Dennis Nilsen: The British Jeffery Dahmer

On February 8th, 1983, a plumber, Michael Cattran, was called to 23 Cranley Gardens, an apartment that sits in North London. Residents here had been complaining of blocked drains for some time and Michael was there to fix this issue, he never was expecting to find human remains.

After Michael had opened a drain cover that was at the side of the building, he began to pull out the suspected blockage. But, instead of seeing the typical mess of hair and napkins, he instead discovered a flesh-like substance and small broken bones.

One of the building's residents, Dennis Nilsen, said; "It looks to me like someone has been flushing their Kentucky Fried Chicken," But Michael thought that it looked more human like. And as it turned out, he was correct. And the person behind this horrific mess was Dennis Nilsen.

From 1978 to 1983, Dennis killed at least 12 young men and boys and did unspeakable things to the corpses. To make this already horrific case even worse, the Scottish killer left behind a series of chilling audiotapes that described his murders in sickening detail.

His Early Life

Dennis was born on November 23rd, 1945, in Fraserburgh, Scotland. He had a somewhat difficult childhood. His parents had a troubled marriage and he was devastated by his grandfather's death. Dennis was also discovering his sexuality, and realized early on that he was gay - he was very uncomfortable with his sexuality.

When he was 16, he decided to join the army, he worked as a cook and butcher. After he left in 1972, he pursued a job as a police officer. He wasn't an officer for long, he was at his posting long enough to develop a fascination with dead bodies and autopsies.

He moved on to become a recruitment interviewer and he then moved in with another man, this arrangement that went on for two years. The man later denied that the two shared any sort of sexual relationship, it was clear that the man's departure in 1977 was devastating to Dennis.

He started to actively seek out sexual encounters, but he felt lonely with each new partner. So he decided that he would force men to stay - by killing them. But, despite these murderous urges, he claimed that he felt conflicted about the actions once the deed was done.

"The greater the beauty of the man, the greater was the sense of loss and grief. Their dead naked bodies fascinated me but I would have done anything to have them back alive," Dennis Nilsen said.

His Crimes

Dennis's first victim was a 14-year-old boy who he met at a pub the day before New Year's Eve of 1978. The boy accompanied Dennis back to his apartment after he promised to supply him with some alcohol for the night. Eventually, the boy fell asleep after drinking with him.

Dennis feared that the boy would leave him if he woke up, so he strangled him with a necktie and then drowned him in a bucket of water. He washed the boy's body and took it into bed with him, where he attempted a sex act and then fell asleep next to the corpse.

Eventually, Dennis hid the body beneath the floorboards of his home. the body would stay here for several months until Dennis buried him in the backyard. All while he continued to seek out new victims.

Some of his victims were homeless or sex workers, while others were tourists. But, no matter who they were, Dennis wanted to keep them all to himself, blaming this sickening urge on his loneliness.

Before he moved to 23 Cranley Gardens, Dennis lived in an apartment building that had a garden. Initially he was hiding the corpses under the floorboards, but, the smell became too much to bear, so he started to bury, burn, and dispose of his victims in his garden.

Believing that it was just the internal organs that were causing the horrid smell, he would take the bodies out of their hiding places and dissect them on the floor and often saved the skin and bones for later use.

He kept many of the corpses, he would often dress them up and take them to bed to watch TV with them and to perform depraved sex acts with them. Even worse he would later defend this disturbing behavior, "A corpse is a thing, it can't feel, it can't suffer. If you're more upset by what I did to a corpse than what I did to a living person, then your morals are upside down."

To dispose of the body parts that he didn't wise to keep, he would have small bonfires in his backyard, secretly adding human organs and innards to the flames along with some tire parts to hide the inevitable smell. The body parts that didn't get burned were buried near the fire pit. But these methods wouldn't work at his next apartment.

How He Was Caught and His Taped Confessions

In 1981, his landlord decided to renovate his apartment and he had to move to a new location. 23 Cranley Gardens didn't have enough outdoor space for Dennis to discreetly burn body parts, he had to get a little more creative with his methods.

He assumed that the flesh would either deteriorate or sink far enough into the sewers that it wouldn't be found, so he started to flush human remains down the toilet. The building's plumbing was old and not up to the task of disposing human remains. Eventually, it became so backed up the other residents soon noticed and called in the plumber.

Upon thorough investigation of the apartment building's pipes, the human remains were traced back to Dennis's apartment. Upon setting foot in the room, the police noted the aroma of rotting flesh and decay. When they questioned him where the rest of the body was, Dennis calmly showed them to the garbage bag of body parts that he kept in his wardrobe.

Upon a further search, police discovered body parts that were stashed all over the apartment. Though he admitted to committing between 12 and 15 murders, he claimed he couldn't remember the exact number, he was formally charged with six counts of murder and two attempted murders.

He was then found guilty on all counts in 1983 and sentenced to life in prison, he spent much of his time translating books into Braille. He expressed no remorse for his crimes and no desire to be released.

In the early 1990s, Dennis gained further notoriety when he commented on the arrest of Jeffrey Dahmer, since he preyed on young men and boys, But Dahmer became so infamous that Dennis eventually got the title of the "British Jeffrey Dahmer," even though he was arrested long before Jeffery Dahmer.

Besides targeting males, Dennis had many other things in common with Dahmer, including his methods of strangulation, performing necrophilia, and dissecting the bodies. When Dahmer was arrested, Dennis weighed in on his motives, and he also accused him of lying about his cannibalism. When asked whether he ever preformed cannibalism, Dennis insisted that he was "strictly a bacon and eggs man."

While in prison, he recorded a set of audiotapes that described his murders in graphic detail. These tapes are explored in a Netflix documentary titled Memories of a Murderer: The Nilsen Tapes.

In 2018, Dennis Nilsen passed away in prison at age 72 after suffering a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm.