Dennis Nilsen - Conversations with Britain's Most Evil Serial Killer (28 page)

Carl Stottor’s reaction when I reminded him about Nilsen’s letter to the
Evening Standard
about the identification of Stephen Holmes was that it was a sign of his ‘incredible arrogance’. He told me, ‘Nilsen, is just a nasty, nasty man … he’s a nobody who enjoys the notoriety that being a serial killer has brought him.’ When I told him about the full extent of Nilsen’s legal battles, he rolled his eyes and said he found it outrageous he could get legal aid for his human
rights case when he himself was denied victim compensation for the attack.

Stottor’s appearances in numerous ‘real-crime’ documentaries have always shown him to be, to varying degrees, troubled. His weight has fluctuated, and frequently his voice has trembled. When I met him at his home in 2012, however, he appeared much more at peace. To draw a line under ‘Stottor the victim’, he now calls himself ‘Kha-Ra Willis’. The name reflects his love of ancient Egypt, as does his seaside flat, which looked like cross between a museum and a bohemian hang-out. In the corner is an up-ended sarcophagus that opens up to reveal itself as a DVD rack. During our interview, a black cat called Cleopatra wandered among all the Egyptobilia and Kha-Ra’s artwork.

At 51, Kha-Ra has diabetes and is HIV-positive. But still he remains optimistic about life. One of his favourite words is ‘survivor’. During my afternoon with him, he used it almost continuously. He talked about how he’d survived Nilsen, drink and depression, and he intended to do the same with HIV. To put his life into perspective and to keep positive, he told me he was writing a memoir. He was keen to emphasise how Nilsen was only going to be allocated as much space as he deserved. It was clear, however, that he found just talking about him upsetting.

Nilsen’s book was a particularly sore subject. Kha-Ra said he had learnt about it in 1998 from the same article that I had read. His reaction was an immediate rush of blood and panic – a sense that he just wasn’t being allowed to forget about the man who had tried to kill him. Then Kha-Ra decided to do something practical. He printed up a petition and went out
into the street asking for signatures. When all the sheets were full, he sent them to the Home Office.

He told me, ‘This book [
History of a Drowning Boy
] is just about his desire for attention and publicity, that’s all it is. Nilsen wants to cater for his monster, ego, image. He’s just a monster and we shouldn’t pay attention to him. We should be thinking about the victims and the ripple effect on other victims.’

Kha-Ra asked me what Nilsen had said about him. I explained how he had said that he thought he might be attributing all his problems to one night in 1982. Kha-Ra couldn’t believe that, after all Nilsen had done, he could be that presumptuous. The next day, he sent me an email: ‘Talk about pot … kettle! Nilsen likes to pass his victims over like they are worth nothing, just vulnerable people, waifs and strays. Nilsen’s victims were blameless and innocent, something the press at the time were never kind to. The same goes for the judicial system. I think it is a great miscarriage of justice that Nilsen was never charged with my attempted murder and that I was never compensated as a victim, but that is justice for you, affordable only to those with money. All any victim seeks is justice.’

The following week, I went to see Graham Allen’s former partner, Lesley Mead. Although now in her sixties, it wasn’t hard to imagine her as the short, attractive barmaid her son Shane had described her as once being. But she had clearly had a hard life. Her build was now heavy and her eyes twitched nervously when she spoke. Like Kha-Ra, Mead shares her living space with a cat, a stray she found outside the community centre where she helps out.

I was here at the suggestion of Shane. I had told him I was impressed by the way he had written about his father. He suggested it might help my research to see those events through her eyes. For over two hours, I listened to Mead speaking plainly, without any artifice. She said she knew Puggy hadn’t been perfect; neither had she, for that matter. But she had been enormously hurt by the way the papers had generalised about Nilsen’s victims and their families. I drove home with a sick feeling in my stomach. Back in my study, I decided to re-read Shane’s account of how his mother had taken the news of his father’s murder: ‘It all started with a scream. I heard it from the top of the road as I made my way home from school. Somehow, I knew it was my mother’s pain. It was a scream from nowhere and of unbearable suffering. And it didn’t stop. It was 1983 and my mother had just been informed that her lover, my father, missing for over a year, had been discovered – murdered and dismembered and stuffed in two black bin bags in the flat of serial killer Dennis Nilsen. I was seven, and Hell was on its way.’

That afternoon, two uniformed and two plain-clothes officers had arrived at Lesley’s house. Shane explains how his mother dealt with learning the circumstances surrounding Puggy’s death:

That ‘blackout’ was a suicide attempt.

I thought again about how her hand had shaken as she talked to me. I started to feel guilt about having made her relive those memories; they surely must have distressed her more than she let on.

A couple of days later, I emailed Shane and asked him how Lesley was doing. He thanked me but confirmed it had, indeed, shaken her more than she had initially realised. The scars had faded but the wound, it seemed, was easily aggravated.

Later that afternoon, I followed up a claim from Martyn Hunter-Craig that Nilsen now had a Facebook account. It sounded far-fetched, but he seemed adamant. I wondered if one of his correspondents might be posting on his behalf.
Certainly, when I looked at the page it really seemed to be his style. But as I scrolled down it became apparent that it was actually a fan using the archive of Nilsen quotes available from books, newspapers and documentaries to write in his voice.

I found it unsurprising that people on the internet should be using social media to further a fixation with serial killers. Still, it made me wonder if my own interest in Nilsen might also be helping to fuel the behaviour of such cranks. Where, I asked myself, did the line between sociological enquiry and morbid fascination exist? And, did all interest in Nilsen, ultimately, serve to flatter his ego?

I started to reflect on the last letters we had exchanged in 2012. At the time of his ‘Jimmy Savile’ letter he had seemed resolute he would find new lawyers and continue with his crusade to publish. He believed he could find new ways to appeal. I imagined this desire had been given added urgency since he had finally been told he would never be allowed parole.

But in April 2013, something happened that might have finally put paid to the last of Nilsen’s ambitions. The Ministry of Justice announced a consultation on plans to reform provision of Legal Aid. These included proposals to reduce prisoners’ access to aid other than where such access concerned a legitimate appeal over sentencing. Nilsen’s complaints about the prison authorities disrespecting his human rights would certainly be excluded.

So now it appears that unless Nilsen finds a publisher willing to take on copies of his sprawling, unedited drafts in whatever form they might exist outside of prison, there really
is no further for him to go. Whatever journalists and criminologists may still have to say about these crimes, to the certain relief of his victims, it seems the killer’s ongoing contributions to that discussion have finally come to an end.