EP275: Dennis Nilsen - Britain's Kindly Killer

are your thoughts? And oh have you been?

children that his parents would have together. The marriage between Elizabeth and Olav was the furthest thing from happy due to his alcoholism, so Elizabeth left him, took her kids, and moved in with her father. Luckily, Dennis absolutely adored his maternal grandfather, so when they moved in, Dennis was

over the moon. When his grandfather sadly passed away when Dennis was only six, This completely shot him down, shattered him and seeing his father's corpse at the funeral home really shook him, and later Dennis would say that it shook him so much he believes that psychologically changed him, like at that moment, if he had to pick a

moment in time now. Elizabeth and Olav they eventually got divorced, but she remarried and she went on to have four more children with her new husband, and Elizabeth basically seemed to give all of her love and affection to number two of children. So yeah, this left Dennis completely depressed, alone, and completely withdrawn from his mother and siblings. From a young age, Dennis knew that he was attracted to other boys,

although he was not out as gay. Sometimes the kids at school would make fun of him and accuse him of being gay, which, honestly, Tanya, it's unfortunately, or just almost like a rite of passage. How do you escape right your junior high and high school years without someone calling you gay? Yeah, or whichever way they use you know what I'm saying, right, See, it's almost like you

no one comes out on skates. I'm not making it right, I'm just saying, gosh, I you know, in the eighties, my goodness, that was quite a gravy word covered lots of things totally, but when it came to school dances, Dennis always leaned on his sister to be his date. His homosexuality he didn't seem to get him in trouble when he was young, But this is kind of uncommon given the many stories we have covered like this in

the past. Yeah, Dennis was a good boy. There was no sexual assault committed against anyone when he was younger, and he kept his sexual orientation to himself. He was always aware of his homosexuality, but at the time this was heavily frowned upon. I mean nineteen forty five when he was born, so he's like fifteen, so that'd be a yeah, I mean still come on. So Dennis was never truly comfortable in his own skin. He learned how to cope in the worst way imaginable, and he took

his discomfort and sexual frustration out on his victims. At the age of sixteen, in nineteen sixty one, Dennis enlisted in the Army, and while in the Army, he became a cook and served in the Army Catering Corps as their butcher for eleven years, splitting his time between Norway, Yemen,

and Germany. His initial training was spent stationed in Germany, but he worked as the butcher in Yemen and Norway, and these butchering skills would later come in handy when we get into all of the blood that will be on his hands usually. You know, the army or other branch of military is a place where many people find and have found the structure and discipline that their lives truly needed.

different skills to become the soul. He loved being around people, and he did well with the organization, rules and friendships that the army had to offer. He basically had an unlimited amount of drinking buddies, and he loved this just as much as he loved to drink. His love for alcohol became more intense, and the more he went out with friends, the heavier he drank. In nineteen sixty seven, Dennis was sent to Yemen, and this is where he actually had to use the skills he learned as a soldier.

The conditions while stationed in Yemen were really dangerous, and he soon began to lose friends, but it wasn't for any personal reasons. He was losing his friends on the battlefield and on many occasions he saw his friends get shot dead by enemy gunfire. He obviously wasn't one of the soldiers who was killed, but he was kidnapped while in Yemen by a taxi cab driver. The driver beat Dennis until he was unconscious, and when Dennis awoke, he

was in the trunk of that same cab. After the driver got Dennis right where he wanted him, he dragged him out of the trunk. Dennis was a kinky guy, and he liked to have his victims unconscious, but this was not his style at all because he wasn't in control of the situation. Thankfully, the Army had trained him in various ways to get out of a situation such as this and he was able to use the carjack

as a weapon. He whacked the driver out as soon as he got his chance, and after Dennis knocked the driver out, he put the driver right where he had been locked in the trunk. Dennis was able to get out of this basically on scathe, but this was really the first time he had used violence against another human being, whether it was in self defense or not. Believe it or not, Dennis fantasized a lot about this incident, and he would often masturbate while thinking about the whole fiasco.

