Dennis Nilsen - Conversations with Britain's Most Evil Serial Killer (25 page)

Nilsen carried on talking in a calm, matter-of-fact, way. He seemed totally without remorse. He told the officers that if he hadn’t been caught, he might have killed hundreds. He said that when the trigger in him was pulled, a bomb blast couldn’t have stopped him. Peter Jay never thought he particularly look like he cared.

The police processed Nilsen as politely and efficiently as possible. A doctor and a photographer were ordered so that there could be no suggestion of ill treatment. Then the
prisoner was brought a warm meal and a hot drink. Only then, with Professor Bowen in tow, did they return to Cranley Gardens.

It was now 9.00pm. The smell seemed worse than they’d remembered – a sweet, rotten stench made sharper by the cold. Two large, black bin bags were found in the wardrobe, and in one were four smaller bags. Peeking into them, they could see two contained left and right sections of a man’s torso, with the arm still attached. In the third bag was a much decomposed headless and armless torso. Finally, there was a Sainsbury’s bag containing internal organs in a soup of body fluids. While it was all being bagged up, Jay stood by the door for air.

Back at the mortuary, the second large, black bag was seen to contain a man’s head, boiled but with most of the hair and flesh still remaining. Another skull was found with most of the flesh removed, and another torso. Inside a tea chest, a curtain was wrapped around more bones, hands, feet and another skull. Behind plywood boxing in the bathroom was the lower half of Stephen Sinclair, clean cut from just above the waist and still intact.

Jay remembers the flat being extremely damp. Sleet was coming in the open windows, and electric fires were brought in to dry the place out. The damp made it impossible to dust for fingerprints for several days. Meanwhile, a crew was sent to Melrose Avenue. The floorboards were taken up and a tent erected in the garden. Soon, they found smashed skulls and pieces of bone. All that Forensics could determine at that stage, though, was whether the fragments were human or animal.

The police wanted as much information as they could get before making their initial charge: that of Sinclair’s murder. After that, they could interview Nilsen at their leisure about the other murders. Although Nilsen says he remembers the police doing their job well enough, the more one reads his account, however, the stranger it seems. He says that, from the outset, he knew the police would ‘require him to write their script’. This odd sentence seems not to be just a reference to the confessions he would give but also to how the story of the arrest would be told – that he would need to help create a story that would be told for posterity.

Nilsen also seems concerned to assert his superiority and let us know he wouldn’t have made any mistakes. He finishes this section with an allegation that, before he was sent to Brixton, some junior officers asked for his autograph. He says he obliged, along with one of his ‘one-liners’, such as ‘I don’t have nightmares … I give nightmares’.

The police visited Nilsen in Brixton twice for further interviews. In total, they interviewed him 16 times for a total of over 31 hours, with 165 pages of questions and answers recorded in longhand. A word processor – the latest thing at the time – had been asked for and refused; complete sets of notes would have to be written out by hand. Each interview was between two and two-and-a-half hours and all but the first couple conducted in the presence of Ronald Moss, Nilsen’s first solicitor.

From the evidence gathered in these interviews, the team set about finding the victims. Without advanced forensics, CCTV and sophisticated computer databases, the police had to rely on personal items, fingerprints and dental records.
Ironically, without DNA technology, the skeletal remains of Howlett and Allen found in the flat proved two of the hardest bodies to identify.

As in television dramas, the operations room was full of pin boards with photos and blackboards with leads scrawled over them. On one poster-sized piece of paper the investigating officers tried to fill in as many details about the victims as possible. The top row read: name; last known address; description; date missing; date of death; last seen by; how identified; exhibit numbers; statement numbers; and remarks.

Kenneth Ockendon was identified by a composite fingerprint created by the partial prints found on his
A-Z
London streetguide, and a camera light meter found in his hotel. Nilsen also recognised him from a photo. Sinclair was formally identified by fingerprints found on his leather jacket, his syringes, a tobacco tin and by his blue-and-white scarf. Billy Sutherland was identified by a photograph after his family had contacted police after seeing the news. Some of the personal items found in Nilsen’s flat belonging to Martyn Duffey, such as kitchen knives, bore his name. The existence of missing boy called Martyn Duffey was soon established, but he turned out to be a different height from the one they were looking for and the search resumed.

The legwork involved in finding some victims seemed almost endless. In the case of John Howlett, the police first looked for all ‘Johns’ who had been in the Grenadier Guards, and then, when they realised that he might not have been in the Army, every John they could find in High Wycombe. Eventually, they narrowed their search down by finding his blood type in a strip of muscle tissue.

By the time of the trial, only seven names were filled out on the chart. The others were simply referred to by Nilsen’s descriptions, such as ‘the starving hippy’ or ‘the skinhead with the tattoo around his neck’.

T
he trial of Dennis Andrew Nilsen started on the morning of Monday, 24 October 1983 at London’s Central Criminal Court, otherwise known as the Old Bailey. It is an austere stone building topped with a statue of Justice with her scales and sword. As the court opened for its day’s business, the clerk of the court read out eight charges against the
37-year-
old defendant. These were the murder of Kenneth Ockendon, Malcolm Barlow, Martyn Duffey, John Howlett, Billy Sutherland and Stephen Sinclair, and the attempted murder of Douglas Stewart and Paul Nobbs.

Two charges were conspicuously absent – the crimes
against Graham Allen and Carl Stottor. In 1983, the media reported that the details about these offences had come in after the court indictment papers had already been drawn up and evidence gathered. The judge had, therefore, ruled that it wasn’t possible to include them. But both Stottor and Allen’s wife, Lesley, remain incredulous that there wasn’t still time to make some provision. They feel strongly that justice was denied them. Still, the attacks were included as general evidence of Nilsen’s modus operandi and Stottor would have the opportunity to tell his story from the witness box.

The courtroom was packed to overflowing. When the press benches filled up, journalists moved to the public gallery. At the front sat Mr and Mrs Ockendon; just beneath them stood the man who had butchered their son. He was dressed neatly in a grey sports jacket, light-blue shirt, and blue tie, which he had been loaned. Each time he was asked how he pleaded, he responded, ‘Not guilty’.

Nilsen had eventually decided on this plea after reading through psychiatric reports arranged by his solicitor at the time, Ralph Haeems. He told me that, after his initial scepticism, he became persuaded that his earlier ideas of pleading guilty were naïve. ‘There was a real diminishment of total responsibility,’ he wrote, due to the ‘personality dysfunction mechanisms to which I had slowly evolved from the bleakness of an emotionless child and early manhood.’

To support their plea of ‘diminished responsibility’, the defence produced two psychiatrists: James Mackeith and Patrick Gallwey. Mackeith had a reputation for being a reasonable and balanced man; he thought Nilsen suffered ‘severely’ from a number of personality disorders. He was also
convinced they were, probably, untreatable, and that his grandiosity and inflated ego would render future psychological therapy futile. Gallwey agreed that Nilsen had a personality disorder, but he thought it was slightly different. He diagnosed Nilsen with a rare type of ‘borderline’ disorder which meant Nilsen’s mind moved between a seemingly normal position and a heavily ‘schizoid’ state, bordering on psychosis.

The prosecution said it was murder, pure and simple. Their psychiatrist, Paul Bowden, had met Nilsen in his first week in Brixton, and visited him regularly over the subsequent months. During that time, he concluded Nilsen was a plausible, cunning murderer who had been in full control of himself at the time of all the offences.

The prosecution case was led by Alan Green, QC. In
History of a Drowning Boy
, Nilsen is pleased to point out that Green would later become the Director of Public Prosecutions and then resign when accused of kerb-crawling in 1991. Green opened his case by outlining the day of Nilsen’s arrest and showing the jury photographs of the scene at the flat. He then explained more about the case they were about to hear. There would be six witnesses; the first three, he said – Stewart, Nobbs and Stottor – had all had first-hand experience of Nilsen trying to kill them. Next, there would be detectives Jay and Chambers, who had arrested and interviewed Nilsen. Finally, he said, they would hear from psychiatrist Dr Paul Bowden.

Green, wearing outsized, horn-rimmed glasses, spoke in a softly authoritative, theatrically understated manner. He
began to outline Nilsen’s modus operandi. He explained how he had killed men he met in public houses. They would go back to Nilsen’s flat for more drink and then, at some point, Nilsen would squeeze the life out of them. He explained most of the victims were homosexual – some, in fact, male prostitutes – yet none had been killed because they were homosexual or had resisted Nilsen’s advances. They were, he said, nearly all from the fringes of society and from outside of London; the kind of people whom Nilsen might feel would probably not be missed.

The murders were described one by one. The violence of the killings and indifference of the disposal were both emphasised. Particular attention was given to Malcolm Barlow – killed, apparently, because Nilsen didn’t want to call an ambulance – and John the Guardsman who was strangled three times and then drowned. Green also made sure the jury knew about Nilsen’s extraordinarily casual manner with the police.

The following day, the papers delighted in reporting some of Nilsen’s idiosyncratic quips, such as ‘I started out with 15 ties and now all I’m left with is a clip-on …’ or his reply to Jay’s question of how many bodies he’d had under the floorboards: ‘I don’t know, I didn’t do a stock check.’

Nilsen’s
History of a Drowning Boy
doesn’t say more about the events of the trial than can be found in the press cuttings. It does tell us, however, a significant amount about Nilsen’s attitude to confronting justice. One sketch he draws is full of disgust at the offensive intrusion into those aspects of his life that he had kept most private: ‘The courtroom twitched nervously,’ he says, ‘to the sweaty gasps of guilt-ridden voyeurs
hating and loving the dirt-filled revelations.’ He then speculates how much more startled they might have been by the sight of 12 naked men appearing in front of them, as if he felt he’d actually experienced such a vision during the proceedings. Later, he mocks the way journalists jumped on a ‘throwaway psychological cliché’ he gave about assuming ‘a quasi-God role’. He feels he was the only one who
really
understood what the trial was all about.

He was also highly irritated by the testimony of the first witness, Douglas Stewart, the man whom Gordon Honeycombe had met in Soho. Stewart, a 29-year-old Scotsman with thick, curly hair, took the stand looking tall and confident. In his version of events, Stewart said he had met Nilsen one November in 1980, in the Golden Lion in Soho. He had gone there, he said, not because of its gay reputation but rather because it served his favourite Scottish beer.

On the night in question, he had been one of a group chatting at the end of the bar. When Nilsen had suggested that they go back to his flat, he’d thought the invite was for the whole group, and once in the street he thought it rude not to continue on to Melrose Avenue.

Back in Nilsen’s flat, they started by drinking lager. ‘Dennis’, Stewart told the court, then offered him vodka which he refused. ‘Suit yourself,’ Nilsen replied, ‘I am off to bed; you’re welcome to join me.’ Stewart explained he ‘didn’t do that sort of thing’. He then went to sleep in a chair. Approximately two hours later, he woke to find his feet tied to the legs with a neck tie. There was another around his neck
and Nilsen’s knee was pushed hard against his chest. Stewart said he started shouting and fighting. Nilsen shouted back, ‘Take my money,’ as if trying to suggest that there was a robbery was going on.

Nilsen then calmly told Stewart he could kill him, even though by now Stewart was in charge. After the struggle, things calmed down. They sat in silence. Then Nilsen went to the kitchen and came back with a large knife which he held calmly, unthreateningly. Eventually, the conversation started up again, the two men shared a drink together and Stewart left. Once at a safe distance down the road, Stewart called the police. They sent a squad car over. After speaking to both parties, they concluded that it had been a lovers’ tiff, made some notes, apologised to Nilsen, and then left. All the time Stewart spoke, Nilsen made notes of all the little inaccuracies in his account. Pedantically, he noted he referred to ‘Dennis’ and not ‘Des’, and mentioned vodka, not rum.

