Killing For Company

by Brian Masters

  Eight months earlier, he had written in different vein:

  The sun has burst through on this late April day. The music from a radio wafts down through the bare prison corridors. It’s Abba – ‘Lay All Your Love on Me’. It removes me from this place and back to the sun-drenched garden of Melrose Avenue with Bleep on my lap, a tall glass, and all is well. I look in through the French windows and see the body of Martyn Duffey lying on the floor. Here in my cell I struggle to regain control. I succeed but I have tears in my eyes. I am struck as if by a blow, by a realisation in a new way. The gross moral obscenity of these slayings. Murder under Trust. Under my roof and under my protection – the most horrible thing imaginable. I would, at this moment, think it a proper vindication of natural justice that I be hanged, drawn and quartered for having been the perpetrator of these acts. These killings have been contrary to every rule of humanity. Mitigating circumstances pale into insignificance when they are measured against the enormity of these events. They had put an absolute trust in me and I had betrayed that holy trust by killing them, suddenly, without any reason. Nothing that anyone can do, public, law or relatives, will ever match a heart that will ache until it is finally stilled in death. I have exercised the power of pit and gallows upon my inner mind. I am beyond any redemption. I need their vengeance, hate, punishments, curses and screams to make the rest of my life tolerable. I have gone a million miles beyond the pale and in the depths of my space I can’t even hear myself scream.74

  After all that has been said in these pages, it would be absurd now to speculate on which of these voices is the more authentic. They both give expression to the thoughts of a man who has constructed his own hell and dragged others into it, without, in the end, really knowing why. It is because one needs to ask why that this book has been written.

  fn1 Erich Fromm comments mockingly on Lorenz’s method, claiming that the argument from analogy is specious.

  fn2 He has also said that his washing of the victim was a demonstration of absolute power and control, which accentuated the victim’s helplessness and his authority.

  fn3 See here.

  fn4 Fromm regards Maslow’s hierarchy as unsystematic and arbitrary.

  fn5 It is fair to explain that this idea was put forward by a philologist, not a theologian, to whom it appears nonsense.

  fn6 Sir David Henderson, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Edinburgh, first defined the term in his Psychopathic States (1957). His views influenced the drafting of the Mental Health Act 1959, wherein the notion of psychopathy is given legal recognition. Further debate on the subject may be found in the Royal Commission on Capital Punishment, and in a section of the Butler Committee’s Report.

  fn7 The earliest mention of the Thugs is in 1356, and they were still operating in India in the nineteenth century. They were professional assassins, killing according to strict religious ritual. Their method was strangulation. The modern word ‘thug’ is derived from them.

  Words like ‘sorry’ hold little

  comfort for the bereaved. I

  mistrust my own inner sincerity

  to bear even to utter them.

  – D.A. Nilsen

  POSTSCRIPT

  by Anthony Storr F.R.C.P., F.R.C.Psych.

  I am glad to add a postscript to Brian Masters’s study of Dennis Nilsen, although he has performed his task so expertly that he has left me very little to say. Multiple murderers are extremely rare, and Nilsen is unique amongst multiple murderers. Brian Masters has not only read and assimilated virtually all the relevant literature on multiple murderers, but has also become closely acquainted with Nilsen himself, and, so far as is possible, has won the trust of this emotionally isolated, suspicious individual. His portrait of Nilsen is, therefore, the most intimate and the most authentic which we can expect. I do not think that, however many hours a psychiatrist might spend with Nilsen, he would be likely to discover more about him, or be able to provide a more convincing explanation for Nilsen’s crimes than Masters has done in this sober, unsensational account.

  Only two minor points of criticism occurred to me. First, I think it possible that Masters underestimates the part which alcohol played in the murders. He states that Nilsen ‘overestimates the power of alcohol in the commission of his crimes, but underestimates its symbolic significance’. As Masters rightly points out, alcohol releases inhibitions, and is a factor in the majority of murders and other crimes of violence. Nilsen may indeed be blaming alcohol for murderous aspects of his personality for which it cannot be held responsible; but I think it probable that he would not have embarked upon his first murder unless he had been drunk at the time. Once the inhibition against murder had been overcome, the other murders could follow much more easily. Alcohol played a considerable part in conditioning the S.S. guards in Nazi concentration camps to engage in appalling cruelties and mass executions from which new recruits at first turned away in horror.

