■Murderous Minds■

Dennis Nilsen

This is shorter than my usual cases but I hope you enjoy this serial killer's story

Dennis Nilsen also known as "The Muswell Hill Killer" and "The Kindly Killer"

Dennis Nilsen was a serial killer who was bornin Fraserburgh, Scotland. Though Nilsen recognized his homosexual desires, he was never comfortable with them and began acting on them through murder and dismemberment. Nilsen's first victim was in 1978, he went on to kill, according to his confession, twelve young men and dissect their bodies. When police finally arrested him in 1983, it quickly became apparent that, had they linked a series of reported incidents from lucky escapees over the previous five years, they might well have halted his ghoulish killing spree considerably sooner.

Early Life

Nilsen was born on November 23, 1945, in Fraserburgh, Scotland. His parents' marriage was an unhappy one and, as a result, Nilsen, his mother and siblings lived with his maternal grandfather, whom Nilsen adored. Nilsen claimed that his beloved grandfather's unexpected death, when he was just six years old, and the traumatizing viewing of his corpse at the funeral, led to his later behavioral psychopathology.

His mother went on to remarry and have four more children, leaving Nilsen a withdrawn and lonely child. Aware of his homosexual attractions, he claimed no sexual encounters as an adolescent, and at 16 he enlisted in the army. He became a cook, serving as a butcher in the Army Catering Corps, learning the skills that served him so well during his five-year killing spree.

Upon leaving the army in 1972, he took up police training, where he discovered a fascination with morgue visits and autopsied bodies. Despite the obvious advantages that police work gave to develop his morbid tastes, he resigned and went on to become a recruitment interviewer.

Nilsen's first official brush with the police came in 1973. David Painter, a young man whom Nilsen had met through his work, claimed that Nilsen had taken pictures of him while he was asleep. Painter was so incensed that he required hospitalization as a result of their confrontation. Nilsen was brought in for questioning about the incident but was subsequently released without charge.

In 1975, he took up cohabitation with David Gallichan in a garden apartment situated at 195 Melrose Avenue in North London, although Gallichan denied that they had a homosexual relationship. This lasted two years and when Gallichan left, Nilsen's life began a downward spiral into alcohol and loneliness, which culminated in his first murder 18 months later.

Crimes

Nilsen became increasingly disturbed by his sexual encounters, which only seemed to reinforce his loneliness when they were over. He met his first young victim in a pub on December 29, 1978, and invited him home, as he had on previous occasions. The next morning, overcome by a desire to prevent the young man from leaving, he strangled him with a tie before drowning him in a bucket of water. Taking the corpse to his bathroom to wash it, he then placed it back in his bed, later remarking that he found the corpse beautiful. He attempted to have sex, unsuccessfully, then spent the night sleeping next to the dead man. He finally hid the corpse under his floorboards for seven months, before removing it and burning the decaying remains in his back garden.

Nilsen had another close call with the police in October 1979, when a young student accused Nilsen of trying to strangle him during a bondage-play session. Despite the student's claims, no charges were pressed against Nilsen.

Nilsen encountered his second victim, Canadian tourist Kenneth Ockendon, at a pub on December 3, 1979. Following a day of sightseeing and drinking, which ended at Nilsen's apartment, Nilsen again succumbed to his fears of abandonment and strangled Ockenden to death with an electrical cable. He cleaned up the corpse as he did before, and shared the bed with it overnight. He took photos, engaged in sex and finally deposited the corpse under the floorboards, removing it frequently and engaging in conversation, as if Ockenden were still alive.