Between 1978 and 1983, 15 young men aged between 14 and 23 were killed by a serial killer in London. First, he strangled his victims until they lost consciousness, then drowned them in a bucket full of water, and finally had sex with the corpses or lay down in bed with them. He then hid the bodies under floorboards and took them out again whenever he felt like it, until the decomposition process had progressed so far that maggots were already feasting on the dead bodies. When this happened, he would dismember the bodies and put them in plastic bags to burn them in the backyard along with car tires. This could have gone on forever if the serial killer hadn’t complained to his landlord on February 4, 1983, about clogged drain pipes in the house. When the plumbing company repaired the damage, they discovered human flesh and bones in the pipes. They called the police. When they arrived, they also questioned the neighbor who had reported the blockage, who confessed to having murdered 15 or even 16 people. The man was immediately arrested, and the police found a pot with a cooked human head in it on his stove. The man was 38-year-old Scotsman Dennis Nilsen, who was born on November 23, 1945, in Aberdeenshire. His parents, Betty and Olav Nilsen, divorced early on because Nilsen’s father, a Norwegian soldier, was an alcoholic and had left the family. His mother remarried in 1954 and took the name Scott. Dennis Nilsen grew up for three years with his beloved grandfather, a fisherman. When he died, the boy’s world fell apart. Dennis Nilsen became a loner who developed abstruse sexual submission and murder fantasies during puberty and even wanted to abuse his brothers. After school, Nilsen joined the British Army in 1961, where he first trained as a cook and then as a butcher. It was there that he began drinking large amounts of alcohol. He left the army in 1972 because he wanted to become a police officer, but quit after nine months. He then worked in security before becoming an interviewer at the Manpower Services Commission. During this time, he formed a kind of shared apartment with David Gallichan, who was ten years younger, but Gallichan moved out a year later, presumably because he did not share Nilsen’s necrophilic fantasies. After Gallichan moved out, Dennis Nilsen began his gruesome series of murders. His first victim was 14-year-old Irish worker Stephen Holmes, whom he had met in a pub on December 30, 1978, when Holmes was trying to buy alcohol. Dennis Nilsen invited the young man to his home, where they drank alcohol and listened to music. The next morning, he was seized by the fear that Stephen Holmes would leave him. But he was to stay, at least until the new year. So he strangled Holmes with a tie until he lost consciousness and then drowned him in a bucket of water. Then he washed him and had sex with him before hiding him under his floorboards. Stephen Holmes remained there for seven months, but Nilsen repeatedly took him out to have sex with him until the process of decomposition made this impossible, so he burned the body in the garden together with car tires. Dennis Nilsen met his next victims in pubs again. These were often junkies or homeless people, whom he lured into his apartment with warm meals, a place to sleep, and drinks. This was also the case in November 1979, when Dennis Nilsen met Chinese sailor Andrew Ho in Salisbury and took him back to his apartment. Ho allowed himself to be tied to the bed, but when Nilsen strangled him, he fled the apartment in a panic. Andrew Ho reported the incident to the police. However, Nilsen claimed that Andrew Ho had tried to rob him. The police believed Nilsen and dismissed the complaint. In December 1979, Dennis Nilsen met 23-year-old Canadian student Kenneth Ockenden in a pub in High Holborn and offered to show him around the city. He took him home with him. There, Kenneth listened to music with his headphones. This displeased Nilsen, who simply strangled Kenneth with his headphone cable. He dragged the body across the floor with the cable while drinking rum. Later, he listened to music with his headphones. The next day, he bought a Polaroid camera and photographed the corpse in bizarre poses. Then he stowed the body, wrapped in plastic sheeting, under his floorboards. He took the body out at will, either having sex with the dead man or sitting him in an armchair to watch TV with him. Dennis Nilsen had discovered blood in murder. From 1980 onwards, he killed six young men. This made it increasingly difficult to hide them under the floorboards, as they attracted insects, especially in the summer months, and the smell of decay became extreme. He combated the insects with insecticides and the stench with deodorant. At the end of 1980, he dissected the corpses and burned them in the backyard. To prevent the smell of burning human flesh from giving him away, he burned them together with car tires. He smashed the remaining bones and skulls. When Nilsen’s landlord renovated the house in mid-1981, Nilsen had to move out and once again burn corpses in the backyard, as he had killed again. Nilsen moved into an attic apartment in Muswell Hill in north London, where he began to dismember the corpses instead of dissecting them. He stored their body parts in cupboards, boxes, and drawers, or flushed them down the toilet, which led to blockages, so he informed his landlord, which, intentionally or unintentionally, sealed his fate. His penultimate victim was 21-year-old Carl Stottor, whom he had met in May 1982. They drank alcohol in his apartment until Carl fell asleep. He woke up when Nilsen strangled him. But Nilsen did not kill Carl; instead, he resuscitated him and even cared for him until he took him to the train station. On October 24, 1983, the trial of Dennis Nilsen began, who had confessed to 15 murders and 5 attempted murders. He was charged with six counts of murder and two counts of attempted murder. These were the only charges that the prosecution was able to prove. On November 4, 1983, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. After serving 34 years in HMP Full Sutton, a high-security prison in East Yorkshire, Dennis Nilsen had to be treated for a ruptured aortic aneurysm. He died on May 12, 2018, at the age of 72, as a result of blood loss he had suffered two days earlier during emergency surgery. To this day, Dennis Nilsen and his gruesome crimes are still a hot topic for the media and film industry, as sex and violence continue to sell extremely well.
The boiled man’s head
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