Dennis Nilsen - Conversations with Britain's Most Evil Serial Killer (2 page)

O
ver the years, the story of how Dennis Nilsen was arrested has been told and retold until it has acquired a ring of modern folklore. It goes like this:

On Thursday, 3 February 1983, residents of 23 Cranley Gardens, in the north London suburb of Muswell Hill, found their drains were blocked. They called a drainage engineer from Dyno-Rod. His second visit was on Wednesday, 9 February, a particularly freezing cold day. After careful thought, he concluded that pieces of flesh and bones were causing the blockage. Unsure if they were animal or human, he decided to call the police.

Three officers arrived in a squad car. After peering down the manhole, all agreed something wasn’t right. They fished the pieces of grey matter out from beneath the manhole cover
and took them to the lab. An hour later, the pathologist confirmed them as human. In the mortuary, the detectives knew they were dealing with something hugely significant … and particularly grim.

They returned to Cranley Gardens. An inspection of the outside of the building seemed to indicate that the flesh had come from a pipe that led to the top flat. The neighbours told them that the man who lived there was peculiar and that he should be back from work in about an hour. DCI Peter Jay said they would wait. Rubbing their hands to keep warm, the three men discussed what they knew about Nilsen – his name, age, and that he worried his neighbours. Still, they had little idea of what he might be like. How might a man who had possibly been chopping up bodies and flushing them down the toilet react to arrest?

Nilsen was also waiting. He had spent the afternoon at work mentally preparing himself for his arrest. Since leaving for work that morning, he been quite convinced the game was up. He knew the body parts he’d been flushing down the toilet were still blocking the plumbing.

When Nilsen finally returned to his flat, the police had moved into the warmth of the lobby. Nilsen opened the door to find DCI Jay staring at him. He knowingly returned his gaze. Jay began by asking about the plumbing.

In his calm Scottish voice, Nilsen replied, ‘Since when were the police interested in people’s drains?’

The policemen suggested they take the conversation upstairs. In the flat, Jay explained about the human remains.

‘How awful!’ exclaimed Nilsen.

Jay nervously snapped, ‘Stop messing around … where’s the rest of the body?’

Then, in a matter-of-fact way, Nilsen took them to the damp, cold front room and opened one of the wardrobes where he had stored bodies. He said he had much more to tell and wanted to do it at the station.

In the car back to Hornsey Police Station, the detectives asked their prisoner what it was he wanted to tell them. Had he killed two men?

‘Fifteen or sixteen over four years,’ was Nilsen’s reply. That made him the most prolific multiple killer yet discovered in the UK. And just like in the movies, he was quiet, intelligent and personable. His writing still often is.

In his version of those events above, however, Nilsen changes the emphasis so that it is he at the centre, looking for ‘help’. He says the police were unsure of themselves. It was he, he says, who finally tired of concealing his ‘problem’ and who led the police each step of the way with his sudden, immediate and full co-operation.

Either way, the stark truth was that three young men had been senselessly murdered in that particular flat. At least nine had been killed in another. As Cranley Gardens was a
top-floor
flat and Nilsen didn’t have a car, it had become inevitable that he would soon be caught. Nilsen even says that he deliberately ‘invited’ arrest by his activities. There is no evidence for that.

What the police did find plenty of evidence for was that Nilsen suffered from a severe and dangerous personality disorder. The pot on the stove had been used to boil a human head, and the odour of death hung thick throughout the flat.
In the wardrobe were bin bags filled with the remains of a Scottish youth called Steven Sinclair. Nilsen had killed him two weeks earlier, and now he wanted to explain everything.

The way he did so was distinctive. He talked almost as if he had been in love with Sinclair. In one notebook, Nilsen wrote, ‘I stood in great grief and a wave of utter sadness as if someone very dear to me had just died.’

The line was written next to an ink drawing of the corpse called ‘The Last Time I Saw Stephen Sinclair’. The juxtaposition seemed quite mad. The affection he claimed to have felt for the young man was matched with a vile disregard for his body. The torso had been cut down the middle and was separated into two halves. The lower part of the body had been removed with a clean cut from just above the waist. The eyes had been boiled in their sockets. When the pieces were re-assembled on the mortuary slab, they had turned different colours.

Stephen Sinclair was typical of those Nilsen would bring home. He was the sort whose story interests no one, and the kind of young man that Nilsen felt he could take under his wing. Sinclair was 20 years old and only 5ft-5in tall. He had come down from Scotland, travelling without a ticket on the InterCity Express from Edinburgh to London’s King’s Cross. Like many of the runaways who arrived at that station, he had come with little more than a vague feeling that the big city had something for everyone, even him.

Sinclair met his killer on Wednesday, 26 January. Nilsen isn’t sure exactly where. In one version, it was in a pub called the Royal George in Goslett Yard near Denmark Street where
he had once worked. One witness, however, thought he saw Sinclair hanging around with someone fitting Nilsen’s description some days before. So, despite what he says, Nilsen, did, quite possibly, mark Sinclair out as a potential victim beforehand.

