Kills:15-16
Aliases:
Area:Muswell Hill, London
Active Killing Period:December 1979 - January 1983
Born:23/11/45
Status:Alive, serving sentence of not less than 25 years in Wakefield Prison
Modus Operandi: Nilsen would meet men in gay bars in London and invite them back to his flat. He would get them drunk on Bacardi and Coke, and strangle them. He would then bathe them, and often sat watching tv with them. He would take them to bed, and although he was often not able to perform anal sex would masturbate over the bodies or perform intercrural sex (between their thighs).
Biography: Dennis Nilsen was born in 1945, the middle child of Betty Whyte and a Norwegian soldier Olav Nilsen. Whyte and Nilsen's marriage had been unhappy ever since it had begun, three years before. Olav was a heavy drinker and was often away from home. In 1949 the marriage ended in divorce and Nilsen moved with his mother and siblings into the home of Whyte's parents. Andrew and Lily Whyte were strict presbyterians, and exerted their influence on the upbringing of the children.
Nilsen, like Bundy, idolised his grandfather, and was shocked when he died when Nilsen was just 6. Nilsen saw his grandfather's body laid out for the wake, and was much affected by this sight. In 1954 the family moved to the nearby town of Strichen, when Betty Nilsen remarried, this time to a builder named Adam Scott. Nilsen disliked his step father, and developed into a solitary child.
At the age of fifteen, Nilsen enrolled into the catering corp of the army and was trained at Aldershot for the next three years. It was when the army posted Nilsen to Osnabrook in Germany that he began to drink heavily and discover his sexual preferences for men.
Nilsen stayed in the army for another eight years, until he resigned in 1972. Part of the reason he gave for his resignation was that he disliked the way that the army was being used in Northern Ireland. He took a job as a police officer, but resigned from this after a year because of the restriction it put on his homosexual social life. In December 1973 he took work as a security guard, again this job only lasted a year before Nilsen Quit. This time he took a job as a clerical officer in a job centre in Soho, London. This job lasted from 1974 until his arrest in 1983. It involved him interviewing the unemployed and rootless drifters of central London. At this time it was also known that he frequented public houses which attracted homsexual clientele.
Nilsen's necrophilic fantasies first showed themselves in the way in which he masturbated to a reflection of himself in which his head and lower body could not be seen, showing only an inert torso. He claimed that he had problems with lasting relationships, and as such wanted companions who could not desert him.
The first sign of abnormal behaviour came in 1875 when a young man named David Painter accused Nilsen of attacking him when he refused his sexual advances. In this instance it was actually Nilsen who called the police when Painter cut his arm in the struggle. In 1975 Nilsen moved in with an unemployed man named David Gallichan after meeting him in public house. Two years later Gallichan left Nilsen, who felt rejected by his sudden departure.
A year and a half later, Nilsen committed his first murder. After meeting a young Irishman at a bar, he invited him back to his flat to continue drinking. During the night Nilsen used a tie to strangle his guest. The body was bathed then stored under the floorboards, a pattern which became firmly established in Nilsen's subsequent murders. The body was then kept in pieces in plastic bags until being burnt eight months later. Nilsen would dismember his victims bodies on plastic on the kitchen floor. The only motive for cutting up his victims appears to have been the practicalities of disposal.
This pattern of events continued for many years, resulting in the deaths of 15 or 16 men. Nilsen took many of them to bed with him after they were dead, but was often unable to perform anal sex on them. He would sometimes perform intracrural sex. However, as with many serial killers, not all of Nilsen's victims were fatalities. A Chinese student, Andrew Ho, offered Nilsen sex and agreed to be tied up. When Nilsen attempted to strangle Ho, he managed to escape and inform the police. No charges were brought against Nilsen for this attack, since he claimed that Ho had been trying to con him. Another escapee was a Scottish barman, who Nilsen let go after attempting to strangle him and threatening him with a carving knife.
In October of 1981, Nilsen was offered 1000 pounds to leave his flat so that it could be renovated. After removing the last evidence of his murders, Nilsen moved to the top flat of a house on Muswell Hill. In this house too, Nilsen continued to meet men in gay bars and take them back to his house, and again most were strangled.
Nilsen's last victim was Stephen Sinclair, a 20 year old drug addict. Once Nilsen had killed him, his body was left covered by a blanket for several days, and Nilsen was in the process of dismembering it for disposal when he was arrested, on the 9th of February 1983.
As is the case with so many serial killers, the police only caught Nilsen by accident. One of Nilsen's methods of disposing of his victims was to cut them into small pieces and flush them down the toilet. This resulted in the drains of the house Nilsen lived in becoming blocked. When plumbers were first called in they found the blockage to be large amounts of a white, bloodflecked sludge, with lumps of what appeared to be meat. They arranged to return the following day, when daylight could help them find the source of the problem. However on their return the blockage had cleared. Suspicious, the plumber climbed into the manhole to inspect the situation more closely and found 4 pieces of bone and a piece of flesh. Neighbours reported having seen Nilsen outside the previous night, when the blockage had disappeared.
When the police arrived Nilsen began by expressing surprise that they would be interested in the drains, but when a policeman challenged him then went on to show them two plastic bags in the wardrobe, containing various body parts. Nilsen was charged with murder, and when asked whether there was one body or two to be found, admitted that there had been "15 or 16 since 1978."
Nilsen was found guilty by a majority of ten to two on six counts of murder and two of attempted murder. He began his life sentence at Wormword Scrubs prison, but after an incident in which he was slashed across the cheek with a razorblade by a fellow prisoner was moved to Parkhurst on the Isle of Wight. Currently at Wakefield Prison, Nilsen continues his campaigns which he began before incarceration. He has switched his attentions to the rights of prisoners and the failings of prison staff.
Analysis:
Quotes:
"This all counts for nothing when I can kill fifteen men (without any reason)" - Dennis Nilsen
"Am I mad? I don't feel mad. Maybe I am mad." - Dennis Nilsen
Other Facts:
