Dennis Nilsen Part II

 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 and 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, "No more, please! No more!" before Nilsen again submerged Stottor's head beneath the water. Believing he had killed Stottor, Nilsen seated him in his armchair, then noted his mongrel dog, Bleep, licking Stottor's face. Nilsen realised he was still barely alive. He rubbed Stottor's limbs and heart to increase circulation, covered his body in blankets, and 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, and then arranged three mirrors around the bed before himself lying naked alongside the dead man. Several hours later, he turned Stephen's head towards him, before kissing his 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 hold 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 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.

Discovery and arrest

Nilsen's murders were first discovered by a Dyno-Rod employee, Michael Cattran, who responded to the plumbing complaints made by both Nilsen and other tenants of Cranley Gardens on 8 February 1983. Opening a drain cover at the side of the house, Cattran discovered the drain was packed with a flesh-like substance and numerous small bones of unknown origin. Cattran reported his suspicions to his supervisor, Gary Wheeler. As Cattran had arrived at the property at dusk, he and Wheeler agreed to postpone further investigation into the blockage until the following morning. Prior to leaving the property, Nilsen and fellow tenant Jim Allcock convened with Cattran to discuss the source of the substance. Upon hearing Cattran exclaim how similar the substance was in appearance to human flesh, Nilsen replied: "It looks to me like someone has been flushing down their Kentucky Fried Chicken."

At 7:30 a.m. the following day, Cattran and Wheeler returned to Cranley Gardens, by which time the drain had been cleared. This aroused the suspicions of both men. Cattran discovered some scraps of flesh and four bones in a pipe leading from the drain which linked to the top flat of the house. To both Cattran and Wheeler, the bones looked as if they originated from a human hand. Both men immediately called the police who, upon closer inspection, discovered further small bones and scraps of what looked to the naked eye like either human or animal flesh in the same pipe. These remains were taken to the mortuary at Hornsey, where pathologist David Bowen advised police that the remains were human, and that one particular piece of flesh he concluded had been from a human neck bore a ligature mark.

Upon learning from fellow tenants that the top floor flat from where the human remains had been flushed belonged to Nilsen, Detective Chief Inspector Peter Jay and two colleagues opted to wait outside the house until Nilsen returned home from work. When Nilsen arrived, DCI Jay introduced himself and his colleagues, explaining they had come to enquire about the blockage in the drains from his flat. Nilsen asked why the police were interested in his drains and also whether or not the two officers present with Jay were health inspectors. In response, Jay informed Nilsen that the other two were also police officers, and requested access to his flat to discuss the matter further.

The three officers followed Nilsen into his flat, where they immediately noted the odour of rotting flesh. Nilsen questioned further as to why the police were interested in his drains, to which he was informed the blockage had been caused by human remains. Nilsen feigned shock and bewilderment, stating, "Good grief, how awful!" In response, Jay replied: "Don't mess about, where's the rest of the body?" Nilsen responded calmly, admitting that the remainder of the body could be found in two plastic bags in a nearby wardrobe, from which DCI Jay and his colleagues noted the overpowering smell of decomposition emanated. The officers did not open the cupboard, but asked Nilsen whether there were any other body parts to be found, to which Nilsen replied: "It's a long story; it goes back a long time. I'll tell you everything. I want to get it off my chest. Not here — at the police station." He was then arrested and cautioned on suspicion of murder before being taken to Hornsey police station. While en route to the police station, Nilsen was asked whether the remains in his flat belonged to one person or two. Staring out of the window of the police car, he replied, "Fifteen or sixteen, since 1978."

That evening, Detective Superintendent Chambers accompanied DCI Jay and Bowen to Cranley Gardens, where the plastic bags were removed from the wardrobe and taken to Hornsey mortuary. One bag was found to contain two dissected torsos, one of which had been vertically dissected, and a shopping bag containing various internal organs. The second bag contained a human skull almost completely devoid of flesh, a severed head, and a torso with arms attached, but hands missing. Both heads were found to have been subjected to moist heat.

