Killer: Dennis Nilsen
Victims: Stephen Dean Holmes, Kenneth James Ockenden, Martyn Brandon Duffey, William David Sutherland, Malcolm Stanley Barlow, John Peter Howlett, Archibald Graham Allen, Stephen Neil Sinclair, and perhaps as many as 7 unidentified others
Dates: 30th December 1978 - 26 January 1983
Location: London
Method of Murder: Strangulation
Timeline 23.11.1945 | Dennis Nilsen born in Scotland 09.1961 | Nilsen enlists in the army 12.1972 | Nilsen moves to London to begin police training 12.1973 | Nilsen quits the police force 11.1975 | Nilsen meets David Gallichan 05.1977 | Gallichan moves out of their shared home 30.12.1978 | Nilsen kills Stephen Holmes 11.10.1979 | Nilsen attacks Andrew Ho 3.12.1979 | Nilsen kills Kenneth Ockenden 17.05.1980 | Nilsen kills Martyn Duffey 20.8.1980 | Nilsen kills William Sutherland 1980 | Late in the year, Nilsen burns ~7 bodies 18.9.1981 | Nilsen kills Malcolm Barlow 3.1982 | Nilsen kills John Howlett 9.1982 | Nilsen kills Archibald Allen 26.1.1983 | Nilsen kills Stephen Sinclair 8.2.1983 | Drains at Nilsen's flat blocked, Dyno-Rod called out to fix them 9.2.1983 | Nilsen arrested and claims 15 or 16 bodies 4.11.1983 | Nilsen found guilty and sentenced to 25 to life 12.5.2018 | Nilsen dies in prison
The following text contains excerpts from my book, Boy Under Water - Dennis Nilsen: The Story of a Serial Killer. Please do not reproduce these excerpts without my permission. Unlike my usual posts, these excerpts are told in a narrative non-fiction style, i.e. like a story.
1978
The crippling loneliness gets darker and darker as the year goes on. Worst of all is Christmas time. Des sits with his pets Bleep and Deedee and tries to imagine a life where this wasn’t how it always had to be. A life where he could actually have settled down with someone and found some semblance of domestic bliss.
He isn’t stupid. He knows that his ex, Twinkle, was only with him for the security of it all. There wasn’t any romance between them, certainly not a good fuck. When they talked, it was Des yelling, and Twinkle cowering or taking it on the chin placidly. There had never been any reason for him to stay for long.
There have been a few others since Twinkle left, but they all left, one way or another. It seems as though no one can stand to be around him for long.
Now, Des is about to ring in 1979 alone. He hates it. He can’t stand it. The loneliness is like an oppressive force now, crushing him with a long and unbearable pain. He is even starting to feel a little detached, going through life as if it is a series of motions only. No one is even paying attention to him anymore.
Bleep is good company, but not enough for the only company. It’s New Year’s Eve, for Christ’s sake. Time to get out of here and find some fun.
He heads out, but everywhere is quiet. People are finding fun in their own homes, gathering together with family and friends. He’s had enough of this. Then at last it looks like the Cricklewood Arms is livelier than all of the rest: not his usual kind of haunt, full of Irish Republicans for the most part, but it’ll do. Any port in a storm.
Des settles in at the bar. He tries not to think about getting passed over for a promotion yet again, or how his union activity doesn’t seem to be making any difference. He tries not to think about the cold, empty flat. He tries not to think about the puppies buried in the garden, or the family back home in Scotland who he hasn’t spoken to in years.
He tries not to think about anything, and looks at the boy leaning up against the bar a short distance away.
Pint of Guinness in hand, Des walks over to the smaller boy, casting a gaze over his curly brown hair, his young features, the gentle innocence of him.
“Des,” he says by way of introduction, holding out a hand.
The boy goes to shake it instinctively. He has rough hands, despite his age. Des pegs him as a teen, though he’s in here drinking sure enough. Must be at least eighteen, then.
