Things You Can't Unlearn About Dennis Nilsen, The Romantic Serial Killer Who Made Roommates Out Of His Victims

Dennis Nilsen is one of the more well-known serial killers to emerge from the UK in the late 1970s and early '80s. Dubbed the Muswell Hill Murderer by the British press, Nilsen amassed over a dozen kills, his victims often homeless young men and prostitutes - easy prey for a seemingly benevolent stranger. 

Nilsen's predilection for necrophilia - coupled with his habit of keeping corpses around for weeks on end - has drawn comparisons to Jeffrey Dahmer, one of America's more deranged murderers. While Nilsen did not quite share the Milwaukee cannibal's culinary palette, he certainly engaged in enough strange corpse play to put him in that same unique echelon of killers. He was also the inspiration for the movie Cold Light of Day.

The following list explores some of the most bizarre and gruesome facts about a man sometimes called "The Kindly Killer"; the deadly dossier of a charming English stranger who just happened to keep a heap of dead bodies back at his flat.

After successfully luring a man back to his flat, Nilsen would often feel overcome with a sense of abandonment when they attempted to leave - and this was usually a death sentence for his guests. Using household items like electrical cables or neckties, Nilsen would strangle his victims to death with whatever he had handy, ensuring they could never exit his company.

If his evening guests were incapacitated enough by drugs or alcohol, Nilsen would sometimes drown them. He did this by either drawing a bath and submerging his victims underwater, or by more simply placing their heads in a bucket full of water.

Curiously, Nilsen claims to have revived at least three men he asphyxiated, all of whom he then let go, ironically stating that he took great satisfaction in saving a life. In at least one instance, a young man went directly to authorities, who simply brushed off his claims and allowed Nilsen to continue his grim streak.

Say what you want about him being a brutal murderer, Dennis Nilsen was not the "love 'em and leave 'em" type. Though he indeed had a serious passion for necrophilia, it was not just the sexual gratification aspect he enjoyed about keeping a corpse in his bed - he also simply enjoyed the company. 

Not only did Dennis Nilsen sleep next to the dead bodies of his victims, he watched TV with them, ate dinner in their company, and even let loose and got drunk with them.

Bizarrely (for a serial killer anyway), the dead bodies of the men he killed also evoked a sense of remorse from Nilsen, who after his arrest remarked that when he looked at them he wished nothing more than for them to be alive again.

After the murder was over and the body was cleaned, Nilsen would carry his departed guest to his room, where he would take several photos of the body before engaging in depraved sexual activity. 

Treating his corpses as dolls - dressing them, talking to them, posing them - Nilsen had the ultimate submissive partner. As such, he had a hard time letting go of his dead friends, sometimes keeping them around for weeks. 

Dennis Nilsen's innate separation anxiety meant that he had a difficult time parting with the dead bodies he'd grown so fond of. Not wanting potential new victims to be put off by a rotting corpse sitting on his sofa, Nilsen would often hide dead bodies under his floor boards or beneath his kitchen sink. 

Being sent to storage, however, did not mean that Nilsen had tired of his fleshy prizes. In the case of one of his victims, a Canadian man named Kenneth Ockenden (whom Dennis would later describe as his "favorite"), his dead body was brought out from under the floorboards four times before finally being disposed of. You can imagine the romantic evenings they likely shared.

After completing the act of murder, Dennis Nilsen went to great lengths to tend to the appearance of his victims. He would immediately bathe and clean his newly possessed corpses, all the while speaking to them as though they were still alive. Once his dead victims were sufficiently spick and span, Nilsen would dress them in pajamas and haul them off to bed, where things would proceed to get really weird. 

As Dennis Nilsen was brazenly attempting to flush human flesh down the drain of his kitchen sink, the sewer system that accommodated his apartment building proved ill-equipped for such removal. In February 1983, one of his neighbors called a plumber to check on their backed-up system, and when the technician descended into a manhole below the building he made a startling discovery - a lot of stuff that looked human. 

Police were called in shortly thereafter, and when they went to Nilsen's flat to question him - where he had spent a long night attempting to clean his drains - they were overcome by a pervasive odor. After a bit of prodding, Nilsen confessed rather easily and he was apprehended. In his home, police also recovered several garbage bags of human remains that Nilsen had not yet gotten around to removing. 

By the time Dennis Nilsen had acquired six corpses, his modest apartment was becoming cramped for space - bodies were literally bursting out of the floorboards and cabinets. Beyond that, flies were hatching from the decomposing human flesh and becoming a real nuisance, and that's to say nothing about what must have been an unthinkable odor. Nilsen claims that at this point he was dousing his apartment with air freshener twice a day, but while that may have been good enough for him, his neighbors began to complain.

Pacifying nearby residents with explanations that the odor must be a structural defect, Nilsen began to devise ways to evict his pungent roommates.

Dennis Nilsen did a brief stint in the British army as a cook. It was during his time in the kitchen that he gleaned valuable skills as a butcher - skills he was able to employ when it became time to dispose of his decomposing collection of corpses. 

Using a simple butcher's knife, Nilsen severed hands, feet, heads, and limbs from his victims' bodies before placing them in black garbage bags. With his deceased guests in a more toteable state, he threw the bags on a large bonfire in his backyard, where he also included a large tire to mask the smell of the bodies.

This system worked well for Nilsen until he had to relocate to a smaller flat in 1982 - then he had to get a bit more creative.

Unable to burn the corpses of his victims, Nilsen had to further dismember their bodies, which now included boiling their heads to separate the flesh and brains from their skulls. Nilsen also began getting a little lazy with his disposal methods, and resorted to attempting to send large chunks of flesh down the drain - a practice that would ultimately lead to his downfall.

Dennis Nilsen was born in Fraserburgh, Scotland, in 1942. A child of an unhappy marriage, Nilsen spent a lot of time with his maternal grandfather and was traumatized by his sudden death; he would later claim that viewing his grandfather's corpse at his funeral was the root of his later obsession with the dead. After his mother married again and had several more children, Nilsen became isolated and distant, eventually leaving Scotland for a stint in the army.  

Settling into north London in 1975, it was a few short years later that he began his murderous spree. Between December of 1978 and February of 1983, Nilsen murdered and dismembered at least 15 young men. He committed these crimes over a six-year period at two different addresses, always just barely avoiding the suspicion of his neighbors.

Dennis Nilsen's M.O. was to prey on the vulnerable. He often went out and picked up young, destitute men, or even those who were more plainly homeless. He would ply his victims with offers of food, booze, or shelter - phantom promises that lured them into his house of horrors. 

In the case of 20-year-old Steven Sinclair - his final victim - Nilsen actually claims to have tried to help the young man with his drug addiction, in hopes that the two could have a prolonged sexual relationship. It was not meant to be, however, as Nilsen could not control his urges and killed him hours after bringing him home.