by Russ Coffey
CONTENTS
Title Page
INTRODUCTION
1 9 FEBRUARY 1983
2 GROWING UP
3 PRISON LIFE – BRIXTON
4 OLD KIT BAG
5 PRISON LIFE – THE FIRST DECADE
6 ADRIFT IN LONDON
7 WHITEMOOR
8 FROM FANTASY TO MURDER
9 CRANLEY GARDENS
10 THE TRIAL
11 THE END OF THE ROAD
SOURCES AND REFERENCE MATERIAL
Plates
Copyright
INTRODUCTION
‘History of a Drowning Boy unfolds as a tale of another flawed man who committed 12 homicides. It is certainly no whitewash of my life. I have written my past candidly.’
DENNIS NILSEN
The above lines were written to me in 2003 from HMP Full Sutton, Yorkshire, by Dennis Nilsen, one of Britain’s most notorious serial killers. I had found myself exchanging letters with Nilsen while researching a magazine article about a half-written autobiography he wanted to have published. During our lengthy correspondence, prisoner B62006 would try to persuade me of new insights he had into his former behaviour. He wrote fluently and logically, interspersing his answers with personable comments. Sometimes, in fact, he presented himself so reasonably I had to remind myself what he had done.
Between 1978 and 1983, Dennis Andrew Nilsen murdered up to 15 young men. He met them in West End bars and then invited them back to his suburban London flat for further drinking and, possibly, sex. As they slept, he strangled them. The next morning, he would talk to the bodies. Once out of the flat, however, he would revert to his ‘ordinary’ self – quiet, neat and devoted to his pet dog.
It was this ability to act perfectly normally between the killings that enabled Nilsen to carry on killing for so long. During just over four years of murder, his colleagues at the Job Centre never noticed anything particularly alarming. They simply considered him to be shy and dull. There were some occasions, however, when his demeanour became a little unsettling. He could lose his temper quickly or become overbearing if the conversation turned to politics. On those occasions, even those who had tried to befriend him were struck by his intensity.
Nilsen was arrested on 9 February 1983, when fragments of human flesh blocking the drains of number 23 Cranley Gardens, Muswell Hill, were traced back to his flat. Inside, the police found the remains of three young men. The small, attic flat stank of death and neglect. The windows were flung open to disperse the smell. One detective had to hang back by the door to avoid being sick.
Nilsen’s manner was as surreal as the state of his flat. Quite nonchalantly, he confessed to being Britain’s most prolific serial killer. He spoke calmly and continuously, explaining that many of his victims had been runaways whom he now wanted to help identify. The police interrogations were as bizarre as they were disturbing.
When the press reported the contents of Nilsen’s confessions, these revelations sent a communal shiver up the nation’s spine. But for some of the psychiatrists who worked on the case, Nilsen’s behaviour in interviews made words like ‘mad’ and ‘bad’ seem utterly inadequate. They believed that his actions stemmed from extremely complex personality problems.
Many years later, academics and other writers would also attempt explanations of what had gone on. In March 2012, one psychologist who knows Nilsen well, Matthew Malekos, published a controversial 300-page thesis that invited readers to consider whether, in prison, the killer may have actually psychologically ‘recovered’.
But, even if that were so, recovered from what? He hadn’t been deemed to be insane, so what was he? What were his drives and motives? Did he really have an emotional disorder or was he simply a psychopath? The title of one successful book on the case, Killing for Company, suggested Nilsen seemed, in part, to want companionship from his victims. Newer theories appear in TV documentaries every couple of years.
Part of this interest is just macabre fascination. But there is also the fact that so many of the details derive from the killer himself. Even before his trial, Nilsen wrote hundreds of essays in which he attempted to comprehend his psychology. During 30 subsequent years in prison, Nilsen has continued to attempt a dialogue with the outside world.
