The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (69 page)

power of life and death over his elderly patients. He Nesset offered a variety of MOTIVES for the mur-was given the maximum sentence allowed under Nor-ders—mercy killing, schizophrenia, simple morbid plea-wegian law: 21 years in prison, with a possibility of 10

sure in the act itself—which led defense attorneys to more years’ preventive detention.

suggest that he was mentally unbalanced. Four psychia-See also
MEDICAL MURDERS

trists examined the balding, bespectacled killer, each pronouncing him sane and fit for trial. Before his day in court, the suspect proved his sanity by suddenly recant-NILSEN, Dennis Andrew

ing his confessions, leaving prosecutors in a quandary.

Born in Scotland on November 23, 1945, Nilsen seldom saw his Norwegian father, who preferred strong drink and travel to the quiet life at home. Nilsen’s parents were divorced when he was four years old, and his mother soon remarried. Joining the army in 1961, Nilsen remained in uniform for 11 years. Upon discharge, he moved to London and became a policeman, moving on from there through a series of government jobs. A closet homosexual, Nilsen would not kill for sex as did DEAN CORLL and JOHN GACY in the United States. Rather, his crimes appear to be the product of sheer loneliness, coupled with a morbid fascination for death. Keeping remains of his victims on hand for months at a time, Nilsen was (in the words of biographer Brian Masters), literally “killing for company.”

Nilsen’s loneliness was held at bay through 1976 and early 1977 by the presence of a live-in companion 10

years his junior. While they apparently never had sex, the younger man provided Nilsen with friendship and someone to talk to, sharing the daily grind of cooking, housework, and so forth. Nilsen was stricken by his roommate’s departure in May 1977, and the pressures of a solitary life gradually mounted to the detonation point.

Nilsen’s first victim, in December 1978, was an anonymous Irish youth whom he brought home and strangled with a necktie. Dennis later masturbated over the corpse, storing it beneath his floorboards until August 1979 when it was cremated on an outdoor bonfire. In November 1979, Nilsen tried to strangle Andrew Ho, a young Chinese man, but Ho escaped and summoned the police. Confronted with a former colleague, officers accepted Nilsen’s story of attempted Arnfinn Nesset (Author’s collection)

robbery by Ho and let the matter drop. A few days
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sor an unruly “Billy Sutherland type.” Number 11 was a tough-talking skinhead, notable for the tattoo of a dotted line around his neck, with the instructions “Cut Here.” Nilsen did, and the young man was incinerated on a bonfire during May of 1981.

In September of that year, Nilsen found epileptic Malcolm Barlow slumped against his garden wall and phoned for an ambulance. Barlow came back to see Nilsen the next day on his release from the hospital, and it proved a fatal mistake. A month later, when Nilsen found new lodgings, he cleaned house with one last bonfire, the blaze leaving police with no evidence of 12 murders spanning almost three years.

A month after settling in his new apartment, on November 25, 1981, Nilsen attempted to strangle Paul Nobbs with a necktie. Nobbs survived the attack, which took place as he slept, but he made no report to police. The next victim, John Howlett, fought bitterly for his life, forcing Nilsen to drown him in the bathtub when strangulation proved ineffective. Howlett’s remains were hacked up in the tub, then boiled down in a kettle before they were flushed through the drains.

In May 1982, Nilsen tried to drown Carl Stottor in his bathtub, changing his mind in midstream, persuading Stottor the assault had been intended to “revive” him after he had nearly suffocated in his sleeping bag. Next day, while walking in the woods, Nilsen crept up behind Stottor and clubbed him to the ground, but again Stottor survived, shrugging off the attack and filing no complaint until after Nilsen was jailed for multiple murder.

Number 14 was alcoholic Graham Allen, killed and Dennis Nilsen (Author’s collection)

dissected in Nilsen’s flat; portions of his body were bagged and stored in the cupboard, while other parts were boiled and flushed down the toilet. A local later, on December 3, Nilsen strangled Canadian Ken-

“punk” named Stephen Sinclair was the last to die, neth Ockendon with an electric cord and dissected his murdered on February 1, 1983; portions of his body body, flushing parts down the toilet, while most of the were flushed down the toilet a week later.

butchered remains were stashed under his floor.

It was finally too much for the plumbing, and

In May 1980, Nilsen murdered 19-year-old Martyn Nilsen—like German JOACHIM KROLL before him—was Duffey, hiding his corpse with the fragmentary Ock-betrayed by his pipes. Tenants of Nilsen’s apartment endon remains. That summer, 26-year-old Billy Suther-building summoned a plumber to clear the clogged land joined the growing crowd, followed shortly by a lines, and his discovery of human flesh brought police victim who may have been Mexican or Filipino. “I can’t to the scene. In custody, Nilsen freely confessed his remember the details,” Nilsen said later. “It’s academic.

crimes and was sentenced to life imprisonment. Asked I put him under the floorboards.”

about the motive for his murders, he replied, “Well, Memories were vague about the next five victims, enjoying it is as good a reason as any.”

their names unknown, identified only by some physical trait or quirk of behavior that stuck in Nilsen’s mind. A young Irishman and a malnourished transient were
NORTHCOTT, Gordon Stewart

brought home in swift succession, and both were stran-Canadian-born in 1908, Northcott would later claim gled to death in Nilsen’s flat. Number eight was cut into that his father sodomized him at age 10, and his mother three pieces, his remains hidden beneath the floor for dressed him as a girl until he was 16. The old man fin-two days before they were burned in another garden ished his life in a lunatic asylum, and one of Northcott’s bonfire. Number nine was a young Scot, and his succes-paternal uncles died in San Quentin Prison years later,
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NORTHCOTT, Gordon Stewart

while serving a life term for murder. A homosexual parents, and the boy regaled authorities with tales of sadist in the mold of DEAN CORLL and JOHN GACY, by murder, pointing out newly excavated “grave sites” on age 21 Northcott was living on a poultry ranch near the ranch. Detectives dug up blood-soaked earth on Riverside, California, sharing quarters with his mother September 17 revealing human ankle bones and fingers.

and a 15-year-old nephew, Sanford Clark.

They also found a bloodstained ax and hatchet on the For years, Northcott mixed business with pleasure in premises, which Clark said had been used on human Riverside, abducting boys and hiding them out on his prey as well as chickens.

ranch, renting his victims to wealthy southern Califor-Northcott fled to Canada, but he was captured there nia pedophiles. When he tired of the boys, they were and extradited back to Riverside in October. His shot or brained with an ax, their flesh dissolved in mother claimed responsibility for slaying Walter quicklime, and their bones transported to the nearby Collins, but Clark fingered Gordon as the actual killer.

desert for disposal. Only one skeleton was ever found—

Convicted on three counts of murder, including the a headless teenage Mexican, discovered near La Puente Winslow brothers and the anonymous Mexican, North-during February 1928—but homicide detectives identi-cott was sentenced to hang. Spared by her age and gen-fied three other victims. Walter Collins disappeared der, his mother received a life prison sentence in the from home on March 10, 1928, and Northcott’s

Collins case.

mother was convicted of his death, but evidence sug-Marking time at San Quentin, Northcott alternated gests that she was acting under orders from her psycho-between protestations of innocence and detailed confes-pathic son. Twelve-year-old Lewis Winslow and his sions to the murders of “eighteen or nineteen, maybe 10-year-old brother Nelson vanished from Pomona on twenty” victims. A pathological liar who cherished the May 16, 1928, and Northcott was later condemned for spotlight, he several times offered to point out remains their murders, despite the absence of bodies.

of more victims, always reneging at the last moment.