WHOA yes, so now you know yeah? And Dennis he loved the violent details that took place, even though he could have been killed, and the part that turned him on the most was, of course the violence. While in Yemen, Dennis became very familiar with the painting called The Raft of Medusa, and he would often incorporate the images of this painting into his sexual fantasies and his masturbation. This

painting embodies the aftermath of a shipwreck. Most men in the painting are shirtless and starving while reaching their arms out in a hopeless call for help, knowing that they will most likely die. One detail in the painting that Dennis really loved. Shows the naked body of a deceased man and his body is covering another man's lap. To Dennis, this shows how a man could truly submit when times

became desperate. In the painting, it was very hard to tell which men were dead and which ones were alive, but this still told Dennis that the living dominated over the dead, and that fact was good enough for him. So we're gonna that's kind of setting the stage of Theandards doesn't necessarily need a heart beats. But due to his homosexuality, Dennis was a little nervous showering around other men.

He always took showers with nobody else around due to his overwhelming fear of getting an erection after seeing another naked man. Regardless of his sexuality, Dennis still made friends and he seemed to have formed relationships, but it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows. Shit got a little weird when he was on base in Germany. One night, Dennis overindulged and got a little drunk with a younger German man, and the two got so carried away to the point

the two men passed out on the floor together. Dennis woke up not knowing where he was, but he did remember the friend that he had made earlier the night before. Even still, this man was a stranger to Dennis. Nothing ever happened sexually between the two, But when Dennis woke up and saw the German man lying next to him, Dennis got this unsettling impulse. After this urged, he covered his entire body in telcum powder to look at himself in the mirror. He imagined he was fucking dead, so that's.

internal struggle to stay a good person. While training with the police, he learned what he was truly obsessed with, and since the police worked closely with the morgue and autopsy technicians, Dennis became morbidly fascinated with dead bodies, both before and after the autopsies were completed. Despite his new obsession and the excess that working with the police offered, Dennis left the police force to work as a recruiter. Soon after working at the recruitment center, he was made

a supervisor. He was really good at his job and he worked really hard. While nobody at his place of employment knew about his sexuality, Dennis secretly visited gay bars and would have secret sexual rendezvous with other gay men. The life of a police officer would have been tough to live as a gay man around this time, but he did love the danger that came with living a double life. Although Dennis was meeting men on the regular, his sexual desires had yet to be satisfied. He needed

much more. Hmm. I don't know how you become attracted to something that's dead. I don't get it. But maybe he can shed some light. His crimes can maybe open something. One year after Dennis left the army, he had his first run in with the police, and let me tell you, it was some very petty stuff. This was weird. In nineteen seventy three, while working as a recruitment interviewer, he met a man named David Painter. David went to the police,

claiming that Dennis took some pictures of him. These weren't just ordinary headshots. These were pictures that Dennis took of David while he was asleep. Apparently, David found out about the photos and confronted Dennis about them, and the confrontation resulted in Dennis getting so worked up that he needed to be hospitalized. The police listened to David and they brought Dennison to be interviewed about the accusations, but unfortunately

Dennis was released without being charged at all. Huh, that's some creepy stuff. Yeah, now is that at a chargeable offense? You know, if you sleep with someone and then there were pictures. Unless I'm missing something about the pictures. Was he covered in talcum powder?

relationship ended, Dennis went off the deep end. He became severely depressed and he turned to alcohol to cope with how lonely he was, and this led to his first murder, which would occur a year and a half later. The same apartment is where Dennis would commit many of his murders, but he would later relocate and commit even more. Dennis found himself in the London neighborhood of Cricklewood in nineteen

seventy eight. That's quaint Cricklewood and more specific, at the Cricklewood Arms Pub, Dennis had already had a few pints of his favorite beer. As he sat at the bar with his dark hair and dark brown eyes looking around the bar, someone piqued his interests someone that he could lure away. The boy's name was Stephen Dean Holmes, and Dennis knew that he could take advantage of Stephen because he was young, naive, and way too young to be

in the bar let alone drinking. And when Dennis saw Stephen, he walked over to him and sat next to him, and the two began talking, and Dennis eventually invited him back to his apartment. It's not known what really transpired between Dennis and Stephen, other than the two drinking massive amounts of alcohol that night, and Dennis woke up with an attractive boy in bed next to him. Stephen was fourteen years old, but Dennis didn't give a shit about

his age. He was just he's sick, yeah, and he's just so happy that someone finally agreed to go home with him that night. You know he was a predator, Yeah, he is. Dennis deep down knew that all of this was way too good to be true. Stephen was so drunk the night before, and Dennis knew that as soon as Stephen woke up and realized what was going on, he would jump up, get dressed, and leave and this would have all been for nothing, a one night stand.