Part of his motivation is undoubtedly self-publicity. But might there also be more to it? Nilsen’s autobiography, after all, seems to show some real desire to understand his killing urges. It is now several thousand pages long and has been seen by only four people, including me. For years, Nilsen dreamed of having it published.
His ambitions were quashed in the late nineties when the prison authorities realised what he was up to. The working draft, History of a Drowning Boy, was confiscated. In the years that followed, Nilsen used legal aid to take the prison service to court to get his book back so that he could finish it. In 2011, the Daily Record estimated that his trips to the courts had probably cost the tax payer £65,000.
I first contacted Nilsen after reading a newspaper article about his manuscript. Like many journalists who have written to him, I was on a routine search for stories. He responded quickly and, soon, his letters became a regular fixture in my life. I had, initially, expected to find corresponding with him disturbing in an immediate way. But Nilsen’s written persona was, on the surface, amusing and charming.
He wanted me to inform the nation that he was ready to tell all. Through a friend of his, he gave me full access to his writing. As a result of what I was shown, in 2003 the Sunday Times magazine commissioned a cover feature called Memoirs of a Serial Killer. While writing it, I discovered to my surprise that, while most people found the idea of the autobiography revolting, there were some who believed he was worth listening to. The authorities, however, were consistent in their line that his manuscript was pornographic and outrageous.
Still, Nilsen remained adamant he had worthwhile things to say. Just before one court hearing, he wrote to me: ‘I am not contained, mute and immobile in a glass jar as some kind of eternal official specimen of popular “evil”. As I am alive, I must live as a man.’
‘Living as a man’, for Nilsen, meant being able to read and write. Being able to fulfil himself was a lot more than his victims could ever do. And therein lies the crux of the moral problem presented by Nilsen’s writing. Clearly, to be in the public interest, Nilsen’s book would need to be more than just amateur self-analysis. At the very least, it would need to provide a very rare insight into the workings of a killer’s mind. It would need to explain convincingly why he did what he did.
After his trial, Nilsen confessed to his biographer, Brian Masters, that he simply enjoyed killing. Now he wants to retract that and offer a more psychologically complete answer. He wrote to me: ‘I was under constant pressure from almost everyone I spoke to, to admit that I had enjoyed killing. After my trial, in order to give Brian Masters a “happy” ending to his book on me, I wrote to him saying I probably did enjoy it. I was grasping for an explanation, a certainty, instead of leaving the whole sorry conundrum hanging diffused in the air.’
When I read those lines they simply struck me as evasive. Yet, when I read his full manuscript it seemed History of a Drowning Boy offered something of greater interest; at least for those with the stomach to read it. It was not just what he said that seemed revealing, but also the way in which he said it.
Nilsen’s overall story is predictable – a self-pitying tale of growing up like ‘a dog that had never been patted’, and then turning into a dysfunctional ‘lone wolf’. The details, however, are more telling. In the passages whe
re he explores his sexual imagination, the prose is thick with fantasy and detail. Still, these words need very careful interpretation. Nilsen focuses just on what interests him and often changes his story. Without points of comparison, his writing is often frighteningly misleading.
The book you are reading explains both what Nilsen has to say, and also tries to put it in context. To do so, I have drawn on many years of research. These include interviews with victims, police and others who knew him.
The archives of Nilsen’s writing run into several boxes’ worth. When I was first loaned History of a Drowning Boy back in 2003 – at the time of the Sunday Times magazine project – it comprised four volumes: ‘Orientation in Me’; ‘After the Feast’; ‘A Long Way Down and Rising’ (about his time in Wakefield and Albany Prisons); and ‘Whitemoor: A Volume of Extremes’. Since these, Nilsen has written more volumes, copious essays, and has continued to write letters to me on the clear understanding that I might one day use these, and his unpublished manuscript, to write more about his work. Such professional interest in his autobiography has formed the basis of our correspondence. In the following chapters, material from these letters, and the manuscript, has been interwoven with my own words and with information from other sources to give a sense of what I believe Nilsen’s finished autobiography would look like. Naturally, emphasis has been put on the most psychologically significant aspects.
