The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Serial killer Dennis Nilsen dies in prison
Murderer infamous for killing spree in late 1970s and early 1980s
Fraserburgh-born Dennis Nilsen, one of Britain’s most infamous serial killers, has died behind bars at the age of 72.
The Prison Service confirmed the man who became known as the Muswell Hill Murderer had passed away at HMP Full Sutton on Saturday, 34 years into his life sentence.
It is believed he died from natural causes.
During the late 1970s and early 1980s Nilsen carried out a murderous spree.
He is believed to have killed as many as 15 young men, most of them homeless homosexuals, at his north London home.
His crimes were only detected by chance, when a drain outside his home on Cranley Gardens, Muswell Hill, became blocked by the human remains he had tried to flush away.
He was jailed for life with a recommendation he serve a minimum of 25 years in 1983, on six counts of murder and two of attempted murder.
A spokesman for the Prison Service said: “Dennis Andrew Nilsen, date of birth November 23 1945, died in custody at HMP Full Sutton on Saturday, May 12 2018.
“As with all deaths in custody, there will be an independent investigation by the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman.”
Over four years he turned his cramped, north London flats into grotesque theatres where corpses were used as props for acting out fantasies of devotion.
At least 12 young men, most of them homeless homosexuals, were killed once lured behind the doors of Nilsen’s homes between 1978 and 1983.
After strangling them, he would bathe their lifeless remains and dress them up; placing them around his home and sleeping at their side.
When this grotesque illusion of intimacy drew to a close, he would stow the bodies under floorboards, eventually dismembering and burning them.
It was only the most prosaic of observations from a neighbour that halted Nilsen’s murderous spree – that the drains had become blocked.
A controversial Central TV documentary Murder in Mind featured extracts from an interview Nilsen gave in Albany Prison, Isle of Wight, in 1993.
Describing how he liked to dress the bodies in Y-Fronts and vest, then undress them, he said he enjoyed the feeling of power when he carried their limp bodies.
Asked about “the first young man” – his initial victim – he said: “He is now me. He is now my body in fantasies.
“I carry him in and make him appear even better. I had some Y-fronts in cellophane and a vest.
“I put it on him because it enhanced his appearance. I would undress him and he would be there.”
Nilsen said: “The most exciting part of the little conundrum was when I lifted the body and carried it.
“It was an expression of my power to lift and carry him and have control.”