September 13, 2025 • 52 mins
He looked like the friendly neighbor everyone trusted. A soft-spoken civil servant with a kind smile, Dennis Nilsen appeared anything but dangerous. But behind the closed doors of his North London flat, he harbored some of the darkest secrets in British criminal history. Between 1978 and 1983, Nilsen lured young men into his home, where he murdered them—and kept their bodies hidden for weeks, even months, before disposing of them in ways that shocked the nation.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
This episode maintained content of a graphic nature, including descriptions
of physical and sexual violence against adults, children, and animals.
Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Hi. I'm Shannon. Hi I'm Tanya, and we are Crimes
and Consequences, a hardcore true crime podcast.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Hey Shannon, Hey Tanya.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
How are you?
Speaker 3 (00:46):
I'm doing great? How are you doing?
Speaker 2 (00:48):
I am doing really good. It was a great day
today outside, as you know, it was you rgious. I
spoke with my neighbor Brenda, a mutual friend of ours,
and we were talking about just how beautiful it was,
and I thought, where is weather like this all the time? Breezy,
no humidity, about seventy six degrees. I've heard some good
(01:08):
things about San Diego. I've never been, but I have
been contemplating spending some time in Spain. I'm hoping that
Spain just sounds like it would have nice weather. What
are your thoughts? And oh have you been?
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Spain sounds lovely, doesn't it.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (01:30):
I think I've seen photos of Barcelona and it's gorgeous.
I've never been to Spain. I have been to San Diego,
and San Diego is gorgeous.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
I went to San Diego Zoo.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Yeah, Oh my gosh, I would love that.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
When I went to California to visit my friend Jody,
we went to the San Diego Zoo one day because
San Diego might have been about two hours from where
she is. Oh why yeah, it was gorgeous. It's beautiful.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
And they do get hot weather in California.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Because I remember I visited her in August once and
we went to Disneyland and it was as fuck. Yeah,
but in her home she was really close to the ocean,
so her house like she didn't need air conditioning and
it was August.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
Oh nice, I think, Oh yeah it was.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
It was gorgeous.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
But I'm doing great otherwise.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
And you and I have talked about you know, you
said you wanted to expand your lex kan. This is correct, yes,
And so you and I have talked about maybe introducing
a word of the day.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
I am so on board with this.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
So I do get an email.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
I think I get two different ones, and there are
words of the day and a lot of time these
words are words I would never use. So Shannon and
I talked about it before we started recording, and we
went through a bunch of words and one was really fun.
It what was it?
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Consanguineus? It was fun san guineas.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
That means people coming from a common ancestor.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
So sharing the same blood.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Yes, yeah, I don't think I'm ever going to use
the word consanguineus, even though I liked you, because it's
it reminds me of that scene in Elf where he's
like Francisco, that's you know, He's like, that's fun to say.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
That's one of my favorite I love him by Buddy, Buddy, Buddy,
the Elf, Buddy the Elf. We did decide on a word,
and it is oriate, oriate, oriate, oriate, and tell us
what does oriate mean?
Speaker 1 (03:35):
Oriate means denoting made of or having the color gold,
and it's spelled a U.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
R E A te oriate. So oh yeah, I had
no idea. I was in my head. You know, it's weird.
I have this thing, a condition. I don't even know
what it's called medically, but I hear a word, I
can spell it or see it in my head how
it should be spelled. And when you said orio, I
was like.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
Oh ori, you know, yeah?
Speaker 2 (04:05):
A you well the fancy ri okay a you ye do.
I'm writing this down that was a good one our
eight I'm going to use that post taste.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Let's incorporated into our lexicon for.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
This week or I A you I love it? Okay,
all right, all right, I got that down and I
am bringing you a good story. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
What do you got for us today?
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Well, let me open it up and we're going to
go back here to nineteen forty five to meet mister
Dennis Andrew Nilssen November twenty third, nineteen forty five to
be exact, that's when the day of his birth is
and that makes him a Sagittarius magetary fire sign into
(04:55):
a Scottish mother, Elizabeth and his Norwegian father Ola. Dennis
was born in Fraserburg, Scotland, as the second of three
children that his parents would have together. The marriage between
Elizabeth and Olav was the furthest thing from happy due
to his alcoholism, so Elizabeth left him, took her kids,
(05:16):
and moved in with her father. Luckily, Dennis absolutely adored
his maternal grandfather, so when they moved in, Dennis was
over the moon. When his grandfather sadly passed away when
Dennis was only six, This completely shot him down, shattered
him and seeing his father's corpse at the funeral home
really shook him, and later Dennis would say that it
(05:39):
shook him so much he believes that psychologically changed him,
like at that moment, if he had to pick a
moment in time now. Elizabeth and Olav they eventually got divorced,
but she remarried and she went on to have four
more children with her new husband, and Elizabeth basically seemed
to give all of her love and affection to number
(06:00):
two of children. So yeah, this left Dennis completely depressed, alone,
and completely withdrawn from his mother and siblings. From a
young age, Dennis knew that he was attracted to other boys,
although he was not out as gay. Sometimes the kids
at school would make fun of him and accuse him
of being gay, which, honestly, Tanya, it's unfortunately, or just
(06:24):
almost like a rite of passage. How do you escape
right your junior high and high school years without someone
calling you gay? Yeah, or whichever way they use you
know what I'm saying, right, See, it's almost like you
no one comes out on skates. I'm not making it right,
I'm just saying, gosh, I you know, in the eighties,
(06:45):
my goodness, that was quite a gravy word covered lots
of things totally, but when it came to school dances,
Dennis always leaned on his sister to be his date.
His homosexuality he didn't seem to get him in trouble
when he was young, But this is kind of uncommon
given the many stories we have covered like this in
(07:07):
the past. Yeah, Dennis was a good boy. There was
no sexual assault committed against anyone when he was younger,
and he kept his sexual orientation to himself. He was
always aware of his homosexuality, but at the time this
was heavily frowned upon. I mean nineteen forty five when
he was born, so he's like fifteen, so that'd be
(07:28):
a yeah, I mean still come on. So Dennis was
never truly comfortable in his own skin. He learned how
to cope in the worst way imaginable, and he took
his discomfort and sexual frustration out on his victims. At
the age of sixteen, in nineteen sixty one, Dennis enlisted
in the Army, and while in the Army, he became
(07:49):
a cook and served in the Army Catering Corps as
their butcher for eleven years, splitting his time between Norway, Yemen,
and Germany. His initial training was spent stationed in Germany,
but he worked as the butcher in Yemen and Norway,
and these butchering skills would later come in handy when
we get into all of the blood that will be
(08:10):
on his hands usually. You know, the army or other
branch of military is a place where many people find
and have found the structure and discipline that their lives
truly needed.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Did it happen for you when you were in the military, Well,
I'll tell you what.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
That structure definitely. You know my parents they did give
me structure and then the military just really drove it
home whatever, which is good because I am definitely someone
who thrives in a structured environment. Cass I Ugh, it's
like no, thank you. You know, someone should be in
(08:52):
charge here. Dennis overall didn't do poorly while in the army,
and he did well with the training and learning the
different skills to become the soul. He loved being around people,
and he did well with the organization, rules and friendships
that the army had to offer. He basically had an
unlimited amount of drinking buddies, and he loved this just
as much as he loved to drink. His love for
(09:14):
alcohol became more intense, and the more he went out
with friends, the heavier he drank. In nineteen sixty seven,
Dennis was sent to Yemen, and this is where he
actually had to use the skills he learned as a soldier.
The conditions while stationed in Yemen were really dangerous, and
he soon began to lose friends, but it wasn't for
(09:35):
any personal reasons. He was losing his friends on the
battlefield and on many occasions he saw his friends get
shot dead by enemy gunfire. He obviously wasn't one of
the soldiers who was killed, but he was kidnapped while
in Yemen by a taxi cab driver. The driver beat
Dennis until he was unconscious, and when Dennis awoke, he
(09:58):
was in the trunk of that same cab. After the
driver got Dennis right where he wanted him, he dragged
him out of the trunk. Dennis was a kinky guy,
and he liked to have his victims unconscious, but this
was not his style at all because he wasn't in
control of the situation. Thankfully, the Army had trained him
in various ways to get out of a situation such
(10:18):
as this and he was able to use the carjack
as a weapon. He whacked the driver out as soon
as he got his chance, and after Dennis knocked the
driver out, he put the driver right where he had
been locked in the trunk. Dennis was able to get
out of this basically on scathe, but this was really
the first time he had used violence against another human being,
(10:40):
whether it was in self defense or not. Believe it
or not, Dennis fantasized a lot about this incident, and
he would often masturbate while thinking about the whole fiasco.
WHOA yes, so now you know yeah? And Dennis he
loved the violent details that took place, even though he
(11:01):
could have been killed, and the part that turned him
on the most was, of course the violence. While in Yemen,
Dennis became very familiar with the painting called The Raft
of Medusa, and he would often incorporate the images of
this painting into his sexual fantasies and his masturbation. This
painting embodies the aftermath of a shipwreck. Most men in
(11:25):
the painting are shirtless and starving while reaching their arms
out in a hopeless call for help, knowing that they
will most likely die. One detail in the painting that
Dennis really loved. Shows the naked body of a deceased
man and his body is covering another man's lap. To Dennis,
this shows how a man could truly submit when times
(11:48):
became desperate. In the painting, it was very hard to
tell which men were dead and which ones were alive,
but this still told Dennis that the living dominated over
the dead, and that fact was good enough for him.
So we're gonna that's kind of setting the stage of
Theandards doesn't necessarily need a heart beats. But due to
(12:10):
his homosexuality, Dennis was a little nervous showering around other men.
He always took showers with nobody else around due to
his overwhelming fear of getting an erection after seeing another
naked man. Regardless of his sexuality, Dennis still made friends
and he seemed to have formed relationships, but it wasn't
(12:31):
all sunshine and rainbows. Shit got a little weird when
he was on base in Germany. One night, Dennis overindulged
and got a little drunk with a younger German man,
and the two got so carried away to the point
the two men passed out on the floor together. Dennis
woke up not knowing where he was, but he did
remember the friend that he had made earlier the night before.
(12:53):
Even still, this man was a stranger to Dennis. Nothing
ever happened sexually between the two, But when Dennis woke
up and saw the German man lying next to him,
Dennis got this unsettling impulse. After this urged, he covered
his entire body in telcum powder to look at himself
in the mirror. He imagined he was fucking dead, so that's.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
What he wanted to look creepy dude. Oh my goodness,
this guy's a fucking weirdo.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Uh no, kill my goodness. Dennis left the army in
nineteen seventy two and moved to London, England, and upon
his resignation, he trained with the police as a junior constable.
Of course, at this time, Dennis didn't see himself as
any sort of criminal, even though he felt a constant
internal struggle to stay a good person. While training with
(13:42):
the police, he learned what he was truly obsessed with,
and since the police worked closely with the morgue and
autopsy technicians, Dennis became morbidly fascinated with dead bodies, both
before and after the autopsies were completed. Despite his new
obsession and the excess that working with the police offered,
(14:04):
Dennis left the police force to work as a recruiter.
Soon after working at the recruitment center, he was made
a supervisor. He was really good at his job and
he worked really hard. While nobody at his place of
employment knew about his sexuality, Dennis secretly visited gay bars
and would have secret sexual rendezvous with other gay men.
(14:25):
The life of a police officer would have been tough
to live as a gay man around this time, but
he did love the danger that came with living a
double life. Although Dennis was meeting men on the regular,
his sexual desires had yet to be satisfied. He needed
much more. Hmm. I don't know how you become attracted
(14:46):
to something that's dead. I don't get it. But maybe
he can shed some light. His crimes can maybe open something.
One year after Dennis left the army, he had his
first run in with the police, and let me tell you,
it was some very petty stuff. This was weird. In
nineteen seventy three, while working as a recruitment interviewer, he
(15:10):
met a man named David Painter. David went to the police,
claiming that Dennis took some pictures of him. These weren't
just ordinary headshots. These were pictures that Dennis took of
David while he was asleep. Apparently, David found out about
the photos and confronted Dennis about them, and the confrontation
resulted in Dennis getting so worked up that he needed
(15:33):
to be hospitalized. The police listened to David and they
brought Dennison to be interviewed about the accusations, but unfortunately
Dennis was released without being charged at all. Huh, that's
some creepy stuff. Yeah, now is that at a chargeable offense?
You know, if you sleep with someone and then there
were pictures. Unless I'm missing something about the pictures. Was
(15:55):
he covered in talcum powder?
Speaker 3 (15:57):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (15:57):
I'm scared. This is fun settling if I'm just sleeping,
or then it's creepy and still unsettling.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
But yeah, right.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
So two years later, Dennis meant someone named David Gillichin,
and David seemed to be pretty important to him romantically.
The two of them moved into an apartment together located
at one ninety five Melrose Avenue in North London. Whenever
asked about their relationship years later. David never admitted to
being in a homosexual relationship with Dennis, but when their
(16:29):
relationship ended, Dennis went off the deep end. He became
severely depressed and he turned to alcohol to cope with
how lonely he was, and this led to his first murder,
which would occur a year and a half later. The
same apartment is where Dennis would commit many of his murders,
but he would later relocate and commit even more. Dennis
(16:50):
found himself in the London neighborhood of Cricklewood in nineteen
seventy eight. That's quaint Cricklewood and more specific, at the
Cricklewood Arms Pub, Dennis had already had a few pints
of his favorite beer. As he sat at the bar
with his dark hair and dark brown eyes looking around
(17:11):
the bar, someone piqued his interests someone that he could
lure away. The boy's name was Stephen Dean Holmes, and
Dennis knew that he could take advantage of Stephen because
he was young, naive, and way too young to be
in the bar let alone drinking. And when Dennis saw Stephen,
he walked over to him and sat next to him,
(17:32):
and the two began talking, and Dennis eventually invited him
back to his apartment. It's not known what really transpired
between Dennis and Stephen, other than the two drinking massive
amounts of alcohol that night, and Dennis woke up with
an attractive boy in bed next to him. Stephen was
fourteen years old, but Dennis didn't give a shit about
(17:54):
his age. He was just he's sick, yeah, and he's
just so happy that someone finally agreed to go home
with him that night. You know he was a predator, Yeah,
he is. Dennis deep down knew that all of this
was way too good to be true. Stephen was so
drunk the night before, and Dennis knew that as soon
(18:14):
as Stephen woke up and realized what was going on,
he would jump up, get dressed, and leave and this
would have all been for nothing, a one night stand.
Dennis didn't give Stephen the chance to leave. He didn't
even give him the chance to wake up. As soon
as Dennis came out of the realization of what was
going to happen if Stephen woke up, he strangled the
(18:36):
fourteen year old boy with the necktie. Dennis thought that
this was the only way he could truly take control
over the situation. After he was dead, Dennis washed his
body and took him back to bed with him. Although
Dennis tried to have sex with Stephen's dead body, he
couldn't complete the task and he fell asleep next to
(18:57):
the body. He couldn't complete it because it's not not
fucking natural.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
Yes, so probably not.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
I have to fight all the stop signs come out
like his fucking fantasy.
Speaker 3 (19:09):
I don't I know.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
I mean, good Lord, I can only imagine what's gonna happen,
so oh please do go on.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
Absolutely, Dennis wanted Stephen to stay with him, and he
made sure that that happened. When Dennis strangled him, he
only knocked him unconscious to kill him, he did something horrific.
He slowly poured a bucket of water over his face
to drown Stephen. Before this night, Dennis did some really
(19:38):
mess up stuff. But now he was a cold blood
and murderer, and he just took the life of a
young teenaged boy who had his whole life ahead of him.
And as we discussed in other cases, the killers will
begin to think of where to dispose of the body.
They need to have a moment to think of when
to dispose the body, and they need time to think
(19:58):
of where the body will be dash. This was not
the case for Dennis. Dennis just had killed Stephen because
he was scared that the boy would run out of
the apartment as soon as he awoke. Why would he
waste his time disposing of a perfectly fresh corpse, dead
or alive. Dennis wanted Stephen to stay in his apartment
with him forever, but where was he going to put
(20:20):
his body? Well, he began to rip up the floorboards
inside of his apartment and this would become Stephen's resting place.
In fact, this would be the resting place for the
rest of his victims over the next five years. Good
five years later, Dennis wrote from prison about his first murder.
He said that he had quote started down the avenue
(20:43):
of death in possession of a new kind of flatmate unquote.
Stephen's body would remain under the floorboards until Dennis relocated
his body, along with the others, to the backyard. Dennis
truly had an obsession with the dead bodies of his victims,
made himself believe that a dead body was much more
valuable than one with a heartbeat. He didn't want someone
(21:06):
that was gonna leave him, and he certainly didn't want
one that could make their own decisions.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
You know what this sounds like to me? It sounds
like Jeffrey Dahmer.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
I was just thinking that too, Like this does sound
like Dahmer.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
Yeah, like Jeffrey Dahmer didn't want people to leave him. Yeah,
also didn't want them to they have a mind where
they have a mind, and so yeah, this is very
very Dahmer like it is.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
Dennis didn't get a chance to kill everyone that he
came into contact with, and one man who survived was
a Chinese student named Andrew Hoe. Dennis asked him to
come back to one ninety five Melrose with him, and
Andrew agreed. Andrew was a bit kinky and wanted to
attempt some bondage role playing, but of course, Dennis took
(21:56):
it too far and tied his necktie a little too
tightly while telling Andrew that he wanted to play a
more dangerous game. Now, this freaked Andrew out and he
got the fuck out of there and he went to
the police about this, but they didn't do anything about it.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
Oh, just like Jeffrey Dahmer's victims.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Oh my gosh right after and it's like a precursor
of yeah in Wisconsin. This is London. After Dennis's first murder,
he realized what it felt like to unleash his impulse
that he had pushed down for years. And years later,
he wrote, quote, under the triggering influence of spirits meaning alcohol,
(22:40):
usually dormant mental forces have been released which have made
mind the actions of a destructive psychopath. End quote. This
would be true. Yeah, blame it on the alcohol.
Speaker 3 (22:52):
Yeah, blame it on the alcohol.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
Sure, this would be true for many of his future
murders as well. His next murder would take place in
December of nineteen seventy nine, and this was a year
after he had killed Stephen. Dennis met another young man
named Kenneth Aginden. Kenneth was a really good looking young
dude who had the face and body that you would
(23:15):
normally see on TV or in a concert, you know,
just nice. Kenneth had it going on. Kenneth was Canadian born,
but he found himself in London on this fateful night.
He took a risk, leaving his homeland to visit England, and,
as most do when it comes to an adventure, he
threw caution into the wind. He had waited so long
(23:36):
to see the sights, and he was living his best
life until Dennis's creepy ass came up to him. Dennis
saw Kenneth in the local pub and when Dennis approached him,
he told him about how much he wanted to continue
to see London, and Dennis obliged. The two of them
had a few beers and they walked for a while
looking at the beautiful city of London. Dennis got Kenneth
(23:59):
alone as they were walking, and he was just happy
at the fact that Kenneth wasn't absolutely appalled by him.
After the two hit a few historic hotspots, Dennis invited
Kenneth back up to his apartment. Kenneth agreed to go
back up to the apartment, and on the way back,
Dennis loaded up on his favorite whiskey beer and rum.
(24:20):
This is what triggered his violence, and he obviously knew
that about himself. Yes, he liked the violence and you
know that alcohol. I mean, you've already you know how
to get the party started. Rev your own engine. Apparently
Dennis went a different route when it came to killing Kenneth.
He didn't knock him unconscious before strangling him. The two
(24:42):
were just sitting there listening to a record, and Dennis
came up behind Kenneth with a wire that was attached
to his headphones. Now that Kenneth was dead, he began
to use Kenneth's body to satisfy his psychological needs. He
began to treat Kenneth's corp as a living and breathing person,
no problem touching and fondling his cold body, and he
(25:03):
would interact with the body excessively. Dennis then began to
realize that this is what he had needed his whole life,
and he began to pose Kenneth's body in various ways
so that he could take pictures of it. When he
was finished taking his weird, fucking pictures, he put Kenneth's
body back into bed with him, and the two of them,
(25:24):
one dead, one alive, would watch television together for a
few hours before Dennis fell asleep. I can't even get
my head around, and I'm sensitive to smells. I could
never thank you Jesus. I don't know what makes people
like this tick, but oh and I gotta keep calm
about it or I'm gonna get super violent myself. See
(25:47):
I don't need alcohol to make me violent. I have
to hear about bullshit and then I'll get violent. So
keeping it light, I know, I'm just like, what the fuck?
Speaker 3 (26:00):
Actual fuck? What is the matter with people?
Speaker 2 (26:05):
I don't I know we always get that, but I have.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
Like no words. I don't.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
You know, We're an episode like two hundred and seventy
something and I just can't fucking believe that.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
I'm still shocked. My mouth is a dog. I'm flabbergasted.
I just yes, stunned. It is.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
You know, my fucking I loved my grandpa too, you
know what I mean, and he died when I was young,
So you know, what the fuck?
Speaker 2 (26:37):
How dare you use your grandfather? I know it own
your shit?
Speaker 3 (26:41):
You know, we all lose people. God, I just really
that's you're gonna say.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
See, That's why I mean, it's just bullshit. It's just
that's just another fucking hundred layers of the onion to
peel away.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
Right.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
So, as we mentioned earlier, Dennis loved and clearly had
an obsession with dead so it was obvious why he
killed his victims. He wanted a partner who wouldn't resist,
wouldn't reject him sexually. These victims weren't given the choice
to reject or accept him because he was so terrified
off being rejected by someone he was attracted to, and
(27:16):
after each victim was murdered, he kept the bodies to
appease his appetite for the ultimate submission. He killed each
victim for their body, and he killed them to have control.
After having Kenneth's body in his bed with him for
over twenty four hours, he wrapped Kenneth in a plastic
wrap and placed his body under the floorboards next to Stephen.
(27:39):
Dennis was doing this out of his obsession for the
feeling all of this gave him. He had never felt
any sensation like this before, and he wasn't going to
stop on his own. On many occasions, he would wrap
his victims' bodies just so that he could take them
back out from under the floor to play with them
sometimes right These dead bodies were like dolls to him,
(28:04):
and when he was done with them, he said goodbye
to them until the next time. He would then go
about his life like he didn't have any bodies lying
under the floor of his apartment. Kenneth was one of
the only victims who was reported missing you know what
this reminds me of two actually is the American horror
(28:24):
story Coven, the house servant that you remember. He kept
dolls and he was really create. Oh, I'm gonna have
to watch his series again.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
I know it was good.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Covin was good, very good. When spring came the following year,
Dennis knew that he needed a new attractive boy to
play with, and we now know that he liked picking
up his victims at various pubs. With Stephen, he knew
that he could befriend him by buying him drinks that
he couldn't legally get on his own. And with Kenneth,
Dennis was able to show him around on London. With
(29:01):
the next victim, he just needed a way to befriend him,
just like he had the first two. His next victim
was another young boy, sixteen year old Martin Duffy, and
Martin was homeless and he was on the run from
the law in his hometown of Birkenhead. He had gotten
into some trouble that evolved around him setting a fire
(29:21):
and he had hitchhike all the way to London to
get away from everything. He just wanted a fresh start
and at this point he was over two hundred miles
away from home before he met Dennis. He had been
sleeping at the bus station and he was hungry with
nowhere to go. Dennis thought that he had hit the
jackpot with this one. Dennis knew exactly what he needed
(29:42):
to do to get Martin, and he prayed on the
fact that Martin was in a really tough spot, so
Dennis offered him a place to sleep along with the
hot meal, and of course, Martin accepted the invitation. Dennis
got the young teenager into bed without coming on to him,
and while Martin was asleep, Dennis took a piece of
rope to stop him from breathing, and after he had
(30:04):
knocked him out, Dennis to go walk into the kitchen
to grab some water. He did the same thing that
he had done to Stephen by pouring the water slowly
over his face to drown him while holding his head back.
He then washed his body and took him to bed
with him. Dennis wrapped Martin's lifeless body in plastic before
placing it into the cupboard for at least two weeks.
(30:26):
He later placed it under the floorboards, just as he
had done with Stephen, and Kenneth. But how was he
hiding the smell?
Speaker 3 (30:34):
Yeah, I wondered about that.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
How good is these bags?
Speaker 3 (30:39):
Are these zip locks? I died?
Speaker 2 (30:41):
Yes? Body right. It had been well over a year
since he had killed his first victim and at least
a couple months since he had murdered his second. He
began to buy deodorizers and bug spray to hide the
smile of decomposition. Dennis later said, the greater the beauty
of the man, and the greater was the sense of
(31:02):
loss and grief. Their dead naked bodies fascinated me. But
I would have done anything to have them back alive.
Really doesn't even make sense, I know. And you can't
hide decomposition. You can bug spray and deodorizers always come on,
stop it, I know, But you can convince yourself that
anything's working right Right Before he moved to his home
(31:26):
located at twenty three Cranley Gardens. That's his last apartment
before he was caught, Dennis kept the bodies under the floorboards,
but when the smell became too unbearable, he began to
take apart the bodies, thinking that the smell was coming
from his victim's internal organs. When it was time to
dissect the bodies. He took the bodies out of their
(31:47):
hiding spots, remove the organs, skin, and bones. He would
sometimes save the skin and some of the bones to
use later, maybe when he was feeling lonely. I mean, why,
I'm not kidding, I wish I was. Not only did
he have his personal playtime with his friends, but he
(32:09):
would also dress the bodies up and he would have
sex with them. In defense of his own fucked up behavior,
he said, quote, a corpse is a thing. It can't feel,
it can't suffer. If you're more upset by what I
did to a corpse than what I did to a
living person, then your morals are upside down. Well, I
(32:31):
think we're just starting with the shock of necrophilia. Okay, yeah,
so don't judge me on how I'm judging you, all right, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (32:43):
I'm pretty appalled to you, somebody. Let's just start with that. So, yes,
I am.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
I am offriended by what you did do a living
person and then you just continued to degrade.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
Them, Yes, yeah, and taking life.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
Yeah, did what I have to say?
Speaker 2 (32:58):
Yeah, and compare to necrophilia if it was the only
thing on the table but you just slapped me in
the back of the head with this six shit You're
doing right? How dare you? I'm a fendist By this statement,
Martin he had run away from home a few times
prior to this, but this time he never returned home.
(33:19):
He usually went to the same people each time he
ran away, and his family would just patiently wait for
him to come back home when they hadn't heard from
him or the usual people that he would stay with.
His family obviously became extremely worried about him until his
body was later discovered. His family and especially his father,
never gave up on trying to find him. Martin's father
(33:42):
had a picture of his son on his bedside table,
and each night before he went to bed, he would
look at that picture and ask, where are you son.
In August of nineteen eighty, Dennis met a twenty seven
year old sex worker named William Billy Sutherland. What was
the name of the sex worker and bridesmaids at the
(34:03):
for the AA meeting who had to give blow jobs
that sex work? This one's name is Billy Billy Sutherland
and Dennis knew that Billy slept with men for Bunny,
and he later said that he really didn't want to
take him home to his apartment on Melrose Avenue, but
one night he and Billy went bar hopping, and when
(34:24):
Dennis woke up the next morning, Billy was dead in
bed lying next to him. Dennis later said that he
quote barely remembered unquote strangling him, but he did. That
same month, on August eleventh, Dennis encountered another man named
Douglas Stewart, and Douglas actually survived this attack. Dennis apparently
(34:45):
attacked Douglas after he had fallen asleep inside of Dennis's apartment.
When he woke up, his arms and legs were tied
together and Dennis was in the process of putting the
notorious necktie around his neck in an attempt to strangle him.
Douglas wasn't going down without a fight, and he ended
up knocking Dennis over, and Dennis tried to play it cool,
(35:07):
and he told him to get the hell out, and
Douglas called the police around four am that same morning,
but the police noticed that he had been drinking and
he was slurring his words as he was trying to
tell them what had just happened. The police did come
to the apartment knocked on the door. After the police
told Dennis what Douglas had told them. You know, Dennis
(35:27):
played stupid and shocked, so the police deemed it as
a homosexual encounter gone wrong, and the officers weren't sure
who to believe. Regardless, they wrote up a short report,
but Douglas never showed up for the required follow up.
So it is thought that Dennis killed about seven more
young boys and young men between November nineteen eighty and
(35:49):
May of nineteen eighty one, but they have not been
identified to this day. In September of nineteen eighty one,
Dennis killed a twenty four year old man named Malcolm Barlow.
Malcolm was an orphan who had extreme mental issues and
he was also known to be a pathological liar. One day,
Malcolm was hanging outside of Dennis's apartment and Malcolm was
(36:11):
complaining that he felt weak and had epilepsy. Dennis took
him inside of his apartment. He called for an ambulance.
Malcolm went to the hospital, but he went back to
Dennis's apartment when he was released. He waited on the
stoop of his Melrose Avenue apartment until Dennis came back
from work. Dennis invited him in and the two had
(36:31):
a couple of drinks together. Later, Malcolm passed out and
fell into an almost coma like state as he slept.
Dennis strangled him after he fell asleep because he thought
Malcolm was annoying. Don't judge. Yeah, I've about had it
since the last judge. Shit that you just said, Dennis,
Let's keep the trap shut on your thoughts, right, And
(36:54):
the following day, Dennis stuffed his body into one of
his cabinets located under the sink in the kitchen. At
this point, he had already had half a dozen bodies
in his apartment and he was waiting to dispose of
all of the victim's bodies. He didn't mind the weight though,
like we mentioned earlier, he would keep some of the
bodies in bed with him for as long as a week.
Speaker 3 (37:15):
That's fucking insane.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
It's stink, the liquids, the shit I can't even like, right,
I mean, but this is completely thrilling to him.
Speaker 3 (37:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
In nineteen eighty two, Dennis relocated to twenty three Cranley Gardens,
located in London, and his landlord had no fucking clue
that who he had just signed lease with. God a
horrific serial killer. His apartment on Melrose was on the
first floor, and this made it easy for him to
hide his victims underneath the floorboards, and he always had
(37:49):
so much fun dismembering his victims when he thought it
was time for him to move on. It also had
a garden in the backyard where he would often sprinkle
a little pieces of bone fragments. At first, when Dennis
needed to dispose of his victims' bodies, he would have
little bombfires in his backyard and after the fire was
large enough, he would throw in some body parts and
(38:12):
internal organs. To hide the smell of burning flesh and organs,
he would throw in a piece of rubber from old tire.
Now that I can see that covering up smell. That
is a horrible smell, burning rubber. The body parts that
Dennis wanted to keep were then buried in a hole
that he dug next to his makeshift fire pit. Remember
(38:34):
his time as a butcher in the army, it's very helpful.
When he felt his apartment was getting a little too crowded,
rather than stopping his murder spree, he would take a
body from underneath the floorboards and he would use these
butchering skills to cut up the bodies into smaller pieces,
and he would then throw these pieces into a pot
(38:55):
to boil the flesh off the bones, while throwing the
organs into the trash for disposal. That way. Ugh, I swear,
it's like I throw down my mouth a little bit
when I read stuff.
Speaker 3 (39:06):
I know it's completely elaborate.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
It is so I don't even know how you live
with yourself. That's a whole other level of living. These
messages wouldn't quite work as well after he moved into
his next apartment, though. This new apartment had other neighbors
who lived in the same apartment building had no garden,
and he chose the apartment that was on the top floor.
(39:28):
Now was he trying to get on the straight and narrow, No,
he No, he didn't. He did have yet another failed
attempted murder, though, and this victim's name was Paul Knobs.
