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Speaker 4: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 4: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 4: written about them, Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK. Every
Speaker 4: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 4: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 4: journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Speaker 5: Good evening in the middle class neighborhood of muswoll Hill.
Speaker 5: Underneath a spectacular residence located at twenty three Cranleigh Gardens,
Speaker 5: a gruesome discovery was about to be unearthed. While working
Speaker 5: on drainage pipes of the house at that location, a
Speaker 5: plumber discovered several bones and a flesh like substance covering
Speaker 5: the inside of the pipes. The pipes led to the
Speaker 5: top floor apartment of the residence. It was rented to
Speaker 5: Dennis Nilsen, a thirty seven year old, quiet, soft spoken
Speaker 5: civil servant. Nielsen was also a retired policeman with military service. Shockingly,
Speaker 5: the police were about to discover Dennis Nielsen was also
Speaker 5: one of Britain's worst serial killers. The book that we're
Speaker 5: featuring this evening is Drinks, Dinner and Death, The True
Speaker 5: Story of Dennis Nielsen. With my special guest, journalist and
Speaker 5: author and co host of House of Mystery Radio program.
Speaker 5: Alan R. Warren, welcome back to the program, and thank
Speaker 5: you very much for agreeing this interview. Alan Are Warren, Well.
Speaker 3: Thank you for inviting me. It's a pleasure.
Speaker 5: Thank you. It's always a pleasure, especially given that you
Speaker 5: tackle some of the worst and most infamous killers of
Speaker 5: all time. Appropriate for this program, I think, I believe
Speaker 5: let's get right to the early years of Dennis Andrew Nilsen,
Speaker 5: as you said, born in November nineteen forty five in Aberdeenshire, Scotland.
Speaker 5: Tell us a little bit about his early life growing up.
Speaker 5: What characterized that.
Speaker 3: Well, he was the middle of three children and his
Speaker 3: parents they were from actually they came from Norway and
Speaker 3: what they did was they escaped during the Nazi occupation
Speaker 3: in forty two. I believe it was so his parents
Speaker 3: were from Norway. So even though he was born in
Speaker 3: Scotland and now, his father had a real affinity like
Speaker 3: he really wanted to free Norway and so he continued
Speaker 3: to fight in a subgroup and was not at home
Speaker 3: very much. So most of his child life he was
Speaker 3: raised with his mother and the grandparents, and his grandfather
Speaker 3: had the largest influence on him, and of course in
Speaker 3: that area fishing, and the fisherman trade was the big work,
Speaker 3: you know, for that part of the country, and so
Speaker 3: his grandfather was a fisherman by trade, and so that's
Speaker 3: kind of how it started. That's how he lived. And
Speaker 3: he spent a lot of time with his grandfather, and
Speaker 3: of course some with his siblings, but he was majorly
Speaker 3: influenced by his grandfather. And that would be his mother's parents, right.
Speaker 5: You're right. In October nineteen fifty one, you said he
Speaker 5: wasn't close to his siblings, but he was close to
Speaker 5: his grandfather. In October nineteen fifty one, his grandfather died
Speaker 5: of a heart attack. Tell us about this odd incident
Speaker 5: at home, how he discovers the news about his grandfather,
Speaker 5: And I'll tell us about this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was strange in the fact, not so much.
Speaker 3: I mean, his grandfather died of a heart attack at
Speaker 3: sixty two, and he was out fishing in the North Sea,
Speaker 3: so it's not that that was highly unusual. But when
Speaker 3: they got his body back home, they had sort of
Speaker 3: built a little homemade coffin and put him in the kitchen.
Speaker 3: And so Dennis had no idea about this and was
Speaker 3: at school, and when he came back from school. Of course.
Speaker 3: His mother said well, would you like to see your grandfather?
Speaker 3: And he said, well, of course, And there was no
Speaker 3: warning or anything, so she just took him right into
Speaker 3: the kitchen where he was laying on this homemade sort
Speaker 3: of coffin open and he was dead. And it really
Speaker 3: shocked Dennis seeing won his grandfather dead. And you know,
Speaker 3: in his mind he would always say, well, I didn't
Speaker 3: even know he was sick. I didn't know how that
Speaker 3: could be, Like, what how did this happen? So it
Speaker 3: really shocked him to the core. And I think that
Speaker 3: gave him a huge fear of abandon He just was
Speaker 3: so scared of being alone. You know, his father was
Speaker 3: really not around and did leave his mother and the
Speaker 3: family and never come back. And then you have the
Speaker 3: grandfather who was close to just die of a heart attack.
Speaker 5: Yeah. After that, you say that, he also refused to
Speaker 5: be involved with family events or activities. So he really
Speaker 5: he became a different person as a result of this
Speaker 5: trauma that he was that he experienced with his grandfather's death,
Speaker 5: didn't he.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he became really withdrawn, He became really quiet, and
Speaker 3: he spent a lot of time out on the harbor
Speaker 3: and watching boats and and just and spending there. He
Speaker 3: didn't really interact with the family after that point. It
Speaker 3: sort of it sort of separated them the death of
Speaker 3: the grandfather, what relationship they did have, and so he
Speaker 3: was totally totally away from them and spending time in
Speaker 3: his own mind, I guess, trying to cope with the
Speaker 3: situation of his grandfather and and what he wanted to
Speaker 3: do with it, probably with life and and and he
Speaker 3: was quite panicked over it as well. According to some
Speaker 3: of his own writings, he would see himself out in
Speaker 3: the sea and see himself being covered and slowly drowning,
Speaker 3: and he would always dream of his grandfather coming to
Speaker 3: rescue or fantasize about that. So in his own mind
Speaker 3: he was quite I don't know what he was. He
Speaker 3: was dealing with that death in that way and by himself.
Speaker 5: You talk about shortly after the divorce and father leaving
Speaker 5: and never seeing them again, mother moved into their own
Speaker 5: place with three children and remarried to someone named Andrew Scott.
Speaker 5: Did Dennis appreciate this person? What was the treatment he
Speaker 5: received from this person at the hands.
Speaker 3: Of Andrew Scott, Well, it seemed in his mind he
Speaker 3: never liked his stepfather, and he felt that his stepfather
Speaker 3: was very you know, strict and and and would always
Speaker 3: give him discipline, like always always be punishing him for
Speaker 3: every little thing he did. It wouldn't matter what it was,
Speaker 3: he would be being punished, whereas his older brother would
Speaker 3: he would compare himself to of course, seemed to be
Speaker 3: a favorite of their new stepfather, so he became very
Speaker 3: jealous of his brother, and he became really hateful of
Speaker 3: this Andrew Scott, the new stepfather. He just just didn't
Speaker 3: want to be around him, so that even isolated him more.
Speaker 5: Now let's move to you talk about nineteen fifty five.
Speaker 5: The family moved to Hope them pronounce this right, striking
Speaker 5: about twelve kilometers away, and his sexual development is beginning
Speaker 5: to be revealed. So tell us what happens in his teens,
Speaker 5: what his attraction is, his interaction with his younger sister
Speaker 5: and with brother, all of.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, when they moved, it was more inland, so
Speaker 3: he sort of was forced to be in the house more,
Speaker 3: and so he started having to interact with the family
Speaker 3: and his baby sister he really got along with, well,
Speaker 3: he started to become closer with her and they would
Speaker 3: play games together and do things. I think because she
Speaker 3: was younger and he didn't feel so pressured, and plus
Speaker 3: she was a girl, where the older brother and father
Speaker 3: and all that stepfather they had a real strict manly
Speaker 3: sort of way about them. And so and as a
Speaker 3: teen he really started feeling an attraction to other men
Speaker 3: and it really confused him. Of course, he didn't want
Speaker 3: to tell people. I mean, back then, you got to
Speaker 3: remember this, you know, along forties fifties people in the times.
