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That's $50 off with code LISTEN at BlueNile.com. Welcome to the Serial Killer Podcast. The podcast dedicated to serial killers. Who they were, what they did, and how. Episode number 106. I am your Norwegian host, Thomas Vyborg Thun. Before I continue with this episode, I wish to make a correction.
In part 4 of this series, I said that homosexuality was highly illegal in the UK in 1973. This is factually wrong. I made the error because Dennis Nilsen was Scottish, and Scotland didn't remove its ban on homosexual acts until 1980. But
In the UK as a whole, homosexual activity in private between two consenting men was made legal in 1967. I apologize for this mistake. This is part 7 in my series on Dennis Andrew Nilsen, aka The Kindly Killer. If you haven't listened to part 1 through 6, please do so now.
Last episode ended with me, in Dennis' own words, explaining in depth how he disposed of the corpses he had laying around his apartment. Dennis, or Des, as he liked to be called, was in the process of cutting off Stephen Sinclair's body parts when the police came knocking on his door.
Tonight, we delve into the strange story of what happened when the kindly killer was finally stopped. Do you dislike ads in your podcast content? I understand. But I have audio engineers and bills to pay.
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So head on over to patreon.com slash the serial killer podcast now to get access. Imagine if you will, they are literally a cold British February back in the early 1980s. It's bleak outside and there's a morose sentiment across the UK. Factory jobs have been wiped out at a steady pace the last two decades.
and the British working and middle class are in crisis. Unemployment rate was at a staggering 11.5%, and the country was very polarized between those who supported Prime Minister Thatcher and those who voted Labour. Dennis Nilsen was also getting tired.
He was getting into more and more conflicts with his employer over his radical labor union activities, and his habit of murdering young men was probably taking its toll as well. He had also been getting sloppy with his disposal activities. There were five other tenants at 23 Cranley Gardens, but none of them knew Nilsen very well.
During the first week of February, one of them noticed that the downstairs toilet was not flushing properly. He tried to clear the blockage with acid, to no avail. Other toilets seemed to be functioning just as poorly, but Nilsen denied that he was having any problems. A plumber arrived to investigate, but his tools did not work. He called in a specialist.
Nilsen feared that his own activities might be at the heart of the problems downstairs, so he ceased his process of dismembering Stephen Sinclair and put the rest of the body in his cupboard. He also stopped flushing the toilet. Two days later, in the evening, a company called Dino Rod arrived to examine the blockage.
Deciding it was underground, the technician, Michael Catron, went into a manhole by the side of the house. He noticed a peculiar smell. Catron was convinced it was from something dead. He spotted sludge about eight inches thick on the floor of the sewer and found that it was composed of thirty to forty pieces of flesh. It had come from the pipe leading from the house.
He reported his find to his superiors. The tenants gathered around him as he phoned, including Nilsen, and he mentioned that they might have to call the police. First, however, his company would do a better analysis by daylight. He then took Nilsen and one of the other tenants back outside with him to see the pile of rotting flesh.
Nilsen returned at midnight to remove the particles of flesh and dump them over the fence. He thought about replacing them with pieces of chicken from the store and then pondered suicide. Instead, he sat alone in his flat and drank, surrounded by the remains of three dead men. However...
The downstairs tenants had noticed his movements. When Catherine returned and found the sewer cleaned out, the tenants told him their suspicions. From deep inside the sewer, Catherine pulled out one piece of foul-smelling meat and called the police. Dennis knew it was all coming to an end, but he had gone to work on the 3rd of February anyway.
He went about his tasks at the job center in Kentish Town, almost in a trance-like state. Before he left, he told a co-worker that, and I quote, if I am not in tomorrow, I will either be dead, ill, or in jail, end quote. They both laughed at this. The co-worker, because he thought Dennis was making a morbid joke.
Dennis's laugh was probably a bit more hysterical and desperate-sounding than his co-workers. It was dark when Dennis was nearing his home on Muswell Hill, the apartment building Cranley Gardens. Dennis told interviewers the following of what he went through walking to his own doom. "'My heart began to beat very fast as I walked down Cranley Gardens,'
I approached the house, and I knew instinctively that something was out of place, i.e. that nothing seemed out of place. The house was almost in total darkness. I opened the front door and stepped into the dark hallway. On my left, the front room door opened, and I could see three large men in plain clothes. That's it.
my mind began to race in all directions. End quote. Dennis had rehearsed what he was going to say to the police over and over in his mind. DCI Jay, the officer in charge, told his now famous line to Nilsen. I've come about your drains. End quote.
Although he knew perfectly well the men were police officers, Nilsen still feigned ignorance and asked if they were health inspectors. The conversation went as follows. Police officer. The reason I am interested in your drains is that they are blocked with human remains. Nilsen. Good God! That's terrible! Where did it come from? This is a big house. Police officer. It could only have come from your flat. We've confirmed that.