  My second criticism is related to the first. One of the features of Nilsen’s conduct which Masters finds incomprehensible is the revolting way in which he disposed of the dead bodies which he accumulated. Masters writes, ‘It is Nilsen’s intense detachment, his invulnerability to the squalor of human remains, that makes him finally unrecognisable.’ Yet medical students, near the beginning of their studies, rapidly become accustomed to dissecting preserved human corpses; and, at a later stage, become inured to post mortems in which recently dead bodies are slit open and their organs removed in a way which at first may revolt them. Human beings become more easily accustomed to, and detached from, horrors than Brian Masters allows.

  It must be extremely rare for murderers to make drawings of their victims. Nilsen’s careful, ritualised washing of the corpses and the way in which he portrays them shows that he did indeed regard them as beautiful. The piece which Nilsen wrote dated 23.4.83 which accompanies the drawing in which Nilsen is standing contemplating the body is, I think, revealing. Nilsen writes,

  Peaceful, pale flesh on a bed

  Real and beautiful – and dead.

  On the other side of the same drawing, Nilsen writes, ‘I stood in great grief and aware of utter sadness as if someone very dear to me had just died … I sometimes wondered if anyone cared for me or them. That could surely be me lying there. In fact a lot of the time it was.’

  If one has given up all hope of making any permanent, loving relationship with another living human being, as I think Nilsen had, phantasies of a perfect relationship in death may become insistent. Swinburne is expressing something of the same idea in ‘The Garden of Proserpine’ when he writes, ‘And even the weariest river, Winds somewhere safe to sea.’ Wagner, in ‘Tristan and Isolde’, imagines his lovers achieving perfect union in death in a way which had been impossible in life. There is a sense in which Nilsen can be regarded as a terribly distorted romantic, as his drawings demonstrate.

  Masters’s account of Nilsen’s trial highlights the gulf which still exists between legal and psychiatric ways of thinking. During my lifetime, the relationship between lawyers and psychiatrists has greatly improved. This is largely due to the efforts of forensic psychiatrists such as Dr Peter Scott and Professor Trevor Gibbens, both of whom died only recently. Before their day, the psychiatrists who regularly appeared in Court were often the dregs of their profession, and it is not surprising that lawyers took against them. It is also the case that judges who nowadays serve on the Parole Board often come to regard criminals in a new light, as individuals, because they are required to read the detailed reports upon them which are furnished by prison governors, probation officers, prison medical officers and others. This brings home to them that individuals who commit the same crimes are often very different types of person; that the reasons why a man becomes a criminal are both complex and ill-understood; and that legal categories of ‘responsibility’ and the like are grossly over-simple. In spite of this, there are still some judges who, wilfully or otherwise, close their minds to psychiatric evidence, which they
either treat with contempt or dismiss as too imprecise to be useful. It is not surprising that many psychiatrists are wary of appearing in Court. The three who took part in Nilsen’s trial were all experienced forensic psychiatrists, who must have given evidence on many previous occasions. Yet all three were made to look foolish, either by Counsel or by the Judge.

  One thing which clearly emerges from the Nilsen trial is that both psychiatric classification of mental disorder and legal concepts relating to it are totally inadequate. The defence of ‘insanity’ requires that the individual be shown to exhibit symptoms and signs of some clearly recognisable mental ‘disease’ such as schizophrenia. That is, he must be shown to be suffering from delusions of persecution, or hallucinations, or obvious thought disorder. If he believes that his thoughts are not his own, but inserted into his mind by God or the Devil, so much the better. In cases where mental disorder follows upon brain damage, like that caused by severe head injury, or arteriosclerosis, or senility, juries readily accept that such a person cannot be regarded as fully responsible for his actions. In Nilsen’s case, no such defence was possible. He was not suffering from schizophrenia or from manic-depressive psychosis, or from organic brain disorder. He was highly articulate, above average intelligence, a fluent speaker and writer, who wrote a full confession of his crimes, and thousands of revealing words about himself. Although the man in the street might say that anyone who did what Nilsen did must be mad, even the defence lawyers decided not to attempt to prove that Nilsen was insane in either the legal or the medical sense. The lawyers therefore tried to get the charge of murder reduced to that of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, alleging that, at the time of each killing, Nilsen was suffering from such abnormality of mind that he was incapable of forming the specific intention of murder.