Dennis didn't give Stephen the chance to leave. He didn't even give him the chance to wake up. As soon as Dennis came out of the realization of what was going to happen if Stephen woke up, he strangled the fourteen year old boy with the necktie. Dennis thought that this was the only way he could truly take control over the situation. After he was dead, Dennis washed his

body and took him back to bed with him. Although Dennis tried to have sex with Stephen's dead body, he couldn't complete the task and he fell asleep next to the body. He couldn't complete it because it's not not fucking natural.

And as we discussed in other cases, the killers will begin to think of where to dispose of the body. They need to have a moment to think of when to dispose the body, and they need time to think of where the body will be dash. This was not the case for Dennis. Dennis just had killed Stephen because he was scared that the boy would run out of the apartment as soon as he awoke. Why would he waste his time disposing of a perfectly fresh corpse, dead

or alive. Dennis wanted Stephen to stay in his apartment with him forever, but where was he going to put his body? Well, he began to rip up the floorboards inside of his apartment and this would become Stephen's resting place. In fact, this would be the resting place for the rest of his victims over the next five years. Good five years later, Dennis wrote from prison about his first murder.

He said that he had quote started down the avenue of death in possession of a new kind of flatmate unquote. Stephen's body would remain under the floorboards until Dennis relocated his body, along with the others, to the backyard. Dennis truly had an obsession with the dead bodies of his victims, made himself believe that a dead body was much more

valuable than one with a heartbeat. He didn't want someone that was gonna leave him, and he certainly didn't want one that could make their own decisions.

more dangerous game. Now, this freaked Andrew out and he got the fuck out of there and he went to the police about this, but they didn't do anything about it.

He took a risk, leaving his homeland to visit England, and, as most do when it comes to an adventure, he threw caution into the wind. He had waited so long to see the sights, and he was living his best life until Dennis's creepy ass came up to him. Dennis saw Kenneth in the local pub and when Dennis approached him, he told him about how much he wanted to continue to see London, and Dennis obliged. The two of them had a few beers and they walked for a while

looking at the beautiful city of London. Dennis got Kenneth alone as they were walking, and he was just happy at the fact that Kenneth wasn't absolutely appalled by him. After the two hit a few historic hotspots, Dennis invited Kenneth back up to his apartment. Kenneth agreed to go back up to the apartment, and on the way back, Dennis loaded up on his favorite whiskey beer and rum. This is what triggered his violence, and he obviously knew that about himself. Yes, he liked the violence and you

know that alcohol. I mean, you've already you know how to get the party started. Rev your own engine. Apparently Dennis went a different route when it came to killing Kenneth. He didn't knock him unconscious before strangling him. The two were just sitting there listening to a record, and Dennis came up behind Kenneth with a wire that was attached to his headphones. Now that Kenneth was dead, he began

to use Kenneth's body to satisfy his psychological needs. He began to treat Kenneth's corp as a living and breathing person, no problem touching and fondling his cold body, and he would interact with the body excessively. Dennis then began to realize that this is what he had needed his whole life, and he began to pose Kenneth's body in various ways

so that he could take pictures of it. When he was finished taking his weird, fucking pictures, he put Kenneth's body back into bed with him, and the two of them, one dead, one alive, would watch television together for a few hours before Dennis fell asleep. I can't even get my head around, and I'm sensitive to smells. I could never thank you Jesus. I don't know what makes people like this tick, but oh and I gotta keep calm about it or I'm gonna get super violent myself. See

I don't need alcohol to make me violent. I have to hear about bullshit and then I'll get violent. So keeping it light, I know, I'm just like, what the fuck?

appease his appetite for the ultimate submission. He killed each victim for their body, and he killed them to have control. After having Kenneth's body in his bed with him for over twenty four hours, he wrapped Kenneth in a plastic wrap and placed his body under the floorboards next to Stephen. Dennis was doing this out of his obsession for the feeling all of this gave him. He had never felt any sensation like this before, and he wasn't going to

stop on his own. On many occasions, he would wrap his victims' bodies just so that he could take them back out from under the floor to play with them sometimes right These dead bodies were like dolls to him, and when he was done with them, he said goodbye to them until the next time. He would then go about his life like he didn't have any bodies lying

under the floor of his apartment. Kenneth was one of the only victims who was reported missing you know what this reminds me of two actually is the American horror story Coven, the house servant that you remember. He kept dolls and he was really create. Oh, I'm gonna have to watch his series again.