“Stephen,” the boy says, and now the two of them have a reason to go on talking.
It turns out the boy is Southern Irish, down in the city for some exploration, talking about things like he’s a man when he clearly isn’t. Des likes that about him. The cocksureness of it combined with a shyness hidden behind the exterior, a shyness that he might be caught out. They knock back drink after drink at the bar together, until it finally comes closing time.
Closing time on New Year’s. Not worth thinking about, going home alone. If he drank himself to death alone tonight, Des knows with a certainty, no one would find his body until he was stinking and rotten and attracting flies. Probably only then because people in the other flats would complain of the smell.
So, he invites young Steve back with him and they go for another drink in the flat. Some rum, some vodka, some more beer.
What do they talk about? Des barely knows the answer himself once they leave the pub, but all of it is revolutionary. All of it would set the world on fire if someone else heard it. They talk about the working class and the government and the trade unions and the workforce. The boy nods his head a lot more the drunker he gets.
Eventually, they’re both so drunk they can’t even do that. Des suggests they go to sleep and the boy nods again. They both undress, fumbling with drunk, awkward hands, the boy not even sober enough to feel bashful as he kicks his trousers over into the corner of the room. Des thinks, looking at him, that maybe the boy isn’t quite eighteen after all.
They get under the covers, shivering a little when cold skin touches by accident, settling their spinning heads against pillows that will be spinning a lot more in the morning.
When Stephen is asleep, Des wakes up and looks at him, and that feeling of loneliness descends again. It is a crushing despair. He is all alone, and in the morning, what then? This boy will leave, probably at the first chance he gets. He’ll be just another ship passing in the night, another male floating away from him, no desire to stay.
Suddenly, Des is desperate for him to stay. He is driven almost to tears by it. He wants it more than anything he can think of right then. He can’t spend another night alone, not like this, not at New Year’s. This is a time for fresh starts, not for sinking back into that same old black pit, alone again.
If only there was a way to make him stay.
He pulls the blanket down over both of them, around halfway, so he can admire Stephen’s body and his own. The fire has been on all night, so the small flat is warm enough. Idly, he sits and traces shapes and lines over the skin of Stephen’s back, admiring how smooth and unmarked it is. He stays that way for hours, basking in it, enjoying every part of Stephen that he can see.
Then it is the morning. Stephen will be going soon.
Des feels his heart pounding suddenly, and arousal stirring. It brings a quick heat that makes him sweat, staring at this unconscious young body, feeling his own body respond. They didn’t do anything last night. This body, though. It calls to him.
He glances over at the floor and sees his tie lying there, pooled on top of his other clothes. He stares at it for a little while, sweating, nervous, feeling an excited energy which has never been so strong before. He reaches out and pulls the tie over.
Stephen has to stay for the New Year. He has to, whether he wants to or not. Des won’t be alone again.
He slips the tie over Stephen’s neck, straddles him, and pulls it hard. Stephen wakes up almost immediately, confused, still half-drunk and half-asleep.
“What the -” he gets out, but Des pulls tighter and cuts him off. Stephen struggles and they roll together, off the bed and onto the floor, but Des has the upper hand. Stephen uses his feet desperately to push, trying to move his body further away, but Des is like a dog with a rat now. He knows he only has to hang on the longest, nothing more.
The coffee table goes over. The glasses from last night. The ashtray goes. An almighty mess and clatter, and Stephen’s head is up against the wall, and he has nowhere left to go. He struggles and struggles for a half-minute more, getting weaker all the time. Finally, he goes limp, and Des figures it is done.
He stands up and lets go of the tie. He can feel himself trembling, the exertion and the tension taking away his core. It’s all he can do to get his breathing under control, but then he hears a noise and realises that Stephen is breathing again too. Raspy, short, hard breaths. The breaths of someone trying to fight back to life. Well, that won’t do at all.
But what next? The tie didn’t work. Des thinks for a moment and goes to the kitchen, then pulls out a bucket and fills it with water. That ought to do the job. Returning to Stephen, Des picks him up and drapes his limp body over a dining chair, the bucket of water close by. Now it’s just an easy bit of work to move his head into the bucket and hold it there, under the water. Water splashes up and over the carpet but there is no more struggle. No more movement. Just a few bubbles, and it is done.
It is done.
Des looks at him for a moment, his still form, head still under the water. This body is his now. This body has to stay.
He lifts the body up and sets it comfortably in the chair, the head lolling back. Water drips from the curls of hair down onto the carpet.
Des stares for a while, trying to get his thoughts in order. He wants to think clearly about what he has done, but it is hard to get a grasp on things. I strangled him nearly to death. I put his head in water deliberately. I drowned him. I killed him. He is dead, he thinks.
He is still shaking, even harder now. He has killed someone. He has taken this boy’s life and turned him into a body only.
He thinks about Stephen’s family – his mother and father. His siblings, perhaps. His friends. He thinks about the police. He thinks about prison and how many years you get for murder. He thinks about what you do with dead bodies and how to get rid of evidence. He thinks about the deaths he saw while he was in the army and how nobody cared at all if you killed someone there. He thinks about the death in his family, his dead grandfather. He thinks about masturbating in front of the mirror and pretending to be dead himself. He thinks about going to prison for a very long time. He thinks about the mess they have made in the room. He thinks about the coffee table and the glasses and the bucket of water and the water on the carpet. He thinks about the noise. He thinks about the sun, rising soon. He thinks about being carted out in handcuffs. He thinks about going to work. He thinks about Stephen’s family. He thinks about the body.
Finally, he gets up and does something. He makes a cup of coffee and drinks it, smokes a cigarette, then another. He decides that he will continue to smoke until the shaking stops.
He clears up the mess, the glasses and the coffee table, working around the body of the dead youth. Bleep wanders in from the garden and starts to sniff around; he can’t have that.
“Fuck off, Bleep,” he says, grabbing her by the scruff of the neck and pushing her away from the body. She complies, head down, aware that she has displeased her master.
Des takes the tie from the youth’s neck and then sits down and looks at him. For a long time, he does not move again. Even if someone had come in, he would not have flinched for a single moment. He is contemplating this body, staring at it, until he knows what to do.
Something comes to him, and he goes to run a bath. With it nearly full, he stops the water and grabs a towel. The towel is for covering the window, which does not have curtains. He doesn’t want anyone to be able to see.
He kneels down in front of the body and gently pulls it forward, over his right shoulder, until he is able to lift it. He grasps the thighs of the body to hold it in place, and carries it into the bathroom. He slides it carefully into the water and washes it all over, with washing up liquid, as if completing a secret ritual. The body is limp and floppy, and moves strangely, making it hard to keep it steady.
When it is clean, he picks up the slippery body again, pulling him by the wrists after other techniques fail. He sits it on the seat of the lavatory and wipes it dry with a towel. Now it is perfect.
Des carries the body over his shoulder, back into the main room, and lays it on the bed.
He tidies himself up, smoothing away the evidence of their struggle and of the messy bath, and then takes a closer look.
The body has a slightly pinkish tinge to the face, the features are a little puffed up, and the lips are blue. The eyes and mouth are both partly open. Running his fingers over it, Des discovers that the body is still warm to the touch, as if alive. There is a wet mark on the pillow from the water left in the hair. Des pulls the covers up to his chin as if to tuck him in for the night, and sits down to stare at him again.
He is waiting for the knock on the door, for the police to come. He sits and stares at the body, so that at least he will have a lasting memory to hold on to when they come and take him to prison.
1983
Des gets up and goes to work as normal. It is easier, now that he has accepted everything.
He dresses in his normal clothes: his dark trousers, his pale grey tweed jacket, his dark blue tie, his blue shirt, and his wire-rimmed spectacles. As a final flourish, a kind of homage to the day, he puts Stephen’s - the last Stephen, Stephen Sinclair - blue and white football scarf around his neck.
He wonders idly about what kind of scene will face him when he arrives back in the evening. Since Dyno-Rod are coming to the house so early, he imagines the police will be there by the afternoon. After that, it won’t take too long for them to figure out there is something serious going on.
Maybe they will go into his flat when he is not there, and be waiting for him with handcuffs.
Des tidies his desk as much as he can, and arranges it in such a way as he would want to leave it on his last day of work. Then he gets out a piece of notepaper, and writes a quick line: If I am arrested, there will be no truth in any announcement that I have committed suicide in my cell.
He puts the note into an envelope and half-hides it at the back of his desk. That will do, for now. A fragile kind of cocoon against any kind of injustice that he may end up facing.
He tries to act as normal as possible around his co-workers. He even manages to be quite cheerful, if such a thing can be believed. The weight of the world is almost off his shoulders now, and that knowledge is enough to lift the burden at least a little bit.
By the time the end of the day comes, he is feeling almost misty-eyed about his workplace. There have been ups and downs here, and surely he was deserving of much more than he ever received. But this has also been the job that allowed him to enjoy his union duties, and to get into politics in a much more effectual way. For that, he is grateful.
On the journey home, he worries incessantly, feeling the moment drawing nearer. What will happen to Bleep? What about the next of kin of his victims – how will they feel when they find out what has happened to their loved ones?
By the time he gets home, a little after 5.30pm, he is quite ready for whatever will come next. Still, it is hard not to fall back on old habits when he sees what surely must be a group of policemen outside the house.
“Hello,” one of them says, as he approaches. “I’m Detective Chief Inspector Jay from Hornsey CID. I’ve come about your drains.”
“Since when have police been interested in blocked drains?” Des asks, giving him a wry smile.
“I’ll tell you more when we get inside,” Jay replies. “If you would…?”
Des nods and leads them inside, giving a quick glance back to the two other men in plain clothes. “Health inspectors?” he asks, nodding in their direction.
“No,” Jay says, sounding faintly amused. “Detectives.”
They walk up the stairs, and into his flat. They are here, finally. Standing on what might as well be hallowed ground. They are here, and it is too late to do anything about them.
There is a smell in the house that Des has never quite been fully able to mask. It is a smell that is obvious to those who recognise it, and he knows that Jay will recognise it. He couldn’t fail to.
“Your drains were blocked with human remains,” Jay deadpans, his face completely straight. The two of them are playing a game together, now. Almost an enjoyable one.
“Oh my god, how awful!” Des deadpans back. The right words. The right reaction. But there is nothing genuine behind it, and it shows.
“Don’t mess me about,” Jay says. “Where’s the rest of the body?”
Des takes in his expression, and knows what he needs to do. “In plastic bags in the other room,” he says.
He points out the wardrobe, handing over his keys so that they will be able to open it.
“I won’t open it for the moment. The smell tells me enough,” Jay says, taking the keys. “Is there anything else?”
“It’s a long story,” Des says. “It goes back a long time. I’ll tell you everything. I want to get it all off my chest. Not here, but at the police station.”
Then it is all over. In a flurry, things happen all at once. He is arrested and read his rights. Jay takes him back outside to the car and they drive away from the house, another detective sitting beside him for the ride back.
“Are we talking one body here, or two?” the detective asks, out of the blue.
“Neither,” says Des, with his characteristic flair. “It’s sixteen.”
There is an odd silence hanging in the car for a moment, as the detectives process what he has just told them. He glances around, and he can see they are taking him seriously. It is the magnitude that has struck them.
He allows himself a wry smile in the back of the car. It began with a Stephen; it ended with a Stephen. There is some kind of poetry in that.
Now, at last, they can put him away somewhere where he won’t be able to do any of this ever again. Finally, he can stop.
If you enjoyed these excerpts, do consider buying Boy Under Water, available in ebook, paperback, hardback, and on Kindle Unlimited.