Stench from the drains was terrible... I pulled out lumps of flesh the size of my fist, I wondered ‘Is it an animal?’
– MIKE CATTRAN, PLUMBER WHO FOUND REMAINS OF NILSEN’S VICTIMS
ON what was a bitterly cold and miserable night plumber Michael Cattran was called out to 23 Cranley Gardens to clear a blocked drain. It was a seemingly routine job for the 29-year-old.
“When he lifted the manhole cover to the drain he was opening a door to horror,” the Daily Mirror reported on February 11, 1983.
“As Mike scrambled deeper into the drain he came across lumps of ash. Further probing confirmed the grisly find as evidence of mass murder.”
This was the extraordinary moment that Dennis Nilsen’s gruesome murders had finally caught up with him. Our reporting was featured in ITV’s three-part drama, Des, starring David Tennant as the serial killer, which has gripped six million viewers this week.
In episode one Mike, played by To ny Wa y, a l er ted the Mirror to the story because the police “didn’t believe” him.
Lead investigator DCI Peter Jay, played by Daniel Mays, then furiously brandished a copy of the Mirror in the police station when our story broke. Known as the
“kindly killer”, Nilsen was a civil servant and ex-policeman.
Over five years from 1978 he murdered vulnerable boys and young men he found on the streets of Soho.
He befriended his victims, who often needed food or lodgings, lured them back to his flat in Muswel l Hi l l , North London and then strangled them.
On February 8, 1983, Mike went t to the property and made the grisly discovery. It led to Nilsen’s arrest the following day and his confession that he had killed as
SERIAL KILLER Dennis Nilsen murdered up to 15 people many as 15 people, before going on to dismember and dispose of their bodies.
Mike told his incredible account to the Mirror in an exclusive interview with our team on the ground. It was horrifying in its detail.
“I could tell it was full, so the blockage was between that and the manhole cover,” Mike told our reporters.
“There was a terrible stench when I lifted the manhole cover and climbed down 12ft to the bottom. When I got down there
I couldn’t believe it. I pulled out lumps of flesh the size of my fist and strips of flesh that looked as though they had been cut from an arm.
“I went down again with a plunger. As I pushed it down towards the mains, the whole lot moved and my bottle went.
“There was a bit with hair on it. The flesh was so white and there was such a lot of it.
“I was trying to think what sort of animal it could be. As I
There was so much flesh.. it had bits of hair on it & was so white
MIKE CATTRAN RECALLING GRISLY FIND TO REPORTER
was prodding around, I thought it’s obviously not a dog, there’s no fur. It’s not a chicken – not that much of it.
“It was all bruised up and eventually I got to thinking that it had to be a body.”
Stunned, Mike called his boss, Gary Wheeler, and told him he thought he had found a body down the drain.
They went back the next morning, thinking it would be better to return in daylight.
But all the evidence had been washed away overnight.
Nilsen had been spotted by neighbours during the night.
“I was determined not to be proved wrong about what I had seen so I climbed down to look for more,” Mike continued.
“I reached down the pipe and there was some more there – bits of what could be fingers and strips of flesh.
“I lined the fingers up with my own and thought they could be that bit from the palm to the first knuckle and other bits up the second joint.
“Then one of the girls who live there came out of in her dressing gown, whitefaced with her hands shaking and offered to call the police.”
After being tipped off by Mike, the Mirror tracked down Nilsen’s mother, Betty Scott, at her home in Aber - deenshire. We got the first interview with her as well as some childhood photos of her son. From her home in the village of Strichen, near where Nilsen grew up, she told how he was once a promising art student.
“He was a delightful baby and I loved him there and then,” she said. “I brought up three children without the help of a husband. “He was rarely there and, when he was, there was only trouble. “Eve ryone assumed art was what he would do, but one day he came back from school and said, join the Army’.
“He passed all his exams and I was proud of him.
“Until then he had been just like my other children and didn’t stand out in any way.”
In a later interview with the BBC, when Nilsen was convicted of six of the murders, she said: “He just must be sick or something. It’s not the Dennis I knew doing this.”
An ITV documentary tonight, The Real ‘Des’: The Dennis Nilsen Story, features chilling footage of the killer, which has not been seen in more than 30 years.
It also shows victims’ relatives speaking for the first time.
Nilsen died aged 72 in 2018 after falling ill in jail. ‘Mum, I want to