Speaker 3: Back then, it was thought of as not a good thing,
Speaker 3: and it was illegal, and so he kept it totally secret,
Speaker 3: and he felt really bad about it. The bad side
Speaker 3: of that, or what what he had to endure was
Speaker 3: sitting around and listening to his family say really bad
Speaker 3: things about homosexuals. You know, they talked really really badly
Speaker 3: about it. And even the few friends he had at
Speaker 3: school were the same way. You know, these he had
Speaker 3: no so he was really kind of isolated that way.
Speaker 3: It was around this time he started to fondle or
Speaker 3: touch his younger sister a little bit sexually. And of course,
Speaker 3: you know, in his own writings, Dennis said that this
Speaker 3: was because he wanted to see if he could be
Speaker 3: sexually turned on by a female. He wanted to see
Speaker 3: if he could you know, start that and and and
Speaker 3: have a way of gaining control over sexuality, because the
Speaker 3: other young man that he was looking at and and
Speaker 3: sort of had sexual attraction to, he couldn't seem to
Speaker 3: turn that off. So I guess he was thinking, well,
Speaker 3: you know, if I have some experience with a woman
Speaker 3: or a female that would turn that part of him on,
Speaker 3: and that that that that wasn't going to work, you know.
Speaker 3: And and and then of course he had to share
Speaker 3: his bed with Olive, which was the older, strict brother.
Speaker 5: And.
Speaker 3: He would try to fondle or touch his brother in
Speaker 3: a in his private areas when Olive was sleeping, and
Speaker 3: of course you know that's going to lead to no good.
Speaker 3: And eventually Olive woke up once and caught him and
Speaker 3: confronted him and uh and started calling him names and
Speaker 3: started calling him sissy in a sense like han. You know,
Speaker 3: it's what they used in Scotland, Scotland for that, So
Speaker 3: you know, he started he started trying to deal with
Speaker 3: his sexuality himself and found himself getting into trouble by
Speaker 3: doing this.
Speaker 5: You're right, when Nielsen was fourteen, he decided to join
Speaker 5: Army Cadets, and he considered an escape from his parents
Speaker 5: and what he thought was a stifling little town. You say.
Speaker 5: He excelled in school and history and arts, but wasn't
Speaker 5: good at sports whatsoever. He had a job, but it
Speaker 5: didn't last too long. But in nineteen sixty one, based
Speaker 5: on I guess, his experience in the Army cadets, he
Speaker 5: decided to list in the Army tell Us about his
Speaker 5: experience in the army and what he did in that service.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he wasn't. He wasn't. You're right. He wasn't really athletic.
Speaker 3: He was not. He was not strong. He was not
Speaker 3: a sports figure or nothing like that. So he was
Speaker 3: and he was artistic and more in that nature. And
Speaker 3: so what he did was he actually went to work
Speaker 3: and he started being a cook and they would train
Speaker 3: him to be a chef eventually, and so he started
Speaker 3: spending time cooking and working with the men in that way.
Speaker 3: He wasn't a soldier, so to speak, like, he wasn't
Speaker 3: out battling and stuff. He had to learn some of
Speaker 3: the basics, but his specialty was going to be cooking.
Speaker 3: And of course, you know, so he had quite a
Speaker 3: few problems, you know, being in in a barracks with
Speaker 3: army personnel, because you know, the they would all shower together,
Speaker 3: and he would be very afraid of that. He would
Speaker 3: he had a real problem controlling and he didn't want
Speaker 3: he didn't want to become aroused in the shower and
Speaker 3: have other army guys see this. So he would wash
Speaker 3: himself privately in the bathroom, like with a sink and stuff.
Speaker 3: And according to his writings, he would find himself masturbating
Speaker 3: a lot in the bathrooms because of the sexual attraction
Speaker 3: he was around all these men, these built men that
Speaker 3: were strong and good looking, and that's just sort of
Speaker 3: what he was dealing with. So that's kind of how
Speaker 3: he did it there. And that was in the first base,
Speaker 3: and then of course he got sent to West Germany
Speaker 3: and it was much the same. By then he had
Speaker 3: passed his exam and become a full fledged chef, I guess,
Speaker 3: as she would say, in the army, So he was
Speaker 3: creating menus as well as cooking.
Speaker 5: You also say that from reports at that time, all
Speaker 5: reports that to counter his shyness, he drank quite a
Speaker 5: bit at that time in the army.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, he he could find, you know, if anything,
Speaker 3: at that time, he was kind of being pushed to
Speaker 3: interact with the other officers more and he could only
Speaker 3: seem to let go when he drank. And the problem
Speaker 3: was he had a real problem trying to figure out
Speaker 3: how much he could drink without giving away his fantasies
Speaker 3: of wanting to have sex with the men. So you
Speaker 3: know what I mean. So he was still cautious of
Speaker 3: what he did, but it would loosen her up enough
Speaker 3: that he could get into trouble.
Speaker 5: It's interesting to you include a story that I hadn't
Speaker 5: read the entire version of. But in nineteen sixty seven,
Speaker 5: you say he was station in Aiden, South Yemen, and
Speaker 5: he was working as a cook for the Al Masura prison,
Speaker 5: a very dangerous prison and a much more dangerous station
Speaker 5: than anyone he had experienced before. And uh often there
Speaker 5: were a taxi write from locals when several of the
Speaker 5: men Nielsen worked with were killed. Tell us about Nielsen's
Speaker 5: experience with the taxi driver.
Speaker 3: Yeah, according to Nilson, he said that he was attacked
Speaker 3: and beaten unconscious by a taxi driver. You know, so
Speaker 3: these these were things that were going on, but this
Speaker 3: happened to him and he was beaten unconscious, right, So
Speaker 3: when he woke up, he was in the in the
Speaker 3: trunk of the car, the taxi cab, and he was
Speaker 3: able to escape by by hitting the driver over the
Speaker 3: head with a tire iron that was in the trunk,
Speaker 3: and he found himself away. There's there's just something strange
Speaker 3: about that story, and there is more to it than
Speaker 3: that too, But you know, it's kind of a he's
Speaker 3: it's kind of a weird story, and he did not
Speaker 3: have the character to be aggressive at that time, So
Speaker 3: what you know, fear or what you know, just the
Speaker 3: whole thing kind of, but it sure gives you a
Speaker 3: kind of an insight to where he was going to
Speaker 3: head further on in his life. Kind of it's a
Speaker 3: good foreshadowy, Yes, certainly.
Speaker 5: Now you talk about the about some of the fantasies
Speaker 5: and the fantasy life that he was sexual, fantasy life
Speaker 5: that he was having at that time, What were some
Speaker 5: of the things that he was fantasizing to replace his
Speaker 5: non interaction with homosexual men. He didn't want to dare
Speaker 5: doing anything to and jeopardize his time in the army.
Speaker 5: He'd always said later that it was the best time
Speaker 5: of his life. So what was his fantasy life consisting
Speaker 5: consisting of.
