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[cassette player opens and closes]
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[button clicks]
[man on recording clears throat]
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.
[slightly distorted] I think this recording machine
might be under some kind of strain.
Speech oscillates from one speaker to the next.
Anyway, let's begin the recording proper.
My name is Dennis Nilsen.
[birds chirping]
[Nilsen on recording] My companions, as you can hear,
are a couple of mating budgies, Hamish and Tweetles.
[chirping continues]
[Nilsen] He's a good boy, Hamish.
I sit here,
smoking a Scaferlati roll-up cigarette.
[coughs] Oh dear.
Yeah, we are ruining our healths-ssss.
Well, we've all gotta die of something, haven't we?
[ominous music playing]
[Nilsen] This morning, a friendly screw kindly lent me his News of the World,
an amusement sheet posing as a newspaper…
and he brought to my attention page 21.
[paper rustles]
[Nilsen] "Dennis Nilsen makes a sick joke of his crimes
by having pinned up in his cell
a poster of The Silence of the Lambs star Hannibal Lecter."
"And he believes that one day,
his grisly exploits will be immortalized in a film."
[recording crackles]
[Nilsen] End of story.
What a load of rubbish!
Good evening. Scotland Yard launched its biggest murder investigation today…
[reporter 1] …after the discovery of bodies in London.
[reporter 2] In the next few hours,
the scale of this crime will begin to unfold.
[Nilsen] Well, what is this article's accuracy?
Oh yes, I was definitely convicted for murder.
Eh, but apart from that, most of the stuff is just pure fiction.
The prosecution alleged a pattern of murder.
[reporter 3] The public gallery of No. 1 Court has been full every day.
Those who'd expected to hear horrors were not disappointed.
[Nilsen] Great. "Des Nilsen, the monster."
"Oh, Nilsen." As soon as you mention the name,
people have made their mind up about it.
Dennis Nilsen, the man who once called himself
"the murderer of the century"…
[Nilsen] They are still trying to plug this image
of the dangerous creature so beloved of fiction,
the movie monsters.
[reporter 4] Now Nilsen wants to publish his autobiography
from behind prison bars.
[menacing music playing]
[Nilsen] It's a tale beyond comprehension.
Right, let's go!
London, 1983.
Good afternoon to you.
Well, it's decidedly parky to say the least.
And, in fact, it's not gonna get any warmer, really, in the next few days
because we're going to keep these north to northeasterly…
[McCusker] I certainly remember the day because it was cold and miserable outside,
and I was sitting in my office
when a colleague of mine told me
that he had been called to Cranley Gardens,
where suspected human remains were pulled out of a manhole there.
When we got there, the tenants were standing around the manhole.
The toilets had been blocked,
and an engineer had been called to clear the drains,
and he discovered huge amounts of flesh and bone.
I have a limited knowledge,
but very heavily suspected
that it wasn't, um, animal, shall we say.
[interviewer] Did anyone express any particular interest in what you found?
Yes. The guy, I believe, was living in the top-floor flat.
[McCusker] Then the tenants told me that the previous evening,
around about midnight,
they had heard a scraping noise outside.
When they went to the front door and opened it,
they saw the man from the upstairs flat.
He was dressed in just a simple vest.
And bearing in mind, this was February, freezing cold.
And they asked him if he was all right.
And he said, "I am. I've just been outside for a pee."
I made further inquiries at Cranley Gardens
and found out he was at the local Jobcentre where he worked.
And he normally returned from his work
at half past five every evening.
We then found out that the pieces of bones from the drains
were indeed from a human body.
And the pathologist said that the piece of flesh
appeared to have strangulation marks on it.
[tense suspenseful music playing]
[McCusker] And lo and behold,
we saw a man walking up the road.
[Nilsen, singing] ♪ Oh, the time is coming ♪
♪ The time is coming! ♪
He was very calm indeed.
[Nilsen] When I arrived to Cranley Gardens,
the police were unsure of their ground.
They were fishing tentatively in the hope of gaining information
concerning the samples of human flesh found down the house…
…drains.
Nilsen then said, "Very strange that police officers should come
and talk to me about my drains."
[camera shutter clicks]
[McCusker] But he let us into the house…
[camera shutter clicks]
[McCusker] …and we went up to the attic flat.
[camera shutter clicks]
[McCusker] And as soon as he opened the door,
the smell just came at you.
[camera shutter clicks]
-[camera shutter clicks] -[McCusker] I knew that awful smell.
So we said to him…
[Nilsen overlaps] "Stop messing about. Where's the rest of the body?"
And he looked at me,
and he pointed
to the wardrobe.
And when I opened it,
there were two huge, black bin sacks, sagging.
[camera shutter clicks]
[McCusker] So I got him by the cuff,
and he was told that he was being arrested on suspicion of murder.
[vehicle moving]
[McCusker] On the way back to the police station,
I sat beside him,
but something was bothering me.
Those two bin sacks were huge.
[Nilsen] In the car, on the journey to the police station, I was asked…
"Are we talking about one body or two here?"
[Nilsen] I immediately replied with…
[overlaps with Nilsen] "15 or 16."
[McCusker] It made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
And I could see the detective chief inspector
looking into the mirror at me.
And I had to tell him to concentrate on the driving
'cause he started to veer across the road.
And it hit me.
"We have a serial killer here."
[menacing music plays]
[indistinct chattering]
[Nilsen] I glide down a long corridor with my escort,
and I'm lodged in the first cell at the end of the line.
I am deposited there, in this antiquated room,
with a small bench
and rough, upright, small stool of a table.
I sit there, light up a cigarette, and pause.
[tense music playing]
[McCusker] We didn't know for sure
if what Nilsen was telling us was actually truthful.
You think, "15 or 16 people?"
But we've only had the authority to keep him in custody for 48 hours,
and that's it.
You've gotta get everything out of this guy that you can.
But you don't wanna put that much pressure on him
that he doesn't wanna talk to you.
[Nilsen] Wary of the expected long train of questioning,
I surprised the CID trio
by interjecting that I would tell them everything.
[McCusker] Nilsen wouldn't stop talking.
He started telling us exactly what had happened.
He would go into a pub
and speak to someone,
take them back to his flat.
They would be drinking. They'd be listening to music.
The following morning, Nilsen would wake up,
and there would be a dead body beside him.
And when he was pressed on this, he just said
he couldn't remember what had happened.
Normally, in a murder case,
you'll have a victim,
and then you will go looking for the murderer.
In this case, we had a murderer,
but he didn't know who the victims were.
So we had to go backwards, if you like,
and trace all the victims.
[Nilsen] There was no questions I refused to answer.
Going into minute detail.
If anything…
no other British murderer
has ever been so forthright…
in confronting his offending behavior than I have been.
He was giving very limited information, but they were mainly young men.
But I thought,
if what Nilsen was telling us was truthful,
how on earth, in a place like London,
could 15 people have been murdered without anyone noticing?
[Nilsen] The police had all the ingredients
to lay a charge against me.
This would have placed the whole matter under the protection of sub judice
and out of reach of the sensation-hungry media.
This was to be the biggest case in all of their careers,
and in order to enhance their own place in the professional public spotlight,
they made sure that the entire nation knew about it
when they sat down to their breakfast tables.
[man] I was up at the office,
and the news desk called me over and gave me this sheet of paper
that said that a plumber working for Dyno-Rod
had found pieces of human flesh down a drain.
I phoned Scotland Yard, but they knew nothing about it.
So I carried on and wrote the story.
But there was resistance to the story being used,
because in those days,
you never really wanted to upset people over the breakfast table.
And there's no doubt
that the reality of Cattran's discoveries
would make people dry heave over their cornflakes.
So I had no idea if the story was gonna be used.
[man 2] Well, I was told there had been a… a murder inquiry
at Cranley Gardens,
and could I get up there as quickly as possible?
Well, I wasn't too excited about it.
I thought, "This is a… a fairly mundane story."
"If I'm lucky, I might get a lead that'll get me a piece on the Six O'Clock News,
and it'll be forgotten."
Well, normally, when you get to a scene like that,
the road's already been cordoned off. Never mind the house, the road.
No sign of that here. We were right up on the doorstep.
But we did interview one or two people who had noted him, you know.
They had seen him. They thought he was a bit strange, a bit quiet.
[interviewer] Is he a man whom you'd seen in this area before?
Oh yes, I've seen him out walking his dog and just nodded hello to him.
And then, half an hour later, uh,
we hear that this, uh… [chuckles]
…this killer hasn't just killed one person.
He's killed 15 or 16.
What?
In some ways… This sounds awful,
but I had this great flow of adrenaline at the time.
[chuckles] I have to admit, you know,
I was totally transfixed on this.
As yet, few in Cranley Gardens have been able to gather
the enormity of what's happened.
For, within hours, what seemed just another inquiry
developed into one of the biggest mass murder inquiries
ever conducted in Britain.
The news editors are asking,
"What more do you know? What more can you give us now?"
[Nilsen] Nobody else knew the published details
but for the officers on the case and me.
As I was incommunicado, there was no leaks from me to the press.
It was the police who gave the press all the information
that hit the headlines in the next couple of days.
Then we hear that this man has a job as an executive officer
at a Jobcentre interviewing people!
For the past six months, he's been working here at the Manpower Services Commission,
known to his colleagues at work as Des.
Well, I thought, you know… [chuckles]
"This guy's a psychopath, all right."
[Nilsen] A clearly prejudiced picture
had been allowed to form in the public's mind,
even before I was charged with any offense,
giving the media full latitude to milk their property.
This allowed the images of monstrosity
to take full flight
to whet the profitable public imagination.
[Bence] As a newspaper reporter, nothing really shocks or surprises you.
As a human being, things do shock and surprise you.
When I heard that he'd killed 15 or 16 people over four years,
I thought, "How can that happen for four years,
in this so-called civilized country,
and we had no knowledge of it?"
We were all talking about how the big problem for any killer
is getting rid of the body.
But how did he get rid of 15 or 16?
[camera shutter clicks]
[McCusker] We only found the remains of three bodies at Cranley Gardens.
So I asked him,
where did he kill the other people at?
[Nilsen] My memory rolled back the fact that I killed three at Cranley Gardens
and the others
[overlapping with Nilsen] at 195 Melrose Avenue.
[McCusker] Which is only a few miles from Cranley Gardens.
[woman] It was absolutely freezing,
icy cold.
But we got the call from the detective chief inspector,
who said, "Right, everybody in. Everybody in."
"We will go down to Melrose Avenue."
"We'll be briefed there."
Bear in mind we didn't know what we were gonna walk into there.
There was no prep. We were the first wave.
So off we went.
But when we got to Melrose Avenue,
the officers who were investigating the crime said,
"Right. We've had information
Dennis Nilsen used to live in Melrose Avenue,
and that he has admitted to killing quite a few people,
and that they're buried in the garden."
So there was this stunned silence.
And then we were given green overalls.
"There you go, Karen. Put your overalls on."
"There's a pitchfork. Start digging."
[reporter] A few minutes ago,
a police van suddenly drew up outside the house,
and a squad of half a dozen officers,
equipped with spades, sieves, and other digging implements,
hurried down the side passage to the back garden.
"Find what you can. Is this guy lying, or is he telling us the truth?"
He could have been a fantasist.
[McCusker] Nilsen told us about his system of disposal
of the bodies at Melrose Avenue.
[Nilsen clearing throat]
I was putting the corpses under the floorboards…
but eventually, there was the smell,
and the rot, and the maggots.
And at one stage, there was no room under the floorboards.
There were so many bodies there.
He had to come up with an idea.
[Bence] I spoke to a neighbor who said she remembers
that he had a series of bonfires.
Er, mostly in the evening time
'cause I used to work evenings.
Um, that's all.
[interviewer 1] Did you think rubbish was being burned?
Yes. Yes.
[interviewer 2] Does it appear that the bodies have been burnt
in the back garden before burial?
Uh, it's a possibility.
[camera shutter clicks]
[Hunt] What he'd done filters through to us.
He burned them in the back garden,
and when they were down to ash,
he would spread them out over the garden and dig them in.
But there would have been regular bonfires in that garden.
I am unaware of anybody making a complaint.
[reporter] The whole area has now been completely cordoned off,
and newsmen ordered away from the scene.
Come on, move back!
[dog whimpers]
It was numbing work because the ground was frozen.