just like he had the first two. His next victim was another young boy, sixteen year old Martin Duffy, and Martin was homeless and he was on the run from the law in his hometown of Birkenhead. He had gotten into some trouble that evolved around him setting a fire and he had hitchhike all the way to London to get away from everything. He just wanted a fresh start and at this point he was over two hundred miles

away from home before he met Dennis. He had been sleeping at the bus station and he was hungry with nowhere to go. Dennis thought that he had hit the jackpot with this one. Dennis knew exactly what he needed to do to get Martin, and he prayed on the fact that Martin was in a really tough spot, so Dennis offered him a place to sleep along with the

hot meal, and of course, Martin accepted the invitation. Dennis got the young teenager into bed without coming on to him, and while Martin was asleep, Dennis took a piece of rope to stop him from breathing, and after he had knocked him out, Dennis to go walk into the kitchen to grab some water. He did the same thing that he had done to Stephen by pouring the water slowly over his face to drown him while holding his head back. He then washed his body and took him to bed

with him. Dennis wrapped Martin's lifeless body in plastic before placing it into the cupboard for at least two weeks. He later placed it under the floorboards, just as he had done with Stephen, and Kenneth. But how was he hiding the smell?

hide decomposition. You can bug spray and deodorizers always come on, stop it, I know, But you can convince yourself that anything's working right Right Before he moved to his home located at twenty three Cranley Gardens. That's his last apartment before he was caught, Dennis kept the bodies under the floorboards, but when the smell became too unbearable, he began to take apart the bodies, thinking that the smell was coming from his victim's internal organs. When it was time to

dissect the bodies. He took the bodies out of their hiding spots, remove the organs, skin, and bones. He would sometimes save the skin and some of the bones to use later, maybe when he was feeling lonely. I mean, why, I'm not kidding, I wish I was. Not only did he have his personal playtime with his friends, but he would also dress the bodies up and he would have sex with them. In defense of his own fucked up behavior, he said, quote, a corpse is a thing. It can't feel,

it can't suffer. If you're more upset by what I did to a corpse than what I did to a living person, then your morals are upside down. Well, I think we're just starting with the shock of necrophilia. Okay, yeah, so don't judge me on how I'm judging you, all right, Yeah.

He usually went to the same people each time he ran away, and his family would just patiently wait for him to come back home when they hadn't heard from him or the usual people that he would stay with. His family obviously became extremely worried about him until his body was later discovered. His family and especially his father,

never gave up on trying to find him. Martin's father had a picture of his son on his bedside table, and each night before he went to bed, he would look at that picture and ask, where are you son. In August of nineteen eighty, Dennis met a twenty seven year old sex worker named William Billy Sutherland. What was the name of the sex worker and bridesmaids at the for the AA meeting who had to give blow jobs

that sex work? This one's name is Billy Billy Sutherland and Dennis knew that Billy slept with men for Bunny, and he later said that he really didn't want to take him home to his apartment on Melrose Avenue, but one night he and Billy went bar hopping, and when Dennis woke up the next morning, Billy was dead in bed lying next to him. Dennis later said that he quote barely remembered unquote strangling him, but he did. That same month, on August eleventh, Dennis encountered another man named

Douglas Stewart, and Douglas actually survived this attack. Dennis apparently attacked Douglas after he had fallen asleep inside of Dennis's apartment. When he woke up, his arms and legs were tied together and Dennis was in the process of putting the notorious necktie around his neck in an attempt to strangle him.

Douglas wasn't going down without a fight, and he ended up knocking Dennis over, and Dennis tried to play it cool, and he told him to get the hell out, and Douglas called the police around four am that same morning, but the police noticed that he had been drinking and he was slurring his words as he was trying to tell them what had just happened. The police did come to the apartment knocked on the door. After the police

told Dennis what Douglas had told them. You know, Dennis played stupid and shocked, so the police deemed it as a homosexual encounter gone wrong, and the officers weren't sure who to believe. Regardless, they wrote up a short report, but Douglas never showed up for the required follow up. So it is thought that Dennis killed about seven more young boys and young men between November nineteen eighty and May of nineteen eighty one, but they have not been

identified to this day. In September of nineteen eighty one, Dennis killed a twenty four year old man named Malcolm Barlow. Malcolm was an orphan who had extreme mental issues and he was also known to be a pathological liar. One day, Malcolm was hanging outside of Dennis's apartment and Malcolm was complaining that he felt weak and had epilepsy. Dennis took him inside of his apartment. He called for an ambulance. Malcolm went to the hospital, but he went back to

Dennis's apartment when he was released. He waited on the stoop of his Melrose Avenue apartment until Dennis came back from work. Dennis invited him in and the two had a couple of drinks together. Later, Malcolm passed out and fell into an almost coma like state as he slept. Dennis strangled him after he fell asleep because he thought Malcolm was annoying. Don't judge. Yeah, I've about had it

since the last judge. Shit that you just said, Dennis, Let's keep the trap shut on your thoughts, right, And the following day, Dennis stuffed his body into one of his cabinets located under the sink in the kitchen. At this point, he had already had half a dozen bodies in his apartment and he was waiting to dispose of all of the victim's bodies. He didn't mind the weight though, like we mentioned earlier, he would keep some of the bodies in bed with him for as long as a week.

a little pieces of bone fragments. At first, when Dennis needed to dispose of his victims' bodies, he would have little bombfires in his backyard and after the fire was large enough, he would throw in some body parts and internal organs. To hide the smell of burning flesh and organs, he would throw in a piece of rubber from old tire. Now that I can see that covering up smell. That is a horrible smell, burning rubber. The body parts that Dennis wanted to keep were then buried in a hole

that he dug next to his makeshift fire pit. Remember his time as a butcher in the army, it's very helpful. When he felt his apartment was getting a little too crowded, rather than stopping his murder spree, he would take a body from underneath the floorboards and he would use these butchering skills to cut up the bodies into smaller pieces, and he would then throw these pieces into a pot to boil the flesh off the bones, while throwing the

organs into the trash for disposal. That way. Ugh, I swear, it's like I throw down my mouth a little bit when I read stuff.

he No, he didn't. He did have yet another failed attempted murder, though, and this victim's name was Paul Knobs. Now Paul was nineteen years old, and the two of them met at the Golden Lion pub. The two of them got wasted and they took a stumbling stroll back to Dennis's new apartment. The two of them had a few more drinks and went to bed together, and around two thirty that morning, Paul woke up with a terrible headache,

but was able to fall back asleep. Later that morning, around six am, he woke up again, and this time he found his way into the kitchen. In the kitchen, there was a mirror, and when Paul looked in the mirror, he saw intense bruising around his neck, and his eyes were completely bloodshot and his face was beat up. Dennis, at one point woke up as well, saw Paul in the kitchen and told him he looked like shit. To

go see a doctor. The following day, he went to the hospital that was in the university where he was attending. He was then informed that someone had tried to strangle him, but he didn't want to make a report because he didn't want himself to be outed as gay. So you have no memory of being strangled, doctor tells you, and you can't say anything. That's what a terrible position to

find yourself in. There was yet another attempted murder, but this time the victim was a drag queen named Kara the Fox, but he was also known as Carl Stodter. When Stotter came to the apartment. He was strangled and Dennis also attempted to drown him. While Dennis was on top of him, Carl woke up not being able to breathe, and while panicking, Carl thought that Dennis was trying to help him clear his airway or something. Dennis then carried him into the bathroom and put him in a bathtub

full of warm water. Dennis tried to drown Carl in the bathtub, and Carl was begging for him to stop. The next time Carl's head wood underwater, he stopped struggling. Dennis thought that he had finally murdered Carl, so he took him out of the bathtub and placed him on the couch, where he began to lick his face Denis MM. Dennis then took him to bed and talked him next to him. When Carl regained consciousness, he asked to be

taken to the train station, to which Dennis agreed. Later, Carl wrote a letter to Dennis asking him why he attacked it like that, and Dennis wrote back, quote what passed between us was a thin strand of love and humanity end quote. Someone's being gas lit Carl M. Carl also saw a doctor for his injuries, and the doctors told him that he had been manually strangled, but Dennis told him that his throat had gotten caught in a sleeping bag zipper. Regardless, he agreed to meet Dennis again,

but never kept the appointment. Carl never went to the police to report what had happened to him. After this failed attempt, Dennis struck again, and this time he didn't fail. The next person that Dennis murdered was a man named John Howlett, and John had actually met Dennis twice before his murder. They had originally met in December of nineteen eighty one and then again in March of nineteen eighty two. When Dennis started to strangle John, he thought as hard

as he possibly could. Unfortunately, Dennis was able to gain control over John by sticking his head in the kitchen sink, and after a few minutes, John was dead. John was Dennis's first murder in his new apartment, so his methods of disposal were different than ripping up floorboards. He quickly dismembered his body and boiled off all the skin off his bones ow Dennis's second murder at the new apartment

came in September, six months after murdering John Graham. Allen was a father, and he found himself in Dennis's apartment waiting for a fresh omelet that was being cooked by Dennis. While Graham was eating, he was strangled, and after he was murdered, Dennis placed his body in the bathtub and left it there for a few days. After he was done with Graham's body, he cut the body up into small pieces so that he could flush it down the toilet.

At one point, Dennis saw some marks on the wrist of Stephen, and this told Dennis that he had already attempted to take his own life, and this made him feel better about killing Stephen, he thought it was better to relieve him of all the pain that he had already had so much of in one lifetime. After he was dead, Dennis cut him up into little pieces and flushed his remains down the toilet. The bodies were eventually found when plumbers in the area found something weird in

a drain that they were trying to unclog. The blockage was human flesh, and it was the flesh from one of the victims, and it was specifically of a human hand, along with other human tissue. And the reason why the plumbers were called was because Dennis stupidly ran to his landlord saying that his dreams were clogged. But I kep right. I woke up and it was all a dream. But in all actuality, he was the one who clogged them,

and he knew that when he founded the complaint. The clog left the whole block of tenants, including Dennis, outrage because there was a horrid smell coming from the manhole that was nearby. Dennis didn't want to be the only person not complaining because in his mind, that would have looked awfully suspicious. With all of the complaints coming in the landlord sent the sewage company named dinoh Rod to

investigate the clog on the property. When the sewage professionals got to the neighborhood of Muzwell Hill, there was nothing that the workers could have done to prepare themselves for what they were about to witness and smell. When one of the workers lifted the man whole cover, he looked down to see a fleshy substance along with tiny bones

being eaten by rats. Dennis looked at the slop, knowing, gosh darn well what the sludge was made of, and he commented, quote, it looks to me like someone has been flushing down there, Kentucky fried chicken end quote. You couldn't make this up.

of decomposition back to Dennis's top story apartment. As soon as the detectives stepped foot inside, they noticed the smell of rotting flesh. The officers asked Dennis where the rest of the human bodies were, and he led them to his closet, where garbage bags were filled with what was left of Graham and Stephen oh Man. Dennis was soon arrested, and he confessed to killing between fifteen and sixteen young

men and boys. The police had originally thought that he had only killed one or two, since that was all that they had found at the apartment at the time of his arrest. While he was in custody, Dennis began talking and eventually told them everything that had happened, detailed by detail. He knew that he had killed all of these people, but he couldn't tell the police any of

the victim's names. Dennis could tell the detectives every detail about the victim, from their height to their body types, the type of clothes they wore, type of hair color, tattoos, no name. So he was charged with six counts of murder and two attempted murders. Which he was found guilty of in nineteen eighty three. He was sentenced to spend the rest of his miserable life in prison, and while in prison, he spent a lot of time translating books

to braille. Dennis did not express a single sign of remorse for the murders, and he didn't give a shit if he ever got out. He became even more popular when Jeffrey Dahmer was arrested. So see like how you called it. So yep, he gets arrested. Now he's back in the limelight, and Dennis was then dubbed the British Jeffrey Dahmer, even though Dennis had been in prison long before Dohmer.

seventy two years old. Wow. That is fucking crazy, isn't it. Yeah, you are correct when you say it should have been the American Dennis Nilssen mm hmm, because his story is just as.