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You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them, Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK. Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host, journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Good evening in the middle class neighborhood of muswoll Hill. Underneath a spectacular residence located at twenty three Cranleigh Gardens, a gruesome discovery was about to be unearthed. While working on drainage pipes of the house at that location, a plumber discovered several bones and a flesh like substance covering the inside of the pipes. The pipes led to the top floor apartment of the residence. It was rented to Dennis Nilsen, a thirty seven year old, quiet, soft spoken
civil servant. Nielsen was also a retired policeman with military service. Shockingly, the police were about to discover Dennis Nielsen was also one of Britain's worst serial killers. The book that we're featuring this evening is Drinks, Dinner and Death, The True Story of Dennis Nielsen. With my special guest, journalist and author and co host of House of Mystery Radio program. Alan R. Warren, welcome back to the program, and thank
you very much for agreeing this interview. Alan Are Warren, Well.
Thank you for inviting me. It's a pleasure.
Thank you. It's always a pleasure, especially given that you tackle some of the worst and most infamous killers of all time. Appropriate for this program, I think, I believe let's get right to the early years of Dennis Andrew Nilsen, as you said, born in November nineteen forty five in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. Tell us a little bit about his early life growing up. What characterized that.
Well, he was the middle of three children and his parents they were from actually they came from Norway and what they did was they escaped during the Nazi occupation in forty two. I believe it was so his parents were from Norway. So even though he was born in Scotland and now, his father had a real affinity like he really wanted to free Norway and so he continued to fight in a subgroup and was not at home
very much. So most of his child life he was raised with his mother and the grandparents, and his grandfather had the largest influence on him, and of course in that area fishing, and the fisherman trade was the big work, you know, for that part of the country, and so his grandfather was a fisherman by trade, and so that's kind of how it started. That's how he lived. And he spent a lot of time with his grandfather, and of course some with his siblings, but he was majorly
influenced by his grandfather. And that would be his mother's parents, right.
You're right. In October nineteen fifty one, you said he wasn't close to his siblings, but he was close to his grandfather. In October nineteen fifty one, his grandfather died of a heart attack. Tell us about this odd incident at home, how he discovers the news about his grandfather, And I'll tell us about this.
Yeah, it was strange in the fact, not so much. I mean, his grandfather died of a heart attack at sixty two, and he was out fishing in the North Sea, so it's not that that was highly unusual. But when they got his body back home, they had sort of built a little homemade coffin and put him in the kitchen. And so Dennis had no idea about this and was at school, and when he came back from school. Of course. His mother said well, would you like to see your grandfather?
And he said, well, of course, And there was no warning or anything, so she just took him right into the kitchen where he was laying on this homemade sort of coffin open and he was dead. And it really shocked Dennis seeing won his grandfather dead. And you know, in his mind he would always say, well, I didn't even know he was sick. I didn't know how that could be, Like, what how did this happen? So it really shocked him to the core. And I think that gave him a huge fear of abandon He just was
so scared of being alone. You know, his father was really not around and did leave his mother and the family and never come back. And then you have the grandfather who was close to just die of a heart attack.
Yeah. After that, you say that, he also refused to be involved with family events or activities. So he really he became a different person as a result of this trauma that he was that he experienced with his grandfather's death, didn't he.
Yeah, he became really withdrawn, He became really quiet, and he spent a lot of time out on the harbor and watching boats and and just and spending there. He
didn't really interact with the family after that point. It sort of it sort of separated them the death of the grandfather, what relationship they did have, and so he was totally totally away from them and spending time in his own mind, I guess, trying to cope with the situation of his grandfather and and what he wanted to do with it, probably with life and and and he
was quite panicked over it as well. According to some of his own writings, he would see himself out in the sea and see himself being covered and slowly drowning, and he would always dream of his grandfather coming to rescue or fantasize about that. So in his own mind he was quite I don't know what he was. He was dealing with that death in that way and by himself.
You talk about shortly after the divorce and father leaving and never seeing them again, mother moved into their own place with three children and remarried to someone named Andrew Scott. Did Dennis appreciate this person? What was the treatment he received from this person at the hands.
Of Andrew Scott, Well, it seemed in his mind he never liked his stepfather, and he felt that his stepfather was very you know, strict and and and would always give him discipline, like always always be punishing him for every little thing he did. It wouldn't matter what it was, he would be being punished, whereas his older brother would he would compare himself to of course, seemed to be a favorite of their new stepfather, so he became very jealous of his brother, and he became really hateful of
this Andrew Scott, the new stepfather. He just just didn't want to be around him, so that even isolated him more.
Now let's move to you talk about nineteen fifty five. The family moved to Hope them pronounce this right, striking about twelve kilometers away, and his sexual development is beginning to be revealed. So tell us what happens in his teens, what his attraction is, his interaction with his younger sister and with brother, all of.