I said, "We're never gonna get through this."
We felt we were gonna be there a year digging that place up.
[reporter] By late afternoon,
a grim and somewhat dispirited squad packed up and left,
shaking their heads when asked if the day's work had yielded anything.
[Hunt] Then you start asking,
why hasn't there been this huge outcry of,
"Yeah, my son… My father's missing"?
It wasn't happening.
It was as if they didn't matter.
[McCusker] Who were these people?
It's almost an impossible task.
But Nilsen had told us we needed to search Cranley Gardens
for a tea chest.
[camera shutter clicks]
[McCusker] And there, we discovered more body parts…
-[camera shutter clicks] -…which we took to the mortuary.
One of the pieces that were removed from the flat
was an arm,
with a hand.
We took the fingerprints of this hand,
and we were absolutely amazed
when we got a match.
It was a young man by the name of, uh, Stephen Sinclair.
He was on police records
because he had been in trouble for various minor criminal matters,
but he was never reported missing.
So we made every effort to contact any family that he had.
[woman] One night, we were talking about things,
and he said that he would love to go to London,
that he was going to London.
And my husband said, "Well, Stephen, you're silly
because it's no' a place for a… a boy like you."
He says, "Oh, but I'm going."
[McCusker] Sinclair was a drifter
who'd come down from Scotland, and he was swallowed up by London.
It was beginning to look like most of these victims were
homeless youths,
down-and-outs.
It was that kind of class of people.
[Bence] You have to look at Britain at that time.
There was high unemployment all over the country.
The consequence of high unemployment is
you get people drawn like a magnet to London.
They think the streets are paved with gold.
In fact, they're not paved with gold.
And you get down on your luck.
Nilsen went round with his vacuum cleaner,
swooping up these victims,
these vulnerable young men.
[reporter] Efforts to identify the victims are centered
among London's growing population of young dropouts.
Police theorize the victims were male runaways under age 21,
lured to the house with a promise of food and a place to spend the night.
[Nilsen] Leave the old autobiography alone.
Now I think it's time to go and pick up lunch.
Excusez-moi.
All right, welcome back. I've just collected my lunch.
It's a kind of a curry.
I don't think these cooks down there have got much of a clue.
The curry seems to have been supplemented
by soya, texturized protein, simulated meat.
I'll bang some of this West Indian sauce on top,
and that might give it some taste.
Right. Let's taste this.
[chewing]
Mmm! That's quite pleasant. I'm surprised myself.
Must have been the West Indian sauce I put in it has given it some taste.
Anyway, where was I? Yes.
1983.
[ominous music playing]
Good evening. A 37-year-old civil servant
has been charged with the murder of a 20-year-old man
whose remains were found at a house in North London
earlier this week.
Dennis Andrew Nilsen will appear in court tomorrow.
[Nilsen] I'm crushed inside a security van,
en route from prison.
It is the first day
whereon I shall stand exposed before my peers.
[Bence] We knew the man's name,
but we'd never seen him.
We had no idea what he looked like.
You expect a big, beefy fellow.
Uh, strong.
You're expecting a heavyweight boxer almost.
[Bence] There was press everywhere,
waiting for the first picture of this monster.
I said to the photographer,
"He's gonna come out with a sheet over his head."
"We're not gonna see him."
But, of course, he didn't have a sheet over his head.
[Nilsen] I am a man,
not a monster.
Awkward, isn't it?
It was almost a feeling of…
It's a horrible way to put it.
…sort of disappointment.
Could this possibly be the man?
He just didn't seem to fit the picture of a mass killer.
[camera shutter clicks]
[Bence] How could a man like that do what he's done,
-this ordinary-looking bloke… -[camera shutter clicks]
…that you'd walk past in the street without a second look?
[reporter] The van made its way to Hornsey Police Station
where investigations are continuing.
[Hamilton] Obviously, now, we want to know something
about Nilsen's upbringing.
Well, the only people who can tell you that are his own family.
We knew that he came from Aberdeenshire.
So I looked up the Aberdeenshire phone book,
and there's only one entry "Nilsen."
And I make a telephone call to his mother and said,
"Obviously, you know that we've got to do a program on this."
And she said, "Well, not today. I don't really feel up to it."
I said, "Well, I just happen to be in Aberdeenshire today."
"Would be a bit of a shame if we had to come back again."
She said, "All right, then."
Outside her house was a little notice
to say that her garden had been the best garden in the whole area.
[clock ticking]
[Hamilton] The house inside was pristine.
Not a speck of dust anywhere.
[kettle whistling]
She went into the kitchen. She brought in a silver salver.
Homemade shortbread.
And I said to her,
"Well, you know, how did you…"
"How did you feel when you heard this news about him?"
And she said…
I've tried to think what could have gone wrong.
And, I mean, why the people in London who worked with him,
why would they not see something there…
before this? It's gone on all this time.
I believe if he'd been at home, I would have seen something was wrong.
Because normally, you couldn't live with a person
unless you could see that there was something bothering him.
Because it's not the Dennis I knew that's doing this, somehow or other.
[Nilsen] Oh dear! Deary, deary me!
[Scott] He was really a quiet boy.
Nothing extraordinary about him, really, when he was young.
Just a normal, quiet boy.
[Nilsen] I was an inwardly troubled boy,
and nobody seemed to notice.
[gulls squawking]
[Nilsen] I remember… I remember
as if there was a Moviola running in my mind.
I see a small, frail boy.
He is new against a background of powerful forces acting on him.
[clock ticking]
[Nilsen] I had the feeling of being somehow different.
Perhaps being poor, thin, and shabbily dressed
was that first definable assault on my awakening self-esteem.
Not having a father to boast about might well have been another.
[menacing music playing]
[Scott] His father, he never was really a person
that was close to the family and that.
I had to bring them up myself.
[Nilsen] Then there was this great gulf between me and my mother.
[Scott] I was a caring person, and I just did my best.
He was brought up just the same way as the others.
[Nilsen] Well… [sighs]
Damned lies.
When I was about eight or nine,
I was first afflicted by that thing called love.
It was for another boy with whom I'd never even spoken.
Visions of him, as seen in school, filled my whole consciousness.
It was a strange, vibrant, and compelling situation,
but the stern moral principles of society and the church
were of such a magnitude
that my inner joys and longings had to be kept secret from the world.
[dance music playing in video]
[reporter] Men who choose to love other men
are treated not only with intolerance and contempt
but prosecuted and jailed.
For many of us, this is revolting, men dancing with men.
Most homosexuals must lead a secret, dark existence.
[Nilsen] It is a great hurt
to begin to appreciate that one's genetic personality
was considered to be monstrous and detestable.
There I was, not into my second decade,
and regarded as a criminal, an outsider, an abomination,
had been convicted and punished to serve a sentence
for the crime of what nature had made.
I was forced not to be anything true
outside of my head.
[McCusker] The interrogators were happy enough
to let Nilsen tell his story without pressing him too much
because he was free flowing with his talk.
So I thought, "I'll sit down with Nilsen myself."
I wanted to see if he could remember anything extra
about the pubs where he picked some of the victims up.
And he told us a lot of them
were gay bars…
in the West End of London.
[Nilsen] Of course I'm homosexual,
but I keep myself to myself.
The last thing anyone would ever admit to is being gay.
[McCusker] So I concentrated my squad in the West End of London.
Then we found out he picked up men in gay pubs.
And once you've got something that you can nail to it,
"the gay killer,"
it's gonna stick.
Whatever the reality, whatever the truth of it,
it's gonna stick.
[Nilsen] Exclusive!
Gay Killer Dennis the Mincing Menace.
Oh dear.
[Bence] Even though, in 1983,
consenting adults of 21 and over would no longer be prosecuted,
gay men and women were ostracized.
There was a lot of institutional homophobia
in lots of aspects of Britain's society, including the press and the police.
And as we were about to find out, Nilsen knew that was the case,
perfectly well.
I remember sitting having a cup of tea
with a member of staff from Scotland Yard's Press Bureau,
and he said, "This is an amazing story,
but it's even more amazing 'cause he's one of our own."
He's an ex-copper!
[Nilsen snickers]
When we found out he was a police officer, we…
Well, I thought, "That's why he's got away with it for so long."
"He's a police officer. He's gonna be one step ahead."
There were two officers I knew, in uniform, who'd worked with him.
[man] The detective chief superintendent running the inquiry ordered me
to come over to his office,
'cause he wanted me to come and tell them all about
my friend Dennis.
He was one of these people,
if you spoke to him, he would drop his head.
He would avoid eye contact.
A real loner.
He wore a uniform
but didn't really achieve anything.
I don't think his interest was in it.
He went before he was pushed.
I don't think anybody batted an eyelid.
You know, there was no leaving do.
[siren sounding]
[Brenton] And then, a few years later,
before he killed anybody,
I got a phone call ordering me to go to an address
to investigate a serious assault.
And the first thing I noticed was the walls had been painted black,
which really wasn't my color.
The living-room window had been completely smashed,
and there's blood everywhere.
A young juvenile had been taken from the address
to the hospital.
And he was just a pale, skinny waif of a kid.
And if I remember rightly, he had over 100 stitches.
He had been picked up in a pub
by a man with a dour Scot's voice
and was taken back to the flat…
plied with alcohol,
and then he woke up
and discovered that he was completely naked,
and this man was coming towards him.
So, fight-or-flight,
he just hurled himself through the window.
So I went back to the police station, and this Scottish man was there,
and it was
my friend Dennis.
So I asked him,
"Why did this young juvenile hurl himself through the window?"
And then he said, "Well, I don't know why he did it."
"But if you got the evidence, you charge me."
"If you don't, you gotta let me go."
And that was our Dennis. He knew the law.
We then discovered that the juvenile was a missing person.
And we spoke to his parents,
but his father just said,
"He's not going to court."
And I remember saying to his father,
"Do you realize
what is going to happen
if you do not bring a prosecution?
"He's gonna do this to somebody else."
"No." They were adamant.
I was fuming.
I didn't say very much to him other than,
"You have no idea, Dennis, how lucky you are."
Because he would have gone to prison.
Grievous bodily harm with intent,
potentially life imprisonment.
When you dealt with somebody,
it was incumbent upon you to type out an intelligence card.
And at the top of the card, I typed,
"In my opinion, this man is a dangerous psychopath."
I always think about what if they had said,
"We'll prosecute him"?
Who would still be breathing today?
But there was a shame factor.
They would be shamed.
Um, and, "We want to take him home and, you know, forget all about it."
He must have thought he was the luckiest person in the world.
And he would never forget that.
[McCusker] The West End was a vibe.
Plenty of action, lots of people,
a way to get lost.
It was just teeming with millionaires to paupers.
But one of the officers on my team came back to me, and he said,
"I've been to the pub and spoken to some people there."
And they had described a guy called John, and he was known as John the Guardsman.
Nilsen had already told us about a guy called John
who wore a woolly hat that looked like a Guardsman's hat.
But we found out that John the Guardsman was known in that area
as a rent boy.
It's the first time that I had heard the term "rent boy."
[Nilsen] Night bringeth the wild dance.
It is the prenuptials before the feast
where all appetites are sated.
Helter-skelter into the fray of the dance,
satisfying these appetites.
[Bence] It was a playground, wasn't it?
And Nilsen could get whatever he wanted.
It was just a flesh market.
[McCusker] We went to West End Central Police Station.
And they had an index of all the rent boys,
and there was hundreds.
We were able to identify John the Guardsman
as a man called John Howlett,
and I spoke to his mother.
Howlett had left home of his own accord.
He'd got involved in drugs,
and there was quite simply an acceptance that her son had died.
Nilsen obviously knew that if these young rent boys went missing,
usually, they just vanished into the London ether.
[Hunt] It got easier, digging that little garden,
but it became evident that he wasn't lying.
We're finding dozens, and dozens, and dozens of tiny bones.
But nothing was so intact that we could identify people from it.
And then I started thinking
perhaps we weren't ever gonna find out who these people were.
And you think, "How on earth have you got to this place?"
"What journey did you go on
to end up here?"
[man] The police contacted me.
They'd found my National Insurance card in Des's flat.
I expect the police did have suspicions about me at first
as to who I was, and why wasn't…
why wasn't I done away with?
It was a warm night.
I was playing a fruit machine,
and a guy behind me was watching me.
I could see him from the reflection in the machine.
He said, "You won't win much on that one."
I said, "Oh, now you tell me."
And he said, "I think it's just paid out."
And he said, um, "Do you want to come home?"
We went back to Melrose Avenue.
[classical music playing]
[Martyn] And he put on classical music.
[Nilsen] Who is this man?
A unit in the herd.
A ghost in society.
How is he formed?
Who and what has placed him towards this fate?
He asked me where I came from. He asked me about my family.
So he seemed quite caring,
and that impressed me.
And I thought, "Ah! Okay, I like you."
But I never said it. But I thought, "I like this guy."
[classical music continues]
[Martyn] I told him that I was from Exeter, outside London.
When I was younger, a few people knew that I was gay,
but it was just, "He'll grow out of it."
All the kids seemed to think I was a bit of a joke.
So I would go to my bedroom.
I just wanted to be in the darkness.
I was 14 when I ran away.
Think I had not much more than about £10 or something like that,
but it was enough to get me to London.
I remember thinking, "So this is London."
"I'm in London! Nobody knows who I am now."
"I can get lost up here."
But I had no way of living. I didn't know what to do.
And I was freezing.
So I found somewhere to sleep in a car park behind Piccadilly Circus.
But then I could see these other boys just hanging around.
"I wonder what that's about?"
I see money changing hands.
I see men kissing boys.
But then some old man was passing by,
and he explained we were on the meat rack,
where each lamppost was owned by a rent boy.
And they all had nicknames.
You wouldn't call somebody by their proper name. That's for sure.
And they weren't all gay.
They were just doing it because they needed money.
Some of the customers were not very pleasant sometimes.
But you'd do it because you need to survive.
But Des was quite friendly, very friendly, in fact.
And you ain't seen nothing yet.
The other week, we got this TV here, 360 quid.
Stereo set, about 200 quid.
And budgerigar up here, Hamish. Have a look at Hamish. Priceless.
He even showed me the gardens.
When we came here, this back garden was like a bloody rubbish heap with…
There was tons of old cookers, and tires, and debris,
and plaster, and wood, and God knows what else.
It was completely overgrown with rubbish.
And we, the good old tenant, trying to improve the property,
in three months, managed to make it what it is now.
Look at it. It's quite neat and tidy. There's a little fence there.
There's vegetables in abundance growing.
And what else can I say?
But then he had Bacardi in a bottle,
and he drank that as we were speaking.
Uh, and then,
we went to bed.
[Nilsen] As is my desire,
the most beautiful creature in my universe
is sleek, slim, male youth.
The sight of him, in his adamant glory,
sends my mind into a concentration of cathartic spasms.
The man obsessed.
The drive powerful.
The heart a-pounding!
He is oblivious to the future.
[Martyn] It must have been about two hours later,
I opened my eyes, and there was smoke in front of me,
and he was straddled across me.
And just pushing him backwards.
I said, "What's happening? What's happened?"
And he said, "You knocked the fire off the wall."
I got water, poured it over the floor,
and I left, 'cause I was really quite upset,
because I thought, "I've caused that damage to his flat."
But it didn't make sense.
The fire wouldn't have been on because it was a warm night.
Then I realized he was trying to kill me that night.
But I didn't know who to talk to. I didn't know where to turn.
London, at the time, was extremely homophobic.
The police certainly were.
The press certainly were.
So I stayed quiet, in a room,
like I was used to when I was younger, in the dark.
[Nilsen whispering] Silence, silence, silence, silence, silence.
[Martyn] Looking back now, I would've been the first victim.
This was just the beginning for him.
In London, police searching for the remains of murder victims
today found what they called "a significant amount of human bone."
It was… it was just a graveyard.
[police officer] We have found a considerable amount of human bones.
Uh, in particular, a, uh, piece of thigh bone,
I would imagine in the… measuring about six inches.
They were coming up all the time.
It wasn't as if, after three or four hours,
"Oh, I found one."
It was every couple of minutes,
a fragment of this, a fragment of that, teeth.
[camera shutters clicking]
[reporter 1] Police searching the rear garden of a North London house
believe they may be a step nearer identifying
some of the human remains they've discovered there.
[man] That story was like a horror film had come to the real world.
But there's also a kind of strange excitement
when something like that happens, you know?
There's a macabre attraction to that kind of stuff.
You want to know more details.
You don't want to know less. You want to know more.
My mother tells a very different story than that.
[reporter 2] Police have half a dozen names
of people they believe may have been victims.
[woman] Well, the news, you know, had been breaking and…
I don't know. I… Of course I was interested.
I mean, who wasn't?
It was horrific, and I thought, "God, them poor parents."
And that was it.
But then there was a knock on the door,
and this police officer said, "Can we come in?"
I said, "What's it about?" He said, "Can we come in?"
"I think you better sit down." I thought, "Oh God."
Still never entered my head.
And when we got indoors, he showed me this photo.
He said, "Do you know this person?"
I said, "Yeah, of course I know him."
It was Graham, the love of my life.
And then he said, "Have you heard of a man called Nilsen?"
Even then, I didn't put two and two together
because they said that Nilsen was only picking on homeless homosexuals.
So that put my mind a bit at rest that he was…
It couldn't be him. He's not homosexual.
And then they asked me, "Had he had any dental treatment just lately?"
I was thinking, "Why do you keep asking me these things
about dental records, and teeth, and jaws?"
Then it clicked.
["Zoom" by Fat Larry's Band playing]
[Lesley] Graham loved buying me records.
I remember he bought me the Fat Larry's Band.
It was called "Zoom."
And every time that record comes on, I'm straight back there.
♪ Zoom, just one look And then my heart went boom… ♪
[Lesley] And that was the very last record he ever bought me.
But I can't say we were a happy family, 'cause we weren't.
♪ …high in a neon sky… ♪
[Shane] We didn't have much growing up. We was very poor.
But we felt like a family, and we loved our mother.
But most memories aren't fun.
Mostly, it was over drugs.
♪ Zoom, you chased… ♪
[Lesley] It was 31st October,
and Graham promised me that morning that he wasn't gonna have a fix.
And I knew,
the minute he spoke to me, I knew he'd had something.
And, of course, I got really cross with him.