Confession

In an interview conducted on 10 February, Nilsen confessed there were further human remains stowed in a tea chest in his living room, with other remains inside an upturned drawer in his bathroom. The dismembered body parts were the bodies of three men, all of whom he had killed by strangulation — usually with a necktie. One victim he could not name; another he knew only as "John the Guardsman", and the third he identified as Stephen Sinclair. He also stated that, beginning in December 1978, he had killed "twelve or thirteen" men at his former address, 195 Melrose Avenue. Nilsen also admitted to having unsuccessfully attempted to kill approximately seven other people, who had either escaped or, on one occasion, had been at the brink of death but had been revived and allowed to leave his residence.

A further search for additional remains at Cranley Gardens on 10 February revealed the lower section of a torso and two legs stowed in a bag in the bathroom, and a skull, a section of a torso, and various bones in the tea chest. The same day, Nilsen accompanied police to Melrose Avenue, where he indicated the three locations in the rear garden where he had burned the remains of his victims.

Cattran contacted the Daily Mirror on 10 February, informing the newspaper of the ongoing search for human remains at Cranley Gardens, leading the newspaper to break the story and spark intense national media interest. By 11 February, reporters from the Mirror had obtained photographs from Nilsen's mother in Aberdeenshire, which appeared on their front page the following day.

Under English law, the police had forty-eight hours in which to charge Nilsen or release him. Assembling the remains of the victims killed at Cranley Gardens on the floor of Hornsey mortuary, Professor Bowen was able to confirm the fingerprints on one body matched those on police files of Sinclair. At 5:40 p.m. on 11 February, Nilsen was charged with Sinclair's murder, and a statement revealing this was released to the press. Formal questioning of Nilsen began the same evening, with Nilsen agreeing to be represented by a solicitor (a facility he had earlier declined). Police interviewed Nilsen on sixteen separate occasions over the following days, in interviews which totaled over thirty hours.

Nilsen was adamant that he was uncertain as to why he had killed, simply saying, "I'm hoping you will tell me that" when asked his motive for the murders. He was adamant that the decision to kill was not made until moments before the act of murder. Most victims had died by strangulation; on several occasions, he had drowned the victims once they had been strangled into unconsciousness. Once the victim had been killed, he typically bathed the victim's body, shaved any hair from the torso to conform it to his physical ideal, and then applied makeup to any obvious blemishes upon the skin. The body was usually dressed in socks and underpants, before Nilsen draped the victims around him as he talked to the corpse. With most victims, Nilsen masturbated as he stood alongside or knelt above the body, and Nilsen confessed to having occasionally engaged in intercrural sex with his victims' bodies, but repeatedly stressed to investigators he had never actually penetrated his victims — explaining that his victims were "too perfect and beautiful for the pathetic ritual of commonplace sex".

All the victims' personal possessions were destroyed following the ritual of bathing their bodies in an effort to obliterate their identity prior to their murder and their now becoming what Nilsen described as a "prop" in his fantasies. In several instances, he talked to the victim's body as it remained seated in a chair or prone on his bed, and he recalled being emotional as he marvelled at the beauty of their bodies. With reference to one victim, Kenneth Ockenden, Nilsen noted that Ockenden's "body and skin were very beautiful", adding the sight "almost brought me to tears". Another, unidentified victim had been so emaciated that he had simply been discarded under the floorboards.

The bodies of the victims killed at his previous address were kept for as long as decomposition would allow: upon noting any major signs of decomposition in a body, Nilsen stowed it beneath his floorboards. If a body did not display any signs of decomposition, he occasionally alternately stowed it beneath the floorboards and retrieved it before again masturbating as he stood over or lay alongside the body. Make-up was again applied to "enhance its appearance" and to obscure blemishes.