Nilsen. I'd better come down to the station and help you with your inquiries, police officer. I must caution you, but you having been a probationary constable probably know that. Nilsen. I will consider myself caution. Police was confident at the time that they had a murderer on their hands.
However, they thought they were dealing with a single murder, perhaps a lover's quarrel gone terribly wrong, and that Nilsen had tried to cover up his crime. They were in no way prepared for what was to come. As the four of them sat cramped in the car on the way to the police station, Dennis started talking, and he did not want to stop.
All his dark secrets had been building up for years, and now he could finally let it all out. Nilsen began to spill out the details of his murders at once, despite being cautioned. His formal questioning began on the 11th of February. It lasted over 30 hours, spread throughout the week. Nilsen talked about his techniques and helped the police identify parts of the victims.
He did not really require much prompting. The information flooded out, as if to purge his conscience and get rid of every possible memory. He made no digressions and did not plead for compassion. He also exhibited no remorse. He claimed later that his professional training allowed him to feign calmness, so the officials could take down the information.
He told them what they would need for conviction, but nothing personal. Privately, he was afraid and deeply disturbed by what he had done. Thanks to Nielsen, it was possible to find the various pieces of bodies and assemble them into a person as they did with Stephen Sinclair. His lower half was in a bag in the bathroom. From there, they could figure out which torso was his, along with the rest.
With a definite identity, they were able to charge Nilsen and hold him, pending further investigation. Nilsen also accompanied police to 195 Melrose Avenue and pointed out where he had buried things and made bonfires. A lawyer was now appointed to Nilsen named Ronald T. Moss, who listened with the police to Nilsen's detailed confession. He was satisfied that Nilsen understood what was happening.
After his initial confession, Nilsen was put in a common jail cell, bare of any creature comforts except a very thin mattress, thin blanket, and a bucket to defecate in. This was a holding cell in preparation for trial. Nilsen probably knew that a proper prison cell would offer more in the way of comfort, and he did not wish to delay proceedings.
Also, he certainly made a lot of effort claiming introspection and remorse. One of the first things he put forward as a theory was that when he was killing these young men, at least 15 in number, he was symbolically killing himself. Nilsen also quickly proffered the view that it was a shame Britain had stopped using capital punishment, as being hung was a fitting end to his life.
One might be deceived into thinking this was a genuine remorse on display. I, dear listener, do not think so. I am of the opinion that Nilsen was just as cold and calculating as the next psychopathic serial killer. He was an almost perfect chameleon, feigning harmlessness and civility for most of his life, but were left alone with someone he desired.
Someone he desired to never leave him. His dark self emerged, revealing something dark, something alien. This is not just mere speculation from me. After his arrest, Dennis tried many different tactics. First, he tried to act a remorseful sinner, who wanted nothing but to pay for his crimes and bring closure to his victims' families. He even wrote letters to this effect. I quote,
"'I would step up there on the scaffold, "'safe in the knowledge that the books were now to be balanced for the good of all. "'I've thought of hanging myself, "'but I can't bear the prospect of it being interpreted as an act of cowardice on my part "'and running away from my responsibilities and punishment. "'It would also have a ruinous effect on my mother, relatives, and friends.'
I'd like posterity to know that I can take anything that they choose to throw at me. Suicide is an escape from justice, and I have handed myself over so that justice may be seen to be done. End quote. These words might seem redeeming, but they are riddled with flaws and the manipulative nature of Nilsen's shine through.
First of all, Nilsen did most certainly not hand himself over to justice. He tried very diligently to hide his crimes, and for many years he successfully did escape justice. When he finally messed up and police came knocking, he still feigned innocence until police showed him they had very hard evidence Nilsen was a murderer. Only then did he confess.
Additionally, it is very easy to claim to want the death penalty when it is no longer in use. The same goes for claims of quote-unquote contemplations of suicide as a means of delivering justice. He never actually tried to kill himself, and he never acted in ways that would put his life or health in harm's way after he was arrested. His concern for his mother also seems a bit concerted and false.
Living in London, he almost never spoke to his mother back home in Scotland, and after his arrest, he wrote to her telling her to stay away, as he was quote-unquote already in a tomb. To me, it seems far more likely that he tried to invoke his mother to gain sympathy, and when it didn't work, he tried something else.
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Visit betterhelp.com slash serialkiller today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash serialkiller. He tried to explain his murderous activities by quasi-psychology, and he did so in a very detached manner. He would say, for example, the following.
Here again we see an attempt to present himself as reformed, as harmless, as someone who should be treated well.