And, oh my God, I said this most awful thing.
I mean, I did.
I said, "If you go back out and have another fix,
don't fucking ever come back."
That's exactly what happened.
He didn't ever come back.
So…
Yeah.
[ominous music playing]
[Shane] I was coming home from the little sweet shop at the top,
and as I got down the road, I could hear screaming.
And for some reason, I knew that was my mother's voice
and that was my mother's pain,
and when we got in there, my mother was in the kitchen crying.
My father had been murdered at the hands of Dennis Nilsen.
[Lesley] The reporters were barbaric.
You know, they say, "They're all homeless, all homosexuals."
They weren't, you know?
Don't clump 'em all in one box. They were all individuals.
I phoned up newspapers and blew my top at 'em.
And then we had the press round at the door.
God, it was awful.
And one of the reporters asked me, did I know all the facts?
I said, "I know as much as the police have told me."
He said, "They haven't told you what happened afterwards?"
I said, "No. Why?"
He said, uh,
"It's not very nice. Do you want me to tell you?"
I said, "Yes."
It was just some compulsion, that I had to know.
Nilsen was down the West End.
And he saw Graham trying to get a cab,
but no cabs would stop for him
because he was staggering all over the place.
And Nilsen took him back to his place,
where he went behind him…
and strangled him.
That was his words.
And then he sat him in an armchair for two days while he went to work.
He came back and sat next to him on the settee,
and they watched TV together.
On the third night, he stripped him naked,
stood him up in front of, like, a dressing table mirror,
and held him from behind,
covered him in talcum powder, and then masturbated over him.
I just wanted to pretend
it didn't happen.
He overdosed, and he was dead somewhere. No! No!
But you can't turn your mind off.
It's impossible.
♪ Oh, zoom, you chased the day away… ♪
[Lesley] Why would you do something like that?
Even to an animal, why would you do it?
[birds chirping]
[Nilsen] Tweetles, are you feeling better?
I think he's got some respiratory infection.
Yes.
I think it was yesterday I received a letter
from a reporter fishing for a story.
"I realize you're producing an autobiography…"
Yak, yak, yak.
"What are you saying in it?"
Yak, yak, yak.
[man] I was a young wannabe investigative journalist.
I was completely green behind the ears.
And one morning I read in the paper
that there was this serial killer,
killed 15 people,
who was now writing his own autobiography in prison,
and I was intrigued.
So then I started writing to Nilsen,
saying, "Dear Mr. Nilsen,
I believe your book will become a landmark work of criminology,
and I'd like to cover it
for a serious British broadsheet newspaper."
After a week, this letter arrived.
The first thing I noticed was
the Biro was pressed really hard against the paper,
uh, like a man bursting to tell his story.
"Dear Russ, thank you for your letter."
"You're keen to know how I justify the publication of my book?"
"Well, my first instinct is to quote dear old Oscar."
"'There is no such thing as a moral or amoral book.'"
"'It's either well written or badly written.'"
When I first got parts of his autobiography,
archive boxes full of tapes and manuscripts,
I'd rung my editor at The Sunday Times Magazine,
like, you know,
"You're just not gonna believe what I've got."
The stuff that was of interest was to do with his grandfather.
[Nilsen] Along the moments of my life…
[Coffey and Nilsen overlap] "…I return to the mystery of my grandfather,
Andrew Whyte."
"I've gazed at a photograph of him at his youth…"
[Nilsen] …taken when he was a petty officer
during the First World War.
I remember playing with the three medals he received
for serving his King Emperor, George V.
[Scott] He was so fond of his granda.
I can just picture the two of them together.
Everywhere he went, he took Dennis with him.
I think there was something great between them.
[Nilsen] He was, to me, a great man.
The broad sweep of his 62 years is too great for this short narrative,
but his mark upon me is indelible.
Grandfather died suddenly when I was five years old.
[Scott] He saw his granda lying in this box,
and then, of course, the religious people, they never say they're dead.
They just said, "Oh, he's gone to a better place."
He says, "He always took me everywhere with him."
"Why could he not have taken me to that better place with him?"
[Coffey] He said that when he saw his grandfather's body,
his ideas of love and death fused.
[eerie music playing]
[Nilsen] His abrupt disappearance left a vacuum in my consciousness,
which was filled by the drives of my imagination.
[tape winding]
[winding stops]
[recording clicks]
[Nilsen] What a way to spend Christmas!
And I think, because it's the festive season,
I think I should have a… a magic cigarette.
[Coffey] Many years later,
Nilsen went through a period of reflection about his life.
[Nilsen] Let's have a wee spot of magic.
[Coffey] He said it was because he had ready access to marijuana in prison.
[Nilsen inhaling deeply]
[coughing] Oh dear!
Oh God!
Bloody stoned as a bat here.
Ah, I've got the keyboard out in front of me.
[eerie electronic music plays]
[Nilsen] Before me is a small portable mini keyboard
of 1980s vintage.
Here, in this splendid and accustomed isolation,
I can use this audio brush
to paint all the colored hues of my emotions.
I reach out to the keyboard, and my hands are shaking slightly.
[eerie electronic music playing on recording]
[music continues]
[Coffey] "There followed an eight-hour trip."
"I am watching what unfolded, like a movie,
with widescreen and full Dolby stereophonic sound,
in full living Technicolor."
[music continues]
[Coffey] "For years, the subject of my grandfather
lay simmering, unresolved in the veil of my subconscious."
"I vaguely remember that concrete, slit-eyed pillbox
where strange things had happened between my grandfather and me."
"It is a most horrifying admission to make
that the only tactile contact I had in my early formative years
was the painful and confusing paradoxical embrace
of a pedophile."
[Nilsen whispering] Silence, silence, silence, silence, silence.
[Coffey] But the most significant turning point in his life
was when he became a cook in the army.
And that was when Nilsen, for the first time, had his own room.
And he would strip himself naked and put talcum powder over his body,
and he looked at himself in the mirror as if he was seeing a dead body.
[Nilsen] That fantasy figure
of my own necessary creation.
I am he, and he is me.
[Coffey] And he almost certainly had, in his fantasies,
thought about how he would make that a reality.
[ominous music playing]
[reporter] Dennis Nilsen has been committed for trial
at the Old Bailey.
Four more murder charges were brought against him this month.
By the time of the trial at the Old Bailey,
we had identified a total of seven victims.
[Hunt] We found out that some of them were homeless men.
Some of them were gay but not all of them.
They were just guys who were drifting through,
but there was one connection.
Nilsen knew that if they were to go missing,
no one would notice anytime soon.
All the victims were young men.
Martyn Duffey from the Wirral.
Malcolm Barlow from Rotherham.
Kenneth Ockenden, a 26-year-old Canadian student
who was visiting this country three years ago.
And William Sutherland of Edinburgh…
I just can't get over it.
[interviewer] Would you have any kind of warning
for the parents of youngsters
who were thinking in terms of going down to London?
Never to go. [sniffles]
It's such a cruel, horrible place. [sniffs]
[Lesley] The police told me the trial was beginning, and they said,
"Listen, we've just come to advise you not to go
because they will be talking about Graham, and they will have some of the…
more or less, tools of the trade that he used there."
And I thought, "No, I'm going."
I just had that compulsion, that feeling that I had to go.
In a way, it was me… in my frame of mind, really,
that I was paying my last respects to Graham.
Sort of, you know,
saying goodbye to him, really.
You know, and I didn't want…
I didn't want them talking about him,
and, uh, you know, he didn't have anyone there for him,
so I just felt that need that I-- [sniffs]
That I had to go,
and that's what I did.
[tense music playing]
[Nilsen] Morning of Monday, 24th October.
I'm inside a security van
en route to No. 1 Court of Central Criminal Court, the Old Bailey.
It is now,
today, the reckoning.
[Bence] The Central Criminal Court
is, without question, the most famous court in the world.
It is a theater.
[Nilsen] It is a theater of the absurd.
Parts have been written.
The actors clear their throats for their oratorical delivery.
I can remember the first time he walked up the steps
in No. 1 Court, the Old Bailey…
…and stood, um, all the eyes are on him.
We all had expected that he would plead guilty.
[Nilsen] I can imagine a Panavision camera
on a crane, idling round the court.
[Bence] If there's a guilty plea, there'd have been no trial,
but the journalists would be very disappointed
because there's no story.
That's it. Story over.
At the Old Bailey, civil servant Dennis Nilsen has pleaded not guilty.
I couldn't believe it. He never flinched. Nothing.
I'm thinking, "Are you human, actually? Are you?"
[Nilsen] Silence in court!
[whispering] Silence, silence, silence, silence, silence.
[playing "Für Elise"]
[producer] Had you ever defended a serial killer before?
No.
Nor since.
I mean, if you rule out the Krays.
["Für Elise" continues]
[Lawrence] Looking at it from an ordinary person's point of view,
all this behavior was madness.
It didn't seem to us to be arguable
that the fellow wasn't deranged.
But the whole thing for me,
was he too mad to be sentenced to life imprisonment for murder?
It has been said that if he behaved normally…
He was, after all, a civil servant working in the labor exchange,
and he'd been a policeman.
So if he was capable of rational behavior,
then he can't be mad.
Ah, but, you see, the law says
that you can be behaving perfectly normally for a lot of the time,
and then on this particular incident when you kill somebody, you were deranged,
and then you went back to being normal.
Then you're guilty of diminished responsibility
and, therefore, of manslaughter.
I don't want him to be mad. I want him to pay.
Let him pay.
Make him responsible for what he's done.
"He's not insane," insisted the prosecution,
"nor is he mentally ill."
"He has an abnormal mind."
"But his responsibility for his acts was not substantially impaired."
"He knew what he was doing." Nilsen is alleged to have told the police,
"I've taken a lot of people back to my flat,
and I haven't killed them all."
We needed to prove that he had premeditation
and had intent to go down to the West End to pick these victims up,
which put us in a little bit of a panic.
We trawled, obviously, looking for anybody
who'd met him in a bar that he'd just had a drink with.
"Have you met this guy? Did you go to his house?"
But back in 1983?
Ah! Brick wall.
[Martyn] I didn't really want to be standing in that theater.
'Cause that's what it was to me. The whole world would be watching that.
I didn't want everybody to know that I was gay.
I didn't want that.
Why should I have to go through that
because of what somebody else has done? Why should we?
I was warned by people beforehand
whoever solicitor was against you would tear you apart and expose your life.
So I didn't want to be involved any more than what I was.
[Hunt] When we eventually found some of these men,
they were afraid people would think they were gay.
And that was a problem with the press
homing in on this one aspect of this investigation.
[recorder clicks]
[Nilsen] My mind now turns to one night.
I met a wandering spirit like me.
Nilsen had talked about a young man called Carl Stottor,
who'd actually survived him.
[Coffey] I'd seen the name Carl Stottor appear in the autobiography,
so I felt that it was very important
that I get to know one of Nilsen's survivors' side of the story.
We arranged for me to come down and meet him in his flat near the sea.
[Coffey on recording] I'm trying to put you
into the context of the Nilsen story.
[Stottor on recording] Mmm.
[Coffey] How much can you recollect of the night prior to the incident?
[Stottor] I was on my own.
It was a gay pub,
and he came over and asked me if I minded if he joined me.
You know, I found him quite comfortable to talk to,
and we hailed a cab and went to Cranley Gardens.
We were just chatting. And he poured a drink, which was Bacardi,
and, um, we ended up going to bed.
[water running]
[Stottor] But before we got into bed, he said, "Oh, be careful,
because you might get caught in the sleeping bag zip."
-The zip had broken away. -[Coffey] Yeah.
[Stottor] But I felt tired, so we cuddled up, and I fell asleep.
And all of a sudden, I felt cold.
[water running]
[Stottor] And then I realized I was in a bath of cold water.
I tried to get out, and he pushed me back down.
And three times I came up, and I managed to say,
"Stop! Please, no more!"
And I remember just lying there. I couldn't fight anymore.
I remember just breathing in the water.
It was like breathing solid air.
I remembered thinking, "You're dying."
"And this is what it feels like."
And a light…
[Nilsen] We are moral creatures of drives and conscience.
I am both strong and weak,
angelic and demonic,
both the cool hand to soothe the fevered forehead
and the desperate, raging hand at the throat.
The harbinger of both life and death.
[Stottor] I remember coming round and the pain.
I could hardly breathe. It was awful.
But I was confused. You know, I couldn't remember anything.
But I knew somebody had tried to kill me.
So I went to the police.
They didn't believe me. They didn't take any notice.
I was just a silly little poofter, a drama queen.
[Bence] Carl Stottor went to the police, but nothing was done.
Then we found out there was a string of about five of them.
They went to the police, and lodged complaints,
or tried to lodge complaints,
and were treated fairly disdainfully, really.
So no action was taken.
[Stottor] I thought, "Maybe they're right."
"They know what they're doing. They know their job."
"It was me."
"I imagined it."
[Coffey] Nilsen gave them information that led to them finding you.
[Stottor] Hmm.
[Stottor] The detective that interviewed me said,
"We just wanna ask you a few questions. Do you know anyone called Dennis Nilsen?"
I went, "No."
He said, "You ever been to Cranley Gardens?"
I went, "Where's that?"
And he went, "Okay then, just one more question,"
and said, "Sleeping bag,"
and I started shaking.
And it all came back,
everything
in detail.
It was Nilsen.
He used the sleeping bag zip to strangle me.
[Coffey] Right.
[Stottor] But before we got into bed, he said, "Oh, be careful,
because you might get caught up in the sleeping bag zip."
But by prewarning me, he was already premeditating my death.
If he hadn't succeeded, then he had an alibi.
He knew what he was doing. There wasn't anything psychotic about him.
He was totally in control.
The simple reason why I'm alive
is because Nilsen had no more room under the floorboards to house my body.
[McCusker] Carl Stottor's story proved that Nilsen had premeditation.
But most of these victims would tell you things,
but in no circumstances would they ever want to be a witness.
[Hunt] It would have been absolutely horrendous
for these young men to come forward.
They would have been vilified.
I've been in court hundreds of times
and seen victims, witnesses torn to shreds.
So people are not gonna put themselves in that position.
[Stottor] I hated the way the press claimed
that all of Nilsen's victims were waifs, and strays, and pathetic homosexuals.
It was awful.
I remember thinking, "No. I have worth."
And, in one respect, I have to thank Nilsen for that,
because had I not died and had that near-death experience,
I would never have known.
There's nothing to fear but fear itself.
Remove the fear, and there's nothing left to fear anymore.
[reporter 1] On the second day of the Dennis Nilsen trial,
the prosecution has continued outlining its case.
[reporter 2] Carl Stottor told of going to bed with Nilsen
and waking in the middle of the night
unable to breathe, feeling pressure around his neck.
In a tiny, quiet voice, he told the court he heard Nilsen whispering, "Keep still."
[Hunt] I have absolutely nothing but admiration
for their courage and strength of character
to come forward.
Well, the… the thought that went through my mind was,
"You are drowning. You are being murdered by this man,
and this is what it feels like, and you're going to die."
[reporter 3] At the Old Bailey, a number of former partners of Dennis Nilsen
have been speaking of Nilsen's alleged attempts to murder them.
[Martyn] I remember thinking to myself, "You have to get through this."
"Just survive it."
I thought to myself,
"Let's do it. I can face it. Whatever life throws at me, bring it on."
So I did attend the trial.
I fell asleep, and about half past three in the morning,
I woke up, and he was right beside me.
I looked at him and said, "What are you doing?"
And he said, "You knocked the fire over."
So I found that kind of freedom. I can express myself a bit more.
I don't have to hide what I feel all the time.
It's lovely.
First, though, at the Old Bailey, the jury has now retired
to consider its verdict in the case of Dennis Nilsen.
And indeed, if we hear any more news from the Nilsen trial,
we'll bring it to you as soon as possible later in the program.
[Nilsen] How can you express the contents of a trial?
Ten days of chatter posing as ten days of relevant evidence.
[reporter 4] When they returned to court, they'd reached a verdict
on all counts of murder and two of attempted murder.
Ten jurors had agreed. Two had dissented. The foreman of the jury answered
that they'd reached majority verdicts of guilty on all six murder charges.
[reporters clamoring]
[reporter 4] The jury has, in effect,
found him to be fully responsible for his actions,
not out of his mind.
[Coffey] Everybody who's involved in the Nilsen story
eventually comes to a point
where they decide that Nilsen was bad and… and not mad.
You just have to know him for long enough.
It's like the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain.
You're left with this little piece of dirt.
Nilsen could paint such a vivid picture of a romantic outsider character
that made it hard to believe that he killed out of pure evil.
He needed to see himself in a certain way.
And the grandfather story, it's possible,
but there's no evidence for it.
So I cannot help but feel
that it's simply Nilsen trying to find another villain…
[chuckles] …other than himself, to point the blame elsewhere.
[Nilsen] At teatime today,
I was given this categorization review, Category A.
"Your custodial behavior is satisfactory."
"Reports, however, describe you as a cold and calculating individual,
who has shown little inclination to confront your offending behavior."
"There are no recommendations for downgrading
due to the absence of any real remorse."
Well!
So I took it upon myself to provide a very short comment.
"This report is just the sort of politically correct,
prejudiced hatchet job
which one can expect from petty officials anxious to embroider the monster myth
than make any objective--"
[recorder clicks]
[Coffey] Society didn't create Nilsen. That's what he'd like you to believe.
But we've still got to take responsibility for creating the prejudiced society
that enabled him to kill over and over again.
[Bence] It was easy.
He just knew from his experiences and the circumstances,
nobody really cared.
[Hunt] I swear to you, in Cranley Gardens,
if the bodies had not got stuck in the drain
and affected the people who lived below him,
he'd have killed for another few years.
The only reason he was stopped
is because his activities imposed on somebody else.
Nothing to do with the victims.
[ominous music playing]
My Shane came in and told me.
I was in bed. He come in and said, "Nilsen's dead."
And I said, "Don't lie." He said, "I'm telling you. He's dead."
And I never mentioned it again because…
it just didn't mean anything to me.
And the newspapers again, you know,
"What do you think now the monster's dead?"
I said, "I don't think anything. I don't think about him."
"Even when he's dead, I'm not letting him make me a victim."
You know?
But I just hope wherever he goes, he don't meet Graham,
'cause Graham would be sober. [laughs]
[somber music playing]