Dennis Andrew Nilsen (23 November 1945 – 12 May 2018) was a Scottish serial killer and necrophile who murdered at least twelve young men and boys between 1978 and 1983 in London. Convicted at the Old Bailey of six counts of murder and two of attempted murder, Nilsen was sentenced to life imprisonment on 4 November 1983, with a recommendation that he serve a minimum of twenty-five years. This recommendation was later changed to a whole life tariff in December 1994. In his later years, Nilsen was imprisoned at Full Sutton maximum security prison.
All of Nilsen's murders were committed at the two North London addresses where he lived between 1978 and 1983. His victims would be lured to these addresses through deception and killed by strangulation, sometimes accompanied by drowning. Following each murder, Nilsen would observe a ritual in which he bathed and dressed the victim's body, which he retained for extended periods of time, before dissecting and disposing of the remains by burning them in a bonfire or flushing them down a toilet.
Nilsen became known as the Muswell Hill Murderer, as he committed his later murders in the Muswell Hill district of North London. He died at York Hospital on 12 May 2018 of a pulmonary embolism and a retro-peritoneal hemorrhage, which occurred following surgery to repair an abdominal aortic aneurysm.
Early life
Childhood
Dennis Andrew Nilsen was born on 23 November 1945 in Fraserburgh, Aberdeenshire, the second of three children born to Elizabeth Duthie Whyte and Olav Magnus Moksheim (who had adopted the surname Nilsen). Moksheim was a Norwegian soldier who had traveled to Scotland in 1940 as part of the Free Norwegian Forces following the German occupation of Norway. After a brief courtship he married Elizabeth Whyte in May 1942. The newlyweds moved into her parents' house.
The marriage between Nilsen's parents was difficult. Olav Nilsen did not view married life with any seriousness, being preoccupied with his duties with the Free Norwegian Forces, and making little attempt to spend much time with or find a new home for his wife. After the birth of her third child, Nilsen's mother concluded she had "rushed into marriage without thinking". The couple divorced in 1948. All three of the couple's children—Olav Jr., Dennis and Sylvia—had been conceived on their father's brief visits to their mother's household. Her parents, Andrew and Lily (née Duthie) Whyte—who had never approved of their daughter's choice of husband—were supportive of their daughter following her divorce and considerate of their grandchildren.
Nilsen was a quiet yet adventurous child. His earliest childhood memories were of family picnics in the Scottish countryside with his mother and siblings, of his grandparents' pious lifestyle (which he later described as "cold and dour"), and of being taken on long countryside walks carried on the shoulders of his maternal grandfather, to whom he was particularly close. Olav Jr. and Sylvia occasionally accompanied Dennis and his grandfather on these walks. Despite only being five years old, Nilsen vividly recalled these walks as being "very long ... along the harbour, across the wide stretch of beach, up to the sand-dunes, which rise thirty feet behind the beach ... and on to Inverallochy". He later described this stage of his childhood as one of contentment, and his grandfather being his "great hero and protector", adding that whenever his grandfather (who was a fisherman) was at sea, "Life would be empty [for me] until he returned.”
By 1951, Nilsen's grandfather's health was in decline, but he continued to work. On 31 October 1951, while fishing in the North Sea, he died of a heart attack at the age of 62. His body was brought ashore and returned to the Whyte family home prior to burial. In what Nilsen later described as his most vivid childhood recollection, his mother, weeping, asked him whether he wanted to see his grandfather. When he replied that he did, he was taken into the room where his grandfather lay in an open coffin. As Nilsen gazed upon the body, his mother told him his grandfather was sleeping, adding that he had "gone to a better place".
In the years following the death of his grandfather, Nilsen became more quiet and withdrawn, often standing alone at the harbour watching the herring boats. At home, he seldom participated in family activities and retreated from any attempts by adult family members to demonstrate any affection towards him. Nilsen grew to resent what he saw as the unfair amount of attention his mother, grandmother and later, stepfather displayed towards his older brother and younger sister. Nilsen envied Olav Jr.'s popularity. He often talked to or played games with his younger sister, Sylvia, to whom he was closer than any other family member.
On one of his solo excursions to the beach at Inverallochy, in 1954 or 1955, Nilsen became submerged beneath the water and was almost dragged out to sea. He initially panicked, flailing his arms and shouting. As he "gasped for air which wasn't there" he recalled believing that his grandfather was about to arrive and pull him out, before experiencing a sense of tranquility. His life was saved by another youth who dragged him ashore. Shortly after this incident, Nilsen's mother moved out of his grandparents' home and into a flat with her three children. She later married a builder named Andrew Scott, with whom she had four more children in as many years. Although Nilsen initially resented his stepfather (whom he viewed as an unfair disciplinarian) he gradually came to grudgingly respect him. The family moved to Strichen in 1955.
At the onset of puberty, Nilsen discovered he was gay, which initially confused and shamed him. He kept his sexuality hidden from his family and his few friends. Because many of the boys to whom he was attracted had facial features similar to those of his younger sister, Sylvia, on one occasion he sexually fondled her, believing that his attraction towards boys might be a manifestation of the care he felt for her. Nilsen made no efforts to seek sexual contact with any of the peers to whom he was sexually attracted, although he later said he had been fondled by an older youth and did not find the experience unpleasant. On one occasion, he also caressed and fondled the body of his older brother as he slept. As a result of this, Olav Jr. began to suspect his brother was gay and regularly belittled him in public—referring to Dennis as "hen" (Scottish dialect for "girl"). Nilsen initially believed that his fondling of his sister may have been evidence that he was bisexual.
As Nilsen progressed into adolescence, he found life in Strichen increasingly stifling, with limited entertainment amenities or career opportunities. He respected his parents' efforts to provide and care for their children, but began to resent the fact that his family was poorer than most of his peers, with his mother and stepfather making no effort to better their lifestyles; thus, Nilsen seldom invited his friends to the family home. At the age of 14, he joined the Army Cadet Force, viewing the British Army as a potential avenue for escaping his rural origins.
Army service
Nilsen's scholastic record was above average. He displayed a flair for history and art, but shunned sports. He finished his schooling in 1961 and briefly worked in a canning factory as he considered which career path he should choose. After three weeks at the factory, Nilsen informed his mother that he intended to join the army, where he intended to train as a chef. Nilsen passed the entrance examinations and received official notification he was to enlist for nine years' service in September 1961, commencing his training with the Army Catering Corps at St. Omer Barracks in Aldershot, Hampshire. Within weeks, Nilsen began to excel in his army duties; he later described his three years of training at Aldershot as "the happiest of my life". He relished the travel opportunities afforded him in his training, and recalled as a highlight his regiment taking part in a ceremonial parade attended by both the Queen and Field Marshal Lord Montgomery of Alamein.
While stationed at Aldershot, Nilsen's latent feelings began to stir, but he kept his sexual orientation well hidden from his colleagues. Nilsen never showered in the company of his fellow soldiers for fear of developing an erection in their presence; instead opting to bathe alone in the bathroom, which also afforded him the privacy to masturbate without discovery.
In mid-1964, Nilsen passed his initial catering exam and was officially assigned to the 1st Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers in Osnabrück, West Germany, where he served as a private. In this deployment, Nilsen began to increase his intake of alcohol. He described himself and his colleagues as a "hard-working, boozy lot"; his colleagues recalled he often drank to excess in order to ease his shyness. On one occasion, Nilsen and a German youth drank themselves into a stupor. When Nilsen awoke, he found himself on the floor of the German youth's flat. No sexual activity had occurred, but this incident fueled Nilsen's sexual fantasies, which initially involved his sexual partner—invariably a young, slender male—being completely passive. These fantasies gradually evolved into his partner being unconscious or dead. On several occasions, Nilsen also made tentative efforts to have his own prone body sexually interfered with by one of his colleagues. In these instances, whenever he and his colleagues drank to excess, Nilsen would pretend he was inebriated in the hope one of his colleagues would make sexual use of his supposedly unconscious body.