I think it was all an act. All manipulation. First of all, he defines evil in a very odd manner. He states evil is someone who worships an evil god. I suspect he means people doing terrible things in the name of Satan or Baal or Cthulhu. As normal, well-balanced people know, evil is not an objective thing. Evil is a term to describe evil acts.
and murdering at least fifteen young men for pleasure is most certainly evil. Ted Bundy probably didn't feel evil either. He, just as Nilsen, knew perfectly well that what he did was wrong, but he did it anyway, and he tried to hide it and to escape justice. Nilsen was not in any way unconscious when he murdered. He remembers all his murders, some of them in extreme graphic detail.
And when prompted to just say something about true remorse, he fails. Again, I quote, "'Here in this cell Stephen Sinclair is still with me. In fact, I believe he is in me, or part of me. How can you feel remorse for taking his pains into yourself? I loved him much more than anyone else he had ever met in his twenty years.'
The image of the sleeping Stephen is and will be with me all of my life. No court or prison can take that from me. Or this almost holy feeling, end quote. This statement is more honest. Here we see the mask slipping and his true sentiment emerging.
Several serial killers have described killing as domination, as possession, as something that make them feel godlike. Nilsen says both. By killing Stephen Sinclair, he utterly dominates him to such an extent that he assumes his life force, almost like a vampire. Also, he admits killing gave him a feeling of holiness, and he flat out says he does not feel remorse.
His claims of him being the only one who ever loved Sinclair is offensive in the extreme. He only knew Sinclair for a few hours, and during those hours both men mostly just got really drunk and or high and listened to music. Nilsen had no way of knowing anything about people who might have loved Stephen Sinclair dearly.
and as such, his justification of murdering him seems even more evil, not less. Again and again, Nilsen would try to appeal for sympathy, with a probable agenda of getting better conditions and treatment. In various ways, both in writing and in interviews, he tried to appear remorseful without actually being so. I quote,
I believe that there is much in my past which I need to morally redress, and I will spend the years remaining to me in acquiring knowledge in order to give all my talents to my fellows. I am a grain of sand who just has to face the oncoming tide, and I expect no miracle." At face value, this might sound genuine, but if I scratch at it...
we again are presented with a psychopath, not a remorseful sinner. First of all, pay attention to the fact that he never says he actually is remorseful. He is offensive to the dozens of loved ones left behind when his view on at least 15 murders is that it constitutes something he simply needed to morally redress. It's not something to morally redress.
It was serial murder, and it is the most evil thing a human being can do. Also, consider why he mentions a miracle. It's an odd thing to do. If he truly believed that he deserved everything authorities did to him, it does not fit to mention a miracle. A miracle would entail him being freed from jail, something he probably wanted most of all.
But he knew that was unlikely. Thus, he called such an event a miracle, but not something he expected. When his repeated attempts at garnering sympathy failed, and the conditions of his imprisonment did not improve above what everyone else was getting, Nilsen got angry.
While at Brixton Prison, he assaulted prison officers and got 56 days punishment, which he resented as the prison staff being vindictive. This is the exact opposite of his claim that he could take anything they threw at him. He also fired his defense attorney, Ronald Moss, because he hadn't been able to alleviate the conditions of his punishment.
He also had an idea that maybe he wasn't guilty after all. Ralph Hames was a solicitor who loved challenging authorities. He thrived on controversial cases, and none could surpass Dennis Nilsen in both notoriety and controversy. He quickly got Dennis Nilsen to agree to a plea of not guilty by reason of diminished responsibility.
On the defense team was also Ivan Lawrence. On the morning of the 24th of October, 1983, the chief administrator of the Central Criminal Court, Mr. Michael McKenzie, read out the charges that Dennis Andrew Nilsen murdered Kenneth Ockenden, Malcolm Barlow, Martin Duffy, John Howlett,
"'Billy Sutherland and Stephen Sinclair, "'and attempted to murder Douglas Stewart and Paul Knobbs. "'At the end of each charge he asked, "'How say you, Nilsen? "'Are you guilty or not guilty?' "'To each the defendant replied, "'Not guilty,' "'and those were to be the only two words "'the court would hear from him.'
It was a jury trial consisting of eight men and four women. The prosecutor told the jury in his opening statement that seven victims had been identified, although only six were listed on the indictment. The seventh, Archibald Graham Allen, aged 28 from Glasgow, was the 14th person to die.
but he was only identified by dental records after the indictment had been drawn up. All the murders fitted into a pattern listed as follows. Every victim was a man. Each one met the defendant in a public house. They were all unknown to him until that meeting. They were all, with one exception, without permanent address. They were all strangled,
Some were homosexual, and a few were male prostitutes. After listing this, the prosecutor took the jury through Nilsen's lengthy confession at the police station at Hornsea. Here, Nilsen had detailed 15 killings in graphic detail. He also laid before the jury Nilsen's own words to describe himself, given voluntarily to the police. I quote,
I guess I may be a creative psychopath who, when in a loss-of-rationality situation, lapses into a destructive psychopath, a condition induced by rapid and heavy ingestion of alcohol. There is no disputing the fact that I am a violent killer under certain circumstances.