Now Paul was nineteen years old, and the two of
them met at the Golden Lion pub. The two of
them got wasted and they took a stumbling stroll back
(39:49):
to Dennis's new apartment. The two of them had a
few more drinks and went to bed together, and around
two thirty that morning, Paul woke up with a terrible headache,
but was able to fall back asleep. Later that morning,
around six am, he woke up again, and this time
he found his way into the kitchen. In the kitchen,
there was a mirror, and when Paul looked in the mirror,
(40:11):
he saw intense bruising around his neck, and his eyes
were completely bloodshot and his face was beat up. Dennis,
at one point woke up as well, saw Paul in
the kitchen and told him he looked like shit. To
go see a doctor. The following day, he went to
the hospital that was in the university where he was attending.
(40:33):
He was then informed that someone had tried to strangle him,
but he didn't want to make a report because he
didn't want himself to be outed as gay. So you
have no memory of being strangled, doctor tells you, and
you can't say anything. That's what a terrible position to
find yourself in. There was yet another attempted murder, but
(40:56):
this time the victim was a drag queen named Kara
the Fox, but he was also known as Carl Stodter.
When Stotter came to the apartment. He was strangled and
Dennis also attempted to drown him. While Dennis was on
top of him, Carl woke up not being able to breathe,
and while panicking, Carl thought that Dennis was trying to
(41:18):
help him clear his airway or something. Dennis then carried
him into the bathroom and put him in a bathtub
full of warm water. Dennis tried to drown Carl in
the bathtub, and Carl was begging for him to stop.
The next time Carl's head wood underwater, he stopped struggling.
Dennis thought that he had finally murdered Carl, so he
(41:38):
took him out of the bathtub and placed him on
the couch, where he began to lick his face Denis MM.
Dennis then took him to bed and talked him next
to him. When Carl regained consciousness, he asked to be
taken to the train station, to which Dennis agreed. Later,
Carl wrote a letter to Dennis asking him why he
(41:59):
attacked it like that, and Dennis wrote back, quote what
passed between us was a thin strand of love and
humanity end quote. Someone's being gas lit Carl M. Carl
also saw a doctor for his injuries, and the doctors
told him that he had been manually strangled, but Dennis
told him that his throat had gotten caught in a
(42:21):
sleeping bag zipper. Regardless, he agreed to meet Dennis again,
but never kept the appointment. Carl never went to the
police to report what had happened to him. After this
failed attempt, Dennis struck again, and this time he didn't fail.
The next person that Dennis murdered was a man named
John Howlett, and John had actually met Dennis twice before
(42:42):
his murder. They had originally met in December of nineteen
eighty one and then again in March of nineteen eighty two.
When Dennis started to strangle John, he thought as hard
as he possibly could. Unfortunately, Dennis was able to gain
control over John by sticking his head in the kitchen sink,
and after a few minutes, John was dead. John was
(43:04):
Dennis's first murder in his new apartment, so his methods
of disposal were different than ripping up floorboards. He quickly
dismembered his body and boiled off all the skin off
his bones ow Dennis's second murder at the new apartment
came in September, six months after murdering John Graham. Allen
(43:25):
was a father, and he found himself in Dennis's apartment
waiting for a fresh omelet that was being cooked by Dennis.
While Graham was eating, he was strangled, and after he
was murdered, Dennis placed his body in the bathtub and
left it there for a few days. After he was
done with Graham's body, he cut the body up into
small pieces so that he could flush it down the toilet.
Speaker 4 (43:48):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (43:49):
In January of nineteen eighty three, Dennis brought home his
final victim, twenty year old Steven Sinclair. The two of
them had met at what had been a classic spot
for him to pick up his victims, the local pub.
The two of them sat together, drinking heavily before they
went back to Dennis's apartment to listen to some music.
(44:10):
According to reports, Dennis said the words quote here I
go again, Stephen end quote before he strangled him to
death with a string he had found in the kitchen.
At one point, Dennis saw some marks on the wrist
of Stephen, and this told Dennis that he had already
attempted to take his own life, and this made him
feel better about killing Stephen, he thought it was better
(44:33):
to relieve him of all the pain that he had
already had so much of in one lifetime. After he
was dead, Dennis cut him up into little pieces and
flushed his remains down the toilet. The bodies were eventually
found when plumbers in the area found something weird in
a drain that they were trying to unclog. The blockage
(44:54):
was human flesh, and it was the flesh from one
of the victims, and it was specifically of a human hand,
along with other human tissue. And the reason why the
plumbers were called was because Dennis stupidly ran to his
landlord saying that his dreams were clogged. But I kep right.
(45:16):
I woke up and it was all a dream. But
in all actuality, he was the one who clogged them,
and he knew that when he founded the complaint. The
clog left the whole block of tenants, including Dennis, outrage
because there was a horrid smell coming from the manhole
that was nearby. Dennis didn't want to be the only
person not complaining because in his mind, that would have
(45:38):
looked awfully suspicious. With all of the complaints coming in
the landlord sent the sewage company named dinoh Rod to
investigate the clog on the property. When the sewage professionals
got to the neighborhood of Muzwell Hill, there was nothing
that the workers could have done to prepare themselves for
what they were about to witness and smell. When one
(46:00):
of the workers lifted the man whole cover, he looked
down to see a fleshy substance along with tiny bones
being eaten by rats. Dennis looked at the slop, knowing,
gosh darn well what the sludge was made of, and
he commented, quote, it looks to me like someone has
been flushing down there, Kentucky fried chicken end quote. You
(46:24):
couldn't make this up.
Speaker 3 (46:25):
Yeah right, this is oh.
Speaker 2 (46:27):
The sewage worker, Michael Katrine, immediately knew that the bones
were not chicken bones. He knew that they were human bones.
The bones were sent to the Charing Cross Hospital where
a professor looked at the bones and tissue, telling the
detectives that these remains had come from a person who
had been strangled. Along with handbones were neck tissue, and
(46:49):
the neck tissue showed severe ligature marks. So detectives went
to inspect the apartments, and they easily traced the smell
of decomposition back to Dennis's top story apartment. As soon
as the detectives stepped foot inside, they noticed the smell
of rotting flesh. The officers asked Dennis where the rest
(47:09):
of the human bodies were, and he led them to
his closet, where garbage bags were filled with what was
left of Graham and Stephen oh Man. Dennis was soon arrested,
and he confessed to killing between fifteen and sixteen young
men and boys. The police had originally thought that he
had only killed one or two, since that was all
(47:31):
that they had found at the apartment at the time
of his arrest. While he was in custody, Dennis began
talking and eventually told them everything that had happened, detailed
by detail. He knew that he had killed all of
these people, but he couldn't tell the police any of
the victim's names. Dennis could tell the detectives every detail
(47:51):
about the victim, from their height to their body types,
the type of clothes they wore, type of hair color, tattoos,
no name. So he was charged with six counts of
murder and two attempted murders. Which he was found guilty
of in nineteen eighty three. He was sentenced to spend
the rest of his miserable life in prison, and while
(48:13):
in prison, he spent a lot of time translating books
to braille. Dennis did not express a single sign of
remorse for the murders, and he didn't give a shit
if he ever got out. He became even more popular
when Jeffrey Dahmer was arrested. So see like how you
called it. So yep, he gets arrested. Now he's back
(48:34):
in the limelight, and Dennis was then dubbed the British
Jeffrey Dahmer, even though Dennis had been in prison long
before Dohmer.
Speaker 1 (48:42):
I was gonna say, Jeffrey Dahmer should have been the
American Dennis Nils.
Speaker 2 (48:45):
Thank you, yes, right, good call. Dennis was interviewed and
commented on Dahmer's crimes, and when Dennis was asked why
he never ate any of his victims, he replied by
stating that he was, quote unquote, he was strictly a
bacon and eggs man. Dennis died in twenty eighteen after
(49:09):
he had suffered an abdominal aortic aneurysm and he was
seventy two years old. Wow. That is fucking crazy, isn't it. Yeah,
you are correct when you say it should have been
the American Dennis Nilssen mm hmm, because his story is
just as.
Speaker 3 (49:29):
I mean, Jeffrey Dahmer.
Speaker 1 (49:30):
The only thing he did differently is he ate m
hm victims too, right, But he did, I mean he
kept body.
Speaker 2 (49:38):
Parts and oh in the freezer and all this, and yeah,
so I mean it was very similar, very very similar.
Speaker 1 (49:46):
Just imagine there in our lifetime two of these people
excite at least got caught.
Speaker 3 (49:52):
I don't even know. There could be another one out
there that just hasn't been caught. But what the fuck?
Speaker 2 (49:57):
Right, It's just it blows my mind restory with you.
I'm just like, no, I was trying to, like, would
I make this decision? What if I did make this
decision and like something like necropacy or necrophilia or eating flesh.
I can't even put myself in that position. No, Like
that's very specific.
Speaker 1 (50:17):
And I understand, like you don't want to be rejected. Okay, sure,
sure everybody feels that way, but you know what, like
I or like you don't want to be alone. Okay,
but fuck, are you freaking kidding me? Like, there's so
many people out there.
Speaker 3 (50:33):
You're not gonna try again. You're just gonna kill somebody.
And that's that. I just I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (50:39):
And who are you to take away someone's right to choose?
Who the fuck are you getting doll? You go get
a blow You're the reason for blow up dolls. They're
made for people like you. It's lifeless and it has holes, right,
you know, come on, But yes, my dear, that is
the story of den Neilson. Oh, thank you so much,
(51:02):
Oh my pleasure?
Speaker 3 (51:05):
Oh dang it? You know what would have really made this?
Speaker 2 (51:09):
Damn all right? So I lost. Apparently, let's make this
a competition. I did not implement aureate, and I maybe
could have had I been on it. The word of the.
Speaker 4 (51:18):
Day, okay, girl, So I'm going to write that down
and maybe I'll have to use the next word of
the day and do a two for in one.
Speaker 1 (51:29):
Well, thank you Shannon very much for that crazy, just
fucked up story. Thank you everyone for listening to this
week's episode. If you haven't done so already, please hit
the subscribe or follow button. I whatever app you're listening to,
and if you would like more episodes than what we
offer on the apps, you can go to Patreon dot
(51:49):
com slash t and T crimes and you can find
even more episodes. If you would like to subscribe and
visit our website Crimes Andconsequences dot com.
Speaker 3 (52:01):
That's about it.
Speaker 1 (52:01):
We have to update that website with your information on it.
Speaker 2 (52:05):
Yes, yes we do. I'm down four pounds, so give
me two more weeks. I want to lose ten more
and I'll get those headshots.