Well, yeah, when they moved, it was more inland, so he sort of was forced to be in the house more, and so he started having to interact with the family and his baby sister he really got along with, well, he started to become closer with her and they would play games together and do things. I think because she was younger and he didn't feel so pressured, and plus she was a girl, where the older brother and father and all that stepfather they had a real strict manly
sort of way about them. And so and as a teen he really started feeling an attraction to other men and it really confused him. Of course, he didn't want to tell people. I mean, back then, you got to remember this, you know, along forties fifties people in the times. Back then, it was thought of as not a good thing, and it was illegal, and so he kept it totally secret,
and he felt really bad about it. The bad side of that, or what what he had to endure was sitting around and listening to his family say really bad things about homosexuals. You know, they talked really really badly about it. And even the few friends he had at school were the same way. You know, these he had no so he was really kind of isolated that way. It was around this time he started to fondle or
touch his younger sister a little bit sexually. And of course, you know, in his own writings, Dennis said that this was because he wanted to see if he could be sexually turned on by a female. He wanted to see if he could you know, start that and and and have a way of gaining control over sexuality, because the other young man that he was looking at and and sort of had sexual attraction to, he couldn't seem to
turn that off. So I guess he was thinking, well, you know, if I have some experience with a woman or a female that would turn that part of him on, and that that that that wasn't going to work, you know. And and and then of course he had to share his bed with Olive, which was the older, strict brother.
And.
He would try to fondle or touch his brother in a in his private areas when Olive was sleeping, and of course you know that's going to lead to no good. And eventually Olive woke up once and caught him and confronted him and uh and started calling him names and started calling him sissy in a sense like han. You know, it's what they used in Scotland, Scotland for that, So you know, he started he started trying to deal with his sexuality himself and found himself getting into trouble by doing this.
You're right, when Nielsen was fourteen, he decided to join Army Cadets, and he considered an escape from his parents and what he thought was a stifling little town. You say. He excelled in school and history and arts, but wasn't good at sports whatsoever. He had a job, but it didn't last too long. But in nineteen sixty one, based on I guess, his experience in the Army cadets, he decided to list in the Army tell Us about his experience in the army and what he did in that service.
Yeah, he wasn't. He wasn't. You're right. He wasn't really athletic. He was not. He was not strong. He was not a sports figure or nothing like that. So he was and he was artistic and more in that nature. And so what he did was he actually went to work and he started being a cook and they would train him to be a chef eventually, and so he started spending time cooking and working with the men in that way. He wasn't a soldier, so to speak, like, he wasn't
out battling and stuff. He had to learn some of the basics, but his specialty was going to be cooking. And of course, you know, so he had quite a few problems, you know, being in in a barracks with army personnel, because you know, the they would all shower together, and he would be very afraid of that. He would he had a real problem controlling and he didn't want he didn't want to become aroused in the shower and
have other army guys see this. So he would wash himself privately in the bathroom, like with a sink and stuff. And according to his writings, he would find himself masturbating a lot in the bathrooms because of the sexual attraction he was around all these men, these built men that were strong and good looking, and that's just sort of what he was dealing with. So that's kind of how he did it there. And that was in the first base, and then of course he got sent to West Germany
and it was much the same. By then he had passed his exam and become a full fledged chef, I guess, as she would say, in the army, So he was creating menus as well as cooking.
You also say that from reports at that time, all reports that to counter his shyness, he drank quite a bit at that time in the army.
Yeah, yeah, he he could find, you know, if anything, at that time, he was kind of being pushed to interact with the other officers more and he could only seem to let go when he drank. And the problem was he had a real problem trying to figure out how much he could drink without giving away his fantasies of wanting to have sex with the men. So you know what I mean. So he was still cautious of what he did, but it would loosen her up enough that he could get into trouble.
It's interesting to you include a story that I hadn't read the entire version of. But in nineteen sixty seven, you say he was station in Aiden, South Yemen, and he was working as a cook for the Al Masura prison, a very dangerous prison and a much more dangerous station than anyone he had experienced before. And uh often there were a taxi write from locals when several of the men Nielsen worked with were killed. Tell us about Nielsen's experience with the taxi driver.
Yeah, according to Nilson, he said that he was attacked and beaten unconscious by a taxi driver. You know, so these these were things that were going on, but this happened to him and he was beaten unconscious, right, So when he woke up, he was in the in the trunk of the car, the taxi cab, and he was able to escape by by hitting the driver over the head with a tire iron that was in the trunk,
and he found himself away. There's there's just something strange about that story, and there is more to it than that too, But you know, it's kind of a he's it's kind of a weird story, and he did not have the character to be aggressive at that time, So what you know, fear or what you know, just the whole thing kind of, but it sure gives you a kind of an insight to where he was going to head further on in his life. Kind of it's a good foreshadowy, Yes, certainly.
Now you talk about the about some of the fantasies and the fantasy life that he was sexual, fantasy life that he was having at that time, What were some of the things that he was fantasizing to replace his non interaction with homosexual men. He didn't want to dare doing anything to and jeopardize his time in the army. He'd always said later that it was the best time of his life. So what was his fantasy life consisting consisting of.
Well, well, he was a cook and he had his own room. He didn't have to share in the bunks. So he would set up the room to where he could, you know, pretend or have his fantasy, and he would have different mirrors placed in different places. He had a couple of them, and it would be on the side of the bed or kind of upwards almost where you could see almost above him but not quite, kind of up in a corner. And he would do this sort of thing because he would he would he had two
different fantasies. One where he would be unconscious and he would dream of a certain man that would come and have sex with him. And then there was ones where he was the dominant one and he would have sex with someone that was unconscious. So and it was always soldiers he fantasized about, but it started getting darker in the sense that different soldiers that he had worked with
or had interacted with that were killed. He would imagine them and they would be naked and on his bed and they would and he would have sex with them, and it sort of it sort of was kind of a weird fantasy and the main thing for him was he didn't It was his way of having sex with men and nobody knowing it. That person didn't know it. Nobody knew it was him that did it.
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Yeah, Now you write about a important event in his life, I would say psychologically would have to be he leaves the military. He resigns from the military, and in nineteen seventy two, but you know, successful career there. But he moves in with his family and strike and stays there for three months trying to figure out his next move. And during this time, the family or they already knew their attitude, but they watched a documentary on TV about homosexuals.
Tell us about this event and the result.
Yeah, the documentary. So, homosexuality had become legal in a lot of the countries in the late sixties and early seventies, depending on which country, and the problem was there was still a huge amount of people that were against it, and so the documentary that the family was watching was kind of like a news broadcast on what to watch for on the homosexual like they're really dangerous and they'll smile and take your kids and for a ride. Like it was a real negative sort of thing and made
them look really bad and really disgusting. And it was a hard hard place for him to be when when they're sitting there watching this and all talking really badly about this. So he turned around and told them. He told his mother right then that well that I'm one of those, I'm homosexual, And you know, a big argument happened, and the father, stepfather, the whole family got into a huge battle and he ended up leaving. He left after the fight, and he actually never really spoke to them again.
He would get a few letters from his mother and send a few but it was very distance between them for the rest of his life. That was kind of like it in the family's eyes, he was dirty, disgusting and they want nothing else to do with him.
Interesting now, Nielsen moves to London and joins them, joins the Metropolitan Police unbelievably in nineteen seventy three tell Us about his work as a police officer and how successful he was at that occupation.
Well, he seemed to be doing well. He as a police officer. That's when he started actually, and he was in London, so he started actually visiting gay pubs and places of meetings and he would he would have encounters. But this, you know, this wasn't going to last long because there was too much of a conflict between being gay and being a policeman. You know, it was just it was too much of an extreme, especially in those days. It was it just sort of put him right out.
So it didn't last long. By December of that same year, he ended up just resigning and just leaving, and he was he had a little bit of financial help because when his stepfather had passed that year earlier, he had left him a thousand pounds and that was a lot of money back then. It carried you a long way.
So he was able to quit and he went to being a security guard part time and that was kind of good enough for him for a while until I think it was early summer of seventy four and he started working for the government as a civil servant, which it found a much easier thing for him to do because you know, he wasn't in amongst all the police officers, and he could continue to meet other men on the side, kind of have his encounters and it wouldn't be a conflict.
Yes, he said. He was respected and considered, you know, a great worker and excelled in his new position and became permanent position. And then he relocated to Kinnished, Kentish Town, London. November nineteen seventy five, And you talk about David galakan twenty year old tell us about this encounter in November nineteen seventy five with Nilsen.
Oh, yeah, yeah, he ended up This was kind of one of his few relationships. He had met up with David in a pub in London. And what it was was David was being pushed around and being made fun of by two older guys and they were calling him names and all this, and he kind of of split up the fight. He kind of got in the middle of it and got David away from them and they eventually, uh walked back to David's place, who he was staying
at a hostel in one of the districts. And this is kind of a little blurry here because it was a couple of different stories because he ended up staying the night with David and according to him, they didn't have sex, but according to David at as different times said that they did have sex. So either way, they ended up deciding that they would make good good roommates, and because David was just at a hostel, they decided
to move in together. So they actually found a larger place from where he was staying, and that's how they found the Melrose Avenue place and they moved in there. It was affordable, it was large, had a garden, had a rare part, you know, the property. It was really nice. He was on the lower level type thing, so it was really perfect place. It was like a home, and that's how it started.
Yeah, you say that Nielsen really took to this relationship and he was the head of the household. He decorated the home and maintained a big garden in the back of the residence. And it was that Nielsen was used to giving orders, being a civil servant and being in charge and David at that time was submissive. This relationship lasted eighteen months you were talking about, so there must have been this semblance of normalcy for these people to
in terms of relationship. For Nielsen, tell us what happens after the eighteen months and why.
Well, you know, there's some of the films from homemade films from back then too, And according to Dave, but he felt very controlled by Nelson. He felt he felt like he was ordered around and pushed around, and and it got to where he felt scared almost of being home. And you know, eventually in the relationship they split and went into separate rooms and then started bringing home people, and it just made it even more tense, you know, it was it was it was almost confrontational at times,
and so that that wasn't going to last. And so David just up and left, moved away, and so Nelson came home one day and David was gone, and it really it really broke his heart and he, according to his own memoirs, he it brought back the pain of when he came home to his grandfather being dead. So it was pretty devastating for him.
Yeah, and you say that after that, he didn't have a long term relationship after that, maybe two weeks tops. And then you introduce to another character, Martin Hunter Craig or Martin Tucker, an eighteen year old tell us about his encounter with Nielsen.
Well, you know, and Martin Tucker was eighteen year old, he was in a special school and he was diagnosed with emotional and stability problems. He was really kind of a little messed up, and he questioned his own sexuality,
which a lot of people were doing. And again in the field of the country, in the region, it was still considered a pretty bad thing to be gay, like this was something that you need to fix or need to go see someone to have it fixed, you know, so that the mentality was that way, and so that was considered another one of his emotional problems. It's just kind of how it was. It's it's it's how they
dealt with it. And so, you know, the two of them hit it up and were kind of on and off for a while, but it never really lasted long and they sort of would drink, have dinner, have sex, just just kind of have some nice conversations. The two of them dated fairly regularly like that, but not all the time, and it would be kind of sometimes once or twice a month. It was sporadic. So that was pretty good for for for him, but he didn't he
wasn't getting the companionship he wanted. Nelson was looking for more of a long term and he wanted someone to fill the spot of his X who had just left, and Craig wasn't really going to do it, and he also had problems with the hygiene. I guess Nelson was really strict and Craig wasn't, and so they would have issues like that, and Craig was not a good housekeeper. I don't know it, just the two of them were
not going to work out. So it didn't last long and they started looking at other places for other people.
Now it seems that another failed attempt at relationship. This is a he stops going to the bars. He said it made him feel insecure and not good enough for anybody. But during Christmas holiday of nineteen seventy eight, again Neilson finds himself alone, restless, in need of some company, and he goes to a pub and there he tell us about this person that he finds being yelled at at a bartender.
Yeah it was Yeah. His name was Stephen Holmes and he was only fourteen years old, and he was trying to get liquor at the pub, and of course they were they were giving him a bad time, and of course the bartender wasn't going to sell and he was rather boisterous and loud and would tell the bartender where to go, and they sort of it was like a
kind of a big fight to get liquor. And and he was he was really attractive to this kid, and so when the kid stormed out the front door, Nelson basically went out and chased him to find out what would what happened and why he was in a fight. Even he thought the kid was seventeen, So the Stephen Holmes did look older than he was. And that's so it wasn't like an obvious young kid trying to buy liquor.
It was someone that looked older. And of course they they ended up going back to Nelson's house and having a few drinks and fell asleep, and that was kind of how the story of how they met and the thing that happened was the next morning when when Nelson woke up, Holmes was sleeping and he started getting these ideas of having homes stay right through the New Year's holidays. But why say it was kind of a little bit evil because in his mind it was he was going
to stay whether he wanted to or not. So he wasn't he wasn't thinking, oh, it would be nice to spend a week and you know, nice sort of holidays. He was thinking, how am I going to get him to stay? And so that's when he got up. I went across to his dresser and grabbed one of his ties and and he wrapped it around his neck and
strangled him until he became unconscious. Homes did wake up for a brief second, and it wasn't long before he passed out, and then he sexually assaulted him, and uh what he This is where he started to bath them. He had this real hygiene thing and cleanliness. So he would fill the top up with warm water and dragged
the body. And so he dragged Homes into the bathroom, placed him face down in the water for the first, you know, five minutes, just to make sure he's dead, and then he would bath him and clean him properly, and then take him out of the tub, lay him on the floor and tie him up with ropes and wrap him in a curtain. And that's kind of what he did. That's how that's how it ended up. He had to he had in that place there. He was on the bottom floor, so he would lift the floorboards
up and place the body in there. So that's kind of what his end game was.
You talk about though, that he was experienced enough I guess from the military. He planned to stash him under the floorboards, but rigor mortis had set in, so was his body was too stiff to do it. But he remembered I thought this was eerie. Did remember that the body would loosen up in a day or two. So he did find it put him into the floorboards in the living room so they could figure out how he could dispose of them.
Uh.
You say that that body remained there for eight months until August eleventh, And then what did Nielsen decide to do with that body at that time?
Well, he started to say he started he had kind of planned this, so he started to do kind of a barbecue or a bonfire, you know, where he would invite a few people over and and he would actually uh burn, burn the remains of the body and the parts, and and the people that would be around wouldn't really even know what he was doing. So it was his way of disposing of the of different things. Then and he started having these bonfires. They became a regular event around the neighborhood.
Yes, you talk about ten months later, this is ten months later October eleventh, nineteen seventy one, Nielsen picks up a person named Andrew Ho, a Ford and student from Hong Kong, at a pub and again they go back to Nielsen's for drinks. Tell us what happens to Andrew Ho, Well.
This was kind of a He had actually got into a deal because he wanted to get into bondage and being tied up and having that done. But Hoe said, you could do it, but he wanted money for it, like it was paid for a sort of thing. And I guess what happened was Ho he got his leg his feet tied up and he was laying there and when he saw Nelson go to the closet and take one of his ties work ties and come out, he
kind of realized that there's something a little different. And then he started trying to strangle Home with the tie and he started to panic and scream, and he struggled and he did get loose, and he grabbed his clothes what he could grab and got out of the apartment.
He went straight to the police and told them. But the police came and questioned Nelson about this, and for some reason, the police believed Nelson's story and that what it was was just a you know, wild sex thing that kind of went a little crazy, and they didn't even bother filing an official report, so it just sort of went away, you know, no child's no charges were filed, and the police just closed the case, you know, and hoe came from a family that it just wouldn't have
been it wouldn't have gone over well. Why he was out with another man and gone home with him and was going to have sex with them, paid or not. So it was one of those things that just went away. But the strange thing was it didn't stay on the police's mind at all. They didn't They didn't follow through or watch them or take any notice of him after this. They sort of believed him and just sort of let it go.
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Canadian tourist Kenneth Ackldon at a pub. Again, once again at a pub. What is the offer for this tourist, Kenneth Auckaden and what do they do that day? What happens?
Oh? Yeah, well he met him. It was in the theater district too, right the West End, so a pretty commercial touristy place, and Kenneth being a tourist from Canada, it was easy for him to just show him. Say hey, listen, I'll show you around all the great places in London. I'll take you to, you know, all the all the touristy places and uh and and the landmarks and everything,
and and he was excited. It'd be great. And Uh called his uncle who he was staying with in London and told him that he was going to go out and have some fun and and UH check out London
with this new friend he met. And the two of them drank a lot and and hung out at the pub and UH and UH started on their their trip around London to see uh see the sights and and so anyway, they what what they had done was they decided they were going to go for dinner, and Nelson invited him over to his place so he could shower, and the two of them drank a lot, of course, and and UH and what it was was that he went in and said he was going to shower, and
Kenneth decided he would be listening to music, so he put on the headphones and was listening to some music and Neilson's knock out of the out of the bathroom and choked him with the cord. And it was pretty pretty It's pretty graphic. And they kind of described in the book how he wrapped it around his neck and pulled them as hard as he could and and killed him basically. And then he took off all of his clothes and all of the argandun's clothes and then went
to bed and fell asleep with him. And so that was that was how that night ended.
Now the next day, what does he do, this is new, What does he do to again live out his fantasy?
Well, you know, he started taking pictures, and back then it was a polaroid, So he would put the body in different poses and take pictures and lay on top of him and take pictures of himself with the body. And then he would on and off play with the body for several hours, and would turn on the TV and watch TV television and talk to the dead body as if he was alive, still in visiting, And so the two of them would be basically enjoying a television show.
But no one is dead. So eventually, by the end of that night he ended up wrapping up the body in plastic garbage bags, and he lifted the floorboards and put him in under there where he had hid the previous body before.
Yes, And so even though that the body of Stephen Holmes remained there. He would use right that he would remove agen Doogg's body from there, and again, on different occasions sit him in a chair and talk to him and drink and watch TV with him. And then when he would put it away when he went off to work, when yeah, Ocaden didn't show up. Sorry, go ahead, No, I was just doing that.
He started he started acting like that person was alive. He and for some reason he picked on Oxington and he would keep putting them. He put him in the chair and they would talk and then he would ask him how work was when he came home and stuff like that. Yeah, so he started really living a fantasy.
M you talk about Ocaden's uncle. In February eighty three, police go question Nielsen again, what do they make of that? What does he have to say to that?
Well, yeah, of course the family was really concerned and upset, didn't know what happened and called. When they called the police, they asked him about, you know, the two of them and what had happened, and Nelson claimed that he had taken him around and showed him to Square and the House of Parliament and all that sort of stuff. And they went back to his place and listened to music and got some rum and off sales and just did that. And then he said, I think that they believe they
got into a fight. It's what he told them.
And so he left. Now let's take us to take us to May nineteen eighty and again he's at a railway station now and he comes across someone named Martin Duffi's again a sixteen year old runaway. And this guy's homeless and he's hungry, and Nielsen tells him he has a spare room. So what happens back at the house.
Yeah, And one thing too, with the railway stations, that was kind of an especially back then, it was a real common place for gay men to hang out and to meet as well. So this is why Nelson would be going places. It makes it sound like he was just there coming home from work and finding the body, but he would quite often go there and hang out. It's just an added thing for people to understand. And
it was a perfect place to find young men. So when her go ahead, I was going to say, so when he met him, and of course he you know, he's you know, homeless and sort of there, he kind of had an impression that he was It was a gay young man. There was sort of a little bit of interaction between the two, so he could invite him back to his house and offer him dinner and drinks and even a place to sleep. And that's sort of
what happened in this case as well. So so Martin Duffy would come home with him, and the two of them ate and drank and fell asleep, and just like before, of course Nelson would go get his tie and placed around the neck and of course pulled tightly and until they fell unconscious. And that's what happened again with Duffy.
Now you talk about that he kept him the body for two days. He sat him in a chair and he talked to him, did all the other things that he did. But he had to put him under the floorboards after a couple of days because he was bloated. But he later said he continued to use Duffy's body in fantasies for much longer than the other ones. For some reason. I guess he found him more particularly attractive.
Yeah, I'm not sure why. In certain cases he would pick certain certain bodies. Later he talked about how he liked to clean them and he was really really obsessed with that, and the amount of body hair they had and stuff, and he would even remove the hair. So I think there are certain bodies he took a real liking to, and it was about the amount of hair and cleanliness and the whole look of the body. I think.
So that's again, you know, with this body, he would take him into the bathroom and he bathed them and carried him around and did the whole thing, just like he did with the previous ones.
You write that in the last six months of nineteen eighty Nielsen killed five more and attempted to murder two more, and one was later identified as William David Sutherland, a twenty six year old person that was working as a prostitute. You right, he had a girlfriend and a daughter, but that mystery wasn't solved until Nielsen's arrest in eighty three.
You say, over next year Nielsen killed between five and eight others and attempted to kill another, Douglas Stewart, And then you chronicled the unidentified murder victims five, six, seven, and number eight. Now you write about the bodies beginning to smell and attract insects. So what does Nilsen try to do to over up this smell and deal with the smell itself.
Well, he was doing all sorts of things, you know, you know, throwing throwing lime on the bodies and trying to cover up the smell with any way that he could. But you know, again he was back into having the bonfires, and then he started, you know, at this point it became kind of a you know, he was a little bit overwhelmed, and so he would he would have to start burning the bodies again, or or cooking different parts of the bodies, just membering them and starting to cook
cook the meteor parts. And so he did everything that he could.
Yeah, you talk about too. In October nineteen ninety one or nineteen eighty one, pardon me, Nielsen's landlord w to renovate and sell the house. So he offered him again a thousand pounds again Hanson some to leave, and Nielsen accepted and found a new place twenty three d Cranleigh
Gardens in the Muswell Hill area in North London. So and then on the last day at Melrose Avenue you write, did he had a huge bonfire to burn his last five victims and used a tire, a burning tire to sort of cover up the smell, isn't that true?
Yeah? Yeah, he would put anything he could in there to make that so they couldn't smell the bodies burning along and anything like that, tires or rubber, anything he could get. All the junk from the neighborhood, he would take and put it all in the big bonfire.
You talk about at the new place. He didn't have a garden and he didn't have the floorboards anymore to deal with, so he was still picking up men. You write about Paul Knobbs nineteen years old, November eighty one, and you talk about in February eighty two of John HOWLITTT. Twenty three. Some of these people were able to escape. You talked to Hobbs, went to the hospital, tell us about John Howett and what happens.
Yeah, he started, you know, he didn't take long. He one month into the new place. He yeah, and he didn't prethink all of this because it didn't hit him that he didn't have the place to hide the bodies or burn them into all that. It didn't really strike him until he started doing it again, and then it
was kind of too late. He started getting overwhelmed, and so with Howlett that was in what January of eighty two, and Howett was a twenty three year old and again he met him at a pub, and he really liked his looks, you know, because he was a fit, good looking man, and so the two of them of course hit it up, started talking, and before you know it, he invited him back to his place, and how it went.
He never killed him on that date, and they started to date or started to meet up after that, and they would meet at the same pub, and that's just sort of how they kind of got together again for dinners and drinks at Nelson's apartment.
Now we talk about the other victims, and we talk about those that narrowly escaped. How does he dispose of these people? If he doesn't have floorboards a bonfire garden? What's his innovation too?
Yeah, then he starts, Yeah, he starts cutting up the bodies, and he starts cooking the meat. He had a pot. He would boil them, and then he would start flushing parts down, the fleshier parts down the toilet, and and the rest he would bag up and throw them away. So basically, you got you got you turned it. He turned it into kind of a plant or factory sort
of base. He would just cut up into parts, boil all he could cook the meat that he could, and the rest of it in innards, livers and stuff like that. He would dispose of them through the bathroom as much and the sinks as much as he could.
You talk about that. In May eighty two, Carl Stodter is a twenty one year old and he falls asleep on his floor and he wakes up to Nielsen choking him and dragging him to the bathroom and just weird behavior of choking him and reviving him. And he goes to the police. Again, what's the response from police from this report?
Well, I think that again, you know, the police had kind of a bias against the homosexual activity, and so when you go there with that right away, they have a negative connotation of who he is and what the problem was. And with Starter, he was very how do you say, he was very expressive.
He was very.
Just there's a word I can't hit, but he was just very over the top and very dramatic. And and he when he describes his situation of waking up and being drowned in the tub, and and just just the way he presented it, I think that the police were kind of not sure if they if they could believe him, and and and for some reason they they just didn't want to I don't know, they they didn't believe him, they didn't want to follow up on it. So it was and there was another problem that he had also
left it. It took him almost two weeks to go to the police, and so there was a lot of things going on, and they just basically swept it under the carpet, so to speak. They just kind of didn't really follow through with it.
You're right. In January twenty sixth, nineteen eighty three, the final victim, Steven Sinclair, twenty years old, again brought him home to eat, had something to drink and movie, fell asleep and strangled him again the same ritual, opposing him on the bed, then dissecting him, boiled the head, flushed down the toilet and bath drain. February fourth, nineteen eighty three. Very oddly, Nilsen writes a complaint to the landlord. What does he complain to the landlord about?
Yeah, so he's having problems with his sewer backing up.
Yeah, and.
You know, he wasn't the only one. Actually, there was quite a few people in the building that were complaining about having backups and problems with their toilets and sewer system, and the drainage was always plugged. So when he wrote the complaint, he was like the fourth one. That's when they decided to send a plumber to do the investigation to find out why they're always having sewer problems.
Yeah. Yeah, in February eighth, nineteen eighty three, you talk about an employee of Dinah Rod. What does he find? Well, we alluded in the beginning, but what does he find? And then that's in the evening and he returns the next day, So tell us what happens in this process of discovery here.
Yeah, when he got there, it was getting close to darker, becoming dark, and he thought it would be something pretty easy. And he gets down in there and he starts finding fleshy substance and then little bones and he described did as KFC. He described it as it looks like someone's been flushing their KFC down the toilet, you know, did in the washroom. And that's how it sort of felt
to him. And because it was late and dark, he didn't know really he was going to have to do more work, and he wanted to report it to a supervisor, so of course he told the supervisor, and then the next morning the supervisor came out with him and a few other people and they started going through and finding more and more, and that's when they decided to call the police.
Yeah, it's interesting too, you write that. Dennis Nilsen. When he returned from work, police introduced themselves and they told the problems with the apartment's drainage pipes, and he asked, since when did the police care about drainage or plumbing?
Yeah? Interesting, Yeah, I know, And he kind of knew it was kind of at the end anyway, because when they want to talk to him, he was like, come on up and then and he even told him where he had other bags full of body parts in the apartment, so he wasn't even trying to hide it when they got up there.
Yeah, you're right. They did several large bags di sected torsos and a bag of internal organs. Also a bag with a skull with no flesh on it, and another one had a severed head and torso with one arm attached. Now, when they ask him, this is February tenth, Detective J. Interview with Nilsen. They have to charge him just for one within the forty eight hours. But when he asked how many bodies, what does he say? They think maybe a couple. What does he say about the total?
Yeah, it was really kind of unusual because at first in the interview he admitted that there were three more corpses in his apartment, you know, and the teach asked in a cabinet that he had and then they had, you know, and another one in a bag. And it was actually later when they asked him and then he sort of they said something and he gave a really weird answer. Oh yeah, that's right. He said, oh, how
many you how many men did you kill? And he just said so, well, twelve or thirteen, and it sort of it made them think what So that was kind of the beginning of the end. And then of course they had to start looking through the whole apartment and then go back to his old place and start putting it all together.
Yeah, you're right that they found a thousand fragments of bones. They had to charge him first with the murder of Stephen Saint Clair and then further investigate to see how many more that they could corroborate. He was interviewed sixteen times, thirty hours total. But he said he had no idea why he murdered the men, and he said he had no actual intercourse with the bodies and destroyed all their
personal items afterwards. So he also wanted to talk and told them about all of these things that we are talking about now, because that's how we got that information. Even with the police, he talked about his conversations and the dress up. He talked about all of it and the disposal methods, didn't he.
Yeah, oh yeah, he was very open about it all. In fact, if anything, you can even see interviews of him on different television programs on YouTube now, and he was very open with all of his conversations about how he did everything. There was no hiding any of it, how he would dispose of the body, what he would do with some of the bodies, how long he kept them, how he removed all the hair and bathom, and he
had he had quite a system to everything. And you know, just a strange fellow all the way around.
Now you talk about the trial, and it didn't take long to pronounce him guilty, but there was he fired his lawyer. He thought he was again how unusual. He thought he could represent himself better than any other attorney. But finally he had an attorney and he pleaded guilty. But diminished responsibility another word for insanity.
Yeah, yeah, he was, he was.
He was.
You know, he had two psychiatrists speak about, you know, on his behalf and said that he lacked emotional development. And you know, it's kind of it's kind of our version over here of being insane.
He was.
He wasn't capable.
He was.
You know, uh, pseudo normal, so outbraids of outbreaks, of Schizoi disturbances and and uh so they had a lot to say about him mentally, he was just not able to handle it. So you know, it's diminished capacity.
What's interesting about the trial is that some of these people that were able to survive and escape, like Douglas Stewart, he was the first witness and he had gone to the to the police and they had considered a lover's quarrel. And then they had another witness was Paul Knobs again, and then Carl Stodter told of two days of torture, being choked, unconscious and held underwater, and then Detective Jay got on the stand and spoke of Nielsen's directing police
to the bodies, and then you had Superintendent Chambers. He read out Nielsen's confession, including all of the ghoulish details for the jury, didn't.
He Yeah, yeah, you know there was really it was an it was really not a hard hard trial person to convict. Really the situation was pretty open. You know, they knew what was what he was doing and how he was doing it, and it Yeah.
You talk about post prison activity because it's very interesting what Nielsen does and how long he lives and all his activities behind bars because he really did want to talk. Won't get into all of that, but what you do write in the book is that that he ends up in Wormwood Scrubs and Hammersmith Prison, West London, and very interestingly, unlike almost everyone else, he does not appeal his conviction. He does not appeal this conviction. But what does he
say about the activities after? Is he remorseful or what does he say about what he had done overall?
You know, I don't remorseful. I don't think is the is the good word. Because when he talked and he you know, he accepted that you know, he couldn't control himself. These are the actions, and in some cases he killed with premeditation, so he planned it, and.
You know he he was.
He was almost proud of of the thrill and the excitement and being able to seduce get men back to his apartment and deciding who he would kill and who he wouldn't, and then how he thought himself was almost a genius by being able to dispose of the bodies and not get caught. So in his mind when he talked about it and when he did interviews, he I think proud is probably the best word you could put it. It was almost like, look at my achievements.
There was two books, and you talk about it right in the book, and I know that I've read this before, that he could not get his what was up to forty five hundred page manuscript. The authorities made sure that there was grounds to be able to not prevent or to prevent that book from being published and all the things that he had to say, and they used some legal ways of doing that, obviously, but this would have
been called history of a Drowning Boy. And also the other bit of I guess information about this, A great wealth of knowledge was from an author named Brian Masters, and now it's considered a classic Killing for Company where he spoke and of course Wels corresponded with Dennis Nielsen about his life. So there's a difference you write in a book of some of the facts that Dennis Nielsen would admit to well say in his own memoir and
what he had said to Brian Masters. There is a little bit of a difference in accounts, isn't there.
Yeah, Yeah, that's and I tried to just emphasize. I just I didn't want to say one was right or wrong. It was like the Morris Murder when I did it. There's a couple of different versions, and so the best thing to do is just kind of lay them out there and kind of go, well, you know, there's slight changes here, and you kind of have to try and you know, decipher it and figure it out what you believe for yourself.
Yeah. Yeah, it's very very interesting to all of the things that he wanted to say and talk about, and again Killing for Company, if anyone who read it, it just reinforces a lot of things that we had you had come to as well, and all the information about that. I mean, it's I hate to see it summed up that because it sounds like a somewhat nice excuse that he was so lonely had to kill the people and so that they wouldn't leave. But that's a very very
nice version of what Dennis Nielsen was all about. You write that in May twelfth, twenty and eighteen, at seventy two years old, he died of natural causes in prison. And yet though you write also that he was attacked in prison, given eighty nine stitches in one prison, and so they moved him to segregation at another place. So he had an eventful career behind bars, didn't he.
Oh yeah, it wasn't boring. And again, when you look at him, and even when he did the Central Television interviews and stuff, and you talk about the books and stuff, he would always present himself in a light that he thought they wanted him to see. So I think that explained some of his changes in some of his stories
as well. But he seemed to you know, you can wrap it up as any way you want, in a sense that he can say, well, you know, he's lonely and he had to kill for company, and he had all this stuff that can all be said, and he might even believe it, and he might even have been mentally disturbed enough to kind of use that as an excuse, but it doesn't really take away how evil he really was.
Yes, yes, absolutely, yes, And just in closing too Prime museum in London I thought was very interesting, which is referred to the Black Museum. Collector has got Nielsen's last letter there in that Black Museum, and certainly that would be an appropriate name for anything that Dennis Nilsen was associated with.
Yeah, that's.
Now. I just want to thank you very much, Alan for coming on and talking about Drinks, dinner and death, True story of Dennis Nielsen. For those that might want to look at other work, tell us about your Facebook website ways that they can look and contact you if necessary.
Oh, for all my book work, it's ALANAR Warren dot com and that can that takes care of all my writing and House of Mystery dot com. It's for the radio show I do, which is a crime show, and that's really on Facebook. Of course, you can find me on Facebook under Alan R. Warren and that's easy to find. And I was going to stay for the first twelve emails I get at radio cub at gmail dot com. I'll give them a free book of the Drinks, Dinner
and Death. So I just need you to send me an email and mention this show and the first twelve we'll get a book.
Well that sounds great, very very exciting. Thank you very much, and I'm sure the audience will appreciate that. So people listen to the program, get out there and give them a call because the books won't last long. Thank you very much, Alan R. Warren for Drinks, Dinner and Death. It's been a pleasure. You have a great evening, and goodnight, thank you, good night. Four