  The two psychiatrists appearing for the defence were, I think, faced with a hopeless task. Psychiatric evidence is, from the legal point of view, intrinsically unsatisfactory, because so much of it is based upon what the patient tells the psychiatrist, which may be feigned or false, rather than upon objective observation of behaviour. Persons suffering from brain damage, or mental defect, can be shown to be so suffering by means of objective tests and physical signs in much the same way that persons suffering from heart disease or kidney disease can be demonstrated to have these diseases. Although severe cases of mania and depression generally exhibit disordered behaviour, milder cases may not do so, and the same is true of schizophrenia. In fact, the diagnosis of schizophrenia is bound to depend largely upon what the patient tells the psychiatrist. This is even more obviously so in cases of ‘personality disorder’, which is the label which the defence psychiatrists decided to attach to Nilsen. The ninth revision of the International Classification of Diseases, Mental Disorders Section, lists some ten or so ‘personality disorders’ which are defined as ‘deeply ingrained maladaptive patterns of behaviour generally recognisable by the time of adolescence or earlier and continuing throughout most of adult life although often becoming less obvious in middle or old age.’ The list includes such varieties as ‘Schizoid personality disorder’, ‘Explosive personality disorder’, ‘Anankastic personality disorder’, and so on. Although, from the point of view of the psychiatrist, such classifications of unusual personalities are useful, and convey immediate information about the person concerned to other psychiatric professionals, they in no way match the accuracy of medical diagnosis of disease. Nor, unlike medical diagnoses, does this type of classification provide much opportunity for accurate prognosis. If a patient is suffering from heart disease, or from brain damage, or even from manic-depressive illness or schizophrenia, it is possible to make an informed guess as to whether he will get better, how long he is likely to live, and so on. The diagnosis of ‘personality disorder’ is one of those classifications which makes one wish that psychiatry was not dogged by the so-called ‘medical model’. No wonder Dr MacKeith was torn to pieces by the Counsel for the prosecution.

  On the other hand, the lawyers are equally constrained by the assumptions and classifications of their profession, and can be made to look equally silly as a result. When Mr Green said that Nilsen showed resourcefulness, cunning, and presence of mind; that he showed initiative in inviting people back to his flat and that he sometimes appeared to be a plausible liar, he was quite rightly trying to show that the defence of diminished responsibility could not be maintained because Nilsen was capable of rational planning and therefore capable of forming the intention of murder. But persons who are obviously mentally ill are also capable of forming such intentions. The man Hadfield who discharged a blunderbuss at George III because he thought it necessary for the salvation of the world was clearly suffering from a mental disorder consequent upon a severe head wound sustained during the Napoleonic wars. He was held to be not guilty on grounds of insanity. But he was perfectly capable of forming the intention of murder and clearly had done so. The mens rea beloved by lawyers often fails to distinguish the mentally abnormal from the mentally normal.

  Dr Gallwey, the other psychiatrist for the defence, had an equally hard time in the witness box. He laid emphasis upon the ‘False Self’ syndrome which is characteristic of schizoid personalities. The idea that schizoid personalities present to the world a mask which conceals their real feelings both from others and from themselves is actually valuable to psychiatrists attempting to treat such patients. There is ‘another side’ to such patients which, as Dr Gallwey said, may manifest itself in sudden outbursts of irrational behaviour. However, the lawyers, not surprisingly, found it difficult to believe that Nilsen was conveniently overwhelmed by uncontrollable feelings on each occasion on which he committed murder, whilst behaving normally at other times. The total failure of the defence psychiatrists and the Counsel for the prosecution to communicate is obvious. Each side is concerned with different problems. The lawyers want a hard-and-fast definition of mental illness which cannot, in cases like this, be given. The psychiatrists are concerned to show that their client is mentally abnormal, but, because psychiatric classification is so inadequate and legal concepts of mental abnormality so primitive, are unable to persuade the lawyers.

  Dr Bowden, the psychiatrist called by the prosecution, fared no better than his colleagues appearing for the defence. He had interviewed Nilsen on sixteen occasions, but affirmed that he could find no abnormality of mind in him which fitted the definition demanded by the Homicide Act of 1957 (see here). Counsel for the defence made much of the fact that Dr Bowden had said that he was unable to show that Dennis Nilsen had an abnormality of mind on one occasion, and then said that he had got an abnormality of mind on another. What Dr Bowden had meant to say was that Nilsen was not suffering from a mental disorder of the definable kind to which I have already referred, which is certainly arguable. Is ‘mental disorder’ the same as ‘abnormality of mind’? Dr Bowden had thought so at one time, but then changed his mind. This enabled Counsel to make him look foolish.

  All that emerges from these deplorable exchanges between lawyers and psychiatrists is that, if you ask silly questions, you are bound to be given silly answers. Many of the most important things in life are not susceptible to exact definition. A friend of mine was once foolish enough to ask his wife how much she loved him. After a moment’s thought she gave the answer ‘Eight,’ which neatly revealed the stupidity of his question. The degree of mental abnormality or mental illness is no more easily defined than the amount of love in a marriage. It is easier for lawyers to make psychiatrists look foolish than vice versa, because they are in charge of proceedings in Court. Psychiatrists can retaliate by pointing out that legal definitions of ‘mental illness’ or ‘abnormality of mind’ are totally inadequate. Indeed, some psychiatrists, of whom Thomas Szasz is the most articulate, argue that mental illness, in the absence of definable brain damage, is a meaningless term which should be dropped altogether.

  Is there any way out of this impasse? Yes, there is, if only we can persuade the lawy
ers and Parliament to adopt it. The defence of insanity should be dropped altogether. What the Court should be asked to decide is whether or not the accused committed the offence or offences with which he has been charged. If the Court finds that he did commit the offences, and there is reason to suppose that he is suffering from some form of mental abnormality or illness, psychiatrists can be called in to help decide upon his disposal. If Drs MacKeith, Gallwey, and Bowden, who are all experienced and competent psychiatrists, had been asked to examine Nilsen after his guilt had been determined by the Court, I venture to think that they would all have agreed about the pragmatic question of whether he was treatable by any known psychiatric method, and also about the question of whether or not he should be confined in prison or in a mental hospital. Psychiatrists should not be called as adversarial witnesses, but should be employed as independent assessors after the trial is over.

  The law is obsessed with the question of responsibility, but responsibility cannot be so easily determined as lawyers would like it to be. Norval Morris, Professor of Law and Criminology in the University of Chicago, has suggested that, if the defence of mental illness is allowed as something which either diminishes criminal responsibility or exculpates an offender altogether, then other defences are equally applicable. In the United States, being brought up in a Negro ghetto is statistically more productive of crime than is insanity. Why not a defence of ‘dwelling in a Negro ghetto’, or, in the case of the United Kingdom, ‘dwelling in a Glasgow slum’? The more we understand about an individual’s background and psychopathology, the more we can begin to comprehend his actions, whether good or bad, and the more difficult it becomes to decide which of his actions were inescapably determined by circumstance, and which were decided upon freely. In many cases, if not in all, we are in no position to decide whether a man who has committed a crime should be punished because he is responsible, or freed or ‘treated’ because he is not. In our present state of knowledge, a pragmatic approach is the only rational one to adopt. Society must be protected from dangerous criminals. Whether they are confined in prisons or in mental hospitals should not be a moral one, but a practical one. Habitually violent offenders should usually be kept in prisons, because prisons are better equipped to cope with them. If they require psychiatric treatment, they can be treated within the prison. Other types of offender may be better dealt with in mental institutions.