Another, more likely, account has them meeting by the slot machines off Piccadilly Circus. This was then a well-known gay ‘cruising’ area where older men would try to pick up rent boys or runaways looking for money. Dressed in a leather jacket, tight black jeans and with tattoos on his hands and arms, Sinclair would have hardly stood out. As a well-spoken man in his late thirties, neither would Nilsen.

Nilsen was 6ft 1in, slim, dark-haired and good-looking despite his oversized glasses and functional suit. We know from victims who escaped, that his manner when picking people up was usually friendly but dominating. The conversation between him and Sinclair was therefore probably one-sided, with their shared knowledge of eastern Scotland helping it along. As they chatted, Nilsen would have appeared sympathetic and kind, and would have spoken with complete confidence as if he knew everything about everything. He found Sinclair attractive, especially approving of the fact that he was small and fair – two of his physical preferences. Nilsen cared less for the fact that he was a delinquent and a drug addict.

Sinclair would have seemed like a safe bet. Not only was he a runaway but he had also just been in trouble. He had been being caught stealing at a St Mungo’s hostel and bailed to appear before magistrates on Monday, 12 February. It was hardly the first time Sinclair had got himself into bother. In
fact, he’d rarely been out of trouble since he was born Stephen Guild in 1962.

He was illegitimate and was soon taken into the custody of the local authorities. After 14 months he was put up for foster care, and came into the home of Neil and Elizabeth Sinclair who adopted him to be a brother to their three daughters. Stephen Sinclair, however, wet his bed and constantly bunked off school. Things became so bad that a doctor’s advice was sought. It transpired that he had psycho-motor epilepsy.

He was then institutionalised until he was 12. By his
mid-teens
, he was also diagnosed as educationally sub-normal and spent time in Borstal. He soon graduated to prison. When he got out, things became worse. On one occasion, he slashed his wrists and, on another, he attacked his sisters. There was also an occasion when he tried to burn the house down.

Eventually, Sinclair was re-fostered into a new family. But the same old problems rose to the surface. As he turned 18, he was a drug addict, a glue sniffer and a recognised, opportunist criminal. At this time, though, there is no particular indication he was homosexual.

Wherever they met, we know that, very soon afterwards, Nilsen invited the young man on a tour of the West End pubs. He bought him anything he cared to drink and insisted on being called ‘Des’, explaining he hated the name Dennis. At closing time – 11.30pm – Nilsen suggested they go back to his flat for more alcohol.

In
History of a Drowning Boy
, he describes their journey home. They took the Northern Line up to Highgate. Sinclair had started feeling sleepy. As they got off, Nilsen noticed his companion was becoming woozier. During the mile or so
walk back to his flat, Nilsen says he doubted he ‘understood a word he said in his half-drugged Scots brogue’.

Muswell Hill was a pleasant, leafy area where urban London dissolved into greenery and space. Most of the large, semi-detached houses remained intact as family homes for genteel and affluent city workers. 23 Cranley Gardens, a tall Edwardian house with Mock Tudor beams, was different. Later, when it appeared under the headline ‘
HOUSE OF HORRORS
’, it looked every bit the part. The house had been split into small bed-sits. There were tiles missing and the paint was flaking off. The landlady lived in India and the agents were in Golders Green. Tenants came and went without getting to know each other. In particular, the strange man living in the attic kept himself to himself.

In the dark, cold and full of drink, Stephen Sinclair was unlikely to have paid particular attention to the outside of the building. Once inside, they went up two flights of stairs and, when Nilsen opened the door, Bleep – his small, black-
and-white
cross-breed dog – jumped up and licked their hands. The flat was smelly, small and damp. As Sinclair walked in, he would have seen a grimy gas stove in small galley kitchen to his left. It adjoined the hall. The bathroom was opposite. The cooker, cooking pot and bath have now been preserved in Scotland Yard’s ‘Black Museum’ as a permanent reminder of the state of mind of the man who owned them.

Ahead of the kitchen was a door leading to the front room. This led to the other main room, the bedroom, in which was a double bed, a comfortable armchair, a stereo, the TV, posters, plants and a scented candle. The room at the front was not used. It contained a large wardrobe and some tea
chests. It had been reported that, no matter what the weather, the windows were flung wide open.

There are a number of accounts of what happened next. Even before writing
History of a Drowning Boy
, Nilsen gave two versions. The first was his confession to the police. He told DCI Jay that when they came in and put on the television, he was pleased to see the working-class drama
Boys from the Blackstuff
being broadcast. The programme appealed to his socialist ideals. Sinclair sat on the floor and Nilsen in the armchair. They watched the programme while drinking the alcohol they had picked up on the way.

Towards the end, Nilsen noticed that Sinclair had disappeared to the corner of the room to inject himself with drugs. That disappointed Nilsen. He put The Who’s
Tommy
on his stereo. With his headphones tightly clasped to his ears, he says that he listened to all 75 minutes before dozing off. In a police statement later, he claimed, ‘I can’t remember anything else until I woke up the next morning. He was still in the armchair and he was dead. On the floor was a piece of string with a tie attached to it … I know I must have killed him … I must have made up the piece of string that night. I don’t know.’

Months later, after the trial, Nilsen wrote an account for author Brian Masters, which is reproduced in his book,
Killing for Company
(extracts of which are reproduced in this book by special permission). Here, he let his memories flow as if reliving the moment: