Читать книгу Life Means Life - Nick Appleyard - Страница 16

‘One would have to say that anyone committing these crimes must be out of their minds.’

Defence counsel Ivan Lawrence, QC

Name: Dennis Nilsen

Crime: Multiple murder

Date of Conviction: 3 November 1983

Age of Conviction: 37

Respected civil servant Dennis Nilsen sat in the bath with his lover, a 16-year-old called Martyn Duffey. It was bizarre that a dog-loving, nerdy pen-pusher was soaking in the suds with a handsome, streetwise young man, and it was especially odd because Martyn was dead.

It was May 1980, and Martyn had made his way from his home in Merseyside to London, looking for work. There, he found a sex-crazed serial killer.

The pair met by chance in the capital’s West End. At that time the deal was simple: if you were a young man who asked for money, there were men who would give you money – so long as you did as they requested. Nilsen asked and Martyn said yes. For a roof over his head and a hot meal, he accepted Nilsen’s offer of a bed to sleep in at his house in Melrose Avenue, Cricklewood Hill, a suburb of North London.

It was the costliest deal of the young man’s life.

As Martyn slumbered, Nilsen strangled his guest, but as he withdrew his hands he realised he didn’t have a corpse in front of him, but an unconscious 16-year-old youth, who would scream down the neighbourhood if he woke up. So Nilsen dragged him to the kitchen, filled the sink with water and plunged his head underneath until he was sure no life remained. He then filled the bathtub, added a splash of bubble bath and placed Martyn’s cooling body in the water… Then he got in himself.

In a journal written in prison, and quoted in the Nilsen biography Killing for Company by Brian Masters, the killer recalled the macabre episode:

I remember sitting astride him (his arms must have been trapped by the quilt). I strangled him with great force in the almost pitch darkness with just one side light on underneath. As I sat on him, I could feel my bottom becoming wet. His urine had come through the bedding and my jeans. I pulled him over my shoulder and carried him down. He was unconscious, but still alive. I put him down, filled the kitchen sink up with water, draped him into it, and held him there, his head under the water. I must have held him there for about three or four minutes. I then lifted him into my arms and took him into the room. I laid him on the floor and took off his socks, jeans, shirt and underpants. I carried him into the bathroom. I got into the bath myself this time and he lay in the water on top of me. I washed his body. Both of us dripping wet, I somehow managed to hoist this slipping burden onto my shoulders and took him into the room. I sat him on the kitchen chair and dried us both. I put him on the bed, but left the bedclothes off. He was still very warm. I talked to him and mentioned that his body was the youngest-looking I had ever seen. I kissed him all over and held him close to me. I sat on his stomach and masturbated. I kept him temporarily in the cupboard. Two days later, I found him bloated in the cupboard. He went straight under the floorboards.

It was a new experience for Nilsen: he’d never bathed with a corpse before, but he’d killed before. And now, as the pale, prune-like body of Martyn Duffey lay between his legs, he knew he’d kill again.

Dennis Nilsen was born in November 1943 at Academy Road, Fraserburgh, Aberdeenshire to a Scots mother and a Norwegian father, Olav Magnus Moksheim, who had adopted the surname Nilsen to seem less German at a time when Britain was battling Hitler. His father was an alcoholic, as were many seafaring men at that time in the North-East of Scotland. Nilsen’s parents divorced when he was just four. Later in life, his mother remarried and the boy’s new family warned him of ‘impurities of the flesh’. This advice was to give him an unhealthy view of human relationships and a murderous conception of sex.

Between 1961 and 1972 Nilsen served in the British Army with the Royal Fusiliers. He loved drinking with his comrades and was a regular in the bar. Like many young soldiers of his time, he saw action in the conflict in Aden, which raged in what is now Yemen from 1963–67. Later serving in the Persian Gulf, where he became a cook, he was popular with colleagues because of the amount of meat he could cut from a bone. It was reportedly in the Middle East that he discovered his homosexual tendencies with an Arab boy. There followed a short stint in the Metropolitan Police, but he was unhappy with the prevalent homophobic, macho atmosphere at Willesden Police Station, where he was based, and after a year, he resigned.

Nilsen the copper became Nilsen the civil servant, securing a place as a clerk at Kentish Town Job Centre. Colleagues viewed him as diligent, almost workaholic. They also respected his commitment to the Trade Union Movement. By this time, he was about to begin another career: as a killer. On 30 December 1978, he was drinking alone in a pub called the Cricklewood Arms, popular with the area’s large Irish community. There, he met a young, anonymous Irishman, who looked about 18. The lad accepted his older friend’s invitation back to the flat at Melrose Avenue for more alcohol. Afterwards, the pair went to bed, but fell asleep without having sex. During the night Nilsen woke with a desire to kill – he took a cord from the end of the bed, wrapped it round the young Irishman’s neck and pulled. There was a struggle, but within a minute the victim was still.