There can surely never be any definitive answers as to why Dennis Nilsen did what he did. So why write another book about the man and the case? Many may feel that people like Nilsen are best forgotten about; they are evil-doers whose stories are macabre and possibly corrupting. A more liberal and rationalist approach, however, might be to say that Nilsen and others like him represent a problem that society has to confront. He himself says, ‘I lived with and among you all.’ That much is true. And if his evil-doing stemmed from psychological disorders that went unnoticed, we surely need to know as much as we can about their origin and nature. Despite all the interest in serial killers over the past 30 years, little is understood about how their internal world drives their exterior behaviour. We need to know more.
In addition to looking at Nilsen’s explanations for his crimes, this book is also concerned with the way in which he has tried to tell his story. How has he managed to get people to listen? What does this say about us? And what exactly is it that people find so interesting about the case? Finally, it is essential that Nilsen’s story be seen constantly in conjunction with the perspective of his victims. Where possible, I have spoken to those who have been directly affected by his horrific crimes.
Ultimately, it is up to the reader to make up his or her own mind about Nilsen’s writing. To that end, I have been careful to present the material clearly – both Nilsen’s own accounts and also the testimony of those who have known him. In particular, it would have been impossible to present a clear and balanced account without the help of DCI Peter Jay, victim Carl Stottor, victim’s son Shane Levene, Scotland Yard’s Crime Museum, and authors Brian Masters and Gordon Honeycombe.
Russ Coffey, May 2013
1
9 FEBRUARY 1983
‘I accept moral responsibility and guilt and punishment which the law and justice demands. It has been thus since the moment of invited arrest in that top flat at 23 Cranley Gardens in that snow-driven evening in February 1983.’
DENNIS NILSEN, IN A LETTER TO THE AUTHOR
Over the years, the story of how Dennis Nilsen was arrested has been told and retold until it has acquired a ring of modern folklore. It goes like this:
On Thursday, 3 February 1983, residents of 23 Cranley Gardens, in the north London suburb of Muswell Hill, found their drains were blocked. They called a drainage engineer from Dyno-Rod. His second visit was on Wednesday, 9 February, a particularly freezing cold day. After careful thought, he concluded that pieces of flesh and bones were causing the blockage. Unsure if they were animal or human, he decided to call the police.
Three officers arrived in a squad car. After peering down the manhole, all agreed something wasn’t right. They fished the pieces of grey matter out from beneath the manhole cover and took them to the lab. An hour later, the pathologist confirmed them as human. In the mortuary, the detectives knew they were dealing with something hugely significant … and particularly grim.
They returned to Cranley Gardens. An inspection of the outside of the building seemed to indicate that the flesh had come from a pipe that led to the top flat. The neighbours told them that the man who lived there was peculiar and that he should be back from work in about an hour. DCI Peter Jay said they would wait. Rubbing their hands to keep warm, the three men discussed what they knew about Nilsen – his name, age, and that he worried his neighbours. Still, they had little idea of what he might be like. How might a man who had possibly been chopping up bodies and flushing them down the toilet react to arrest?
Nilsen was also waiting. He had spent the afternoon at work mentally preparing himself for his arrest. Since leaving for work that morning, he been quite convinced the game was up. He knew the body parts he’d been flushing down the toilet were still blocking the plumbing.
When Nilsen finally returned to his flat, the police had moved into the warmth of the lobby. Nilsen opened the door to find DCI Jay staring at him. He knowingly returned his gaze. Jay began by asking about the plumbing.
In his calm Scottish voice, Nilsen replied, ‘Since when were the police interested in people’s drains?’
The policemen suggested they take the conversation upstairs. In the flat, Jay explained about the human remains.
‘How awful!’ exclaimed Nilsen.