Speaker 3: Well, well, he was a cook and he had his
Speaker 3: own room. He didn't have to share in the bunks.
Speaker 3: So he would set up the room to where he could,
Speaker 3: you know, pretend or have his fantasy, and he would
Speaker 3: have different mirrors placed in different places. He had a
Speaker 3: couple of them, and it would be on the side
Speaker 3: of the bed or kind of upwards almost where you
Speaker 3: could see almost above him but not quite, kind of
Speaker 3: up in a corner. And he would do this sort
Speaker 3: of thing because he would he would he had two
Speaker 3: different fantasies. One where he would be unconscious and he
Speaker 3: would dream of a certain man that would come and
Speaker 3: have sex with him. And then there was ones where
Speaker 3: he was the dominant one and he would have sex
Speaker 3: with someone that was unconscious. So and it was always
Speaker 3: soldiers he fantasized about, but it started getting darker in
Speaker 3: the sense that different soldiers that he had worked with
Speaker 3: or had interacted with that were killed. He would imagine
Speaker 3: them and they would be naked and on his bed
Speaker 3: and they would and he would have sex with them,
Speaker 3: and it sort of it sort of was kind of
Speaker 3: a weird fantasy and the main thing for him was
Speaker 3: he didn't It was his way of having sex with
Speaker 3: men and nobody knowing it. That person didn't know it.
Speaker 3: Nobody knew it was him that did it.
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Speaker 5: Yeah, Now you write about a important event in his life,
Speaker 5: I would say psychologically would have to be he leaves
Speaker 5: the military. He resigns from the military, and in nineteen
Speaker 5: seventy two, but you know, successful career there. But he
Speaker 5: moves in with his family and strike and stays there
Speaker 5: for three months trying to figure out his next move.
Speaker 5: And during this time, the family or they already knew
Speaker 5: their attitude, but they watched a documentary on TV about homosexuals.
Speaker 5: Tell us about this event and the result.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the documentary. So, homosexuality had become legal in a
Speaker 3: lot of the countries in the late sixties and early seventies,
Speaker 3: depending on which country, and the problem was there was
Speaker 3: still a huge amount of people that were against it,
Speaker 3: and so the documentary that the family was watching was
Speaker 3: kind of like a news broadcast on what to watch
Speaker 3: for on the homosexual like they're really dangerous and they'll
Speaker 3: smile and take your kids and for a ride. Like
Speaker 3: it was a real negative sort of thing and made
Speaker 3: them look really bad and really disgusting. And it was
Speaker 3: a hard hard place for him to be when when
Speaker 3: they're sitting there watching this and all talking really badly
Speaker 3: about this. So he turned around and told them. He
Speaker 3: told his mother right then that well that I'm one
Speaker 3: of those, I'm homosexual, And you know, a big argument happened,
Speaker 3: and the father, stepfather, the whole family got into a
Speaker 3: huge battle and he ended up leaving. He left after
Speaker 3: the fight, and he actually never really spoke to them again.
Speaker 3: He would get a few letters from his mother and
Speaker 3: send a few but it was very distance between them
Speaker 3: for the rest of his life. That was kind of
Speaker 3: like it in the family's eyes, he was dirty, disgusting
Speaker 3: and they want nothing else to do with him.
Speaker 5: Interesting now, Nielsen moves to London and joins them, joins
Speaker 5: the Metropolitan Police unbelievably in nineteen seventy three tell Us
Speaker 5: about his work as a police officer and how successful
Speaker 5: he was at that occupation.
Speaker 3: Well, he seemed to be doing well. He as a
Speaker 3: police officer. That's when he started actually, and he was
Speaker 3: in London, so he started actually visiting gay pubs and
Speaker 3: places of meetings and he would he would have encounters.
Speaker 3: But this, you know, this wasn't going to last long
Speaker 3: because there was too much of a conflict between being
Speaker 3: gay and being a policeman. You know, it was just
Speaker 3: it was too much of an extreme, especially in those days.
Speaker 3: It was it just sort of put him right out.
Speaker 3: So it didn't last long. By December of that same year,
Speaker 3: he ended up just resigning and just leaving, and he
Speaker 3: was he had a little bit of financial help because
Speaker 3: when his stepfather had passed that year earlier, he had
Speaker 3: left him a thousand pounds and that was a lot
Speaker 3: of money back then. It carried you a long way.
Speaker 3: So he was able to quit and he went to
Speaker 3: being a security guard part time and that was kind
Speaker 3: of good enough for him for a while until I
Speaker 3: think it was early summer of seventy four and he
Speaker 3: started working for the government as a civil servant, which
Speaker 3: it found a much easier thing for him to do
Speaker 3: because you know, he wasn't in amongst all the police officers,
Speaker 3: and he could continue to meet other men on the side,
Speaker 3: kind of have his encounters and it wouldn't be a conflict.
Speaker 5: Yes, he said. He was respected and considered, you know,
Speaker 5: a great worker and excelled in his new position and
Speaker 5: became permanent position. And then he relocated to Kinnished, Kentish Town, London.
Speaker 5: November nineteen seventy five, And you talk about David galakan
Speaker 5: twenty year old tell us about this encounter in November
Speaker 5: nineteen seventy five with Nilsen.
Speaker 3: Oh, yeah, yeah, he ended up This was kind of
Speaker 3: one of his few relationships. He had met up with
Speaker 3: David in a pub in London. And what it was
Speaker 3: was David was being pushed around and being made fun
Speaker 3: of by two older guys and they were calling him
Speaker 3: names and all this, and he kind of of split
Speaker 3: up the fight. He kind of got in the middle
Speaker 3: of it and got David away from them and they eventually,
Speaker 3: uh walked back to David's place, who he was staying
Speaker 3: at a hostel in one of the districts. And this
Speaker 3: is kind of a little blurry here because it was
Speaker 3: a couple of different stories because he ended up staying
Speaker 3: the night with David and according to him, they didn't
Speaker 3: have sex, but according to David at as different times
Speaker 3: said that they did have sex. So either way, they
Speaker 3: ended up deciding that they would make good good roommates,
Speaker 3: and because David was just at a hostel, they decided
Speaker 3: to move in together. So they actually found a larger
Speaker 3: place from where he was staying, and that's how they
Speaker 3: found the Melrose Avenue place and they moved in there.
Speaker 3: It was affordable, it was large, had a garden, had
Speaker 3: a rare part, you know, the property. It was really nice.
Speaker 3: He was on the lower level type thing, so it
Speaker 3: was really perfect place. It was like a home, and
Speaker 3: that's how it started.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you say that Nielsen really took to this relationship
Speaker 5: and he was the head of the household. He decorated
Speaker 5: the home and maintained a big garden in the back
Speaker 5: of the residence. And it was that Nielsen was used
Speaker 5: to giving orders, being a civil servant and being in
Speaker 5: charge and David at that time was submissive. This relationship
Speaker 5: lasted eighteen months you were talking about, so there must
Speaker 5: have been this semblance of normalcy for these people to
Speaker 5: in terms of relationship. For Nielsen, tell us what happens
Speaker 5: after the eighteen months and why.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, there's some of the films from homemade
Speaker 3: films from back then too, And according to Dave, but
Speaker 3: he felt very controlled by Nelson. He felt he felt
Speaker 3: like he was ordered around and pushed around, and and
Speaker 3: it got to where he felt scared almost of being home.
Speaker 3: And you know, eventually in the relationship they split and
Speaker 3: went into separate rooms and then started bringing home people,
Speaker 3: and it just made it even more tense, you know,
Speaker 3: it was it was it was almost confrontational at times,
Speaker 3: and so that that wasn't going to last. And so
Speaker 3: David just up and left, moved away, and so Nelson
Speaker 3: came home one day and David was gone, and it
Speaker 3: really it really broke his heart and he, according to
Speaker 3: his own memoirs, he it brought back the pain of
Speaker 3: when he came home to his grandfather being dead. So
Speaker 3: it was pretty devastating for him.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and you say that after that, he didn't have
Speaker 5: a long term relationship after that, maybe two weeks tops.
Speaker 5: And then you introduce to another character, Martin Hunter Craig
Speaker 5: or Martin Tucker, an eighteen year old tell us about
Speaker 5: his encounter with Nielsen.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, and Martin Tucker was eighteen year old,
Speaker 3: he was in a special school and he was diagnosed
Speaker 3: with emotional and stability problems. He was really kind of
Speaker 3: a little messed up, and he questioned his own sexuality,
Speaker 3: which a lot of people were doing. And again in
Speaker 3: the field of the country, in the region, it was
Speaker 3: still considered a pretty bad thing to be gay, like
Speaker 3: this was something that you need to fix or need
Speaker 3: to go see someone to have it fixed, you know,
Speaker 3: so that the mentality was that way, and so that
Speaker 3: was considered another one of his emotional problems. It's just
Speaker 3: kind of how it was. It's it's it's how they
Speaker 3: dealt with it. And so, you know, the two of
Speaker 3: them hit it up and were kind of on and
Speaker 3: off for a while, but it never really lasted long
Speaker 3: and they sort of would drink, have dinner, have sex,
Speaker 3: just just kind of have some nice conversations. The two
Speaker 3: of them dated fairly regularly like that, but not all
Speaker 3: the time, and it would be kind of sometimes once
Speaker 3: or twice a month. It was sporadic. So that was
Speaker 3: pretty good for for for him, but he didn't he
Speaker 3: wasn't getting the companionship he wanted. Nelson was looking for
Speaker 3: more of a long term and he wanted someone to
Speaker 3: fill the spot of his X who had just left,
Speaker 3: and Craig wasn't really going to do it, and he
Speaker 3: also had problems with the hygiene. I guess Nelson was
Speaker 3: really strict and Craig wasn't, and so they would have
Speaker 3: issues like that, and Craig was not a good housekeeper.
Speaker 3: I don't know it, just the two of them were
Speaker 3: not going to work out. So it didn't last long
Speaker 3: and they started looking at other places for other people.
Speaker 5: Now it seems that another failed attempt at relationship. This
Speaker 5: is a he stops going to the bars. He said
Speaker 5: it made him feel insecure and not good enough for anybody.
Speaker 5: But during Christmas holiday of nineteen seventy eight, again Neilson
Speaker 5: finds himself alone, restless, in need of some company, and
Speaker 5: he goes to a pub and there he tell us
Speaker 5: about this person that he finds being yelled at at
Speaker 5: a bartender.
Speaker 3: Yeah it was Yeah. His name was Stephen Holmes and
Speaker 3: he was only fourteen years old, and he was trying
Speaker 3: to get liquor at the pub, and of course they
Speaker 3: were they were giving him a bad time, and of
Speaker 3: course the bartender wasn't going to sell and he was
Speaker 3: rather boisterous and loud and would tell the bartender where
Speaker 3: to go, and they sort of it was like a
Speaker 3: kind of a big fight to get liquor. And and
Speaker 3: he was he was really attractive to this kid, and
Speaker 3: so when the kid stormed out the front door, Nelson
Speaker 3: basically went out and chased him to find out what
Speaker 3: would what happened and why he was in a fight.
Speaker 3: Even he thought the kid was seventeen, So the Stephen
Speaker 3: Holmes did look older than he was. And that's so
Speaker 3: it wasn't like an obvious young kid trying to buy liquor.
Speaker 3: It was someone that looked older. And of course they
Speaker 3: they ended up going back to Nelson's house and having
Speaker 3: a few drinks and fell asleep, and that was kind
Speaker 3: of how the story of how they met and the
Speaker 3: thing that happened was the next morning when when Nelson
Speaker 3: woke up, Holmes was sleeping and he started getting these
Speaker 3: ideas of having homes stay right through the New Year's holidays.
Speaker 3: But why say it was kind of a little bit
Speaker 3: evil because in his mind it was he was going
Speaker 3: to stay whether he wanted to or not. So he
Speaker 3: wasn't he wasn't thinking, oh, it would be nice to
Speaker 3: spend a week and you know, nice sort of holidays.
Speaker 3: He was thinking, how am I going to get him
Speaker 3: to stay? And so that's when he got up. I
Speaker 3: went across to his dresser and grabbed one of his
Speaker 3: ties and and he wrapped it around his neck and
Speaker 3: strangled him until he became unconscious. Homes did wake up
Speaker 3: for a brief second, and it wasn't long before he
Speaker 3: passed out, and then he sexually assaulted him, and uh
Speaker 3: what he This is where he started to bath them.
Speaker 3: He had this real hygiene thing and cleanliness. So he
Speaker 3: would fill the top up with warm water and dragged
Speaker 3: the body. And so he dragged Homes into the bathroom,
Speaker 3: placed him face down in the water for the first,
Speaker 3: you know, five minutes, just to make sure he's dead,
Speaker 3: and then he would bath him and clean him properly,
Speaker 3: and then take him out of the tub, lay him
Speaker 3: on the floor and tie him up with ropes and
Speaker 3: wrap him in a curtain. And that's kind of what
Speaker 3: he did. That's how that's how it ended up. He
Speaker 3: had to he had in that place there. He was
Speaker 3: on the bottom floor, so he would lift the floorboards
Speaker 3: up and place the body in there. So that's kind
Speaker 3: of what his end game was.
Speaker 5: You talk about though, that he was experienced enough I
Speaker 5: guess from the military. He planned to stash him under
Speaker 5: the floorboards, but rigor mortis had set in, so was
Speaker 5: his body was too stiff to do it. But he
Speaker 5: remembered I thought this was eerie. Did remember that the
Speaker 5: body would loosen up in a day or two. So
Speaker 5: he did find it put him into the floorboards in
Speaker 5: the living room so they could figure out how he
Speaker 5: could dispose of them.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 5: You say that that body remained there for eight months
Speaker 5: until August eleventh, And then what did Nielsen decide to
Speaker 5: do with that body at that time?
Speaker 3: Well, he started to say he started he had kind
Speaker 3: of planned this, so he started to do kind of
Speaker 3: a barbecue or a bonfire, you know, where he would
Speaker 3: invite a few people over and and he would actually
Speaker 3: uh burn, burn the remains of the body and the parts,
Speaker 3: and and the people that would be around wouldn't really
Speaker 3: even know what he was doing. So it was his
Speaker 3: way of disposing of the of different things. Then and
Speaker 3: he started having these bonfires. They became a regular event
Speaker 3: around the neighborhood.
Speaker 5: Yes, you talk about ten months later, this is ten
Speaker 5: months later October eleventh, nineteen seventy one, Nielsen picks up
Speaker 5: a person named Andrew Ho, a Ford and student from
Speaker 5: Hong Kong, at a pub and again they go back
Speaker 5: to Nielsen's for drinks. Tell us what happens to Andrew Ho, Well.
