Toshimitsu Ozawa
On the evening of New Year’s Eve 1982, Vivienne McStay and Monique Van-Rutte were cooking a meal at their flat in Cranley Gardens when there was a knock at their door. It was Des Nilsen, the man who lived upstairs. He invited them to come up and watch television with him, but they declined, partly because they were busy preparing dinner, and partly because Nilsen appeared drunk, swaying from side to side. He left them with the impression that he was very annoyed by their refusal, but suggested none the less that they join him for a drink later at a local pub. Then he went back upstairs.
They heard him leave the house at about 11 p.m., and return with someone else at about 12.30 a.m. on New Year’s Day. An hour later they heard a great commotion from upstairs, voices raised, banging and crashing, the dog barking furiously. They were quite afraid until they heard people rushing downstairs, someone fall, sobbing, and the front door slam. They wanted to see if Nilsen was all right and met him on the stairs, carrying a torch. He appeared very drunk.
The man who had run out of the house in terror was Toshimitsu Ozawa, who later told the police that he thought Nilsen had intended to kill him. Nilsen had approached him calmly, with a tie outstretched between his hands. At first Ozawa had thought he was joking. When the gesture was repeated, he took it seriously. When the police read out Ozawa’s statement, Nilsen commented, ‘I find that frightening.’31
Douglas Stewart
Stewart, aged twenty-six, met Nilsen in a West End pub on the evening of 10 November 1980, and agreed to go with him to Melrose Avenue for a late-night drink. They listened to records. At about 1 a.m. Stewart said he ought to be making his way home, and Nilsen told him he could stay the night if he wished. Not being homosexual, Stewart refused the suggestion that they share a bed, which Nilsen accepted without fuss, and Stewart fell asleep in the armchair. Some time later he woke to find that his feet had been tied and that Nilsen was standing behind him pulling the tie around his neck. He fought, and managed to scratch Nilsen and draw blood. Nilsen fell and offered no resistance; he simply told Stewart to take his money and leave, but Stewart was not interested in robbery. Then he noticed that Nilsen was staring at a large bread-knife which he held in his right hand. Stewart thought he must at all costs keep him quiet, so they chatted for about ten minutes, and the knife was laid down. Stewart was convinced that the knife would have been used to attack him. He left the house at about 4 a.m., ran down the street and called the police. Two officers from Kilburn Police Station picked him up and went with him to Melrose Avenue, where Nilsen appeared surprised. They formed the impression that this had been a homosexual encounter which had gone wrong, and that neither man could be believed entirely. The incident was filed for report to C.I.D. branch. There was a red mark on Stewart’s neck, but no evidence that Nilsen had been injured.
When parts of Douglas Stewart’s statement were read to Nilsen he could recall nothing of the incident, though he conceded that the story was quite possibly true in essence. He denied, however, that he would ever have tied the man’s legs or threatened him with a knife.
Carl Stottor
Carl Stottor, aged twenty-one and unemployed, met Des Nilsen at the Black Cap in Camden Town one evening in April 1982. They went back to Cranley Gardens for a drink, where Stottor consumed too much and became depressed. Eventually they went to bed, and slept straight away. No attempt at any sexual activity was made by either of them. Stottor then remembers waking up and not being able to breathe. Nilsen was behind him, and something seemed to be round his neck. He thought at first that Nilsen was trying to release or untangle whatever it was, but the pressure increased. Stottor could not see properly, could not swallow, and felt dizzy. He heard Nilsen say to him ‘Keep still.’ He felt his tongue had swollen up. He kept periodically falling into unconsciousness, until he was being carried into the bathroom. The next thing he knew was that he was in the bath, and was being pushed under the water. Several times his head was put under, with him swallowing water, and several times he came up again. The last time he was pushed under he could no longer resist. Then he felt Nilsen was lifting him out of the bath and placing him on the bed, where the dog was licking his face. He does not know how long he stayed in the flat, probably more than a day, as he kept falling asleep for long periods. When he saw the condition of his face in the mirror he was shocked. There was a red mark around his neck. Nilsen told him that he had got caught up in the zipper of the sleeping-bag which lay on top of the bed. He was inclined to believe this, as the alternative seemed incredible at the time. He attributed his experience in the bath to a nightmare. They left the flat together, and Nilsen hoped they would meet again. Stottor said yes, but actually had no intention of renewing the acquaintance. Stottor went to the casualty department of the London Hospital in Whitechapel where examination showed that his condition was consistent with having been strangled. Stottor denied this interpretation as he did not want to have dealings with the police, and in any case he would not have been able to prove the matter without witnesses. A part of him still wondered whether he had dreamt it all; the distinction between conscious memory and what might have been unconscious imaginings was smudgy, to say the least.