To make doubly sure he had actually killed, Nilsen fetched a bucket of water and held the youth’s head in it. In what was to become a repeated trademark, he then carefully washed him and put the body to bed. The next day, he placed it under the floorboards, only to retrieve it a day later for another hot bath. Following this, the body remained under the floorboards until August 1979, when the killer burned it on a bonfire of fence posts at the bottom of the garden.

The next attack, in October 1979, did not prove fatal. Andrew Ho, a young student from Hong Kong, was lured back to Melrose Avenue. But the killer’s attempts at strangulation were half-hearted and his victim escaped. Police were alerted and quizzed Nilsen, but the investigation was dropped as Ho, 19, did not want to go through with a prosecution and admit in front of a public court that he had intended to sleep with a strange man twice his age.

Nilsen’s second murder came on 3 December 1979. He took a day off work to go Christmas shopping. At the time no one perceived it as odd that such a loner would need time to buy gifts for anyone, but the clerk had other items on his shopping list and as he sat drinking in the Princess Louise pub in Holborn he came across Canadian Kenneth Ockendon. Kenneth, 19, had just completed a technical course and was holidaying before flying home for Christmas. His final destination was Melrose Avenue, where he accepted an offer of a heavy boozing session with Nilsen.

As Kenneth drank whisky and listened to music through headphones, Nilsen strangled him with the flex from his stereo. Once more, the victim was given a hot bath before being taken to bed. The next day, the corpse was hidden under the floorboards, only to be disinterred several times over the next fortnight to ‘watch’ TV on an armchair next to the whisky-swigging murderer. Kenneth was one of the few victims to be reported missing. His frantic parents in Canada contacted police in London, who found his unused airline ticket home in his hotel room. But there was little more they could do. Kenneth Ockendon was placed on Scotland Yard’s Missing Person’s Register.

There followed the killing of victim number three, Martyn Duffey, whose murder is described earlier. The fourth victim was Billy Sutherland, a 27-year-old from Edinburgh, who was working as a male prostitute in London’s West End. Nilsen insists he had no intention of taking Billy home, but the rent boy followed him on the Underground. His insistent manner sealed his fate. Strangled with Nilsen’s bare hands at Melrose Avenue, his body went under the floorboards along with the others. But here Nilsen’s own recollections – the only details available of his crimes with few witnesses – become vague. During this time, he was drinking more and more, traipsing around the gay bars of early 1980s London in search of liquor, sex and victims.

Victim five was an Asian prostitute, ‘probably Thai or Filipino’; six was an ‘Irish labourer’, while seven a ‘hippy type’ found in a doorway at Charing Cross. Of victim eight, the killer had no recollection apart from that he’d cut him into three pieces before hiding him under the floorboards. Nine and ten were later described to police as merely young Scots picked up in Soho’s gay Dean Street area.

But Nilsen did manage to recall his eleventh victim. Little wonder, as he was a skinhead with a tattoo ironically reading ‘Cut Here’ around his neck. The lad boasted how he liked fighting and how tough he was. Not so tough after a dozen cans of beer and several large whiskies, though. Nilsen strangled him and hanged his corpse from a bunk bed to admire it for an entire day.

On 10 November 1980, Scottish barman Douglas Stewart met Nilsen at The Golden Lion in Dean Street. He was to have a lucky escape. As usual, large amounts of alcohol had been consumed and the younger man fell into a slumber. He woke up in the nick of time to find his host strangling him. Nilsen was also carrying a large knife. Stewart literally fought for his life and managed to fend off his attacker. Almost immediately after the attack he called the police, but no action was taken because the officers, it is reported, considered the incident to be a ‘domestic’.

Murder victim twelve – prostitute and pickpocket Malcolm Barlow – was discovered slumped in a doorway by Nilsen. Suffering from epilepsy, he had collapsed from the effects of the drugs he was taking for his condition. The killer called an ambulance and Malcolm was taken to hospital. After treatment, he returned to Melrose Avenue and waited on the doorstep of his ‘rescuer’s’ home. He was invited inside, plied with drink… and throttled. His corpse was hidden under the kitchen sink until the killer had time to put him under the floorboards.

The disposal of bodies at Melrose Avenue was a task Nilsen – using butchery skills acquired in the Army Catering Corps – approached with apparent relish. As the space beneath the floorboards filled up, he removed the corpses. Stinking rotten, they would be dissected by him, wearing only his underpants. Heads were cut off, main organs removed and torsos cut into three. Then the parts were packed into suitcases and hidden in a shed at the rear of the property, covered in rubble. Other body parts were dumped in a narrow space between a fence and wall, where London’s dogs, cats and foxes acted as undertaker. Yet more body parts ended up on the bonfire, tyres covering up the smell of burning flesh.

In his journals, Nilsen describes in revolting detail the process of chopping up one of his victims:

I had to have a couple of drinks before I could start. I removed the vest and undershorts from the body. With a knife I cut the head from the body. There was very little blood. I put the head in the kitchen sink, washed it, and put it in a carrier bag. I then cut off the hands, and then the feet. I washed them in the sink and dried them. I made a cut from the body’s naval to the breast bone; I removed all the intestines, stomach, kidneys and liver. I would break through the diaphragm and remove the heart and lungs. I put all these organs into a plastic carrier bag. I then separated the top half of the body from the bottom half. I removed the arms and legs below the knee. I put the parts in large black carrier bags. I put the chest and rib cage in a large bag and the thigh/buttock/private parts (in one piece) in another. I stored the packages back under the floorboards.

In October 1981 Nilsen moved to Cranley Gardens, Muswell Hill. There, he had a problem: there was no garden in which to dump or burn the remains of bodies and the floorboards could not be pulled up. He would have to take another route.

Nilsen’s first known guest at his new address was student Paul Nobbs. He awoke after a drinking session with Nilsen, suffering bruises to his throat. Paul, 25, consulted a doctor, who told him that he had probably been strangled. The man, who met Nilsen in Soho’s Golden Lion, refused to go to police – he was afraid his homosexuality would be discovered. Another hair’s breath escape was by drag queen Carl Stottor – who went by the name of Khara le Fox. After meeting Nilsen in the Black Cap pub in Camden, he awoke submerged in Nilsen’s bath. His attacker explained to Carl that he had passed out and it was only a revival attempt.

In December 1982, John Howlett became the first to be murdered at Cranley Gardens. There was a tremendous struggle, during which John even tried to strangle Nilsen back. Eventually he was drowned after having his head held underwater for five minutes. He was to become the first victim of a ghastly end – being flushed away in pieces down the toilet into London’s Victorian sewerage system.

Nilsen’s next victim was drunken drifter Graham Allen. Taken home from his haunt on Shaftesbury Avenue, Graham was given a meal. As he tucked into an omelette, the homeless man was strangled from behind and left in the bath for three days while Nilsen planned his disposal. Body parts were boiled on the stove and the flesh either flushed down the lavatory or put in black-liners and left out for refuse collectors.

Nilsen’s unwitting nemesis was drug addict Stephen Sinclair. The youngster dropped into a booze and drugs-fuelled stupor at the killer’s home, where he was stripped and strangled. His body was cut up and flushed down the drains.

The slow-burning massacre that stalked London’s gay and homeless young men since 1978 was brought to light by a cleaning company responding to a blocked drain – blocked, it turned out, by pieces of Stephen Sinclair’s body. The company found the drain was packed with a flesh-like substance, resembling chicken.

Suspicious, the drain inspector summoned his supervisor and they called police. Upon closer inspection, some small bones and what looked like human flesh were found in a pipe leading off from the drain. DCI Peter Jay was called to the scene with two colleagues and waited outside until Nilsen returned home from work. As they entered the building, Jay introduced himself with the now-famous words: ‘Mr Nilsen, we’ve come to talk to you about the drains.’

As they entered the flat DCI Jay immediately smelt rotting flesh. Nilsen asked why the police would be interested in his drains and the officer told him they were filled with human remains. ‘How awful!’ Nilsen exclaimed. ‘Don’t mess about, where’s the rest of the body?’ snapped Jay.

Dennis Nilsen came to trial at Court No. 1 at the Old Bailey on 24 October 1983. He was charged with the murder of six of the seven men that police had been able to identify: Kenneth Ockendon, Martyn Duffey, Billy Sutherland, Malcolm Barlow, John Howlett and Steve Sinclair. The defendant was also charged with the attempted murder of Douglas Stewart. To each count, he pleaded not guilty.

He told the court: ‘By nature I am not a violent person. You can look at my school reports, Army and Police Service, and nine years in the Civil Service and you’ll find not one record of violence against me.’ Questioned by the prosecution as to why he murdered, he replied: ‘Yes, it is a great enigma. These things were out of character. I killed people over a period of five years and it got worse.’ He denied that during his time on remand he had taunted fellow prisoners about his crimes, saying: ‘I’ve never gloried in their publicity, never given interviews to the press, not received any money for anything.’ He added: ‘Since I have been in prison I have felt no irresistible urge to kill someone else.’

Defence counsel Ivan Lawrence, QC, argued Nilsen was not guilty on account of being mentally ill. He told the jury: ‘One would have to say that anyone committing such crimes must be out of his mind.’ But the prosecution, led by Alan Green, QC, had already told the jury that Nilsen killed simply because he enjoyed it. After 24 hours, the jury returned a ten to two majority verdict. Nilsen was guilty on all counts and he was sentenced to life, with a recommendation that he serve at least 25 years. Home Secretary Leon Brittan later imposed a full-life tariff.

In his summing-up, judge Mr Justice Croom-Johnson said: ‘There are evil people who do evil things. Committing murder is one of them. A mind can be evil without being abnormal.’