When questioned as to why the heads found at Cranley Gardens had been subjected to moist heat, Nilsen stated that he had frequently boiled the heads of his victims in a large cooking pot on his stove so that the internal contents evaporated, thus removing the need to dispose of the brain and flesh. The torsos and limbs of the three victims killed at this address were dissected within about one week of their murder before being wrapped in plastic bags and stowed in the three locations he had indicated to police; the internal organs and smaller bones he flushed down the toilet. This practice — which had led to his arrest — had been the only method he could consider to dispose of the internal organs and soft tissue as, unlike at Melrose Avenue, he had no exclusive use of the garden of the property.

At Melrose Avenue, Nilsen typically retained the victims' bodies for a much longer period before disposing of the remains. He kept "three or four" bodies stowed beneath the floorboards before he dissected the remains, which he would wrap inside plastic bags and either return under the floorboards or, in two instances, place inside suitcases which had been left at the property by a previous tenant. The remains stowed inside suitcases — those of Ockenden and Duffey — were placed inside a shed in the rear garden, and were disposed of upon the second bonfire Nilsen had constructed at Melrose Avenue. Other dissected remains — minus the internal organs — were returned beneath the floorboards or placed upon a bonfire he had constructed in the garden.

Nilsen confirmed that on four occasions, he had removed the accumulated bodies from beneath his floorboards and dissected the remains, and on three of these occasions, he had then disposed of the accumulated remains upon an assembled bonfire. On more than one occasion, he had removed the internal organs from the victims' bodies and placed them in bags, which he then typically dumped behind a fence to be eaten by wildlife. All the bodies of the victims killed at Melrose Avenue were dismembered after several weeks or months of interment beneath the floorboards. Nilsen recalled that the putrefaction of these victims' bodies made this task exceedingly vile; he recalled having to fortify his nerves with whisky and having to grab handfuls of salt with which to brush aside maggots from the remains. Often, he vomited as he dissected the bodies, before wrapping the dismembered limbs inside plastic bags and carrying the remains to the bonfires. Nonetheless, immediately prior to his dissecting the victims' bodies, Nilsen masturbated as he knelt or sat alongside the corpse. This, he stated, was his symbolic gesture of saying goodbye to his victims.

When questioned as to whether he had any remorse for his crimes, Nilsen replied: "I wished I could stop, but I couldn't. I had no other thrill or happiness". He also emphasized that he took no pleasure from the act of killing, but "worshipped the art and the act of death".

Formal charges

On 11 February 1983, Nilsen was officially charged with the murder of Stephen Sinclair. He was transferred to HMP Brixton to be held on remand until his trial.

According to Nilsen, upon being transferred to Brixton Prison to await trial, his mood was one of "resignation and relief"; with his belief being that he would be viewed, in accordance with law, as innocent until proven guilty. He objected to wearing a prison uniform while on remand. In protest at having to wear a prison uniform and what he interpreted to be breaches of prison rules, Nilsen threatened to protest against his remand conditions by refusing to wear any clothes; as a result of this threat, he was not allowed to leave his cell. On 1 August, Nilsen threw the contents of his chamber pot out of his cell, hitting several prison officers. This incident resulted in Nilsen being found guilty on 9 August of assaulting prison officers and subsequently spending fifty-six days in solitary confinement.

On 26 May, Nilsen was committed to stand trial at the Old Bailey on five counts of murder and two of attempted murder (a sixth murder charge was later added). Throughout this committal hearing, he was represented by a solicitor named Ronald Moss, whom he had previously dismissed as his legal representative on 21 April, before Moss was reappointed to the role after Nilsen had complained to magistrates he had been afforded no facilities with which he could mount his own defence. Moss was to remain Nilsen's legal representative until July 1983, when Nilsen — again expressing his intention to defend himself — discharged him, until 5 August when Nilsen once again reappointed Moss.

Initially, Nilsen intended to plead guilty to each charge of murder at his upcoming trial. With Nilsen's full consent, Moss had fully prepared his defense; five weeks before his trial, Nilsen again dismissed Moss, and opted instead to be represented by Ralph Haeems, upon whose advice Nilsen agreed to plead not guilty by diminished responsibility.