British convicted murderer. He admitted the murder and mutilation of between 12 and 16 young men in England between 1978 and 1983. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, with a recommendation that he serve a minimum of 25 years on six counts of murder and two of attempted murder.
Dennis Andrew Nilsen (born November 23, 1945) is a Scottish serial killer who lived in London.
Early life and leadup to murders
Nilsen was born in Strichen, Aberdeenshire to a Scottish mother and a Norwegian father.
Nilsen claimed the first traumatic event to shape his life came about when he was a small child, when his beloved grandfather died.
In 1961, Nilsen enlisted in the British Army and became a cook in Aden, Cyprus and Berlin. From the mid 1970s, Nilsen worked as a civil servant in a jobcentre.
Aspects of the murders and arrest
All his victims were students or homeless men whom he picked up in bars and brought to his house either for sex or just for company. Nilsen strangled and drowned his victims during the night, waking up with little memory of what he had done. Nilsen had access to a large garden and was able to burn many of the remains in a bonfire.
In 1981, however, Nilsen moved to an upstairs flat.
Dennis Nilsen was arrested in 1983 on suspicion of multiple murders. When his house was searched, they found three heads in a cupboard, and 13 more bodies in Nilsen's former home, 195 Melrose Avenue, Cricklewood. During the trial at Old Bailey, Nilsen was cold and distant, and seemed unaffected by the fact that he had murdered 15 people.
The murders and attempted murders
Murder 1: Nilsen's first murder took place on December 30, 1978. Nilsen claimed to have met his first victim in a gay bar. Nilsen strangled him with a necktie until he was unconscious and then drowned him in a bucket of water. On November 9, 2006, Nilsen finally confessed to the murder of Holmes in a letter sent from his prison cell to the Evening Standard, a London newspaper. Between the first and second murders, Nilsen attempted to murder a student from Hong Kong he had met in the West End. Although questioned by police, the student decided not to prosecute, and Nilsen was released without charge. Murder 2: The second victim (on December 3, 1979) was Canadian student Kenneth Ockendon. During their sexual intercourse, Nilsen strangled him. Ockendon was one of the few murder victims who was reported as a missing person. In May 1980, he accepted Nilsen's invitation to come over to his place. Nilsen could not remember how he murdered Sutherland; Murder 5: The fifth victim was another male prostitute; Murder 6: Nilsen could recall very little about this and the following two victims. Murder 7: The seventh victim was what Nilsen described as a starving "hippy-type" he had found sleeping in a doorway in Charing Cross. Murder 8: Nilsen could recall nothing at all about his eighth victim. Murder 9 and Murder 10: Both were young Scottish men, picked up in pubs in Soho. Murder 11: The 11th victim was a skinhead Nilsen picked up at Piccadilly Circus who had a tattoo around his neck saying "cut here". He had boasted to Nilsen how tough he was and how he liked to fight; however, once he was drunk, he proved no match for Nilsen, who hung his naked torso in his bedroom for 24 hours before he was buried under the floorboards. At some point between murders 6 and 11, on November 10, 1980, a potential victim of Nilsen's woke up while being strangled and was able to fend off his attacker. Murder 12: The 12th victim (and the last before Nilsen moved home) was a man called Malcolm Barlow. Nilsen found him in a doorway not far from his own home, and took him in and called an ambulance for him. When Barlow was released the next day, he returned to Nilsen's home to thank him and was pleased to be invited in for a meal and a few drinks. After moving to a new house in Muswell Hill in October 1981, Nilsen met a student in a bar in Soho and invited him back to his new home. Following this attempted murder, Nilsen met a drag queen in a pub in Camden. After passing out from strangulation, he came to while Nilsen was trying to drown him in a bath of cold water and managed to fight off his attacker. Murder 13: John Howlett was the first to be murdered in Nilsen's Muswell Hill home, in December 1981. however, Nilsen had taken a disliking to him and was determined that he should die. There was a tremendous struggle, in which at one point Howlett even tried to strangle Nilsen back. Murder 14: Graham Allen was another homeless man who met Nilsen in Shaftesbury Avenue. After murdering him, Nilsen left Allen's body in the bath, unsure how to dispose of it. After three days, he was dismembered like Nilsen's previous victim. Murder 15: Nilsen's final victim was a drug addict called Stephen Sinclair. They met in Oxford Street and Sinclair managed to scrounge a hamburger off Nilsen, who then suggested that they go back to his place. It was Sinclair's dismembered remains in the drain outside Nilsen's home that first alerted the police to Nilsen's murders.Trial and Sentence
Nilsen was convicted of six murders and two attempted murders, and was sentenced to life imprisonment on 4 November 1983.
Nilsen's minimum term was set at 25 years by the trial judge, but the Home Secretary later imposed a whole life tariff, which meant he would never be released. But after the Home Secretary was stripped of his powers to set minimum terms in November 2002, Nilsen could be freed on life licence in 2008 because of his original 25-year minimum sentence.
Prison
Nilsen is currently held at HMP Full Sutton maximum security prison near Pocklington in East Yorkshire.
During his time in prison he has proved a thorn in the side of prison authorities, bringing Judicial Review procedings over Whitemoor prison's decision not to allow him access to homosexual pornography.
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