Dennis Nilsen

: For the North Carolina politician see Dennis Nielsen.

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Dennis Andrew Nilsen (born November 23, 1945) was a British serial killer who lived in London. During a murderous spree that lasted five years, he killed approximately fifteen men. He is often called "The British Jeffrey Dahmer" (in the states).

Related Topics:
November 23 - 1945 - British - Serial killer - London - Jeffrey Dahmer

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Nilsen was born in Strichen, Aberdeenshire to a Scottish mother and a Norwegian father. His father was an alcoholic and his parents divorced when he was four years old. His mother remarried and sent her son to his grandparents, but after a couple of years, he was sent back to his mother again.

Related Topics:
Aberdeenshire - Scottish - Norwegian - Alcoholic

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Nilsen claimed the first traumatic event to shape his life came about when he was a small child, when his beloved grandfather died. His strict Catholic mother insisted that he view the body before burial. Whether this incident, or his mother and stepfather's lectures on the "impurities of the flesh" helped shape him into what he was to become, no one really knows.

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In 1961, Nilsen enlisted in the British Army and became a cook in Aden, Cyprus and Berlin. He left the army in 1972 and served briefly as a police officer. From the mid 1970s, Nilsen worked as a civil servant in a jobcentre.

Related Topics:
1961 - British Army - Cook - Aden - Cyprus - Berlin - 1972 - Police officer - Civil servant - Jobcentre

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He had a series of superficial, transient relationships with men, but they did not help to placate his profound isolation and loneliness. Like Dahmer, he sought somebody "who wouldn't leave." He wanted a corpse.

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All his victims were students or homeless men whom he picked up in bars and brought to his house either for sex or just for company. Nilsen strangled and drowned his victims during the night, waking up with little memory of what he had done. He used his butchering skills, learnt in the army, to help him dispose of the bodies. Nilsen had access to a large garden and was able to burn many of the remains in a bonfire.

Related Topics:
Students - Butcher

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In 1981, however, Nilsen moved to an upstairs flat. As his murders continued, he found it difficult to dispose of the remains and had suitcases full of human organs stored in his wardrobe, and plastic bags with human remains under the floorboards. Neighbours had begun to notice the smell. When he tried to dispose of the bodies by flushing them down the toilet, he blocked the sewerage of his house in Muswell Hill 23 Cranley Gardens, north London.

Related Topics:
1981 - Human - Organs - Sewerage - Muswell Hill - London

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When a company was called to unblock the sewer system, they first found the drain to be packed with a flesh-like substance. The drain inspector then called his supervisor to assess the situation; however, this was not to take place until the next day, by which time the drain had been cleared. This aroused the suspicions of the drain inspector and his supervisor, who immediately called the police. On closer inspection, some small bones and what looked like chicken flesh were found in a pipe leading off from the drain; these were later discovered to be of human origin.

Related Topics:
Supervisor - Police - Chicken

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Dennis Nilsen was arrested in 1983 on suspicion of multiple murder. He apologized to the police for not being able to tell them the exact number of people he had killed. When his house was searched, they found three heads in a cupboard, and they found thirteen more bodies in Nilsen's former place of residence at Cricklewood at 195 Melrose Avenue. During the trial at Old Bailey, Nilsen was cold and distant, and seemed utterly unaffected by the fact that he had murdered fifteen people. He was sentenced to life in prison.

Related Topics:
1983 - Murder - Cricklewood - Old Bailey - Prison

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Nilsen's minimum term was set at 25 years by the trial judge, but the Home Secretary later imposed a whole life tariff, which meant he would never be released. But after the Home Secretary was stripped of his powers to set minimum terms in November 2002, Nilsen could be freed on life licence in 2008 because of his original 25-year minimum sentence. In 1993 he was given permission to give a televised interview from prison.

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