The reason Carl Stottor has only intermittent impressions of that night is that he frequently lapsed into unconsciousness, and probably came to within seconds of death. Nilsen had strangled him from behind, had carried him to the bath, and had held him under water in the bath until he ceased struggling. At that point Stottor’s ears, throat and eyes were in excruciating pain, his lungs were filling with water and his grasp of what was happening to him was unclear; he had, however, found the strength to say, ‘Please, no more; please, stop.’ After that, he gave up. When Nilsen lifted him out of the bath and put him on the bed, he thought he was dead. The body was cold and still. But the dog, Bleep, knew differently; it was she who saw the signs of life, and started licking Carl Stottor’s face, which Stottor remembers. What he does not remember is that as soon as Nilsen realised the body was alive, he covered it with blankets and got into bed with it, spending the next several hours warming it with his own body heat, rubbing and quickening the body until Carl Stottor came totally back to life. He also put on all the bars of the electric fire.
This is a most interesting story, for it throws new light upon Nilsen’s state of mind. In the case of Paul Nobbs, the murderer actually prevented himself from completing the act; he stopped wanting to kill while he was killing. But with Stottor, Dennis Nilsen thought the murder was over, that he had a dead body on his hands, and when alerted by his dog that the man was alive he spent hours trying to revive him. He could have finished the job pretty easily; but he had already reverted to the ordinary non-violent Des Nilsen, and it was this Des Nilsen who saved Carl Stottor from the murderer Nilsen. This incident at least shows that the killer instinct was not constant, was perhaps not conscious, and possibly not voluntary.
Incidentally, it was Nilsen’s recollection of the event, scribbled down on a piece of paper headed ‘Unscrambling Behaviour’ at Hornsey Police Station, which enabled the police officers to trace Carl Stottor, who confirmed that the dog’s licking his face had been his first memory on regaining consciousness, and that he had slept afterwards for a very long time. Nilsen’s account of that night came first and Stottor’s matched it, not the other way round.
‘I am grateful for snapping out of the killing trance in the cases of attempted murder,’ writes Nilsen. Bleep, it appears, may have saved more than one life. Whenever a cigarette was left burning, or fell to the floor, the dog would bark furiously and bring Nilsen sharply back into the real world. ‘I could not really have meant to kill the others at all as I successfully pulled back, regained control of myself and did nothing whatsoever to prevent them leaving.’32 This sounds like post facto self-justification, but it is more the result of bewildered introspection, for whoever heard of a would-be murderer who accompanies his victim to the bus-stop and gives him his name and address, expecting
their acquaintance to continue? The attempted murders suggest that there were two Nilsens at large, and that the one had only sporadic control over the other.
Implications and suggestions such as these would henceforth be for the court to consider and for psychiatrists to unravel. They would in the meantime be for Dennis Nilsen to ponder during his eight months of remand, and presumably for the rest of his life. He had, according to his own lights, offended against his own most cherished principles and values:
I like to see people in happiness.
I like to do good.
I love democracy.
I detest any criminal acts.
I like kids.
I like all animals.
I love public and community service.
I hate to see hunger, unemployment, oppression, war, aggression, ignorance, illiteracy, etc.
I was a trades union officer.
I was a good soldier and N.C.O.
I was a fair policeman.
I was an effective civil servant.
STOP. THIS ALL COUNTS FOR NOTHING when I can kill fifteen men (without any reason) and attempt to kill about nine others – in my home and under friendly circumstances.
Am I mad? I don’t feel mad. Maybe I am mad.33
With what can only be seen as a desperate need to reassure himself, or more, to rediscover himself, Nilsen returned time and again to a rehearsal of those qualities he could discern within him that seemed so hideously out of tune with the offences laid against him. ‘I do not like the sight of blood, I despair at the very thought of people in pain, I am repelled by the idea of suffering.’34 He wrote to his mother that he could scarcely come to terms with the fact that it was he at the centre of this notorious case, and not someone else. The period on remand would give him pause to reflect on and absorb the truth with greater honesty than he had ever done before and to prepare himself for the justice to which his responsible side wished his demonic side to submit. ‘I must find the strength,’ he wrote, ‘to face with dignity a public vengeance for the vanished blood that dried on my hands.’35 ‘The glutinous dread of past evil is still lying sharply in my eyes.’36
Remand was also to show the volatility of his temperament under stress.
fn1 He had thought that he might make the attempt with the first victim, but found that he was not aroused.
fn2 Later at Cranley Gardens.
fn3 One of them was the very bag he and Kenneth Ockendon had used to carry home their shopping. Remnants were not recognisable.
fn4 It was these which eventually blocked the drains and led to Nilsen’s arrest.
8
REMAND
Dennis Nilsen referred to 9 February 1983 as ‘the day help arrived.’ He went through the motions of work at the Jobcentre in Kentish Town, his mind nailed to the contemplation of an arrest which he knew must be imminent. Before leaving the office, he turned to his assistant Don Stow and said, ‘If I am not in tomorrow, I will be either ill, dead, or in jail.’ They both laughed.
On the way home, he bought a tin of dog food as usual, and a few items of food for himself, these gestures of normality cushioning him against what was to come.
My heart began to beat very fast as I walked down Cranley Gardens. I approached the house and I knew instinctively that something was out of place, i.e. that nothing seemed out of place. The house was almost in total darkness. I opened the front door and stepped into the dark hallway. On my left the front room door opened and I could see three large men in plain clothes. That’s it! My mind began to race in all directions.
He had rehearsed what he would say (‘I’d better come down to the station and help you with your inquiries’), but there were a few more seconds of freedom to which Nilsen clung. D.C.I. Jay said, ‘I’ve come about your drains.’ Nilsen expressed surprise that the police should concern themselves with blocked drains, and wondered if the other two men were health inspectors. They all went upstairs to the attic flat, and the conversation proceeded (in Nilsen’s version):
‘The reason I’m interested in your drains is that they are blocked with human remains.’
‘Good God, that’s terrible! Where did it come from? This is a big house.’
‘It could only have come from your flat. We’ve confirmed that.’
Then Nilsen said he would come to the station.
‘I must caution you,’ said D.C.I. Jay. ‘I don’t need to tell you anything about that.’
‘No,’ replied Nilsen. ‘I will consider myself cautioned.’1 The police had already discovered that D. A. Nilsen had once been a probationary constable, and would therefore be familiar with the procedure. But they were not prepared for the gush of unburdening which followed throughout the next week, as Nilsen, for the first time, released his ghastly secret. He could not even wait until they reached the station; he started talking in the police car, and from that moment there was no stopping him. He wanted to talk. He needed to talk. Saying it all would be the first step towards a long and seemingly endless path of introspection.