The next day, Tuesday, 5 October, the jury heard from two young men Nilsen had attacked. The first was Paul Nobbs, who had met Nilsen almost exactly a year after Stewart, again in the Golden Lion in Soho. Nobbs described how grateful he was when Nilsen stepped in and saved him from the attention of a predatory older man. He explained how, during the evening, he had called his mother twice. Having decided to stay, there was more drinking, kissing and fondling but Nilsen had declined the offer of sex.

Nobbs then described waking up after the attack. After looking at himself in the mirror, he had gone back to the bedroom. Nilsen had remarked he looked awful. ‘Oh, thanks very much,’ said Nobbs sarcastically.

When Ivan Lawrence, cross-examining, asked whether there’d been anything strange about Nilsen’s manner during the evening, Nobbs replied that nothing in particular had worried him. The jury were left wondering if Nilsen was so out of control he could risk an attack on a man whose mother knew he was there, or whether, in fact, he was so in control that he could turn his violence on and off at will.

Similar testimony would come from Carl Stottor that afternoon. He told me when I met with him later that he had found the prospect of giving evidence an enormous ordeal. On the morning prior to his appearance in the witness box, he said that he sat in a friend’s living room looking at himself in the mirror. What he saw displeased him. Having just dyed his blond hair black, he now felt he looked pale and washed out. Staring at his reflected image, he decided to apply a small amount of make-up. When he arrived in the court at 2.00pm, in an open-necked shirt with a medallion underneath, he said that he became extremely self-conscious. Suddenly, he felt very nervous. When Alan Green referred to him as ‘slightly pathetic’, he shrank further into himself. It was a hard job getting his evidence out.

Taking a deep breath, Stottor told the room the facts as he remembered them. When he faltered, Green helped him out: ‘Is it true you told Nilsen that you weren’t in touch with your family?’ … ‘Did it strike you as odd that Nilsen suggested you might get caught up in that loose zip?’

Stottor told the court how he had met Nilsen in Camden’s Black Cap. Stottor had come down to London to escape from an unhappy relationship. Nilsen had seemed kind and sympathetic. Despite the cut on Stottor’s face, Nilsen told
him how lovely he looked. Then, some drinks later, at closing time, he suggested they go back to Cranley Gardens. He wasn’t pushy, and promised not to try anything on. They took a cab back to Nilsen’s flat, where Stottor became more and more depressed.

When he started to feel ill from the alcohol, they both went to bed. In the middle of the night, he remembered being in a semi-conscious state and unable to breathe. As Nilsen had warned about getting caught up in the loose zip, Stottor thought the hand he felt on his neck was Nilsen trying to help. He heard Nilsen’s voice saying, ‘Stay still.’ Then he passed out again.

Then he remembered hearing the sound of water, like a tap running. Next, he was underwater. He started to panic before passing out again. Sometime later, he woke up to find Bleep the dog licking his face. Nilsen was now beside the animal and fussing over him. He told Stottor he had got caught in the zip and probably had a nightmare as a result. Nilsen explained the water on his head was from a jug he’d poured over him to bring him to. He comforted him some more. Later, they cuddled in bed and, in the morning, Nilsen helped him to the Tube.

Stottor could only remember the evening in snapshots, but he had said enough for the prosecution to indicate that Nilsen deliberately and consciously ‘chose’ his victims. Counsel for the defence, however, wanted to know how Nilsen had seemed after the attack. Stottor said he seemed genuinely concerned. Lawrence suggested that this was evidence that Nilsen was moving in and out of abnormal states of mind. To emphasise the point, he told the jury how, when Chambers
and Jay had asked about his manner after attacking Stottor, he’d replied, ‘I hoped that these uncontrollable events would not affect our relationship.’

Now it was time for the court to hear more of what Nilsen himself had to say about his crimes and why he may have committed them. DCI Peter Jay rose to the stand with a statement Nilsen had written for them called ‘Unscrambling Behaviour’:

Nilsen was keen to downplay his sexual orientation, and made it sound as ambiguous as possible. His statement continued with a self-consciously confused tone: