Killer Profiles: DENNIS NILSEN - "The Muswell Hill Murderer"

LEFT: Dennis Andrew Nilsen / RIGHT: David Tennent portrayed as The Muswell Hill Murderer

I’m sure we’re all very familiar with the actions of the notorious Jeffrey Dahmer. Targeting young, gay men for sex, killing them in the process for sexual gratification while cannibalizing them after; even if you don’t know the entire history of the man, you at least know these basics. What if I were to tell you, that there was another man across the pond that mimicked most of these same behaviors? Yes, the UK had their very own Jeff Dahmer, and his named is Dennis Nilsen. Sit tight, because this is a good one.

Let’s start by explaining how I even stumbled upon the name, Dennis Nilsen. I love true crime and all things serial killers. Not necessarily their acts, but I have a fascination with the mental gymnastics and the psyche of it all. That’s when I heard ITV is launching the highly anticipated true-crime series DES, which is coming at the end of 2020. David Tennant will portray Dennis Nilsen in this series. Yes, The Doctor will be portraying one of the UK’s most notorious serial killers of the 1980s.

LEFT: Dennis Andrew Nilsen / RIGHT: David Tennent portrayed as The Muswell Hill Murderer

Known as The Muswell Hill Murderer, Dennis Andrew Nilsen was a Scottish serial killer and necrophile who confessed to murdering at least twelve men and boys (some reports state there were as many as sixteen). His sprees were active in London between 1978 and 1983. Although he claims to have killed twelve, he had two would-be murder victims that escaped. Unfortunately did not report their attacks to the police or press charges. Fortunately, they were able to testify against him, helping to produce a sentence of life in prison. While they did provide first-hand accounts to the actions of Nilsen, I wonder how many lives would have been saved had they reported their attacks to authorities.

All of Nilsen’s murders took place in various North London apartments, with the majority of his later kills committed in the Muswell Hill district of London, to which he would get his namesake. He would lure his victims to his home and would proceed to strangle and often drown them. He had an odd ritual of bathing and dressing the deceased bodies, and would keep them around the house for long periods of time (usually for company and sex), and once they began decomposing he would dissect and dispose of their corpse by throwing them into bonfires or flushing human meat down the toilet.

When learning of a new serial killer and their acts, I usually ask myself “was this nature or nurture?”

Was he born a killer or was he created?

Looking into his early life, he was originally from the town of Fraserburgh in Scottland. He was one of three children born into an unhappy marriage, as his father, Olav Nilsen, didn’t take marriage seriously. Olav was in the Free Norwegian Forces and made very little attempts at spending any quality time with his family. His mother, Elizabeth Whyte, would divorce Olav and would move into his grandparent’s home. This created a very close bond to Nilsen’s maternal grandparents. When he was six years old, his grandfather passed away unexpectedly. It’s been said that viewing his grandfather’s corpse at the funeral traumatized him, which is believed to be what caused his behavioral psychopathology. He took his grandfather’s death hard, becoming quieter and reserved, never really participating in family activities, or showed any type of affection. The only person he was particularly close to was his younger sister, mainly because he envied his older brother who got most of his mother’s and grandmother’s attention.

As he got older, he discovered he was gay which, understandably, caused a little bit of confusion at first and he initially was ashamed of it. He hid his sexuality from everyone, and many of the boys he was attracted to had similar facial features as his sister. During this time, it was also reported that he would molest his sister believing that this was evidence he wasn’t gay, but bisexual. At fourteen years old, he joined the Army Cadet Force, viewing it as an opportunity to escape his life as it was.

He would join the Army Catering Corps in 1961, enlisting for nine years working as a cook and a butcher. While he was stationed in Aldershot, his homosexual desires began to increase but found a way to disguise them from his peers and colleagues. During this time he would become dependent on alcohol, to which his peers brushed off as him drinking to combat his shyness. Nilsen later would admit he would drink and pretend to be passed out drunk, in hopes one of his fellow soldiers would take advantage of him while he was “unconscious.” Nilsen would eventually serve as a cook for The Queen’s Royal Guard, before being reassigned to the Shetland Islands where he evidently ended his 11-year career with the military. He would then move to London.

in 1975, he meets a 20-year old man named David after intervening in an altercation he was in. Nilsen takes David to his place and spends the rest of the night drinking and engaging in conversation. Nilsen discovered that David was gay, had just moved to London, was living in a hostel, and was unemployed. After some more conversation, the men decide to move in together in a larger apartment using money Nilsen inherited after his father’s death. Nilsen was sexually attracted to David, and while they acted as sexual partners, David would state in a later interview he was sexually uninterested in Nilsen. After a year, their relationship would strain, causing them to sleep in separate beds and they both would bring home casual sexual encounters. In 1977, David would move out, and Nilsen would not be able to hold relationships the way he did with David. He would have at least three failed relationship attempts, later admitting he wasn’t the easiest person to live with. His drinking would continue, spending his evenings drinking alone while usually listening to music on the radio.

