apartment, but sadly only four could be identified.
As Nilsen was running low on ‘storage space’, he was forced to get rid of the bodies.
He did this by first removing his clothes and dismembered the bodies on his stone kitchen floor with a large kitchen knife. He sometimes boiled the skulls to remove the flesh, and places organs and viscera in plastic bags for disposal.
He buried limbs in the garden and the shed, and stuffed torsos in suitcases until he could burn the remains in a bonfire in his garden – with no suspicion from neighbours.
His method included crushing the bones once the fire consumed the flesh - police found thousands of bone fragments in the garden during a later forensic examination.
In 1982, in an attempt to squash his murderous behaviour, Nilsen moved to another apartment, also in North London, which had no garden of floorboards.
Despite this, three more men were killed by Nilsen between his arrival to the building and February 1983.
With less ways to dispose of the bodies, Nilsen tried dissecting them and flushing the miniscule pieces down the toilet.
In February 1983, one of the other tenants in Nilsen’s building called a specialist due to a drain blockage.
In view of all tenants (including Nilsen), the specialist found rotting human remains – leading to a full investigation the following day.
Nilsen tried to cover his tracks by removing the remains, but was spotted by another tenant.
A detective came to Nilsen’s house to discuss the drains and what the other tenant saw, when he noticed a putrid stench in Nilsen’s apartment.
This led to Nilsen telling the detective that they should be looking for two dismembered heads in plastic bags, along with other, larger body parts.
Arrest and trial
Upon his arrest, Nilsen seemed very eager to cooperate with authorities, by telling them where to look for remains and how he disposed of them. In addition to admitting killing 15 men, he claimed to have attempted to kill seven more.
His trial began on October 24th, 1983. He was charged with six counts of murder and two charges of attempted murder.
He pleaded not guilty to all charges, citing diminished responsibility due to mental defect.
The jury retired on November 23rd of that same year as they couldn’t reach a unanimous verdict. However, the following day the judge agreed to accept a majority verdict of guilty on all six counts of murder.
Nilsen was sentenced to life in prison, without the possibility for parole for at least 25 years.
Nilsen died in prison in 2018.
Popular culture and Nilsen
On September 14th, 2020, the first of a three part mini-series aired called Des, recounting the life of Nilsen. The subsequent two episodes were released a day at a time.
David Tennant, widely known for his portrayal of The Doctor in Doctor Who, played Nilsen in the drama and apparently accomplished a ‘blood-curdling’ performance.
Many who watched the show were rightly horrified by Nilsen’s crimes, and amazed by Tennant’s performance. The show did not celebrate the killer, but serve to show people what he had done.
Written by Melissa, who you can follow on Twitter @melissajournal
RELATED: The Sinister Saturday series continues with a case that sickened many: The Moors Murders
Quite simply, this is a story almost everyone in Britain knows. The murders of young children which took place near Manchester in the UK during the 60s, are horrific and as the majority would rightly argue – pointless acts of pure evil... to read more click HERE
Tagged in True Crime