Speaker 3 (52:14):
Oh girl, you're gorgeous. Well, thank you again and until
our next episode.
Speaker 2 (52:20):
Until next time time you love you, I'd love you.
Speaker 3 (52:23):
I'll see you by
This episode maintained content of a graphic nature, including descriptions
of physical and sexual violence against adults, children, and animals.
Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Hi. I'm Shannon. Hi I'm Tanya, and we are Crimes
and Consequences, a hardcore true crime podcast.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Hey Shannon, Hey Tanya.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
How are you?
Speaker 3 (00:46):
I'm doing great? How are you doing?
Speaker 2 (00:48):
I am doing really good. It was a great day
today outside, as you know, it was you rgious. I
spoke with my neighbor Brenda, a mutual friend of ours,
and we were talking about just how beautiful it was,
and I thought, where is weather like this all the time? Breezy,
no humidity, about seventy six degrees. I've heard some good
(01:08):
things about San Diego. I've never been, but I have
been contemplating spending some time in Spain. I'm hoping that
Spain just sounds like it would have nice weather. What
are your thoughts? And oh have you been?
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Spain sounds lovely, doesn't it.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (01:30):
I think I've seen photos of Barcelona and it's gorgeous.
I've never been to Spain. I have been to San Diego,
and San Diego is gorgeous.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
I went to San Diego Zoo.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Yeah, Oh my gosh, I would love that.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
When I went to California to visit my friend Jody,
we went to the San Diego Zoo one day because
San Diego might have been about two hours from where
she is. Oh why yeah, it was gorgeous. It's beautiful.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
And they do get hot weather in California.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Because I remember I visited her in August once and
we went to Disneyland and it was as fuck. Yeah,
but in her home she was really close to the ocean,
so her house like she didn't need air conditioning and
it was August.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
Oh nice, I think, Oh yeah it was.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
It was gorgeous.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
But I'm doing great otherwise.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
And you and I have talked about you know, you
said you wanted to expand your lex kan. This is correct, yes,
And so you and I have talked about maybe introducing
a word of the day.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
I am so on board with this.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
So I do get an email.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
I think I get two different ones, and there are
words of the day and a lot of time these
words are words I would never use. So Shannon and
I talked about it before we started recording, and we
went through a bunch of words and one was really fun.
It what was it?
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Consanguineus? It was fun san guineas.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
That means people coming from a common ancestor.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
So sharing the same blood.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Yes, yeah, I don't think I'm ever going to use
the word consanguineus, even though I liked you, because it's
it reminds me of that scene in Elf where he's
like Francisco, that's you know, He's like, that's fun to say.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
That's one of my favorite I love him by Buddy, Buddy, Buddy,
the Elf, Buddy the Elf. We did decide on a word,
and it is oriate, oriate, oriate, oriate, and tell us
what does oriate mean?
Speaker 1 (03:35):
Oriate means denoting made of or having the color gold,
and it's spelled a U.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
R E A te oriate. So oh yeah, I had
no idea. I was in my head. You know, it's weird.
I have this thing, a condition. I don't even know
what it's called medically, but I hear a word, I
can spell it or see it in my head how
it should be spelled. And when you said orio, I
was like.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
Oh ori, you know, yeah?
Speaker 2 (04:05):
A you well the fancy ri okay a you ye do.
I'm writing this down that was a good one our
eight I'm going to use that post taste.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Let's incorporated into our lexicon for.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
This week or I A you I love it? Okay,
all right, all right, I got that down and I
am bringing you a good story. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
What do you got for us today?
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Well, let me open it up and we're going to
go back here to nineteen forty five to meet mister
Dennis Andrew Nilssen November twenty third, nineteen forty five to
be exact, that's when the day of his birth is
and that makes him a Sagittarius magetary fire sign into
(04:55):
a Scottish mother, Elizabeth and his Norwegian father Ola. Dennis
was born in Fraserburg, Scotland, as the second of three
children that his parents would have together. The marriage between
Elizabeth and Olav was the furthest thing from happy due
to his alcoholism, so Elizabeth left him, took her kids,
(05:16):
and moved in with her father. Luckily, Dennis absolutely adored
his maternal grandfather, so when they moved in, Dennis was
over the moon. When his grandfather sadly passed away when
Dennis was only six, This completely shot him down, shattered
him and seeing his father's corpse at the funeral home
really shook him, and later Dennis would say that it
(05:39):
shook him so much he believes that psychologically changed him,
like at that moment, if he had to pick a
moment in time now. Elizabeth and Olav they eventually got divorced,
but she remarried and she went on to have four
more children with her new husband, and Elizabeth basically seemed
to give all of her love and affection to number
(06:00):
two of children. So yeah, this left Dennis completely depressed, alone,
and completely withdrawn from his mother and siblings. From a
young age, Dennis knew that he was attracted to other boys,
although he was not out as gay. Sometimes the kids
at school would make fun of him and accuse him
of being gay, which, honestly, Tanya, it's unfortunately, or just
(06:24):
almost like a rite of passage. How do you escape
right your junior high and high school years without someone
calling you gay? Yeah, or whichever way they use you
know what I'm saying, right, See, it's almost like you
no one comes out on skates. I'm not making it right,
I'm just saying, gosh, I you know, in the eighties,
(06:45):
my goodness, that was quite a gravy word covered lots
of things totally, but when it came to school dances,
Dennis always leaned on his sister to be his date.
His homosexuality he didn't seem to get him in trouble
when he was young, But this is kind of uncommon
given the many stories we have covered like this in
(07:07):
the past. Yeah, Dennis was a good boy. There was
no sexual assault committed against anyone when he was younger,
and he kept his sexual orientation to himself. He was
always aware of his homosexuality, but at the time this
was heavily frowned upon. I mean nineteen forty five when
he was born, so he's like fifteen, so that'd be
(07:28):
a yeah, I mean still come on. So Dennis was
never truly comfortable in his own skin. He learned how
to cope in the worst way imaginable, and he took
his discomfort and sexual frustration out on his victims. At
the age of sixteen, in nineteen sixty one, Dennis enlisted
in the Army, and while in the Army, he became
(07:49):
a cook and served in the Army Catering Corps as
their butcher for eleven years, splitting his time between Norway, Yemen,
and Germany. His initial training was spent stationed in Germany,
but he worked as the butcher in Yemen and Norway,
and these butchering skills would later come in handy when
we get into all of the blood that will be
(08:10):
on his hands usually. You know, the army or other
branch of military is a place where many people find
and have found the structure and discipline that their lives
truly needed.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Did it happen for you when you were in the military, Well,
I'll tell you what.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
That structure definitely. You know my parents they did give
me structure and then the military just really drove it
home whatever, which is good because I am definitely someone
who thrives in a structured environment. Cass I Ugh, it's
like no, thank you. You know, someone should be in
(08:52):
charge here. Dennis overall didn't do poorly while in the army,
and he did well with the training and learning the
different skills to become the soul. He loved being around people,
and he did well with the organization, rules and friendships
that the army had to offer. He basically had an
unlimited amount of drinking buddies, and he loved this just
as much as he loved to drink. His love for
(09:14):
alcohol became more intense, and the more he went out
with friends, the heavier he drank. In nineteen sixty seven,
Dennis was sent to Yemen, and this is where he
actually had to use the skills he learned as a soldier.
The conditions while stationed in Yemen were really dangerous, and
he soon began to lose friends, but it wasn't for
(09:35):
any personal reasons. He was losing his friends on the
battlefield and on many occasions he saw his friends get
shot dead by enemy gunfire. He obviously wasn't one of
the soldiers who was killed, but he was kidnapped while
in Yemen by a taxi cab driver. The driver beat
Dennis until he was unconscious, and when Dennis awoke, he
(09:58):
was in the trunk of that same cab. After the
driver got Dennis right where he wanted him, he dragged
him out of the trunk. Dennis was a kinky guy,
and he liked to have his victims unconscious, but this
was not his style at all because he wasn't in
control of the situation. Thankfully, the Army had trained him
in various ways to get out of a situation such
(10:18):
as this and he was able to use the carjack
as a weapon. He whacked the driver out as soon
as he got his chance, and after Dennis knocked the
driver out, he put the driver right where he had
been locked in the trunk. Dennis was able to get
out of this basically on scathe, but this was really
the first time he had used violence against another human being,
(10:40):
whether it was in self defense or not. Believe it
or not, Dennis fantasized a lot about this incident, and
he would often masturbate while thinking about the whole fiasco.
WHOA yes, so now you know yeah? And Dennis he
loved the violent details that took place, even though he
(11:01):
could have been killed, and the part that turned him
on the most was, of course the violence. While in Yemen,
Dennis became very familiar with the painting called The Raft
of Medusa, and he would often incorporate the images of
this painting into his sexual fantasies and his masturbation. This
painting embodies the aftermath of a shipwreck. Most men in
(11:25):
the painting are shirtless and starving while reaching their arms
out in a hopeless call for help, knowing that they
will most likely die. One detail in the painting that
Dennis really loved. Shows the naked body of a deceased
man and his body is covering another man's lap. To Dennis,
this shows how a man could truly submit when times
(11:48):
became desperate. In the painting, it was very hard to
tell which men were dead and which ones were alive,
but this still told Dennis that the living dominated over
the dead, and that fact was good enough for him.
So we're gonna that's kind of setting the stage of
Theandards doesn't necessarily need a heart beats. But due to
(12:10):
his homosexuality, Dennis was a little nervous showering around other men.
He always took showers with nobody else around due to
his overwhelming fear of getting an erection after seeing another
naked man. Regardless of his sexuality, Dennis still made friends
and he seemed to have formed relationships, but it wasn't
(12:31):
all sunshine and rainbows. Shit got a little weird when
he was on base in Germany. One night, Dennis overindulged
and got a little drunk with a younger German man,
and the two got so carried away to the point
the two men passed out on the floor together. Dennis
woke up not knowing where he was, but he did
remember the friend that he had made earlier the night before.
(12:53):
Even still, this man was a stranger to Dennis. Nothing
ever happened sexually between the two, But when Dennis woke
up and saw the German man lying next to him,
Dennis got this unsettling impulse. After this urged, he covered
his entire body in telcum powder to look at himself
in the mirror. He imagined he was fucking dead, so that's.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
What he wanted to look creepy dude. Oh my goodness,
this guy's a fucking weirdo.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Uh no, kill my goodness. Dennis left the army in
nineteen seventy two and moved to London, England, and upon
his resignation, he trained with the police as a junior constable.
Of course, at this time, Dennis didn't see himself as
any sort of criminal, even though he felt a constant
internal struggle to stay a good person. While training with
(13:42):
the police, he learned what he was truly obsessed with,
and since the police worked closely with the morgue and
autopsy technicians, Dennis became morbidly fascinated with dead bodies, both
before and after the autopsies were completed. Despite his new
obsession and the excess that working with the police offered,
(14:04):
Dennis left the police force to work as a recruiter.
Soon after working at the recruitment center, he was made
a supervisor. He was really good at his job and
he worked really hard. While nobody at his place of
employment knew about his sexuality, Dennis secretly visited gay bars
and would have secret sexual rendezvous with other gay men.
(14:25):
The life of a police officer would have been tough
to live as a gay man around this time, but
he did love the danger that came with living a
double life. Although Dennis was meeting men on the regular,
his sexual desires had yet to be satisfied. He needed
much more. Hmm. I don't know how you become attracted
(14:46):
to something that's dead. I don't get it. But maybe
he can shed some light. His crimes can maybe open something.
One year after Dennis left the army, he had his
first run in with the police, and let me tell you,
it was some very petty stuff. This was weird. In
nineteen seventy three, while working as a recruitment interviewer, he
(15:10):
met a man named David Painter. David went to the police,
claiming that Dennis took some pictures of him. These weren't
just ordinary headshots. These were pictures that Dennis took of
David while he was asleep. Apparently, David found out about
the photos and confronted Dennis about them, and the confrontation
resulted in Dennis getting so worked up that he needed
(15:33):
to be hospitalized. The police listened to David and they
brought Dennison to be interviewed about the accusations, but unfortunately
Dennis was released without being charged at all. Huh, that's
some creepy stuff. Yeah, now is that at a chargeable offense?
You know, if you sleep with someone and then there
were pictures. Unless I'm missing something about the pictures. Was
(15:55):
he covered in talcum powder?
Speaker 3 (15:57):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (15:57):
I'm scared. This is fun settling if I'm just sleeping,
or then it's creepy and still unsettling.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
But yeah, right.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
So two years later, Dennis meant someone named David Gillichin,
and David seemed to be pretty important to him romantically.
The two of them moved into an apartment together located
at one ninety five Melrose Avenue in North London. Whenever
asked about their relationship years later. David never admitted to
being in a homosexual relationship with Dennis, but when their
(16:29):
relationship ended, Dennis went off the deep end. He became
severely depressed and he turned to alcohol to cope with
how lonely he was, and this led to his first murder,
which would occur a year and a half later. The
same apartment is where Dennis would commit many of his murders,
but he would later relocate and commit even more. Dennis
(16:50):
found himself in the London neighborhood of Cricklewood in nineteen
seventy eight. That's quaint Cricklewood and more specific, at the
Cricklewood Arms Pub, Dennis had already had a few pints
of his favorite beer. As he sat at the bar
with his dark hair and dark brown eyes looking around
(17:11):
the bar, someone piqued his interests someone that he could
lure away. The boy's name was Stephen Dean Holmes, and
Dennis knew that he could take advantage of Stephen because
he was young, naive, and way too young to be
in the bar let alone drinking. And when Dennis saw Stephen,
he walked over to him and sat next to him,
(17:32):
and the two began talking, and Dennis eventually invited him
back to his apartment. It's not known what really transpired
between Dennis and Stephen, other than the two drinking massive
amounts of alcohol that night, and Dennis woke up with
an attractive boy in bed next to him. Stephen was
fourteen years old, but Dennis didn't give a shit about
(17:54):
his age. He was just he's sick, yeah, and he's
just so happy that someone finally agreed to go home
with him that night. You know he was a predator, Yeah,
he is. Dennis deep down knew that all of this
was way too good to be true. Stephen was so
drunk the night before, and Dennis knew that as soon
(18:14):
as Stephen woke up and realized what was going on,
he would jump up, get dressed, and leave and this
would have all been for nothing, a one night stand.
Dennis didn't give Stephen the chance to leave. He didn't
even give him the chance to wake up. As soon
as Dennis came out of the realization of what was
going to happen if Stephen woke up, he strangled the
(18:36):
fourteen year old boy with the necktie. Dennis thought that
this was the only way he could truly take control
over the situation. After he was dead, Dennis washed his
body and took him back to bed with him. Although
Dennis tried to have sex with Stephen's dead body, he
couldn't complete the task and he fell asleep next to
(18:57):
the body. He couldn't complete it because it's not not
fucking natural.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
Yes, so probably not.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
I have to fight all the stop signs come out
like his fucking fantasy.
Speaker 3 (19:09):
I don't I know.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
I mean, good Lord, I can only imagine what's gonna happen,
so oh please do go on.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
Absolutely, Dennis wanted Stephen to stay with him, and he
made sure that that happened. When Dennis strangled him, he
only knocked him unconscious to kill him, he did something horrific.
He slowly poured a bucket of water over his face
to drown Stephen. Before this night, Dennis did some really
(19:38):
mess up stuff. But now he was a cold blood
and murderer, and he just took the life of a
young teenaged boy who had his whole life ahead of him.
And as we discussed in other cases, the killers will
begin to think of where to dispose of the body.
They need to have a moment to think of when
to dispose the body, and they need time to think
(19:58):
of where the body will be dash. This was not
the case for Dennis. Dennis just had killed Stephen because
he was scared that the boy would run out of
the apartment as soon as he awoke. Why would he
waste his time disposing of a perfectly fresh corpse, dead
or alive. Dennis wanted Stephen to stay in his apartment
with him forever, but where was he going to put
(20:20):
his body? Well, he began to rip up the floorboards
inside of his apartment and this would become Stephen's resting place.
In fact, this would be the resting place for the
rest of his victims over the next five years. Good
five years later, Dennis wrote from prison about his first murder.
He said that he had quote started down the avenue
(20:43):
of death in possession of a new kind of flatmate unquote.
Stephen's body would remain under the floorboards until Dennis relocated
his body, along with the others, to the backyard. Dennis
truly had an obsession with the dead bodies of his victims,
made himself believe that a dead body was much more
valuable than one with a heartbeat. He didn't want someone
(21:06):
that was gonna leave him, and he certainly didn't want
one that could make their own decisions.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
You know what this sounds like to me? It sounds
like Jeffrey Dahmer.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
I was just thinking that too, Like this does sound
like Dahmer.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
Yeah, like Jeffrey Dahmer didn't want people to leave him. Yeah,
also didn't want them to they have a mind where
they have a mind, and so yeah, this is very
very Dahmer like it is.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
Dennis didn't get a chance to kill everyone that he
came into contact with, and one man who survived was
a Chinese student named Andrew Hoe. Dennis asked him to
come back to one ninety five Melrose with him, and
Andrew agreed. Andrew was a bit kinky and wanted to
attempt some bondage role playing, but of course, Dennis took
(21:56):
it too far and tied his necktie a little too
tightly while telling Andrew that he wanted to play a
more dangerous game. Now, this freaked Andrew out and he
got the fuck out of there and he went to
the police about this, but they didn't do anything about it.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
Oh, just like Jeffrey Dahmer's victims.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Oh my gosh right after and it's like a precursor
of yeah in Wisconsin. This is London. After Dennis's first murder,
he realized what it felt like to unleash his impulse
that he had pushed down for years. And years later,
he wrote, quote, under the triggering influence of spirits meaning alcohol,
(22:40):
usually dormant mental forces have been released which have made
mind the actions of a destructive psychopath. End quote. This
would be true. Yeah, blame it on the alcohol.
Speaker 3 (22:52):
Yeah, blame it on the alcohol.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
Sure, this would be true for many of his future
murders as well. His next murder would take place in
December of nineteen seventy nine, and this was a year
after he had killed Stephen. Dennis met another young man
named Kenneth Aginden. Kenneth was a really good looking young
dude who had the face and body that you would
(23:15):
normally see on TV or in a concert, you know,
just nice. Kenneth had it going on. Kenneth was Canadian born,
but he found himself in London on this fateful night.
He took a risk, leaving his homeland to visit England, and,
as most do when it comes to an adventure, he
threw caution into the wind. He had waited so long
(23:36):
to see the sights, and he was living his best
life until Dennis's creepy ass came up to him. Dennis
saw Kenneth in the local pub and when Dennis approached him,
he told him about how much he wanted to continue
to see London, and Dennis obliged. The two of them
had a few beers and they walked for a while
looking at the beautiful city of London. Dennis got Kenneth
(23:59):
alone as they were walking, and he was just happy
at the fact that Kenneth wasn't absolutely appalled by him.
After the two hit a few historic hotspots, Dennis invited
Kenneth back up to his apartment. Kenneth agreed to go
back up to the apartment, and on the way back,
Dennis loaded up on his favorite whiskey beer and rum.
(24:20):
This is what triggered his violence, and he obviously knew
that about himself. Yes, he liked the violence and you
know that alcohol. I mean, you've already you know how
to get the party started. Rev your own engine. Apparently
Dennis went a different route when it came to killing Kenneth.
He didn't knock him unconscious before strangling him. The two
(24:42):
were just sitting there listening to a record, and Dennis
came up behind Kenneth with a wire that was attached
to his headphones. Now that Kenneth was dead, he began
to use Kenneth's body to satisfy his psychological needs. He
began to treat Kenneth's corp as a living and breathing person,
no problem touching and fondling his cold body, and he
(25:03):
would interact with the body excessively. Dennis then began to
realize that this is what he had needed his whole life,
and he began to pose Kenneth's body in various ways
so that he could take pictures of it. When he
was finished taking his weird, fucking pictures, he put Kenneth's
body back into bed with him, and the two of them,
(25:24):
one dead, one alive, would watch television together for a
few hours before Dennis fell asleep. I can't even get
my head around, and I'm sensitive to smells. I could
never thank you Jesus. I don't know what makes people
like this tick, but oh and I gotta keep calm
about it or I'm gonna get super violent myself. See
(25:47):
I don't need alcohol to make me violent. I have
to hear about bullshit and then I'll get violent. So
keeping it light, I know, I'm just like, what the fuck?
Speaker 3 (26:00):
Actual fuck? What is the matter with people?
Speaker 2 (26:05):
I don't I know we always get that, but I have.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
Like no words. I don't.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
You know, We're an episode like two hundred and seventy
something and I just can't fucking believe that.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
I'm still shocked. My mouth is a dog. I'm flabbergasted.
I just yes, stunned. It is.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
You know, my fucking I loved my grandpa too, you
know what I mean, and he died when I was young,
So you know, what the fuck?
Speaker 2 (26:37):
How dare you use your grandfather? I know it own
your shit?
Speaker 3 (26:41):
You know, we all lose people. God, I just really
that's you're gonna say.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
See, That's why I mean, it's just bullshit. It's just
that's just another fucking hundred layers of the onion to
peel away.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
Right.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
So, as we mentioned earlier, Dennis loved and clearly had
an obsession with dead so it was obvious why he
killed his victims. He wanted a partner who wouldn't resist,
wouldn't reject him sexually. These victims weren't given the choice
to reject or accept him because he was so terrified
off being rejected by someone he was attracted to, and
(27:16):
after each victim was murdered, he kept the bodies to
appease his appetite for the ultimate submission. He killed each
victim for their body, and he killed them to have control.
After having Kenneth's body in his bed with him for
over twenty four hours, he wrapped Kenneth in a plastic
wrap and placed his body under the floorboards next to Stephen.
(27:39):
Dennis was doing this out of his obsession for the
feeling all of this gave him. He had never felt
any sensation like this before, and he wasn't going to
stop on his own. On many occasions, he would wrap
his victims' bodies just so that he could take them
back out from under the floor to play with them
sometimes right These dead bodies were like dolls to him,
(28:04):
and when he was done with them, he said goodbye
to them until the next time. He would then go
about his life like he didn't have any bodies lying
under the floor of his apartment. Kenneth was one of
the only victims who was reported missing you know what
this reminds me of two actually is the American horror
(28:24):
story Coven, the house servant that you remember. He kept
dolls and he was really create. Oh, I'm gonna have
to watch his series again.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
I know it was good.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Covin was good, very good. When spring came the following year,
Dennis knew that he needed a new attractive boy to
play with, and we now know that he liked picking
up his victims at various pubs. With Stephen, he knew
that he could befriend him by buying him drinks that
he couldn't legally get on his own. And with Kenneth,
Dennis was able to show him around on London. With
(29:01):
the next victim, he just needed a way to befriend him,
just like he had the first two. His next victim
was another young boy, sixteen year old Martin Duffy, and
Martin was homeless and he was on the run from
the law in his hometown of Birkenhead. He had gotten
into some trouble that evolved around him setting a fire
(29:21):
and he had hitchhike all the way to London to
get away from everything. He just wanted a fresh start
and at this point he was over two hundred miles
away from home before he met Dennis. He had been
sleeping at the bus station and he was hungry with
nowhere to go. Dennis thought that he had hit the
jackpot with this one. Dennis knew exactly what he needed
(29:42):
to do to get Martin, and he prayed on the
fact that Martin was in a really tough spot, so
Dennis offered him a place to sleep along with the
hot meal, and of course, Martin accepted the invitation. Dennis
got the young teenager into bed without coming on to him,
and while Martin was asleep, Dennis took a piece of
rope to stop him from breathing, and after he had
(30:04):
knocked him out, Dennis to go walk into the kitchen
to grab some water. He did the same thing that
he had done to Stephen by pouring the water slowly
over his face to drown him while holding his head back.
He then washed his body and took him to bed
with him. Dennis wrapped Martin's lifeless body in plastic before
placing it into the cupboard for at least two weeks.
(30:26):
He later placed it under the floorboards, just as he
had done with Stephen, and Kenneth. But how was he
hiding the smell?
Speaker 3 (30:34):
Yeah, I wondered about that.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
How good is these bags?
Speaker 3 (30:39):
Are these zip locks? I died?
Speaker 2 (30:41):
Yes? Body right. It had been well over a year
since he had killed his first victim and at least
a couple months since he had murdered his second. He
began to buy deodorizers and bug spray to hide the
smile of decomposition. Dennis later said, the greater the beauty
of the man, and the greater was the sense of
(31:02):
loss and grief. Their dead naked bodies fascinated me. But
I would have done anything to have them back alive.
Really doesn't even make sense, I know. And you can't
hide decomposition. You can bug spray and deodorizers always come on,
stop it, I know, But you can convince yourself that
anything's working right Right Before he moved to his home
(31:26):
located at twenty three Cranley Gardens. That's his last apartment
before he was caught, Dennis kept the bodies under the floorboards,
but when the smell became too unbearable, he began to
take apart the bodies, thinking that the smell was coming
from his victim's internal organs. When it was time to
dissect the bodies. He took the bodies out of their
(31:47):
hiding spots, remove the organs, skin, and bones. He would
sometimes save the skin and some of the bones to
use later, maybe when he was feeling lonely. I mean, why,
I'm not kidding, I wish I was. Not only did
he have his personal playtime with his friends, but he
(32:09):
would also dress the bodies up and he would have
sex with them. In defense of his own fucked up behavior,
he said, quote, a corpse is a thing. It can't feel,
it can't suffer. If you're more upset by what I
did to a corpse than what I did to a
living person, then your morals are upside down. Well, I
(32:31):
think we're just starting with the shock of necrophilia. Okay, yeah,
so don't judge me on how I'm judging you, all right, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (32:43):
I'm pretty appalled to you, somebody. Let's just start with that. So, yes,
I am.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
I am offriended by what you did do a living
person and then you just continued to degrade.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
Them, Yes, yeah, and taking life.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
Yeah, did what I have to say?
Speaker 2 (32:58):
Yeah, and compare to necrophilia if it was the only
thing on the table but you just slapped me in
the back of the head with this six shit You're
doing right? How dare you? I'm a fendist By this statement,
Martin he had run away from home a few times
prior to this, but this time he never returned home.
(33:19):
He usually went to the same people each time he
ran away, and his family would just patiently wait for
him to come back home when they hadn't heard from
him or the usual people that he would stay with.
His family obviously became extremely worried about him until his
body was later discovered. His family and especially his father,
never gave up on trying to find him. Martin's father
(33:42):
had a picture of his son on his bedside table,
and each night before he went to bed, he would
look at that picture and ask, where are you son.
In August of nineteen eighty, Dennis met a twenty seven
year old sex worker named William Billy Sutherland. What was
the name of the sex worker and bridesmaids at the
(34:03):
for the AA meeting who had to give blow jobs
that sex work? This one's name is Billy Billy Sutherland
and Dennis knew that Billy slept with men for Bunny,
and he later said that he really didn't want to
take him home to his apartment on Melrose Avenue, but
one night he and Billy went bar hopping, and when
(34:24):
Dennis woke up the next morning, Billy was dead in
bed lying next to him. Dennis later said that he
quote barely remembered unquote strangling him, but he did. That
same month, on August eleventh, Dennis encountered another man named
Douglas Stewart, and Douglas actually survived this attack. Dennis apparently
(34:45):
attacked Douglas after he had fallen asleep inside of Dennis's apartment.
When he woke up, his arms and legs were tied
together and Dennis was in the process of putting the
notorious necktie around his neck in an attempt to strangle him.
Douglas wasn't going down without a fight, and he ended
up knocking Dennis over, and Dennis tried to play it cool,
(35:07):
and he told him to get the hell out, and
Douglas called the police around four am that same morning,
but the police noticed that he had been drinking and
he was slurring his words as he was trying to
tell them what had just happened. The police did come
to the apartment knocked on the door. After the police
told Dennis what Douglas had told them. You know, Dennis
(35:27):
played stupid and shocked, so the police deemed it as
a homosexual encounter gone wrong, and the officers weren't sure
who to believe. Regardless, they wrote up a short report,
but Douglas never showed up for the required follow up.
So it is thought that Dennis killed about seven more
young boys and young men between November nineteen eighty and
(35:49):
May of nineteen eighty one, but they have not been
identified to this day. In September of nineteen eighty one,
Dennis killed a twenty four year old man named Malcolm Barlow.
Malcolm was an orphan who had extreme mental issues and
he was also known to be a pathological liar. One day,
Malcolm was hanging outside of Dennis's apartment and Malcolm was
(36:11):
complaining that he felt weak and had epilepsy. Dennis took
him inside of his apartment. He called for an ambulance.
Malcolm went to the hospital, but he went back to
Dennis's apartment when he was released. He waited on the
stoop of his Melrose Avenue apartment until Dennis came back
from work. Dennis invited him in and the two had
(36:31):
a couple of drinks together. Later, Malcolm passed out and
fell into an almost coma like state as he slept.
Dennis strangled him after he fell asleep because he thought
Malcolm was annoying. Don't judge. Yeah, I've about had it
since the last judge. Shit that you just said, Dennis,
Let's keep the trap shut on your thoughts, right, And
(36:54):
the following day, Dennis stuffed his body into one of
his cabinets located under the sink in the kitchen. At
this point, he had already had half a dozen bodies
in his apartment and he was waiting to dispose of
all of the victim's bodies. He didn't mind the weight though,
like we mentioned earlier, he would keep some of the
bodies in bed with him for as long as a week.
Speaker 3 (37:15):
That's fucking insane.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
It's stink, the liquids, the shit I can't even like, right,
I mean, but this is completely thrilling to him.
Speaker 3 (37:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
In nineteen eighty two, Dennis relocated to twenty three Cranley Gardens,
located in London, and his landlord had no fucking clue
that who he had just signed lease with. God a
horrific serial killer. His apartment on Melrose was on the
first floor, and this made it easy for him to
hide his victims underneath the floorboards, and he always had
(37:49):
so much fun dismembering his victims when he thought it
was time for him to move on. It also had
a garden in the backyard where he would often sprinkle
a little pieces of bone fragments. At first, when Dennis
needed to dispose of his victims' bodies, he would have
little bombfires in his backyard and after the fire was
large enough, he would throw in some body parts and
(38:12):
internal organs. To hide the smell of burning flesh and organs,
he would throw in a piece of rubber from old tire.
Now that I can see that covering up smell. That
is a horrible smell, burning rubber. The body parts that
Dennis wanted to keep were then buried in a hole
that he dug next to his makeshift fire pit. Remember
(38:34):
his time as a butcher in the army, it's very helpful.
When he felt his apartment was getting a little too crowded,
rather than stopping his murder spree, he would take a
body from underneath the floorboards and he would use these
butchering skills to cut up the bodies into smaller pieces,
and he would then throw these pieces into a pot
(38:55):
to boil the flesh off the bones, while throwing the
organs into the trash for disposal. That way. Ugh, I swear,
it's like I throw down my mouth a little bit
when I read stuff.
Speaker 3 (39:06):
I know it's completely elaborate.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
It is so I don't even know how you live
with yourself. That's a whole other level of living. These
messages wouldn't quite work as well after he moved into
his next apartment, though. This new apartment had other neighbors
who lived in the same apartment building had no garden,
and he chose the apartment that was on the top floor.
(39:28):
Now was he trying to get on the straight and narrow, No,
he No, he didn't. He did have yet another failed
attempted murder, though, and this victim's name was Paul Knobs.
Now Paul was nineteen years old, and the two of
them met at the Golden Lion pub. The two of
them got wasted and they took a stumbling stroll back
(39:49):
to Dennis's new apartment. The two of them had a
few more drinks and went to bed together, and around
two thirty that morning, Paul woke up with a terrible headache,
but was able to fall back asleep. Later that morning,
around six am, he woke up again, and this time
he found his way into the kitchen. In the kitchen,
there was a mirror, and when Paul looked in the mirror,
(40:11):
he saw intense bruising around his neck, and his eyes
were completely bloodshot and his face was beat up. Dennis,
at one point woke up as well, saw Paul in
the kitchen and told him he looked like shit. To
go see a doctor. The following day, he went to
the hospital that was in the university where he was attending.
(40:33):
He was then informed that someone had tried to strangle him,
but he didn't want to make a report because he
didn't want himself to be outed as gay. So you
have no memory of being strangled, doctor tells you, and
you can't say anything. That's what a terrible position to
find yourself in. There was yet another attempted murder, but
(40:56):
this time the victim was a drag queen named Kara
the Fox, but he was also known as Carl Stodter.
When Stotter came to the apartment. He was strangled and
Dennis also attempted to drown him. While Dennis was on
top of him, Carl woke up not being able to breathe,
and while panicking, Carl thought that Dennis was trying to
(41:18):
help him clear his airway or something. Dennis then carried
him into the bathroom and put him in a bathtub
full of warm water. Dennis tried to drown Carl in
the bathtub, and Carl was begging for him to stop.
The next time Carl's head wood underwater, he stopped struggling.
Dennis thought that he had finally murdered Carl, so he
(41:38):
took him out of the bathtub and placed him on
the couch, where he began to lick his face Denis MM.
Dennis then took him to bed and talked him next
to him. When Carl regained consciousness, he asked to be
taken to the train station, to which Dennis agreed. Later,
Carl wrote a letter to Dennis asking him why he
(41:59):
attacked it like that, and Dennis wrote back, quote what
passed between us was a thin strand of love and
humanity end quote. Someone's being gas lit Carl M. Carl
also saw a doctor for his injuries, and the doctors
told him that he had been manually strangled, but Dennis
told him that his throat had gotten caught in a
(42:21):
sleeping bag zipper. Regardless, he agreed to meet Dennis again,
but never kept the appointment. Carl never went to the
police to report what had happened to him. After this
failed attempt, Dennis struck again, and this time he didn't fail.
The next person that Dennis murdered was a man named
John Howlett, and John had actually met Dennis twice before
(42:42):
his murder. They had originally met in December of nineteen
eighty one and then again in March of nineteen eighty two.
When Dennis started to strangle John, he thought as hard
as he possibly could. Unfortunately, Dennis was able to gain
control over John by sticking his head in the kitchen sink,
and after a few minutes, John was dead. John was
(43:04):
Dennis's first murder in his new apartment, so his methods
of disposal were different than ripping up floorboards. He quickly
dismembered his body and boiled off all the skin off
his bones ow Dennis's second murder at the new apartment
came in September, six months after murdering John Graham. Allen
(43:25):
was a father, and he found himself in Dennis's apartment
waiting for a fresh omelet that was being cooked by Dennis.
While Graham was eating, he was strangled, and after he
was murdered, Dennis placed his body in the bathtub and
left it there for a few days. After he was
done with Graham's body, he cut the body up into
small pieces so that he could flush it down the toilet.
Speaker 4 (43:48):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (43:49):
In January of nineteen eighty three, Dennis brought home his
final victim, twenty year old Steven Sinclair. The two of
them had met at what had been a classic spot
for him to pick up his victims, the local pub.
The two of them sat together, drinking heavily before they
went back to Dennis's apartment to listen to some music.
(44:10):
According to reports, Dennis said the words quote here I
go again, Stephen end quote before he strangled him to
death with a string he had found in the kitchen.
At one point, Dennis saw some marks on the wrist
of Stephen, and this told Dennis that he had already
attempted to take his own life, and this made him
feel better about killing Stephen, he thought it was better
(44:33):
to relieve him of all the pain that he had
already had so much of in one lifetime. After he
was dead, Dennis cut him up into little pieces and
flushed his remains down the toilet. The bodies were eventually
found when plumbers in the area found something weird in
a drain that they were trying to unclog. The blockage
(44:54):
was human flesh, and it was the flesh from one
of the victims, and it was specifically of a human hand,
along with other human tissue. And the reason why the
plumbers were called was because Dennis stupidly ran to his
landlord saying that his dreams were clogged. But I kep right.
(45:16):
I woke up and it was all a dream. But
in all actuality, he was the one who clogged them,
and he knew that when he founded the complaint. The
clog left the whole block of tenants, including Dennis, outrage
because there was a horrid smell coming from the manhole
that was nearby. Dennis didn't want to be the only
person not complaining because in his mind, that would have
(45:38):
looked awfully suspicious. With all of the complaints coming in
the landlord sent the sewage company named dinoh Rod to
investigate the clog on the property. When the sewage professionals
got to the neighborhood of Muzwell Hill, there was nothing
that the workers could have done to prepare themselves for
what they were about to witness and smell. When one
(46:00):
of the workers lifted the man whole cover, he looked
down to see a fleshy substance along with tiny bones
being eaten by rats. Dennis looked at the slop, knowing,
gosh darn well what the sludge was made of, and
he commented, quote, it looks to me like someone has
been flushing down there, Kentucky fried chicken end quote. You
(46:24):
couldn't make this up.
Speaker 3 (46:25):
Yeah right, this is oh.
Speaker 2 (46:27):
The sewage worker, Michael Katrine, immediately knew that the bones
were not chicken bones. He knew that they were human bones.
The bones were sent to the Charing Cross Hospital where
a professor looked at the bones and tissue, telling the
detectives that these remains had come from a person who
had been strangled. Along with handbones were neck tissue, and
(46:49):
the neck tissue showed severe ligature marks. So detectives went
to inspect the apartments, and they easily traced the smell
of decomposition back to Dennis's top story apartment. As soon
as the detectives stepped foot inside, they noticed the smell
of rotting flesh. The officers asked Dennis where the rest
(47:09):
of the human bodies were, and he led them to
his closet, where garbage bags were filled with what was
left of Graham and Stephen oh Man. Dennis was soon arrested,
and he confessed to killing between fifteen and sixteen young
men and boys. The police had originally thought that he
had only killed one or two, since that was all
(47:31):
that they had found at the apartment at the time
of his arrest. While he was in custody, Dennis began
talking and eventually told them everything that had happened, detailed
by detail. He knew that he had killed all of
these people, but he couldn't tell the police any of
the victim's names. Dennis could tell the detectives every detail
(47:51):
about the victim, from their height to their body types,
the type of clothes they wore, type of hair color, tattoos,
no name. So he was charged with six counts of
murder and two attempted murders. Which he was found guilty
of in nineteen eighty three. He was sentenced to spend
the rest of his miserable life in prison, and while
(48:13):
in prison, he spent a lot of time translating books
to braille. Dennis did not express a single sign of
remorse for the murders, and he didn't give a shit
if he ever got out. He became even more popular
when Jeffrey Dahmer was arrested. So see like how you
called it. So yep, he gets arrested. Now he's back
(48:34):
in the limelight, and Dennis was then dubbed the British
Jeffrey Dahmer, even though Dennis had been in prison long
before Dohmer.
Speaker 1 (48:42):
I was gonna say, Jeffrey Dahmer should have been the
American Dennis Nils.
Speaker 2 (48:45):
Thank you, yes, right, good call. Dennis was interviewed and
commented on Dahmer's crimes, and when Dennis was asked why
he never ate any of his victims, he replied by
stating that he was, quote unquote, he was strictly a
bacon and eggs man. Dennis died in twenty eighteen after
(49:09):
he had suffered an abdominal aortic aneurysm and he was
seventy two years old. Wow. That is fucking crazy, isn't it. Yeah,
you are correct when you say it should have been
the American Dennis Nilssen mm hmm, because his story is
just as.
Speaker 3 (49:29):
I mean, Jeffrey Dahmer.
Speaker 1 (49:30):
The only thing he did differently is he ate m
hm victims too, right, But he did, I mean he
kept body.
Speaker 2 (49:38):
Parts and oh in the freezer and all this, and yeah,
so I mean it was very similar, very very similar.
Speaker 1 (49:46):
Just imagine there in our lifetime two of these people
excite at least got caught.
Speaker 3 (49:52):
I don't even know. There could be another one out
there that just hasn't been caught. But what the fuck?
Speaker 2 (49:57):
Right, It's just it blows my mind restory with you.
I'm just like, no, I was trying to, like, would
I make this decision? What if I did make this
decision and like something like necropacy or necrophilia or eating flesh.
I can't even put myself in that position. No, Like
that's very specific.
Speaker 1 (50:17):
And I understand, like you don't want to be rejected. Okay, sure,
sure everybody feels that way, but you know what, like
I or like you don't want to be alone. Okay,
but fuck, are you freaking kidding me? Like, there's so
many people out there.
Speaker 3 (50:33):
You're not gonna try again. You're just gonna kill somebody.
And that's that. I just I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (50:39):
And who are you to take away someone's right to choose?
Who the fuck are you getting doll? You go get
a blow You're the reason for blow up dolls. They're
made for people like you. It's lifeless and it has holes, right,
you know, come on, But yes, my dear, that is
the story of den Neilson. Oh, thank you so much,
(51:02):
Oh my pleasure?
Speaker 3 (51:05):
Oh dang it? You know what would have really made this?
Speaker 2 (51:09):
Damn all right? So I lost. Apparently, let's make this
a competition. I did not implement aureate, and I maybe
could have had I been on it. The word of the.
Speaker 4 (51:18):
Day, okay, girl, So I'm going to write that down
and maybe I'll have to use the next word of
the day and do a two for in one.
Speaker 1 (51:29):
Well, thank you Shannon very much for that crazy, just
fucked up story. Thank you everyone for listening to this
week's episode. If you haven't done so already, please hit
the subscribe or follow button. I whatever app you're listening to,
and if you would like more episodes than what we
offer on the apps, you can go to Patreon dot
(51:49):
com slash t and T crimes and you can find
even more episodes. If you would like to subscribe and
visit our website Crimes Andconsequences dot com.
Speaker 3 (52:01):
That's about it.
Speaker 1 (52:01):
We have to update that website with your information on it.
Speaker 2 (52:05):
Yes, yes we do. I'm down four pounds, so give
me two more weeks. I want to lose ten more
and I'll get those headshots.
Speaker 3 (52:14):
Oh girl, you're gorgeous. Well, thank you again and until
our next episode.
Speaker 2 (52:20):
Until next time time you love you, I'd love you.
Speaker 3 (52:23):
I'll see you by
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