Now, as I previously mentioned, Nilsen had killed about twelve men and boys and is reported to have attempted to kill seven others. As with Jeffrey Dahmer, he targeted men and boys who were often homeless or prostitutes. The majority of his victims were gay, but some of his victims were straight men he met at the bar or on the train/bus. Many were also students of the local university. He would lure them into his home offering them a drink or providing them shelter from the cold. While in his home, he would either have sex with these men or keep them around for company. While they were sleeping or too drunk to fight back, he would strangle or drown his victims. And again, like Jeffrey Dahmer, he wanted someone “who wouldn’t leave”. In this case, the only option he saw was having a corpse to hang out with. Some would survive the attacks and had very little memory of what had happened to them. For those that weren’t as lucky and succumbed to his attacks, he would clean their dead bodies, dress them, and kept them in his home for company and would have sex with their corpse until they were too decomposed to keep. He used his butchering skills he learned while in the army to help him dispose of their bodies. His 1st apartment had a small garden behind it that he would use to bury dismembered body parts or burn the remains in a bonfire.

Murder Victim : Stephen Holmes, Age 14

His first victim was 14-year-old Stephen Holmes. Nilsen had been drinking heavily that day, and his loneliness convinced him to walk into the pub looking for company to take home. He meets Holmes as he is being denied the purchase of booze. He invited the boy to his house, promising that they’d drink alcohol and listen to some music. They drank themselves to the point of unconsciousness, and in the morning Nilsen found the boy asleep next to him on his bed. Nilsen was afraid to wake him, because he didn’t want him to leave, and decided then and there he was going to stay with him whether he wanted to or not. Nilsen strangled the boy with a necktie and proceeded to drown him in a bucket of water. He washed the boy’s body, masturbated over the body, and waited for rigor mortis to fully set in before hiding the corpse under his floorboards. The body stayed there for eight months before he used the garden behind his apartment to dispose of the remains.

8 months after killing Holmes, he would attempt to murder Andrew Ho, a foreign student from Hong Kong. Ho was lured from a pub to Nilsen’s apartment under the assumption they’d have sex. Nilsen tried to strangle Ho as he did to Holmes, but Ho managed to escape and reported the incident to the police. After police questioned Nilsen, Ho had decided to not continue to press charges. The reason he decided to not prosecute is unknown.

The frequency of his kills had increased significantly following the murder of his fourth victim, 16-year-old Martyn Duffey. Duffey was a homeless boy that accepted Nilsen’s friendly invitation to sleep in his apartment for the night. He drank two beers and called it a night. Nilsen went to the room Duffey was sleeping in, trapped him under the covers, and strangled him. Duffey didn’t immediately die. Limp and unconscious, he was still alive, so Nilsen took him to his kitchen sink and finished the job by drowning him. His lifeless body was first placed on a chair, then on the bed, to where Nilsen kissed, caressed, and masturbated all over the body. He took him to the bathroom and got into the tub with him. Duffey would be stuffed into the cupboard for two full weeks and eventually placed under the floorboards once Nilsen noticed the body was showing signs of bloating.

Nilsen would commit 6 more murders and attempt one in this apartment (totaling 12 victims). He had accumulated so many bodies under his floorboards that the decomposing bodies started to smell of death and attracted insects and maggots. Nilsen would spray insecticide and deodorant on the bodies twice a day, but there was no way he was going to get rid of the smell of rotting flesh. He eventually removed the bodies from the floorboards and burned a large bonfire in his garden to dispose of them completely. He knew that the smell of burning human flesh would be an issue, so he combined their bodies with old car tires to mask the smell. After the fire subsided, he raked through the ashes for any notable signs of human bones.

in 1981, his landlord had decided to renovate the apartment building and Nilsen was asked to move. This caused him to lose access to the garden he used to dispose of the decomposed corpses, was unable to store anything under his new floorboards, so he needed a new method to his madness. Anyone he had in his apartment wasn’t assaulted in any way, shape, or form. Although tempted, he was able to stop himself from killing as there wasn’t a real way to store their bodies.

In 1982, that all changed when he met 23-year-old John Howlett. As per usual, he met the man at a pub and had a pretty long conversation. They would eventually go their separate ways. Some time goes by and Howlett noticed Nilsen drinking in the pub alone. Recognizing each other, they chat it up again and decide to go to Nilsen’s place to continue drinking. They had been drinking for a while. Both drunk and tired, Howlett decides to lay in Nilsen’s bed and sleep. Unlike most situations, it was reported the Nilsen wanted Howlett to leave the apartment, but he refused to leave. Nilsen sat at the edge of the bed, staring at Howlett for a while before deciding he was just going to kill him. Howlett put up a fight, and there was a struggle in that room as he too tried to strangle his attacker. Nilsen strangled Howlett three times, but each time Howlett wouldn’t stop breathing. Nilsen eventually filled his bathtub and drowned Howlett. Howlett fought so hard, that Nilsen recounted having his victim’s hand/finger impressions on his neck from being strangled for a week.

Collage of some of Nilsen’s murder victims

.A couple of months later he meets a 21-year-old named Carl Strottor. Nilsen struck up a conversation with him noting he looked a little down. He found out the guy had just broken up with his boyfriend, was depressed over the breakup and it lead him to console himself with alcohol. Nilsen invited him back to his apartment, making it clear he had no intention of having sex with him; he just wanted to give him some company. Once they get to Nilsen’s apartment, they both continue drinking and Strottor eventually fell asleep in a sleeping bag. He woke up suddenly, to find Nilsen strangling him and instructing him to “stay still.” At Nilsen’s trial, Stottor says he was initially under the belief that Nilsen was trying to free him from the zipper of the sleeping bag before he became unconscious again. He reported that he heard the faint sound of running water before being submerged, realizing Nilsen was trying to drown him. In his testimony, he was able to bring his head above the water to scream, “No more, please! No more!” Cries Nilsen ignored as he continued to hold Strottor’s head underwater. His body went limp, and it was enough to convince Nilsen that he was dead. Sitting him up on a chair, Nilsen noticed that Strottor was still alive. He then proceeded to rub his arms and legs to help promote blood circulation and laid him in his bed. When Strottor came out of unconsciousness, Nilsen held him and tried explaining to Strottor that he accidentally strangled himself with the zipper of the sleeping bag, and he was able to resuscitate him. The next two days, Strottor was coming in and out of consciousness, until finally regaining enough strength to question his memory of what happened; not just being strangled but also being drowned. Nilsen had come up with an elaborate lie, explaining to him that he was caught in the zipper after having a nightmare and he was able to free him from it. After he was placed in cold water to help remove him from the shock he was in. The next day Nilsen walked Strottor to the nearest train station, said goodbye, and went their separate ways.

He would kill two more times before killing his final victim, Stephen Sinclair. Sinclair fell asleep in Nilsen’s apartment after a drug and alcohol binge. Nilsen didn’t skip a beat and strangled him with a rope and necktie. After killing Sinclair, Nilsen noted bandages on his victim’s arms, to what was a surprise to him, discovered deep slash wounds from where Sinclair had attempted suicide. Nilsen followed his usual routine; bathed the body, laid the body on the bed, and sprinkled baby powder all over it. Nilsen then fell asleep next to the corpse. As with the rest of his corpses, they’d be dismembered and stored. The difference this time was there were no floorboards to store them in. He wrapped various body parts in plastic wrap, stored the body parts in closets, cupboards, or drawers. He tried to dispose of their flesh, organs, and smaller pieces of bone by flushing their remains down the toilet. He also boiled the heads, hands and feet to remove the flesh off these sections of the victims’ bodies.

In what was probably the dumbest move known to serial killer history, in 1983 Nilsen wrote a letter to his landlord complaining that his drains were blocked and that this was a situation that made living in the building intolerable for himself and the other tenants in the building. The next day, he refused to let anyone in his apartment as he was dismembering Sinclair’s body on his kitchen floor. A Dyno-Rod employee had responded to the plumbing complaints made by Nilsen and other tenants. When they removed the drain cover, they found the drain to be packed with a flesh-like substance. The drain inspector called his supervisor to take a look at the situation and assess it, but this wouldn’t happen until the next day. When they returned to the drain, the found it cleaned out. This obviously made them extremely suspicious, and they did some deeper investigating to which they found small pieces of bone and what looked like chicken skin in a pipe leading off from the drain (these were later confirmed to be human remains.) The drain inspectors immediately called police to report what they had found. They were able to trace the blockage to Nilsen’s apartment. Detective Peter Jay and two colleagues waited outside until Nilsen returned home from work. When Nilsen got home, the detectives introduced themselves and were inquiring about the blockage that was coming from his unit. Nilsen was surprised that they were interested in his apartment. Det. Jay had requested entry to his apartment to talk about the situation further. As he and his colleagues walked into Nilsen’s apartment, they were overcome by the smell of rotting flesh. When Nilsen asked why they were interested in his apartment, and the detective explained the blockage was due to human flesh, Nilsen flat-out played dumb. He acted surprised stating, “Good grief, how awful!” In response, Det. Jay replied, “Don’t mess about, where’s the rest of the body?” Nilsen admitted that the remainder of the body was in two plastic bags in the closet. Det. Jay and his colleagues noted the overpowering smell of decomposition. The officers didn’t open the closet but asked if there were any other areas of the apartment that he was holding body parts in. Nilsen calmly showed where there were additional body parts in the room. One bag contained two torsos, one of which had been vertically dissected, and a shopping bag containing internal organs. The second bag had a human skull which had almost all its skin completely removed, a severed head, and a torso with arms attached but hands missing. Both heads were found to have been subjected to moist heat.

After his arrest, he immediately provided extensive details about his killing spree, admitting to killing at least 15 young men, despite receiving a legal caution. He also admitted to the attempted murder of seven others, although he could name only four of them. He also apologized to the police for not being able to tell them the exact number of people he had killed. At no point did he show any remorse, and was willing to help police with amassing evidence against him, even taking them to his old address to point out where he would burn his victims’ bodies.

After his confession, he was officially charged with murder on February 11, 1983. Nilsen was held at Brixton Prison pending trial. While he was there, he wrote over fifty notebooks of his memories to try and assist the prosecution and also drew what he referred to as “sad sketches” which described his treatment of his victims. He seemed unsure of his fate, at times he showed no remorse and then showing concern about public attitudes towards him. He fired and rehired his legal council multiple times before his trial. Nilsen was adamant he didn’t know why he killed these men and boys, simply saying, “I’m hoping you will tell me that” when asked his motive was for the murders. He was adamant his decision to kill wasn’t premeditated, rahter made moments before he actually did so. When asked if he had any remorse, Nilsen replied: “I wished I could stop, but I couldn’t. I had no other thrill or happiness”. He emphasized he took no pleasure from the act of killing, but “worshipped the art and the act of death”.

On October 24, 1983, he was charged with six counts of murder and two charges of attempted murder. He pleaded not guilty due to mental defect. The defense wasn’t if Nilsen had committed murder, but what his state of mind was before, during, and after the murders. The prosecution relied on interview notes from his arrest (which took more than four hours to read verbatim to the court) as well as the testimony of the three victims who managed to escape and all of whom he had attempted to strangle. The prosecution also argued that Nilsen was sane, was in full control of his actions and these were all premeditated murders; to which the defense argued Nilsen suffered from diminished responsibility which in turn made him unable of forming the actual intention of committing murder and should be convicted of manslaughter, not murder.

Two psychiatrists testified on behalf of the defense. Dr. James MacKeith testified that thought a lack of emotional development, Nilsen had trouble expressing any other emotion other than anger, which caused him to treat other people as components to his fantasies. He also described Nilsen’s association between unconscious bodies and sexual arousal, saying that Nilsen suffered from narcissism, an impaired sense of identity, and depersonalized the people around him. He stated his conclusions that Nilsen displayed many signs of “maladaptive behaviour,” the combination of which in one man, was lethal.

The second psychiatrist to testify for the defense, Dr. Patrick Gallwey, diagnosed Nilsen with a “borderline, false-self as if pseudo-normal, narcissistic personality disorder”, with “occasional outbreaks of schizoid disturbances” that Nilsen managed most of the time to keep at bay. Gallwey stated that in episodic breakdowns, Nilsen became predominantly schizoid, acting in an impulsive, violent, and in a sudden manner. During the cross-examination, prosecuting counsel, Allan Green, mainly focused on Nilsen’s degree of awareness and his ability to make decisions. Dr. Gallwey acknowledged that Nilsen was intellectually aware of his actions, but stressed that due to his personality disorder, Nilsen did not “appreciate the criminal nature of his actions.” Physical evidence included photographs of the murder scenes, as well as the chopping board used to dissect the victims, and the cooking pot used to boil the skulls, feet and hands. In summary, the judge addressed the jury, instructing them that “a mind can be evil, without being abnormal.” This quite obviously confused the jury.

Following the closing arguments of both the prosecution and the defense, the jury retired to consider their verdict. On November 4th, 1983, the jury returned with a majority verdict, which was guilty on all six counts of murder with one count of attempted murder. He was sentenced to life in prison. Nilsen’s minimum term was initially set 25 years by the judge, but the Home Secretary later imposed a whole life tariff, which meant he would never be released.

Nilsen would conduct multiple interviews during his lifetime and wrote a 400-page autobiography titled, The History Of a Drowning Boy. At least four of his victims remain unidentified. Nilsen suffered a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm that was repaired but suffered a blood clot as a complication of his surgery. He died on May 12, 2018.

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