The papergirl, 13, who vanished & was never found

police didn’t take it seriously. If they had, other men could have been saved.”

Things escalated, and over the next six months, he killed another two young men – Canadian tourist Kenneth Ockenden, 23, and homeless 16-year-old Martyn Duffey – strangling both before hiding them under his floorboards. He would frequently remove Ockenden’s body and talk to it.

By the end of 1980 the psychopath, who would have sex with some of the corpses, had killed a further six – but only one of these men, Billy Sutherland, 26, was identified.

“He’d ply these men with alcohol and strangle them,” says Prof Wilson. “Sometimes he’d wake the victim, just to strangle them again.” He went on to murder another three men and by 1981, he was rapidly running out of storage for the bodies, having stuffed the last under his kitchen sink.

The smell of decomposition was dreadful. Nilsen told neighbours it was due to structural problems with the building. He used fly spray twice a day.

To get rid of the corpses, he would dismember them on the kitchen floor with a large kitchen knife, sometimes boiling the skulls to remove the flesh.

He buried limbs in the garden and stuffed torsos into suitcases, storing them until he could burn them.

His final victim at Melrose Avenue was Malcolm Barlow, 23, in September 1981. Barlow was an epileptic, and returned to Nilsen’s flat to thank him for calling an ambulance when he suffered a seizure. He paid for his

Nilsen lived in Muswell Hill house politeness with his life. In 1982, Nilsen moved to a flat in Cranley Gardens, Muswell Hill, North London, where he would strangle another three men, and attempt to murder two others.

There, he finely dissected John Howlett, 23, and Graham Allan, 27, and flushed pieces down the toilet.

He was finally caught in February 1983, when Dyno-Rod technician Michael Cattran found a drain and pipes from Nilsen’s attic flat were blocked with human flesh and bones.

A police search of the flat revealed plastic bags of human remains, including those of Nilsen’s final victim, Stephen Sinclair, 20.

During his trial at the Old Bailey, Nilsen admitted killing 15 men, but difficulty identifying victims meant he was convicted of six murders and two

Police tent at Melrose Ave

Cattran found flesh in blocked drain

Nilsen was Army cook and a policeman

attempted murders. Carl Stottor, a 21-year-old who Nilsen let go after failing to throttle and drown him in a cold bath in 1982, gave evidence.

Initially jailed for a life sentence of at least 25 years, his term was later upgraded to a whole-life tariff.

Nilsen claimed his memories of he attacks were vague, and that he went into a trance during the killings, saying of one victim: “In the morning he was lying there dead on one of the beds, fully clothed. I got the impression he wanted to go, and I must have killed him. I can’t remember strangling him.”

The killer, who died in May 2018 aged 72 from internal bleeding, after 34 years in prison, seemed to have no remorse. “I don’t lose sleep over what I have done or have nightmares about it,” he once said.

DISAPPEARED Genette Tate was 13

ON a warm Saturday afternoon, Genette Tate set off on her bike to deliver copies of her local newspaper.

But “Ginny” would never return home from that paper round in August 1978. And her body would never be found.

Her parents John and Sheila had separated, and Ginny, 13, lived with her dad John, his partner Violet, and her daughter Tania. On that fateful day, Violet was at work. Tania was going on holiday to Cornwall with her dad, and at 12.20pm, John drove her to Exeter to catch her coach, leaving Ginny at home.

At just after 2pm, she set off on her blue Kalkhoff bike and rode through Aylesebeare, Devon, out of the village and onto the main road. She collected a bundle of papers from outside the White Horse Inn, and began her round.

At 3.15pm, Ginny travelled along Withen Lane. At a small bridge she bumped into her friends, Margaret and Tracey. The girls walked back towards Aylesbeare together, Ginny pushing her bike up a small slope.

She hopped back on and cycled ahead. Minutes later, the girls found her bike in the road, the papers spilled from the basket.

Her dad John remembered: “Genette’s friends came up to say that they couldn’t find her anywhere and they were pushing her bicycle. I went back with them to the lane... After a very short time Violet said, ‘John, I think we better call the police’.”

Within hours, officers were combing the area and the RAF search and rescue helicopter was buzzing overhead.

But after months of searching, the investigation eventually wound down.

In 1994, Robert Black was convicted of the murder and rape of three young girls, which led to Devon and Cornwall Police questioning him about Ginny. They were convinced they had their man but in 2007, the CPS said there was insufficient evidence.

Hope came with Black’s fourth murder conviction in 2011. He’d abducted and murdered Jennifer Cardy, nine, as she cycled to a friend’s house.

Evidence heard during the trial put him in the right place and the right time for Ginny’s disappearance.

But Black died in prison in August 2016, weeks before detectives could present the file to prosecutors.

SUSPECT Killer Robert Black