Speaker 3: This was kind of a He had actually got into
Speaker 3: a deal because he wanted to get into bondage and
Speaker 3: being tied up and having that done. But Hoe said,
Speaker 3: you could do it, but he wanted money for it,
Speaker 3: like it was paid for a sort of thing. And
Speaker 3: I guess what happened was Ho he got his leg
Speaker 3: his feet tied up and he was laying there and
Speaker 3: when he saw Nelson go to the closet and take
Speaker 3: one of his ties work ties and come out, he
Speaker 3: kind of realized that there's something a little different. And
Speaker 3: then he started trying to strangle Home with the tie
Speaker 3: and he started to panic and scream, and he struggled
Speaker 3: and he did get loose, and he grabbed his clothes
Speaker 3: what he could grab and got out of the apartment.
Speaker 3: He went straight to the police and told them. But
Speaker 3: the police came and questioned Nelson about this, and for
Speaker 3: some reason, the police believed Nelson's story and that what
Speaker 3: it was was just a you know, wild sex thing
Speaker 3: that kind of went a little crazy, and they didn't
Speaker 3: even bother filing an official report, so it just sort
Speaker 3: of went away, you know, no child's no charges were filed,
Speaker 3: and the police just closed the case, you know, and
Speaker 3: hoe came from a family that it just wouldn't have
Speaker 3: been it wouldn't have gone over well. Why he was
Speaker 3: out with another man and gone home with him and
Speaker 3: was going to have sex with them, paid or not.
Speaker 3: So it was one of those things that just went away.
Speaker 3: But the strange thing was it didn't stay on the
Speaker 3: police's mind at all. They didn't They didn't follow through
Speaker 3: or watch them or take any notice of him after this.
Speaker 3: They sort of believed him and just sort of let
Speaker 3: it go.
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Speaker 5: we were talking about the development of Dennis Nielsen. Of
Speaker 5: there was an opportunity for police to understand who he
Speaker 5: was and at least note this event in their records,
Speaker 5: but of course nothing, no charges, no notice. Take us
Speaker 5: to December third, nineteen seventy nine and Nilsen meets the
Speaker 5: Canadian tourist Kenneth Ackldon at a pub. Again, once again
Speaker 5: at a pub. What is the offer for this tourist,
Speaker 5: Kenneth Auckaden and what do they do that day? What happens?
Speaker 3: Oh? Yeah, well he met him. It was in the
Speaker 3: theater district too, right the West End, so a pretty
Speaker 3: commercial touristy place, and Kenneth being a tourist from Canada,
Speaker 3: it was easy for him to just show him. Say hey, listen,
Speaker 3: I'll show you around all the great places in London.
Speaker 3: I'll take you to, you know, all the all the
Speaker 3: touristy places and uh and and the landmarks and everything,
Speaker 3: and and he was excited. It'd be great. And Uh
Speaker 3: called his uncle who he was staying with in London
Speaker 3: and told him that he was going to go out
Speaker 3: and have some fun and and UH check out London
Speaker 3: with this new friend he met. And the two of
Speaker 3: them drank a lot and and hung out at the
Speaker 3: pub and UH and UH started on their their trip
Speaker 3: around London to see uh see the sights and and
Speaker 3: so anyway, they what what they had done was they
Speaker 3: decided they were going to go for dinner, and Nelson
Speaker 3: invited him over to his place so he could shower,
Speaker 3: and the two of them drank a lot, of course,
Speaker 3: and and UH and what it was was that he
Speaker 3: went in and said he was going to shower, and
Speaker 3: Kenneth decided he would be listening to music, so he
Speaker 3: put on the headphones and was listening to some music
Speaker 3: and Neilson's knock out of the out of the bathroom
Speaker 3: and choked him with the cord. And it was pretty
Speaker 3: pretty It's pretty graphic. And they kind of described in
Speaker 3: the book how he wrapped it around his neck and
Speaker 3: pulled them as hard as he could and and killed
Speaker 3: him basically. And then he took off all of his
Speaker 3: clothes and all of the argandun's clothes and then went
Speaker 3: to bed and fell asleep with him. And so that
Speaker 3: was that was how that night ended.
Speaker 5: Now the next day, what does he do, this is new,
Speaker 5: What does he do to again live out his fantasy?
Speaker 3: Well, you know, he started taking pictures, and back then
Speaker 3: it was a polaroid, So he would put the body
Speaker 3: in different poses and take pictures and lay on top
Speaker 3: of him and take pictures of himself with the body.
Speaker 3: And then he would on and off play with the
Speaker 3: body for several hours, and would turn on the TV
Speaker 3: and watch TV television and talk to the dead body
Speaker 3: as if he was alive, still in visiting, And so
Speaker 3: the two of them would be basically enjoying a television show.
Speaker 3: But no one is dead. So eventually, by the end
Speaker 3: of that night he ended up wrapping up the body
Speaker 3: in plastic garbage bags, and he lifted the floorboards and
Speaker 3: put him in under there where he had hid the
Speaker 3: previous body before.
Speaker 5: Yes, And so even though that the body of Stephen
Speaker 5: Holmes remained there. He would use right that he would
Speaker 5: remove agen Doogg's body from there, and again, on different
Speaker 5: occasions sit him in a chair and talk to him
Speaker 5: and drink and watch TV with him. And then when
Speaker 5: he would put it away when he went off to work,
Speaker 5: when yeah, Ocaden didn't show up. Sorry, go ahead, No,
Speaker 5: I was just doing that.
Speaker 3: He started he started acting like that person was alive.
Speaker 3: He and for some reason he picked on Oxington and
Speaker 3: he would keep putting them. He put him in the
Speaker 3: chair and they would talk and then he would ask
Speaker 3: him how work was when he came home and stuff
Speaker 3: like that. Yeah, so he started really living a fantasy.
Speaker 5: M you talk about Ocaden's uncle. In February eighty three,
Speaker 5: police go question Nielsen again, what do they make of that?
Speaker 5: What does he have to say to that?
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, of course the family was really concerned and upset,
Speaker 3: didn't know what happened and called. When they called the police,
Speaker 3: they asked him about, you know, the two of them
Speaker 3: and what had happened, and Nelson claimed that he had
Speaker 3: taken him around and showed him to Square and the
Speaker 3: House of Parliament and all that sort of stuff. And
Speaker 3: they went back to his place and listened to music
Speaker 3: and got some rum and off sales and just did that.
Speaker 3: And then he said, I think that they believe they
Speaker 3: got into a fight. It's what he told them.
Speaker 5: And so he left. Now let's take us to take
Speaker 5: us to May nineteen eighty and again he's at a
Speaker 5: railway station now and he comes across someone named Martin
Speaker 5: Duffi's again a sixteen year old runaway. And this guy's
Speaker 5: homeless and he's hungry, and Nielsen tells him he has
Speaker 5: a spare room. So what happens back at the house.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And one thing too, with the railway stations, that
Speaker 3: was kind of an especially back then, it was a
Speaker 3: real common place for gay men to hang out and
Speaker 3: to meet as well. So this is why Nelson would
Speaker 3: be going places. It makes it sound like he was
Speaker 3: just there coming home from work and finding the body,
Speaker 3: but he would quite often go there and hang out.
