I made them look dead so I would look dead. Dennis Nilsen
I have no tears for myself. No tears for my victims nor those bereaved by my actions. Dennis Nilsen
I hated the establishment. Dennis Nilsen
It’s just a compulsion when I’m drunk. Dennis Nilsen
The most exciting part of the little conundrum was when I lifted the body, carried it. Dennis Nilsen
It was an experiment of my power to lift and carry. Dennis Nilsen
These are the home movies of a murderer. A man who in the 1980s would be uncovered as the most prolific serial killer in British history. A civil servant whose extraordinary behaviour would see him named in cruel irony the Kindly Killer. But was this murderer of young men driven by nature or nurture? Was the kindly killer born to kill? Born to Kill? s3e4: Dennis Nilsen, Sky Vision 2012
In the garden of an address in Cricklewood investigators would identify the fragmented remains of at least eight more. ibid.
In 1970s London he found a thriving gay scene. ibid.
Nilsen would describe the murder of fifteen young men in minute detail. ibid.
He preyed on the lost and the vulnerable. He murdered fifteen men without the police realising a killer was on the large. He attacked without reason. His brutality shocked even the most hardened of investigators. Crimes that Shook the World: Dennis Nilsen s/a Britain’s Worst Serial Killers: Dennis Nilsen s/a Serial Killers: Dennis Nilsen s/a Murder UK with Martin Kemp
Muswell Hill, Cranley Gardens: caught in the drain are strange looking lumps of meat and bone. ibid.
The most macabre serial killer to prowl the streets of London. ibid.
Nilsen later goes on to recall how he set about systematically flushing the boiled remains down the toilet. ibid.
Nilsen’s lack of regret still troubles Peter Jay. ibid.
After a troubled childhood Dennis Nilsen grew into a lonely and bitter man who struggled to relate to the world around him. Dennis Nilsen’s First Kill: Countdown to Murder, Channel 5 2013
Necrophila – the sexual attraction to corpses – was the answer to his loneliness. ibid.
He could have as many as six bodies in and around the flat at any one time. ibid.
He started cutting the bodies into pieces. ibid.
He had to chop up and boil their flesh ... Inevitably the drains became blocked. ibid.
‘He told the police he had murdered 15 victims but that he couldn’t remember all their names.’ Dennis Nilsen: In Love With Death? rozzer, BBC Alba 2009
‘Necrophilia to an overlay of narcissism.’ ibid. shrink
On 9th February 1983 police were called to a property here in Muswell Hill, London. Workers had found a fleshy substance in a drain and tests confirmed it was human remains. ibid.
‘It’s just a compulsion when I’m drunk.’ ibid. Nilsen
He began to target only, often troubled, young men. ibid.
On 8th February 1983 a maintenance worker was called out to a house in London to investigate some unusual smells coming from the property’s blocked drains. He was about to make a grisly discovery. Right under the noses of his neighbours 37-year-old Dennis Nilsen had secretly been killing young men and disposing of their bodies. Britain’s Most Evil Killers s1e8: Dennis Nilsen, Pick TV 2017
Dennis Nilsen is one of Britain’s most prolific serial killers. Over the course of five years in the late 1970s and early ’80s he killed at least twelve men, confessing to as many as fifteen. ibid.
‘She [mother] felt repelled by Dennis.’ ibid. Dr Susan Yardley
Dennis Nilsen is one of Britain’s biggest serial killers of the twentieth century. He’s admitted to murdering 15 young men at his homes in London. Real Crime s3e4: A Mind to Murder, ITV 2003
On 9th February 1983 police were called to 23 Cranley Gardens in north London. Human remains had been found in the drains leading from Dennis Nilsen’s upstairs flat. ibid.
Dennis Nilsen couldn’t remember the names of most of his victims. ibid.
The men who’d escaped Nilsen’s attacks became the focus of the murder investigation. ibid.
Dennis Andrew Nilsen seemed to be an ordinary man with an ordinary life, but behind the facade he was the stuff of nightmares. Because Nilsen was a killer with the blood of at least twelve young men on his hands. A seemingly boring civil servant who hid in the shadows. The Real Des: The Dennis Nilsen Story, ITV 2020
‘My whole life has been er lived on this profile of being the odd one out.’ ibid. Nilsen
‘At any one time 8,000 people are listed as missing in London alone.’ ibid. old news commentary
‘The smell was absolutely awful. It was the smell of death.’ ibid. rozzer re Nilsen’s flat
‘I noticed there was a head in a cooking pot. It was one hell of a shock.’ ibid.
At Hornsey Police Station Nilsen was talking to detectives calmly and lucidly telling them what he had done. ibid.
Binbags containing body parts were removed from the wardrobe. So was a wooden box holding limbs and a torso. ibid.
He’d taken Kenneth back to his flat in Melrose Avenue then strangled him. He’d kept his body under the floorboards bringing it out to wash and dress it, watching television with the corpse as company. ibid.
TV roving reporter: What did you find?
Dyno-Rod dude: Er, a mass of flesh. The Nilsen Files I, BBC 2022
On the 8th February 1983 body parts were discovered in a suburban London flat. The tenant Dennis Nilsen confessed to killing up to 16 young men. ibid. caption
Nilsen admitted cutting up bodies and flushing flesh down the lavatory. bid. TV news
Muswell Hill is a quiet London suburb seven miles north of the city centre. ibid.
Nilsen’s sexuality and this aspect of the case was treated as if it was almost too awful to fully explain. ibid.
For the police it was a murder investigation in reverse. They had the killer but they didn’t know the identities of most of the victims. The Nilsen Files II: Survivors, television news
By May 1983 after a three-month investigation five victims had been named. ibid.
Nilsen’s account detailed each and every murder, creating an incredible story that was uncritically repeated in the media. Listening to it, there’s a horrible sense that he anticipated an audience as his confession is filled with dark jibes about his crimes. ibid.
There had been multiple opportunities to apprehend him years before his arrest in February 1983. ibid.
It’s that awful feeling of being left in limbo. With not knowing if they’re alive or dead. The lack of information, the uncertainty. It’s really terrible for them. It’s like they are sort of frozen in grief. The Nilsen Files III: Forgotten, woman
‘An unacceptable face of society, a garish panorama of permissiveness which led to murder, mass murder.’ ibid. Nilsen biography
Nilsen was interviewed for over 31 hours by detectives as they tried to identify the 16 people he said he murdered. ibid.
Nilsen’s crimes were perhaps simply enabled by a black of interest in his victims. ibid.
Residents at 23 Cranley Gardens flats in North London were fed up on the morning of February 8th 1983. All their toilets were clogged … There was a rancid disgusting smell coming from the pipes. True Crime Recaps: Is Dennis Nilsen Britain’s Sickest Serial Killer? Youtube 17.08, 2022
One of England’s most terrifying serial killers, Dennis Nilsen. ibid.
He calmly pointed to his closet: inside were legs and a torso stuffed in two garbage bags. ibid.
He preferred his dates dead; he liked to turn their corpses into his dolls. ibid.