Following two years of service in Osnabrück, Nilsen returned to Aldershot, where he passed his official catering exam before being deployed to serve as a cook for the British Army in Norway. In 1967, he was deployed to the State of Aden (formerly Aden Colony), where he again served as a cook at the Al Mansoura Prison. This posting was more dangerous than his previous postings in West Germany or Norway, and Nilsen later recalled his regiment losing several men, often in ambushes en route to the army barracks. Nilsen was kidnapped by an Arab taxi driver, who beat him unconscious and placed him in the boot of his car. Upon being dragged out of the boot of the taxi, Nilsen grabbed a jack-handle and knocked the taxi driver to the floor before beating him unconscious. He then locked the man in the boot of the taxi.
Unlike his previous postings, Nilsen had his own room while stationed in Aden. This afforded him the privacy to masturbate without discovery. His developed fantasies of sex with an unresistant or deceased partner unfulfilled, Nilsen compensated by imagining sexual encounters with an unconscious body as he masturbated while looking at his own prone, nude body in a mirror. On one occasion, Nilsen discovered that, by using a free-standing mirror, he could create an effect whereby if positioning the mirror so his head was out of view, he could visualize himself engaged in a sexual act with another man. To Nilsen, this ruse created the ideal circumstance in which he could visually "split" his personality: in these masturbatory fantasies, Nilsen alternately envisaged himself as being both the domineering and the passive partner. These fantasies gradually evolved to incorporate his own near-death experience with the Arab taxi driver, the dead bodies he had seen in Aden, and imagery within a 19th-century oil painting entitled The Raft of the Medusa, which depicts an old man holding the limp, nude body of a dead youth as he sits aside the dismembered body of another young male. In Nilsen's most vividly recalled fantasy, a slender, attractive young blond soldier who had been recently killed in battle is dominated by a faceless "dirty, grey-haired old man" who washed this body before engaging in intercourse with the spreadeagled corpse.
When Nilsen completed his deployment in Aden he returned to the UK and was assigned to serve with the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders at Seaton Barracks in Plymouth, Devon. Throughout his service with this regiment, he was required to cook for thirty soldiers and two officers on a daily basis. Nilsen served at these barracks for one year before being transferred with the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders to Cyprus in 1969. Months later, the regiment was transferred to West Berlin, where, the same year, Nilsen had his first sexual experience with a female: a prostitute whose services he solicited. He bragged of this sexual encounter to his colleagues, but later stated he found intercourse with a female both "over-rated" and "depressing".
Following a brief period with the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders in Inverness, Nilsen was selected to cook for the Queen's Royal Guard before, in January 1971, being reassigned to serve as a cook for a different regiment in the Shetland Islands, where he ended his 11-year military career at the rank of corporal in October 1972.
Between October and December 1972, Nilsen lived with his family as he considered his next career move. On more than one occasion in the three months Nilsen lived in Strichen, his mother voiced her opinion as to her being more concerned with his lack of female companionship than his career path, and of her desire to see him marry and start a family. On one occasion, Nilsen joined his older brother Olav Jr., his sister-in-law, and another couple to watch a documentary about gay men. All present viewed the topic with derision, except Nilsen, who ardently spoke in defence of gay rights. A fight ensued, after which Olav Jr. informed his mother that Dennis was gay. Nilsen never spoke to his older brother again, and maintained only sporadic written contact with his mother, stepfather and younger siblings. He decided to join the Metropolitan Police, and moved to London in December to begin the training course.
Move to London
Employment
In April 1973, Nilsen completed his training and was posted to Willesden Green. Still a cadet and junior constable, he performed several arrests but never had to physically subdue a member of the public. Nilsen enjoyed the work, but missed the comradeship of the army. He began to drink alone in the evenings. During the summer and autumn of 1973, Nilsen began frequenting gay pubs and engaged in several casual liaisons with men. He viewed these encounters as "soul-destroying" liaisons in which he "would only lend" his partner his body in a "vain search for inner peace" as he sought a lasting relationship. In August, following a failed relationship, Nilsen came to the conclusion that his personal lifestyle was at odds with his job. His birth father died the same month, leaving each of his three children £1,000. In December, Nilsen resigned from the police.
Between December 1973 and May 1974, Nilsen worked as a security guard. The work was intermittent, and he resolved to find more stable, secure employment. He found work as a civil servant in May 1974. He was initially posted to a Jobcentre in Denmark Street, where his primary role was to find employment for unskilled labourers. At his workplace, Nilsen was known to be a quiet, conscientious employee who was active in the trade union movement. His attendance record was mediocre, although he frequently volunteered to work overtime, leading several colleagues to suspect he was something of a loner. In 1979, Nilsen was appointed acting executive officer. He was officially promoted to the position of executive officer, with additional supervisory responsibilities, in June 1982, and transferred to another Jobcentre in Kentish Town, continuing in this job until his arrest.
Melrose Avenue
In November 1975, Nilsen encountered a 20-year-old man named David Gallichan being threatened outside a pub by two other men. Nilsen intervened in the altercation and took Gallichan to his room at 80 Teignmouth Road in the Cricklewood district of North London. The two men spent the evening drinking and talking; Nilsen learned that Gallichan had recently moved to London from Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, was gay, unemployed, and residing in a hostel. The following morning, both men agreed to live together in a larger residence and Nilsen—using part of the inheritance bequeathed to him by his father—immediately resolved to find a larger property. Several days later, the pair viewed a vacant ground floor flat at 195 Melrose Avenue, also in Cricklewood, and they decided to move into the property. Prior to moving into Melrose Avenue, Nilsen negotiated a deal with the landlord whereby he and Gallichan had exclusive use of the garden at the rear of the property.
The flat was supposed to be furnished, but upon moving in, the pair found it to be largely threadbare. Over the following months, the couple redecorated and furnished the entire flat. Much of this work was performed by Gallichan, as Nilsen—having discovered Gallichan's lack of employment ambitions—began to view himself as the breadwinner in their relationship. Nilsen later recollected that he was sexually attracted to Gallichan, but the pair seldom had intercourse.
Initially, Nilsen experienced domestic contentment with Gallichan, but within a year of their moving to Melrose Avenue, the superficial relationship between the two men began to show signs of strain. They slept in separate beds, and both began to bring home casual sexual partners. Gallichan later insisted Nilsen had never been violent towards him, but that he did engage in verbal abuse, and the pair had begun arguing with increasing frequency by early 1976. Nilsen later stated that, following a heated argument in May 1977, he demanded Gallichan leave the residence. (Gallichan later informed investigators that he had chosen to end the relationship.)
Nilsen formed brief relationships with several other young men over the following eighteen months; none of these relationships lasted more than a few weeks, and none of the men expressed any intention of living with him on a permanent basis.
By late 1978, Nilsen was living a solitary existence; he had experienced at least three failed relationships in the previous eighteen months, and he later confessed to having developed an increasing conviction that he was unfit to live with. Throughout 1978, he devoted an ever-increasing amount of his time, effort and assiduity to his work, and most evenings he spent consuming spirits and/or lager as he listened to music.
Murders
Between 1978 and 1983, Nilsen is known to have killed a minimum of twelve men and boys, and to have attempted to kill seven others (he initially confessed in 1983 to having killed about sixteen victims). The majority of Nilsen's victims were homeless or gay men; others were heterosexual people he typically met in bars, on public transport or—on one occasion—outside his own home. All of Nilsen's murders were committed inside the two North London addresses where he resided in the years he is known to have killed. His victims were lured to these addresses through guile—typically the offer of alcohol and/or shelter.
Inside Nilsen's home, the victims were usually given food and alcohol, then strangled—typically with a ligature—either to death or until they had become unconscious. If the victim had been strangled into unconsciousness, Nilsen then drowned him in his bathtub, his sink or a bucket of water before observing a ritual in which he bathed, clothed and retained the bodies inside his residences for several weeks or, occasionally, months before he dismembered them. Each victim killed between 1978 and 1981 at his Cricklewood residence was disposed of via burning upon a bonfire. Prior to their dissection, Nilsen removed their internal organs, which he disposed of either beside a fence behind his flat, or close to Gladstone Park. The victims killed in 1982 and 1983 at his Muswell Hill residence were retained at his flat, with their flesh and smaller bones flushed down the lavatory.
Nilsen admitted to engaging in masturbation as he viewed the nude bodies of several of his victims, and to have engaged in sexual acts with six of his victims' bodies, but was adamant that he had never penetrated any of his victims.
195 Melrose Avenue
Nilsen killed his first victim, 14-year-old Stephen Holmes, on 30 December 1978. Holmes encountered Nilsen in the Cricklewood Arms pub, where Holmes had unsuccessfully attempted to purchase alcohol. According to Nilsen, he had been drinking heavily alone on the day he met Holmes before deciding in the evening that he must "at all costs" leave his flat and seek company. Nilsen invited Holmes to his house with the promise of the two drinking alcohol and listening to music, believing him to be approximately 17 years old. At Nilsen's home, both he and Holmes drank heavily before they fell asleep. The following morning, Nilsen awoke to find the sleeping Holmes beside him on his bed. In his subsequent written confessions, Nilsen stated he was "afraid to wake him in case he left me". After caressing the sleeping youth, Nilsen decided Holmes was to "stay with me over the New Year whether he wanted to or not". Reaching for a necktie, Nilsen straddled Holmes as he strangled him into unconsciousness, before drowning the teenager in a bucket filled with water. Nilsen then washed the body in his bathtub before placing Holmes on his bed and caressing his body. He twice masturbated over the body, before awaiting the passing of rigor mortis to enable him to stow the corpse beneath his floorboards. Holmes' bound corpse remained beneath the floorboards for almost eight months, before Nilsen built a bonfire in the garden behind his flat and burned the body on 11 August 1979.
I eased him into his new bed [beneath the floorboards] ... A week later, I wondered whether his body had changed at all or had started to decompose. I disinterred him and pulled the dirt-stained youth up onto the floor. His skin was very dirty. I stripped myself naked and carried him into the bathroom and washed the body. There was practically no discoloration and his skin was pale white. His limbs were more relaxed than when I had put him down there.
Nilsen's written recollections of the ritual he observed after the murder of his first victim.
Reflecting on his killing spree in 1983, Nilsen stated that, having killed Holmes: "I caused dreams which caused death ... this is my crime," adding that he had "started down the avenue of death and possession of a new kind of flatmate".
On 11 October 1979, Nilsen attempted to murder a student from Hong Kong named Andrew Ho, whom he had met in a St Martin's Lane pub and lured to his flat on the promise of sex. Nilsen attempted to strangle Ho, who managed to flee from his flat and reported the incident to police. Nilsen was questioned in relation to the incident, but Ho decided not to press charges.
Two months after the attempted murder of Ho, on 3 December 1979, Nilsen encountered a 23-year-old Canadian student named Kenneth Ockenden, who had been on a tour of England visiting relatives. Nilsen encountered Ockenden as they both drank in a West End pub. Upon learning the young man was a tourist, Nilsen offered to show Ockenden several London landmarks, an offer which Ockenden accepted. Nilsen then invited the student to his house on the promise of a meal and further drinks. The pair stopped at an off license en route to Nilsen's residence and purchased whiskey, rum, and beer, with Ockenden insisting on sharing the bill. Nilsen was adamant he could not recall the precise moment he strangled Ockenden, but recalled that he strangled the young man with the cord of his (Nilsen's) headphones as Ockenden listened to music. He also recalled dragging Ockenden across his floor with the wire wrapped around his neck as he strangled him, before pouring himself half a glass of rum and continuing to listen to music on the headphones with which he had strangled Ockenden.
The following day, Nilsen purchased a Polaroid camera and photographed Ockenden's body in various suggestive positions. He then laid Ockenden's corpse spreadeagled above him on his bed as he watched television for several hours before wrapping the body in plastic bags and stowing the corpse beneath the floorboards. On approximately four occasions over the following fortnight, Nilsen disinterred Ockenden's body from beneath his floorboards and seated the body upon his armchair alongside him as he himself watched television and drank alcohol.
Nilsen killed his third victim, 16-year-old Martyn Duffey, on 17 May 1980. Duffey was a catering student from Birkenhead, Merseyside, who had hitchhiked to London without his parents' knowledge on 13 May after being questioned by the British Transport Police for evading his train fare. For four days, Duffey had slept rough near Euston railway station before Nilsen encountered the youth as he returned from a union conference in Southport. Duffey, Nilsen recollected, was both exhausted and hungry, and happily accepted Nilsen's offer of a meal and a bed for the evening. After the youth had fallen asleep in Nilsen's bed, Nilsen fashioned a ligature around his neck, then simultaneously sat on Duffey's chest and tightened the ligature with a "great force". Nilsen held this grip until Duffey became unconscious; he then dragged the youth into his kitchen and drowned him in his sink before bathing with the body—which he recollected as being "the youngest-looking I had ever seen."
Duffey's body was first placed upon a kitchen chair, then upon the bed on which he had been strangled. The body was repeatedly kissed, complimented and caressed by Nilsen, both before and after he had masturbated while sitting upon the stomach of the corpse. For two days, Duffey's body was stowed in a cupboard, before Nilsen noted signs of bloating; therefore, "he went straight under the floorboards".
Following Duffey's murder, Nilsen began to kill with increasing frequency. Before the end of 1980, he killed a further five victims and attempted to murder one other; only one of these victims whom Nilsen murdered, 26-year-old William Sutherland, has ever been identified. Nilsen's recollections of the unidentified victims were vague, but he graphically recalled how each victim had been murdered and just how long the body had been retained before dissection. One unidentified victim killed in November had moved his legs in a cycling motion as he was strangled (Nilsen is known to have absented himself from work between 11 and 18 November, likely due to this particular murder); another unidentified victim Nilsen had unsuccessfully attempted to resuscitate, before sinking to his knees and sobbing, before standing to expressly spit at his own image as he looked at himself in the mirror. On another occasion, he had lain in bed alongside the body of an unidentified victim as he listened to the classical theme Fanfare for the Common Man before bursting into tears.
Inevitably, the accumulated bodies beneath Nilsen's floorboards attracted insects and created a foul odor—particularly throughout summer months. On occasions when Nilsen disinterred victims from beneath the floorboards, he noted that the bodies were covered with pupae and infested with maggots; some victims' heads had maggots crawling out of eye sockets and mouths. He placed deodorants beneath the floorboards and sprayed insecticide about the flat twice daily, but the odor of decay and the presence of flies remained.
In late 1980, Nilsen removed and dissected the bodies of each victim killed since December 1979 and burned them upon a communal bonfire he had constructed on waste ground behind his flat. To disguise the smell of the burning flesh of the six dissected bodies placed upon this pyre, Nilsen crowned the bonfire with an old car tire. Three neighborhood children stood to watch this particular bonfire, and Nilsen later wrote in his memoirs that he felt it would have seemed "in order" if he had seen these three children "dancing around a mass funeral pyre". When the bonfire had been reduced to ashes and cinders, Nilsen used a rake to search the debris for any recognizable bones. Noting a skull was still intact, he smashed it to pieces with his rake.
I could only relate to a dead image of the person I could love. The image of my dead grandfather would be the model of him at his most striking in my mind. It seems necessary for them to have been dead in order that I could express those feelings which were the feelings I held sacred for my grandfather ... it was a pseudo-sexual, infantile love which had not yet developed and matured. The sight of them [my victims] brought me a bitter sweetness and a temporary peace and fulfillment.--Extract from Nilsen's prison journals, written while on remand, April 1983.
On or about 4 January 1981, Nilsen encountered an unidentified man whom he described for investigators as an "18-year-old, blue-eyed" young Scot at the Golden Lion pub in Soho; he was lured to Melrose Avenue upon the promise of partaking in a drinking contest. After Nilsen and this victim had consumed several beverages, Nilsen strangled him with a tie and subsequently placed the body beneath the floorboards. Nilsen is known to have informed his employers he was ill and unable to attend work on 12 January in order that he could dissect both this victim and another unidentified victim he had killed approximately one month earlier. By April, Nilsen had killed two further unidentified victims: one of whom he described as an English skinhead whom he had met in Leicester Square; the other he described as "Belfast boy"; a man in his early 20s, approximately 5 ft 9 in (1.75 m) height, whom he had murdered sometime in February. In relation to the first of these three unidentified victims, he later casually reflected: "End of the day, end of the drink, end of a person ... floorboards back, carpet replaced, and back to work at Denmark Street". The following month, Nilsen removed the internal organs of several victims stowed beneath his floorboards. He discarded these innards both upon the waste ground behind his flat, and in his household rubbish.
The final victim to be murdered at Melrose Avenue was 23-year-old Malcolm Barlow, whom Nilsen discovered slumped against a wall outside his home on 17 September 1981. When Nilsen enquired as to Barlow's welfare, he was informed the medication Barlow was prescribed for his epilepsy had caused his legs to weaken. Nilsen suggested that Barlow should be in hospital and, supporting him, walked him into his residence before phoning for an ambulance. The following day, Barlow was released from hospital and returned to Nilsen's home, apparently to thank him. He was invited in and, after eating a meal, began drinking rum and coke before falling asleep on the sofa. Nilsen manually strangled Barlow as he slept, before stowing his body beneath his kitchen sink the following morning.
In mid-1981, Nilsen's landlord decided to renovate 195 Melrose Avenue, and asked Nilsen to vacate the property. Nilsen was initially resistant to the proposal, but accepted an offer of £1,000 from the landlord to vacate the residence. He moved into an attic flat at 23D Cranley Gardens in the Muswell Hill district of North London on 5 October 1981. The day before he vacated the property, Nilsen burned the dissected bodies of the last five victims he had killed at this address upon a third and final bonfire he constructed in the garden behind his flat. Again, Nilsen ensured the bonfire was crowned with an old car tire to disguise the smell of burning flesh (Nilsen had already dissected the bodies of four of these victims in January and August, and needed only to complete the dissection of Barlow for this third bonfire).
23 Cranley Gardens
At 23 Cranley Gardens, Nilsen had no access to a garden, and as he resided in an attic flat, he was unable to stow any bodies beneath his floorboards. For almost two months, any acquaintances Nilsen encountered and lured to his flat were not assaulted in any manner, although he did attempt to strangle a 19-year-old student named Paul Nobbs on 23 November 1981, but stopped himself from completing the act.
In March 1982, Nilsen encountered 23-year-old John Howlett while drinking in a pub near Leicester Square. Howlett was lured to Nilsen's flat on the promise of continuing drinking with Nilsen. There, both Nilsen and Howlett drank as they watched a film, before Howlett walked into Nilsen's front room and fell asleep in his bed (which was located in the front room at this time). One hour later, Nilsen unsuccessfully attempted to rouse Howlett, then sat on the edge of the bed drinking rum as he stared at Howlett before deciding to kill him. Following a ferocious struggle (in which Howlett himself attempted to strangle his attacker), Nilsen strangled Howlett into unconsciousness with an upholstery strap before returning to his living room, shaking from the "stress of the struggle" in which he had believed he would be overpowered. On three occasions over the following ten minutes, Nilsen unsuccessfully attempted to kill this victim after noting he had resumed breathing, before deciding to fill his bathtub with water and drown him. For over a week following Howlett's murder, Nilsen's own neck bore the victim's finger impressions.
In May 1982, Nilsen encountered Carl Stottor, a 21-year-old gay man, as the young man drank at the Black Cap pub in Camden. Nilsen engaged Stottor in conversation, discovering he was depressed following a failed relationship. After plying him with alcohol, Nilsen invited Stottor to his flat, assuring his guest he had no intention of sexual activity. At the flat, Stottor consumed further alcohol before falling asleep upon an open sleeping bag; he later awoke to find himself being strangled with Nilsen loudly whispering, "Stay still".
In his subsequent testimony at Nilsen's trial, Stottor stated he initially believed Nilsen was trying to free him from the zip of the sleeping bag, before he returned to a state of unconsciousness. He then vaguely recalled hearing "water running" before realizing he was immersed in the water and that Nilsen was attempting to drown him. After briefly succeeding in raising his head above the water, Stottor gasped the words, "No more, please! No more!" before Nilsen again submerged Stottor's head beneath the water. Believing he had killed Stottor, Nilsen seated the youth in his armchair, then noted his mongrel dog, Bleep, licking Stottor's face. Nilsen realized the tiniest thread of life still clung in the youth: he rubbed Stottor's limbs and heart to increase circulation, covered the youth's body in blankets, then laid him upon his bed. When Stottor regained consciousness, Nilsen embraced him; he then explained to Stottor he had almost strangled himself on the zip of the sleeping bag, and that he had resuscitated him.
Over the following two days, Stottor repeatedly lapsed in and out of consciousness. When Stottor had regained enough strength to question Nilsen as to his recollections of being strangled and immersed in cold water, Nilsen explained he had become caught in the zip of the sleeping bag following a nightmare, and that he had placed him in cold water as "you were in shock". Nilsen then led Stottor to a nearby railway station, where he informed the young man he hoped they might meet again before he bade him farewell.
Three months after Nilsen's June 1982 promotion to the position of executive officer in his employment, he encountered a 27-year-old named Graham Allen attempting to hail a taxi in Shaftesbury Avenue. Allen accepted Nilsen's offer to accompany him to Cranley Gardens for a meal. As had been the case with several previous victims, Nilsen stated he could not recall the precise moment he had strangled Allen, but recalled approaching him as he sat eating an omelet with the full intention of murdering him. Allen's body was retained in the bathtub for a total of three days before Nilsen began the task of dissecting his body upon the kitchen floor. Nilsen is again known to have informed his employers he was ill and unable to attend work on 9 October 1982—likely in order that he could complete the dissection of Allen's body.
On 26 January 1983, Nilsen killed his final victim, 20-year-old Stephen Sinclair. Sinclair was last seen by acquaintances in the company of Nilsen, walking in the direction of a tube station. At Nilsen's flat, Sinclair fell asleep in a drug- and alcohol-induced stupor in an armchair as Nilsen sat listening to the rock opera Tommy. Nilsen approached Sinclair, knelt before him and said to himself, "Oh Stephen, here I go again", before strangling Sinclair with a ligature constructed with a necktie and a rope. Noting crepe bandages upon each of Sinclair's wrists, Nilsen removed these to discover several deep slash marks from where Sinclair had recently tried to kill himself.
Following his usual ritual of bathing the body, Nilsen laid Sinclair's body upon his bed, applied talcum powder to the body, then arranged three mirrors around the bed before himself lying naked alongside the dead youth. Several hours later, he turned Stephen's head towards him, before kissing the youth's body on the forehead and saying, "Goodnight, Stephen". Nilsen then fell asleep alongside the body. As had been the case with both Howlett and Allen, Sinclair's body was subsequently dissected, with various dismembered parts wrapped in plastic bags and stored in either a wardrobe, a tea chest or within a drawer located beneath the bathtub. The bags used to seal Sinclair's remains were sealed with the same crepe bandages Nilsen had found upon Sinclair's wrists. Nilsen attempted to dispose of the flesh, internal organs and smaller bones of all three victims killed at Cranley Gardens by flushing their dissected remains down his toilet. In a practice which he had conducted upon several victims killed at Melrose Avenue, he also boiled the heads, hands and feet to remove the flesh off these sections of the victims' bodies.
On 4 February 1983, Nilsen wrote a letter of complaint to estate agents complaining that the drains at Cranley Gardens were blocked, and that the situation for both himself and the other tenants at the property was intolerable. The following day, he refused to allow an acquaintance to enter his property, the reason being he had begun to dismember Sinclair's body on the floor of his kitchen.
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