Jay nervously snapped, ‘Stop messing around … where’s the rest of the body?’
Then, in a matter-of-fact way, Nilsen took them to the damp, cold front room and opened one of the wardrobes where he had stored bodies. He said he had much more to tell and wanted to do it at the station.
In the car back to Hornsey Police Station, the detectives asked their prisoner what it was he wanted to tell them. Had he killed two men?
‘Fifteen or sixteen over four years,’ was Nilsen’s reply. That made him the most prolific multiple killer yet discovered in the UK. And just like in the movies, he was quiet, intelligent and personable. His writing still often is.
In his version of those events above, however, Nilsen changes the emphasis so that it is he at the centre, looking for ‘help’. He says the police were unsure of themselves. It was he, he says, who finally tired of concealing his ‘problem’ and who led the police each step of the way with his sudden, immediate and full co-operation.
Either way, the stark truth was that three young men had been senselessly murdered in that particular flat. At least nine had been killed in another. As Cranley Gardens was a top-floor flat and Nilsen didn’t have a car, it had become inevitable that he would soon be caught. Nilsen even says that he deliberately ‘invited’ arrest by his activities. There is no evidence for that.
What the police did find plenty of evidence for was that Nilsen suffered from a severe and dangerous personality disorder. The pot on the stove had been used to boil a human head, and the odour of death hung thick throughout the flat. In the wardrobe were bin bags filled with the remains of a Scottish youth called Steven Sinclair. Nilsen had killed him two weeks earlier, and now he wanted to explain everything.
The way he did so was distinctive. He talked almost as if he had been in love with Sinclair. In one notebook, Nilsen wrote, ‘I stood in great grief and a wave of utter sadness as if someone very dear to me had just died.’
The line was written next to an ink drawing of the corpse called ‘The Last Time I Saw Stephen Sinclair’. The juxtaposition seemed quite mad. The affection he claimed to have felt for the young man was matched with a vile disregard for his body. The torso had been cut down the middle and was separated into two halves. The lower part of the body had been removed with a clean cut from just above the waist. The eyes had been
boiled in their sockets. When the pieces were re-assembled on the mortuary slab, they had turned different colours.
Stephen Sinclair was typical of those Nilsen would bring home. He was the sort whose story interests no one, and the kind of young man that Nilsen felt he could take under his wing. Sinclair was 20 years old and only 5ft-5in tall. He had come down from Scotland, travelling without a ticket on the InterCity Express from Edinburgh to London’s King’s Cross. Like many of the runaways who arrived at that station, he had come with little more than a vague feeling that the big city had something for everyone, even him.
Sinclair met his killer on Wednesday, 26 January. Nilsen isn’t sure exactly where. In one version, it was in a pub called the Royal George in Goslett Yard near Denmark Street where he had once worked. One witness, however, thought he saw Sinclair hanging around with someone fitting Nilsen’s description some days before. So, despite what he says, Nilsen, did, quite possibly, mark Sinclair out as a potential victim beforehand.
Another, more likely, account has them meeting by the slot machines off Piccadilly Circus. This was then a well-known gay ‘cruising’ area where older men would try to pick up rent boys or runaways looking for money. Dressed in a leather jacket, tight black jeans and with tattoos on his hands and arms, Sinclair would have hardly stood out. As a well-spoken man in his late thirties, neither would Nilsen.
Nilsen was 6ft 1in, slim, dark-haired and good-looking despite his oversized glasses and functional suit. We know from victims who escaped, that his manner when picking people up was usually friendly but dominating. The conversation between him and Sinclair was therefore probably one-sided, with their shared knowledge of eastern Scotland helping it along. As they chatted, Nilsen would have appeared sympathetic and kind, and would have spoken with complete confidence as if he knew everything about everything. He found Sinclair attractive, especially approving of the fact that he was small and fair – two of his physical preferences. Nilsen cared less for the fact that he was a delinquent and a drug addict.