Speaker 3: It's just an added thing for people to understand. And
Speaker 3: it was a perfect place to find young men. So
Speaker 3: when her go ahead, I was going to say, so
Speaker 3: when he met him, and of course he you know,
Speaker 3: he's you know, homeless and sort of there, he kind
Speaker 3: of had an impression that he was It was a
Speaker 3: gay young man. There was sort of a little bit
Speaker 3: of interaction between the two, so he could invite him
Speaker 3: back to his house and offer him dinner and drinks
Speaker 3: and even a place to sleep. And that's sort of
Speaker 3: what happened in this case as well. So so Martin
Speaker 3: Duffy would come home with him, and the two of
Speaker 3: them ate and drank and fell asleep, and just like before,
Speaker 3: of course Nelson would go get his tie and placed
Speaker 3: around the neck and of course pulled tightly and until
Speaker 3: they fell unconscious. And that's what happened again with Duffy.
Speaker 5: Now you talk about that he kept him the body
Speaker 5: for two days. He sat him in a chair and
Speaker 5: he talked to him, did all the other things that
Speaker 5: he did. But he had to put him under the
Speaker 5: floorboards after a couple of days because he was bloated.
Speaker 5: But he later said he continued to use Duffy's body
Speaker 5: in fantasies for much longer than the other ones. For
Speaker 5: some reason. I guess he found him more particularly attractive.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not sure why. In certain cases he would
Speaker 3: pick certain certain bodies. Later he talked about how he
Speaker 3: liked to clean them and he was really really obsessed
Speaker 3: with that, and the amount of body hair they had
Speaker 3: and stuff, and he would even remove the hair. So
Speaker 3: I think there are certain bodies he took a real
Speaker 3: liking to, and it was about the amount of hair
Speaker 3: and cleanliness and the whole look of the body. I think.
Speaker 3: So that's again, you know, with this body, he would
Speaker 3: take him into the bathroom and he bathed them and
Speaker 3: carried him around and did the whole thing, just like
Speaker 3: he did with the previous ones.
Speaker 5: You write that in the last six months of nineteen
Speaker 5: eighty Nielsen killed five more and attempted to murder two more,
Speaker 5: and one was later identified as William David Sutherland, a
Speaker 5: twenty six year old person that was working as a prostitute.
Speaker 5: You right, he had a girlfriend and a daughter, but
Speaker 5: that mystery wasn't solved until Nielsen's arrest in eighty three.
Speaker 5: You say, over next year Nielsen killed between five and
Speaker 5: eight others and attempted to kill another, Douglas Stewart, And
Speaker 5: then you chronicled the unidentified murder victims five, six, seven,
Speaker 5: and number eight. Now you write about the bodies beginning
Speaker 5: to smell and attract insects. So what does Nilsen try
Speaker 5: to do to over up this smell and deal with
Speaker 5: the smell itself.
Speaker 3: Well, he was doing all sorts of things, you know,
Speaker 3: you know, throwing throwing lime on the bodies and trying
Speaker 3: to cover up the smell with any way that he could.
Speaker 3: But you know, again he was back into having the bonfires,
Speaker 3: and then he started, you know, at this point it
Speaker 3: became kind of a you know, he was a little
Speaker 3: bit overwhelmed, and so he would he would have to
Speaker 3: start burning the bodies again, or or cooking different parts
Speaker 3: of the bodies, just membering them and starting to cook
Speaker 3: cook the meteor parts. And so he did everything that
Speaker 3: he could.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you talk about too. In October nineteen ninety one
Speaker 5: or nineteen eighty one, pardon me, Nielsen's landlord w to
Speaker 5: renovate and sell the house. So he offered him again
Speaker 5: a thousand pounds again Hanson some to leave, and Nielsen
Speaker 5: accepted and found a new place twenty three d Cranleigh
Speaker 5: Gardens in the Muswell Hill area in North London. So
Speaker 5: and then on the last day at Melrose Avenue you write,
Speaker 5: did he had a huge bonfire to burn his last
Speaker 5: five victims and used a tire, a burning tire to
Speaker 5: sort of cover up the smell, isn't that true?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, he would put anything he could in there
Speaker 3: to make that so they couldn't smell the bodies burning
Speaker 3: along and anything like that, tires or rubber, anything he
Speaker 3: could get. All the junk from the neighborhood, he would
Speaker 3: take and put it all in the big bonfire.
Speaker 5: You talk about at the new place. He didn't have
Speaker 5: a garden and he didn't have the floorboards anymore to
Speaker 5: deal with, so he was still picking up men. You
Speaker 5: write about Paul Knobbs nineteen years old, November eighty one,
Speaker 5: and you talk about in February eighty two of John HOWLITTT.
Speaker 5: Twenty three. Some of these people were able to escape.
Speaker 5: You talked to Hobbs, went to the hospital, tell us
Speaker 5: about John Howett and what happens.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he started, you know, he didn't take long. He
Speaker 3: one month into the new place. He yeah, and he
Speaker 3: didn't prethink all of this because it didn't hit him
Speaker 3: that he didn't have the place to hide the bodies
Speaker 3: or burn them into all that. It didn't really strike
Speaker 3: him until he started doing it again, and then it
Speaker 3: was kind of too late. He started getting overwhelmed, and
Speaker 3: so with Howlett that was in what January of eighty two,
Speaker 3: and Howett was a twenty three year old and again
Speaker 3: he met him at a pub, and he really liked
Speaker 3: his looks, you know, because he was a fit, good
Speaker 3: looking man, and so the two of them of course
Speaker 3: hit it up, started talking, and before you know it,
Speaker 3: he invited him back to his place, and how it went.
Speaker 3: He never killed him on that date, and they started
Speaker 3: to date or started to meet up after that, and
Speaker 3: they would meet at the same pub, and that's just
Speaker 3: sort of how they kind of got together again for
Speaker 3: dinners and drinks at Nelson's apartment.
Speaker 5: Now we talk about the other victims, and we talk
Speaker 5: about those that narrowly escaped. How does he dispose of
Speaker 5: these people? If he doesn't have floorboards a bonfire garden?
Speaker 5: What's his innovation too?
Speaker 3: Yeah, then he starts, Yeah, he starts cutting up the bodies,
Speaker 3: and he starts cooking the meat. He had a pot.
Speaker 3: He would boil them, and then he would start flushing
Speaker 3: parts down, the fleshier parts down the toilet, and and
Speaker 3: the rest he would bag up and throw them away.
Speaker 3: So basically, you got you got you turned it. He
Speaker 3: turned it into kind of a plant or factory sort
Speaker 3: of base. He would just cut up into parts, boil
Speaker 3: all he could cook the meat that he could, and
Speaker 3: the rest of it in innards, livers and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: He would dispose of them through the bathroom as much
Speaker 3: and the sinks as much as he could.
Speaker 5: You talk about that. In May eighty two, Carl Stodter
Speaker 5: is a twenty one year old and he falls asleep
Speaker 5: on his floor and he wakes up to Nielsen choking
Speaker 5: him and dragging him to the bathroom and just weird
Speaker 5: behavior of choking him and reviving him. And he goes
Speaker 5: to the police. Again, what's the response from police from
Speaker 5: this report?
Speaker 3: Well, I think that again, you know, the police had
Speaker 3: kind of a bias against the homosexual activity, and so
Speaker 3: when you go there with that right away, they have
Speaker 3: a negative connotation of who he is and what the
Speaker 3: problem was. And with Starter, he was very how do
Speaker 3: you say, he was very expressive.
Speaker 5: He was very.
Speaker 3: Just there's a word I can't hit, but he was
Speaker 3: just very over the top and very dramatic. And and
Speaker 3: he when he describes his situation of waking up and
Speaker 3: being drowned in the tub, and and just just the
Speaker 3: way he presented it, I think that the police were
Speaker 3: kind of not sure if they if they could believe him,
Speaker 3: and and and for some reason they they just didn't
Speaker 3: want to I don't know, they they didn't believe him,
Speaker 3: they didn't want to follow up on it. So it
Speaker 3: was and there was another problem that he had also
Speaker 3: left it. It took him almost two weeks to go
Speaker 3: to the police, and so there was a lot of
Speaker 3: things going on, and they just basically swept it under
Speaker 3: the carpet, so to speak. They just kind of didn't
Speaker 3: really follow through with it.
Speaker 5: You're right. In January twenty sixth, nineteen eighty three, the
Speaker 5: final victim, Steven Sinclair, twenty years old, again brought him
Speaker 5: home to eat, had something to drink and movie, fell
Speaker 5: asleep and strangled him again the same ritual, opposing him
Speaker 5: on the bed, then dissecting him, boiled the head, flushed
Speaker 5: down the toilet and bath drain. February fourth, nineteen eighty three.
Speaker 5: Very oddly, Nilsen writes a complaint to the landlord. What
Speaker 5: does he complain to the landlord about?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so he's having problems with his sewer backing up.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and.
Speaker 3: You know, he wasn't the only one. Actually, there was
Speaker 3: quite a few people in the building that were complaining
Speaker 3: about having backups and problems with their toilets and sewer system,
Speaker 3: and the drainage was always plugged. So when he wrote
Speaker 3: the complaint, he was like the fourth one. That's when
Speaker 3: they decided to send a plumber to do the investigation
Speaker 3: to find out why they're always having sewer problems.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah, in February eighth, nineteen eighty three, you talk
Speaker 5: about an employee of Dinah Rod. What does he find? Well,
Speaker 5: we alluded in the beginning, but what does he find?
Speaker 5: And then that's in the evening and he returns the
Speaker 5: next day, So tell us what happens in this process
Speaker 5: of discovery here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, when he got there, it was getting close to darker,
Speaker 3: becoming dark, and he thought it would be something pretty easy.
Speaker 3: And he gets down in there and he starts finding
Speaker 3: fleshy substance and then little bones and he described did
Speaker 3: as KFC. He described it as it looks like someone's
Speaker 3: been flushing their KFC down the toilet, you know, did
Speaker 3: in the washroom. And that's how it sort of felt
Speaker 3: to him. And because it was late and dark, he
Speaker 3: didn't know really he was going to have to do
Speaker 3: more work, and he wanted to report it to a supervisor,
Speaker 3: so of course he told the supervisor, and then the
Speaker 3: next morning the supervisor came out with him and a
Speaker 3: few other people and they started going through and finding
Speaker 3: more and more, and that's when they decided to call
Speaker 3: the police.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's interesting too, you write that. Dennis Nilsen. When
Speaker 5: he returned from work, police introduced themselves and they told
Speaker 5: the problems with the apartment's drainage pipes, and he asked,
Speaker 5: since when did the police care about drainage or plumbing?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Interesting, Yeah, I know, And he kind of knew
Speaker 3: it was kind of at the end anyway, because when
Speaker 3: they want to talk to him, he was like, come
Speaker 3: on up and then and he even told him where
Speaker 3: he had other bags full of body parts in the apartment,
Speaker 3: so he wasn't even trying to hide it when they
Speaker 3: got up there.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you're right. They did several large bags di sected
Speaker 5: torsos and a bag of internal organs. Also a bag
Speaker 5: with a skull with no flesh on it, and another
Speaker 5: one had a severed head and torso with one arm attached. Now,
Speaker 5: when they ask him, this is February tenth, Detective J.
Speaker 5: Interview with Nilsen. They have to charge him just for
Speaker 5: one within the forty eight hours. But when he asked
Speaker 5: how many bodies, what does he say? They think maybe
Speaker 5: a couple. What does he say about the total?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was really kind of unusual because at first
Speaker 3: in the interview he admitted that there were three more
Speaker 3: corpses in his apartment, you know, and the teach asked
Speaker 3: in a cabinet that he had and then they had,
Speaker 3: you know, and another one in a bag. And it
Speaker 3: was actually later when they asked him and then he
Speaker 3: sort of they said something and he gave a really
Speaker 3: weird answer. Oh yeah, that's right. He said, oh, how
Speaker 3: many you how many men did you kill? And he
Speaker 3: just said so, well, twelve or thirteen, and it sort
Speaker 3: of it made them think what So that was kind
Speaker 3: of the beginning of the end. And then of course
Speaker 3: they had to start looking through the whole apartment and
Speaker 3: then go back to his old place and start putting
Speaker 3: it all together.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you're right that they found a thousand fragments of bones.
Speaker 5: They had to charge him first with the murder of
Speaker 5: Stephen Saint Clair and then further investigate to see how
Speaker 5: many more that they could corroborate. He was interviewed sixteen times,
Speaker 5: thirty hours total. But he said he had no idea
Speaker 5: why he murdered the men, and he said he had
Speaker 5: no actual intercourse with the bodies and destroyed all their
Speaker 5: personal items afterwards. So he also wanted to talk and
Speaker 5: told them about all of these things that we are
Speaker 5: talking about now, because that's how we got that information.
Speaker 5: Even with the police, he talked about his conversations and
Speaker 5: the dress up. He talked about all of it and
Speaker 5: the disposal methods, didn't he.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh yeah, he was very open about it all.
Speaker 3: In fact, if anything, you can even see interviews of
Speaker 3: him on different television programs on YouTube now, and he
Speaker 3: was very open with all of his conversations about how
Speaker 3: he did everything. There was no hiding any of it,
Speaker 3: how he would dispose of the body, what he would
Speaker 3: do with some of the bodies, how long he kept them,
Speaker 3: how he removed all the hair and bathom, and he
Speaker 3: had he had quite a system to everything. And you know,
Speaker 3: just a strange fellow all the way around.
Speaker 5: Now you talk about the trial, and it didn't take
Speaker 5: long to pronounce him guilty, but there was he fired
Speaker 5: his lawyer. He thought he was again how unusual. He
Speaker 5: thought he could represent himself better than any other attorney.
Speaker 5: But finally he had an attorney and he pleaded guilty.
Speaker 5: But diminished responsibility another word for insanity.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, he was, he was.
Speaker 5: He was.
Speaker 3: You know, he had two psychiatrists speak about, you know,
Speaker 3: on his behalf and said that he lacked emotional development.
Speaker 3: And you know, it's kind of it's kind of our
Speaker 3: version over here of being insane.
Speaker 5: He was.
Speaker 3: He wasn't capable.
Speaker 5: He was.
Speaker 3: You know, uh, pseudo normal, so outbraids of outbreaks, of
Speaker 3: Schizoi disturbances and and uh so they had a lot
Speaker 3: to say about him mentally, he was just not able
Speaker 3: to handle it. So you know, it's diminished capacity.
Speaker 5: What's interesting about the trial is that some of these
Speaker 5: people that were able to survive and escape, like Douglas Stewart,
Speaker 5: he was the first witness and he had gone to
Speaker 5: the to the police and they had considered a lover's quarrel.
Speaker 5: And then they had another witness was Paul Knobs again,
Speaker 5: and then Carl Stodter told of two days of torture,
Speaker 5: being choked, unconscious and held underwater, and then Detective Jay
Speaker 5: got on the stand and spoke of Nielsen's directing police
Speaker 5: to the bodies, and then you had Superintendent Chambers. He
Speaker 5: read out Nielsen's confession, including all of the ghoulish details
Speaker 5: for the jury, didn't.
Speaker 3: He Yeah, yeah, you know there was really it was
Speaker 3: an it was really not a hard hard trial person
Speaker 3: to convict. Really the situation was pretty open. You know,
Speaker 3: they knew what was what he was doing and how
Speaker 3: he was doing it, and it Yeah.
Speaker 5: You talk about post prison activity because it's very interesting
Speaker 5: what Nielsen does and how long he lives and all
Speaker 5: his activities behind bars because he really did want to talk.
Speaker 5: Won't get into all of that, but what you do
Speaker 5: write in the book is that that he ends up
Speaker 5: in Wormwood Scrubs and Hammersmith Prison, West London, and very interestingly,
Speaker 5: unlike almost everyone else, he does not appeal his conviction.
Speaker 5: He does not appeal this conviction. But what does he
Speaker 5: say about the activities after? Is he remorseful or what
Speaker 5: does he say about what he had done overall?
Speaker 3: You know, I don't remorseful. I don't think is the
Speaker 3: is the good word. Because when he talked and he
Speaker 3: you know, he accepted that you know, he couldn't control himself.
Speaker 3: These are the actions, and in some cases he killed
Speaker 3: with premeditation, so he planned it, and.
Speaker 5: You know he he was.
Speaker 3: He was almost proud of of the thrill and the
Speaker 3: excitement and being able to seduce get men back to
Speaker 3: his apartment and deciding who he would kill and who
Speaker 3: he wouldn't, and then how he thought himself was almost
Speaker 3: a genius by being able to dispose of the bodies
Speaker 3: and not get caught. So in his mind when he
Speaker 3: talked about it and when he did interviews, he I
Speaker 3: think proud is probably the best word you could put it.
Speaker 3: It was almost like, look at my achievements.
Speaker 5: There was two books, and you talk about it right
Speaker 5: in the book, and I know that I've read this before,
Speaker 5: that he could not get his what was up to
Speaker 5: forty five hundred page manuscript. The authorities made sure that
Speaker 5: there was grounds to be able to not prevent or
Speaker 5: to prevent that book from being published and all the
Speaker 5: things that he had to say, and they used some
Speaker 5: legal ways of doing that, obviously, but this would have
Speaker 5: been called history of a Drowning Boy. And also the
Speaker 5: other bit of I guess information about this, A great
Speaker 5: wealth of knowledge was from an author named Brian Masters,
Speaker 5: and now it's considered a classic Killing for Company where
Speaker 5: he spoke and of course Wels corresponded with Dennis Nielsen
Speaker 5: about his life. So there's a difference you write in
Speaker 5: a book of some of the facts that Dennis Nielsen
Speaker 5: would admit to well say in his own memoir and
Speaker 5: what he had said to Brian Masters. There is a
Speaker 5: little bit of a difference in accounts, isn't there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, that's and I tried to just emphasize. I
Speaker 3: just I didn't want to say one was right or wrong.
Speaker 3: It was like the Morris Murder when I did it.
Speaker 3: There's a couple of different versions, and so the best
Speaker 3: thing to do is just kind of lay them out
Speaker 3: there and kind of go, well, you know, there's slight
Speaker 3: changes here, and you kind of have to try and
Speaker 3: you know, decipher it and figure it out what you
Speaker 3: believe for yourself.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah, it's very very interesting to all of the
Speaker 5: things that he wanted to say and talk about, and
Speaker 5: again Killing for Company, if anyone who read it, it
Speaker 5: just reinforces a lot of things that we had you
Speaker 5: had come to as well, and all the information about that.
Speaker 5: I mean, it's I hate to see it summed up
Speaker 5: that because it sounds like a somewhat nice excuse that
Speaker 5: he was so lonely had to kill the people and
Speaker 5: so that they wouldn't leave. But that's a very very
Speaker 5: nice version of what Dennis Nielsen was all about. You
Speaker 5: write that in May twelfth, twenty and eighteen, at seventy
Speaker 5: two years old, he died of natural causes in prison.
Speaker 5: And yet though you write also that he was attacked
Speaker 5: in prison, given eighty nine stitches in one prison, and
Speaker 5: so they moved him to segregation at another place. So
Speaker 5: he had an eventful career behind bars, didn't he.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, it wasn't boring. And again, when you look
Speaker 3: at him, and even when he did the Central Television
Speaker 3: interviews and stuff, and you talk about the books and stuff,
Speaker 3: he would always present himself in a light that he
Speaker 3: thought they wanted him to see. So I think that
Speaker 3: explained some of his changes in some of his stories
Speaker 3: as well. But he seemed to you know, you can
Speaker 3: wrap it up as any way you want, in a
Speaker 3: sense that he can say, well, you know, he's lonely
Speaker 3: and he had to kill for company, and he had
Speaker 3: all this stuff that can all be said, and he
Speaker 3: might even believe it, and he might even have been
Speaker 3: mentally disturbed enough to kind of use that as an excuse,
Speaker 3: but it doesn't really take away how evil he really was.
Speaker 5: Yes, yes, absolutely, yes, And just in closing too Prime
Speaker 5: museum in London I thought was very interesting, which is
Speaker 5: referred to the Black Museum. Collector has got Nielsen's last
Speaker 5: letter there in that Black Museum, and certainly that would
Speaker 5: be an appropriate name for anything that Dennis Nilsen was
Speaker 5: associated with.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's.
Speaker 5: Now. I just want to thank you very much, Alan
Speaker 5: for coming on and talking about Drinks, dinner and death,
Speaker 5: True story of Dennis Nielsen. For those that might want
Speaker 5: to look at other work, tell us about your Facebook
Speaker 5: website ways that they can look and contact you if necessary.
Speaker 3: Oh, for all my book work, it's ALANAR Warren dot
Speaker 3: com and that can that takes care of all my
Speaker 3: writing and House of Mystery dot com. It's for the
Speaker 3: radio show I do, which is a crime show, and
Speaker 3: that's really on Facebook. Of course, you can find me
Speaker 3: on Facebook under Alan R. Warren and that's easy to find.
Speaker 3: And I was going to stay for the first twelve
Speaker 3: emails I get at radio cub at gmail dot com.
Speaker 3: I'll give them a free book of the Drinks, Dinner
Speaker 3: and Death. So I just need you to send me
Speaker 3: an email and mention this show and the first twelve
Speaker 3: we'll get a book.
Speaker 5: Well that sounds great, very very exciting. Thank you very much,
Speaker 5: and I'm sure the audience will appreciate that. So people
Speaker 5: listen to the program, get out there and give them
Speaker 5: a call because the books won't last long. Thank you
Speaker 5: very much, Alan R. Warren for Drinks, Dinner and Death.
Speaker 5: It's been a pleasure. You have a great evening, and goodnight,
Speaker 5: thank you, good night. Four