The victims is the dirty platter after the feast, and the washing up is a clinically ordinary task. End quote. Those who testified against Nielsen were Paul Nobbs, Douglas Stewart, and Carl Stotter. Nielsen attempted to undermine their credibility by helping his lawyer to point out problems with some of their statements.
He said that Stuart had stayed for another drink after the alleged attack, which Stuart could not explain, and the defense counsel managed to get him to admit that he had sold his story to the media with embellishments. Nobbs admitted to a sexual encounter with Nilsen and said that he had appeared to be quite friendly throughout the evening.
Stotter, shy and quite terrified by the proceedings, also said that Nilsen had been solicitous and friendly. Nevertheless, his chilling account had a damaging effect on the defense. The evidence presented in court included the cooking pot, the cutting board used to dissect one victim, and a set of knives that had belonged to Martin Duffy.
The defense witness, Dr. James McKeith, discussed the various aspects of unspecified personality disorder from which he believed Nilsen suffered. He then described how Nilsen had always had trouble expressing his feelings, and he always fled from relationships that had gone wrong. His maladaptive behaviors had been in place since childhood.
He had the ability to separate his mental and behavioral functions to an extraordinary degree, which implied diminished responsibility for what he was doing. The psychiatrist also described Nilsen's association between unconscious bodies and sexual arousal. He was also narcissistic and grandiose, with the added hindrance of blackouts from excessive drinking.
He had an impaired sense of identity and was able to depersonalize others to the point where he did not feel much about what he was doing to them. On strenuous cross-examination, McKeith was forced to retract his judgment about diminished responsibility in all of the cases. He said that was for the court to decide.
The second psychiatrist, Dr. Patrick Galway, diagnosed Nilsen with a borderline false self as if pseudo-normal narcissistic personality disorder. He settled for a false self syndrome, which meant that Nilsen had occasional outbreaks of schizoid disturbances that he managed most of the time to keep at bay.
Such a person is most likely to disintegrate under circumstances of social isolation. In effect, Nilsen was not guilty of malice aforethought. Even the judge questioned Galway's obtuse medical jargon, and his testimony had the effect of being over the jury's heads.
A rebuttal psychiatrist was called, Dr. Paul Bowden, who had spent 14 hours with Nilsen, much more than those doctors for the defense. He found no evidence for much of the testimony put forth by the other psychiatrists and thought that Nilsen was manipulative. He did see Nilsen as a unique case with a mental abnormality, but not a mental disorder.
His explanation of the difference was not very clear. During the summing up, in which the case was reduced to its basic elements, the judge instructed the jury that a mind can be evil without being abnormal, thereby dispensing with all of the psychiatric jargon. The jury retired on Thursday, the 3rd of November 1916.
And the following day, at 11.25 a.m., the judge said that he would accept a majority count, since there were two dissenters on every issue, except the attempted murder of Knops. At 4.25, they delivered a verdict, guilty on all counts. The judge sentenced Dennis Andrew Nielsen to life in prison, not eligible for parole for 25 years.
Nilsen was almost 38 years old. After this sentence, Nilsen was transferred to Wormwood Scrubs Prison in the western part of London. In prison, Nilsen was a mark for the other prisoners looking to make a name for themselves. In December of 1983, Nilsen was cut in the face and chest with a razor blade by an inmate named Albert Moffat.
The injuries were severe and required 89 stitches. For his safety, Nilsen was moved to Wakefield Prison in West Yorkshire, where he stayed until 1990. He was repeatedly attacked and threatened by other prisoners, and as such he was designated as a vulnerable prisoner and moved to Full Sutton Prison, also in Yorkshire.
There he remained until 1993, when he was transferred to Whitemore Prison near Cambridge. In December 1994, Home Secretary Michael Howard replaced his sentence of 25 years with a whole life tariff, ensuring Dennis Nilsen would never breathe air as a free man again.
In 2003, Nilsen was transferred back to Full Sutton, where he remained until he died. Nilsen's death is a bit of an interesting story as well. After complaining of stomach pains, on the 10th of May, 2018, he was taken to York Hospital. There, he was found to have a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm, which the doctors managed to repair.
After the surgery, he was taken back to his cell. Following returning to prison, a blood clot caused an internal hemorrhage. An official inquest stated Dennis Nilsen spent his final moments lying in his own feces and urine for several hours in extreme and utter agony in his prison cell as he died from the internal bleeding.
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It has been a long road, and I hope you enjoyed riding it with me. Next week, I will bring you episode 107 and a fresh new Serial Killer Expo say. So, as they say in the land of radio, stay tuned. This podcast would not be possible if it had not been for my dear patrons who pledge their hard-earned money every month.
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