Worse than Jeffrey Dahmer? The Serial Murderer Dennis Nilsen

A plumber by the name of Michael Cattran was called to an apartment complex at 23 Cranley Gardens in North London on February 8, 1983, because drains had been clogged for some time. He never anticipated coming upon human remains.

Cattran started to remove the obstruction after opening a drain cover at the side of the structure. However, he found a flesh-like material and a few fractured bones instead of the usual jumble of hair or napkins.

It appears like someone has been flushing down their Kentucky Fried Chicken, said one of the building's inhabitants, Dennis Nilsen. However, Cattran believed it had an unsettlingly human appearance. He was right, it turned out. And Nilsen alone was responsible for this terrible catastrophe.

At least 12 adolescents and men were murdered by Dennis Nilsen between 1978 and 1983, and his victims' corpses were subjected to heinous acts. The Scottish serial murderer left behind a number of terrifying audiotapes that documented his killings in gory detail, further aggravating an already horrible situation.

This is Dennis Nilsen's horrifying story.

Dennis Nilsen's Early Life

Dennis Nilsen, who was born in Fraserburgh, Scotland, on November 23, 1945, had a challenging childhood. He was crushed by his adored grandfather's passing and his parents' unhappy marriage. Nilsen also became aware of his sexual orientation at a young age, and he struggled much with it.

At the age of 16, he made the decision to enlist in the army, where he served as a chef and, horrifyingly, a butcher. He pursued a career as a police officer when he departed in 1972. He wasn't a cop for very long, but he was there long enough for him to have a macabre obsession with dead corpses and examinations.

Nilsen thereafter went on to work as a recruiter and lived with another guy for two years. Even though the guy later denied having a sexual connection with Nilsen, it was obvious that his departure in 1977 devastated Nilsen.

But every time a new partner departed, he felt abandoned. He started to deliberately seek out sexual experiences. Nilsen made the decision to force the guys to remain by murdering them. He said that despite his desire to kill, after carrying out the deed he had second thoughts.

According to Dennis Nilsen, the sensation of loss and anguish was stronger the more beautiful the man were. He was attracted by their naked, lifeless corpses, but he would have given anything to have them alive now.

The Crimes of Dennis Nilsen

A 14-year-old kid who Dennis Nilsen had met at a bar the day before New Year's Eve in 1978 became his first victim. After Nilsen assured the child that he would provide him with booze for the evening, the boy accompanied him back to his flat. The young man eventually slept off after drinking with him.

Nilsen strangled the child with a necktie and drowned him in a pail of water out of fear that he would run away if he woke. After cleaning the boy's body, he brought it into his bedroom with him. There, he tried performing a sex act on the corpse before just drifting off to sleep next to it.

The boy's body was eventually buried under the floorboards of Nilsen's flat. Dennis would leave him there for several months before burying him in the backyard. Nilsen carried on seeking more victims in the meanwhile.

Others were visitors who happened to be in the wrong pub at the wrong hour. Some of the youngsters and young men were homeless or sex workers. Nilsen attributed his terrible impulse to keep them all to himself from his loneliness, but regardless of who they were, he wanted to keep them all to himself forever.

Nilsen had resided in an apartment complex with a garden before relocating to 23 Cranley Gardens. He had first been burying bodies beneath his floorboards. But finally the scent got to be too much. So he began disposing of his victims in the garden by burying, burning, and disposing of them.

Dennis removed the victims from their hiding places, dissected them on the ground, and frequently preserved their skin and bones for later use, thinking that the scent was only coming from the internal organs.

In addition to keeping a large number of the dead, he frequently dressed them up, put them to bed, watched TV with them, and engaged in heinous sex practices with them. And to make matters worse, he then rationalized this troubling conduct by saying, "A body is a thing. It cannot sense or endure pain. Your values are upside down if you're more concerned about what I did to a corpse than what I did to a live person."

Nilsen would frequently make little bonfires in his backyard to get rid of the body parts he didn't want to preserve, discreetly throwing human organs and guts to the flames along with tire components to mask the scent. Near the fire pit, the body parts that weren't burnt were buried. But at his new residence, these disposal strategies wouldn't be practical.

How Dennis Was Finally Captured ? - And his Taped Confessions

Nilsen had to relocate since, regrettably, his landlord chose to rebuild his apartment in 1981. Nilsen had to be a little more inventive with his disposal techniques as 23 Cranley Gardens didn't have enough outdoor area for him to covertly burn body pieces.

Nilsen started flushing human parts down his toilet, hoping that the flesh would either rot or sink deep enough into the sewers that it wouldn't be discovered. However, the building's plumbing was outdated and not nearly capable of disposing of people. It became clogged to the point where the other occupants also became aware of it and phoned the plumber.

The human remains were quickly identified as coming from Nilsen's flat after an extensive analysis of the apartment building's pipes. The officers entered the room and instantly detected the smell of decomposition and rotting flesh. Nilsen casually led them to the garbage bag of body parts he kept in his closet when they inquired about where the remainder of the corpse was.

Nilsen was positively identified as a suspect in many homicide cases after a second search uncovered up body parts hidden all throughout his residence. Although he acknowledged killing between 12 and 15 people (he insisted he couldn't recall the precise number), he was legally charged with six charges of murder and two attempted murders.

In 1983, he was convicted guilty on all counts and given a life term in jail, where he mostly translated literature into Braille. Nilsen did not show regret for his actions or a wish to be set free.

Dennis Nilsen acquired more popularity in the early 1990s when he made a statement on the capture of American serial murderer Jeffrey Dahmer, who also preyed on youths and young men. However, Dahmer quickly garnered such notoriety that Nilsen finally earned the moniker "British Jeffrey Dahmer," despite the fact that he was apprehended years before the real Dahmer.

Nilsen and Dahmer had numerous traits outside their preference for killing men, such as their ways of strangling victims, engaging in necrophilia on their corpses, and dissecting the bodies. And once Dahmer was taken into custody, Nilsen commented on his motivations and charged him with lying about his cannibalism. Nilsen stated that he was "strictly a bacon and eggs man" when questioned if he ever ate any of his victims.

Dennis made a series of terrifying audiotapes detailing his killings when he was incarcerated at some time.

After suffering a burst abdominal aortic aneurysm, Dennis Nilsen passed away in jail in 2018 at the age of 72. He passed away in his jail cell while lying in his own filth. He was also said to be in "excruciating agony."

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