Mr Jay promised that the police would look after Nilsen’s dog. From his cell at Hornsey Police Station Nilsen could hear her whining, but he declined the offer to see her, as a further parting would only distress her more. She died a week later under anaesthetic. ‘I am ashamed that her last days should be so painful. She had always forgiven me everything, and nothing but me could ever break her heart. She never let me down, but in the moment of her greatest crisis I was not there.’ What he would miss most about Bleep was the fact that, like all dogs, her responses were genuine, not counterfeit. In a revealing phrase, he admitted that ‘her great redeeming feature was that she was not in my image’.2
On arrival at Brixton Prison, Dennis Nilsen was made quickly aware of the notoriety which preceded him. ‘You evil bastard, Nilsen,’ shouted one prisoner through the door of the reception cell. Having put his own clothes in a cardboard box, he was issued with prison uniform (brown trousers and blue striped shirt) and marched off to the hospital wing as a Category A maximum security prisoner, Number B62006.
When he first went to Brixton, Nilsen’s mood was one of resignation and relief, coupled with a determination to cooperate fully to secure his own conviction and await his fate. He assumed that, until the court heard the evidence and made its decision, he would in accordance with the law be regarded as innocent. It was his belief that he was not so treated that gradually changed his mood into one of defiance.fn1
He first objected to the imposition of prison uniform upon someone who was merely remanded in custody, but relented when it was made clear to him that no exception could or would be made in his case. The problem would erupt again six months later with profound consequences. Nilsen resented his Category A status because he could see no reasonable justification for it. He was not likely to escape, or to intimidate witnesses, or to commit suicide (he thought). In his view, the co-operation he had given to the police should be recognised, not punished; police officers were sympathetic to this attitude, but had no power to influence Home Office policy. It is an interesting comment on Nilsen’s perception of reality that he could admit a series of ghastly acts, and be surprised if people reacted with hostility towards him.
Nilsen was placed in a cell for twenty-three and a half hours every day, with half an hour for supervised exercise with a prison officer. Every few days he and other Category A prisoners would be moved to different cells. They were allowed no association and precious little in the way of privileges. Like other remand prisoners, Nilsen was permitted his own money to supplement the standard ‘income’ of 88p a week, as many cigarettes as he could afford, and eventually a transistor radio in his cell. For the first three months he was taken at regular intervals to Highgate Magistrates Court to be further remanded in custody while the police completed their gathering of evidence, but was sometimes not permitted to wash and shave before a court appearance. When he was told that there was not the staff or time available to supervise his washing, he volunteered to s
acrifice his half-hour of exercise and use that time to wash. This was refused. Although he was resident in the hospital wing, he had not once been medically examined.fn2 Dr Bowden saw him for conversations with a view to preparing his psychiatric report for the prosecution. Nilsen’s experience as a union branch secretary and his natural Buchan rebelliousness predisposed him towards a seditious attitude in prison, which earned him a reputation among warders for awkwardness and arrogance. From his point of view, he merely wanted to see the prison rules applied properly, and he was frustrated that his voice should no longer be heard as it had been in the C.P.S.A.
Friendships were formed invisibly in prison. Inmates would have long conversations through walls or shouting down corridors, and Nilsen took to the ‘comradeship’ of prison life. We do not have to rely solely on his word for this. One man who was in the cell next to his for a time subsequent sent him a letter. ‘You did a lot for me, those ten days I was with you. I still look back to those joke sessions we used to have … Keep your chin up, and good luck for the future.’
The despair which he could perceive in the ‘body language’ of other inmates excited Dennis Nilsen’s latent and rarely expressed humility. They had wives and children to worry about, whereas he felt that ‘I have the least problems of anyone in this prison.’ Furthermore, their crimes could be blamed at least partly on poverty and unemployment – the cruel circle of deprivation. His could not. ‘I feel I have no reasonable excuse … I must be one of the few guilty men in our block.’3
Trivial incidents helped bolster morale and instil in Nilsen the feeling of solidarity which he most prized. On the other hand, morale could be easily deflated. On being moved from one cell to another, he had not been given a chamber pot. In the middle of the night he rang the bell for the attendant night nurse, who told him that his cell could not be opened until the morning and that he should shit on the floor.4
Killing For Company Page 19