Gordon might have gone on raping and killing indef-

(Northcott also named several of his wealthy “cus-initely, but in the summer of 1928, he visited the district tomers” at the ranch, but their identities were never attorney’s office, complaining about a neighbor’s “pro-published and no charges were filed.) Warden Clinton fane and violent” behavior. The outbursts reportedly Duffy recalled his conversations with Northcott as “a upset his nephew, who was “training for the priest-lurid account of mass murder, sodomy, oral copulation hood” by tending chickens at age 15. Questioned by and torture so vivid it made my flesh creep.”

sheriff’s deputies, the neighbor recalled seeing North-Northcott mounted the gallows on October 2,

cott beat Clark on occasion, and he urged detectives to 1930, finally quailing in the face of death. Before the

“find out what goes on” at Gordon’s ranch.

trap was sprung, he screamed, “A prayer! Please say a Immigration officials struck first, taking Clark into prayer for me!” His mother subsequently died in custody on a runaway complaint from his Canadian prison of natural causes.

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O

OGORZOV, Paul

persimmon trees, Kiyoshi’s mother replied, “You A German railroad worker and loyal Nazi Party mem-shouldn’t have planted those trees there.”

ber, Paul Ogorzov earned notoriety as the “S Bahn Despite the coddling at home, Okubo was teased Murderer” in World War II. Stalking female victims unmercifully at school over his “Western” appear-around Rummelsberg on the Berlin line, he was a sadist ance—the result of Russian blood in his mother’s fam-who killed for sexual satisfaction, relishing the terror of ily. Resentful of the teasing and entirely undisciplined, his chosen prey. Between 1939 and 1941, he killed at Okubo was a problem student who received poor

least eight women, raping most of them before he beat grades and frequent warnings about his poor attitude.

them to death with a length of lead cable. Twenty-eight A sixth-grade evaluation notes that he “engages in years old when his trial opened on July 24, 1941, Ogor-unseemly acts toward his superiors” and “is showing zov received no sympathy from his fellow Nazis. Anx-signs of maturity too early for his age.” The latter ious to put the scandal behind them and get on with the complaint was a reference to his treatment of female business of murdering Jews, party leaders rushed classmates, including the incessant muttering of through the proceedings in a single afternoon, sentenc-

“words that shouldn’t be said” in the company of ing Ogorzov to death. He was shot by a firing squad on girls.

July 26.

In the summer of 1946, at age 11, Okubo was

caught attempting to molest a neighbor’s four-year-old daughter. Those who knew his family were only half
OKUBO Kiyoshi

joking when they began to describe Okubo as “little Twenty-two years after the execution of KODAIRA Kodaira” or the “son of Kodaira,” comparing him to YOSHIO, Japanese police found themselves in pursuit of Tokyo’s notorious rape-slayer. Nine years later, in July another serial lust killer. Less adept than Kodaira at 1955, he raped a 17-year-old high school student in covering his tracks, the new practitioner was active for Maebashi and was sentenced to 18 months in prison, barely two months, but within that time he accosted at but the jail time was promptly commuted to three least 127 women (some reports say 150 or more), raped years’ probation. Arrested for a second rape five more than a dozen, and murdered eight. His capture, months later, he found the judge less merciful and when it came, owed as much to personal negligence as wound up serving three years in Matsumoto Prison.

to great detective work.

Paroled at age 25, Okubo adopted the pseudonym of Born in January 1935, Okubo Kiyoshi was the third

“Watanabe Kyoshi,” posing as a student while he and youngest son in a family of eight children, on preyed on college coeds. Married in May 1962, he whom both parents lavished affection, and he was vir-fathered two children before his next arrest for rape, in tually immune to discipline. On one occasion, when a February 1967. Convicted of attacking two young neighbor complained of Okubo knocking fruit from his women, he was sentenced to four and a half years in
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OLAH, Susannah

prison, winning provisional release on March 2, 1971.

OLAH, Susannah

See
“ANGEL MAKERS OF NAGYREV”

Ten days later, he paid ¥210,000 for the cream-colored Mazda sedan that would ultimately lead to his arrest and conviction for multiple murders.

OLSON, Clifford Robert

Okubo’s final rampage began on March 21, and