by Russ Coffey
‘What mess? No, no, no … If I were to stab you now, there would be lots of blood. The heart is pumping away, there would be blood splattering all over the place. But funnily enough, in a dead body there’s no blood spurts or anything like that. It congeals inside and forms part of the flesh. It’s like anything in a butcher’s shop. There’s little or no blood.’
The film then cut away from the prison to Brian Masters, who was filmed walking through university cloisters. The narrator explained about Masters’ book and how, for years, he had continued to visited Nilsen. Then, facing the camera, Masters explained his theory of how the death of Nilsen’s grandfather had caused Nilsen to associate love with death. He said that when Nilsen wore talcum powder in his mirror fantasies, he did so because he wanted to look dead. The video image then cut back to Nilsen:
‘Making myself up to be dead has nothing to do with being dead. It’s making myself up to be as different as possible to look like someone else. This first occasion you have this young man. You have bathed him. He is now me. He is now my body in the fantasies.’
‘And so what would you do to him?’
‘Carry him in – make him appear even better. I would have some Y-fronts in cellophane. In put that on him because it enhanced his appearance.’
‘And then what?’
‘I would undress him.’
‘What would you do with the body? Would you leave it there on the floor wrapped up, or would you do other things with it?’
‘The most exciting part of the little conundrum was when I lifted the body. When I carried it, it was an expression of my power to lift and carry and have control. And the dangling element of limp limbs was an expression of his passivity. The more passive he could be, the more powerful I was.’
Whatever producer Mike Morley had had in mind when he approached Brian Masters to help introduce him to Mr Nilsen, he could hardly have hoped for a better performance. Not only was Nilsen confident, relaxed and intelligent, he also sounded superior. If Channel 4 had wanted to capture footage of a real-life Hannibal Lecter, then that is exactly what they got.
Their short, edited soundbites made Nilsen seem potent. The man who later described the incident to me in letters, however, simply appeared angry and petulant. He certainly wasn’t prepared to give Central TV, the production company responsible for making the film, any sneaking regard for their skill in achieving such a tricky interview. In a letter to me about the interview, Nilsen recalls:
The interview, recorded by two cameras, took one whole day. I asked for no payment nor did I wish to know the questions in advance. In the room were two men introduced to me as cameramen, Paul Britton (who asked the questions) and Mike Morley overseeing the whole production. I had also loaned Britton Parts I and II (of the autobiography) to help him with my background (I had a job getting these back. He returned these eight months later only when I wrote to Home Office HQ in complaint). So the interview was ‘in the can’ and I awaited the finished product.
In January ’93, the shit hit the proverbial fan. The then Home Secretary, Kenneth Clark, had found out about the project and, politically embarrassed, sought a High Court injunction to stop Central TV using any of the footage. The Home Office’s case (all news to me) held that the taped interview had been conceived and made by and for the purposes of police training by ACPO (Association of Chief Police Officers) and approved as such by the Home Office. It was never meant for public broadcast, as was wrongly claimed.
So it seems that Morley acted as a front man in a deal with the immediate organisers, and in return he was promised use of some of the footage. As all my letters are censored, it is clear that all in authority at Albany knew full well what was being organised. It also transpired that these two ‘cameramen’ were, in fact, a Chief Superintendent and a Chief Inspector. The deception had been thorough.
In 2012, I asked Michael Morley in an email to tell me what he thought of a précis I had give him of Nilsen’s recollections. He said he thought they were ‘not completely accurate, not completely inaccurate either’. The film had initially been cleared, he told me, but authorisation had been removed at the last moment by the Home Office who failed to inform ACPO and the prison. As such, filming went ahead.
Nilsen still seethes over the incident. His indignation, however, is less directed at Morley – to whom he was grateful for the gift of a typewriter – than towards Britton, who had held on to the manuscript for so long. In his writings, he points out that Britton – generally thought of as the inspiration behind ITV’s Cracker – was later widely criticised for his involvement in the arrest and then subsequent collapse of the case against Colin Stagg for the murder of Rachel Nickell on Wimbledon Common in 1992.
By the time Murder in Mind was aired, Nilsen had been moved from Albany Prison on the Isle of Wight to Whitemoor Prison near Peterborough. This brand-new facility had been constructed on the site of some old railway marshalling yards a couple of miles outside the town of March. It was a return to the old Victorian-style wing accommodation. Out, says Nilsen, were the ‘hard-to-police’ corridors, and in were open galleries.
Nilsen’s VPU was housed within a Special Secure Unit situated at the one end of the compound. Nilsen describes the SSU as a ‘prison within a prison’, with wings A and B for ‘vulnerable prisoners’, and C and D for ‘normal’ prisoners. He says that there was a thriving underground economy – illegal alcohol, knives and cannabis were, apparently, commonplace, and everything from drugs to exotic love birds were available for sale. Those who had money were ‘taxed’ by minor gangsters. Life was noisy, too, with people shouting from their windows late into the night.
Nilsen says in his autobiography that he just wanted to get on with doing his time quietly: ‘Most prisoners just wanted to do their bird and get the hell out of prison. But they were bullied by the gangsters whose philosophy was that of the loser who, in all his self-deluded insecurity, continues to believe he is a winner. The recidivist blames everyone for his failure in life other than himself. If we are to make any positive progress, we must address our own offending behaviour.’
As before, Nilsen’s way of ‘addressing his offending behaviour’ was by throwing himself into the things he believed he was best at, including writing. In the spring of 1993, he turned his creative energies towards both his archive of personal autobiographical pieces, and to the number of regular correspondents he had. Some of these were ‘fans’, thrilled to be in dialogue with such a notorious criminal. But others, including criminologists, psychiatrists and sociologists, had sincere and legitimate, professional reasons to want to try to understand him.
In response to their questions, Nilsen would often try to contextualise his crimes. It was illogical, he would say, to demonise a criminal suffering from a psycho-sexual disorder any more than, for example, a terrorist. If anything, he felt, sex offenders were less culpable than other criminals, as their free will was compromised by a compulsive disorder. Nilsen thought the ‘evil’ actions of many of his neighbours were simply ‘men succumbing to the pressures of their psychological predicament’. His reaction to the murder of a child killer a couple of cells down from him was that it was just ‘another pointless killing to satisfy … the lust for revenge’.
In July 1993, Nilsen received a letter that particularly flattered his ego. It was from an aspiring author called Peter-Paul Hartnett. Hartnett had just begun writing Call Me, later to become a cult hit in certain gay circles. At the time, however, Hartnett was working as a special-needs teacher-cum-photographer. One subject that particularly interested him was that of isolation in gay urban culture. The early drafts of what would later become Call Me went by the title A Nasty Piece of Work. The book told the story of one man’s trawl through the world of classified sex adverts. Hartnett’s anti-hero, Liam, claims to be a serial killer and, in the final book, frequently makes references to Nilsen.
Hartnett first wrote to Nilsen after reading one of his letters reproduced in the Evening Standard. Ni
lsen had been asked by journalist Tim Barlass to comment on a gay serial killer operating around Earls Court. He would later be identified as Colin Ireland, but at the time he was known as the ‘Gay Slayer’. It was believed his crimes might have been connected with Coleherne pub in Earls Court.
Nilsen had also been familiar with that pub. The words of his letter seemed to reveal him as being a bit of an expert on a certain twilight world. Hartnett wondered if this extreme personality might possibly become a sounding-board for his project. In the letter, he explained he was mainly interested in Nilsen’s thoughts on isolation and Hartnett’s writing, not on Nilsen’s crimes. After a few letters, the two men decided that their conversations might be better conducted face to face.
The governor’s office initially granted a one-off discretionary hour together. Nilsen describes the meeting in his book. He says he was thrilled to meet someone he considered so glamorous. Hartnett, aged 35, was tall, about Nilsen’s height, with similar dark hair and a boyishly handsome face. Nilsen says, ‘He looked really cool, and we hit it off as if we had been acquainted all our lives.’ Later, after conducting a full background check, the prison authorities found unspecified reasons to decline further visiting rights. Still, Hartnett and Nilsen kept up a correspondence that would last for years.
The recognition Nilsen received from Hartnett and Barlass made Nilsen feel like an amateur psychologist. Now that he felt he was coming up with valuable answers, he was increasingly keen to tell anyone who cared to ask that he had received very little analysis of his own condition. In 1993, however, the prisoner was persuaded to take part in the country’s new Sex Offender Treatment Programme – one of the world’s first. Pilot projects had been judged a success and now the SOTP was being rolled out across the country. The scheme was underpinned by the principles of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT).
CBT is a process of intensive therapy designed to alter how people think and behave. Today, it is widely used to treat everything from depression to paedophilia. It is a ‘talking therapy’ but, unlike psychotherapy, CBT concentrates on practical techniques to modify attitudes and behaviour. Typically, sex offender patients on such courses will be required to work their way through folder upon folder of worksheets. They will question their sexual preoccupations, impulsiveness and emotional control. Afterwards, a series of exercises will be prescribed to change the way the subject thinks and acts. Where possible, these might then be tested with lie detectors or other measuring tools.
The therapy, however, is heavily reliant on motivation and co-operation. Patients really have to want to change and work hard for it. Nilsen soon decided that the programme was not telling him anything he hadn’t already worked out for himself. He hardly mentions the course in his autobiography. Elsewhere, in essays and letters, what he has to say is disparaging. In his essay entitled ‘Anatomy of an Official Conclusion’, he says: ‘I learned nothing new from this SOTP which I had not learned from myself years before.’
Part of this attitude was down to Nilsen’s natural antipathy towards psychology and authority. But it was also because, after several years of self-analysis, the serial killer believed he now possessed the ability to unravel his own psychology. Underpinning his examination was a theoretical framework he had come up with and which he called the ‘Psychograph’. This was a term that had been used previously by phrenologists and handwriting experts to describe a graphical representation of mental attributes. For Nilsen, however, the psychograph is simply the mental map that early experiences leave as their legacy for the adult.
Nilsen didn’t just apply the concept of the psychograph to himself. He started to use his theories as a way of describing the workings of other killers. One was Jeffrey Dahmer, about whom Brian Masters was in the process of finishing a book. On the surface, Dahmer’s crimes, around Milwaukee in the USA, were carbon copies of Nilsen’s. He was another gay loner, who brought men back and killed them in perversely ‘affectionate’ ways. Nilsen, however, doesn’t like the comparisons that many have made. His analysis of Dahmer is full of quibbles that any similarities between them are superficial. He wants it known he didn’t keep trophies, or regularly take photographs, or have desire to eat any human flesh.
Nilsen also pours scorn on Masters’ book, The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer. He writes in History of a Drowning Boy: ‘I certainly got no clearer recognition of Dahmer the man from reading it. Dahmer’s aberrations were sculpted in society’s response to his malforming “psychograph”, which trapped him in an impersonal fantasy life. His genetic uniqueness had succumbed to the battering of a lack of psychological nourishment. In early years, he had become so removed from tactile and emotional contact with his fellow creatures that his condition became ingrained by volition of combined circumstances acting throughout his life.’
An incident from Master’s promotion of his book on Jeffrey Dahmer proved the catalyst to end the ongoing contact between killer and author. In May 1994, Nicky Campbell from BBC Radio 1 interviewed Masters about his unusual relationship with serial killers. Towards the end of the interview, the conversation moved from Dahmer to Nilsen.
Nilsen doesn’t say exactly what it was that he objected to so much – now, however, that was almost beside the point. More than anything, Nilsen was incensed at the way Masters had taken ‘possession’ of his life story. He mentions feeling a surge of annoyance about being what he calls ‘Masters’ commodity’. Now, he felt, was the time to terminate their strange relationship. He did it with a phone call.
Despite being a Category A prisoner, Nilsen was allowed to use a phonecard. Whereas now prisoners may only call people on approved lists through an operator, in those days, Nilsen says, prisoners allowed to use the phone could call straight out. Nilsen’s first telephone call in 11 years was to the Garrick Club in London where Brian Masters was a member. When he was put through to a bar steward he asked him to find the author and say ‘Des’ was on the phone. Masters was chatting with actors Keith Waterhouse and Rodney Bewes. When the steward told him who was calling, Masters nearly spilled his drink, fearful that Nilsen might have escaped. Nilsen appears to have enjoyed making Masters uncomfortable and informed him that he wanted to end their ongoing relationship. Masters told me that this ‘came as a relief’.
In 1994, Nilsen had been a convicted prisoner for just over 10 years. He may have no longer had any contact with his family nor Brian Masters, but he did have Jonny Marling and other correspondents. Moreover, despite frequent disagreements with the authorities, he knew if he behaved himself, theoretically, after another 15 years he would have been eligible to apply for parole.
In the back of Nilsen’s mind was always the thought that one day he might be able to taste freedom. Any such flickers of optimism, however, were extinguished in the summer of 1994 when rumours spread about a change in the law that was going to allow the Home Secretary to set ‘whole-life tariffs’. Previously, all sentence-setting was the preserve of judges. But in December 1994, Michael Howard, the Conservative Party’s Home Secretary, drew up his list of those who would be subject to the principle of ‘life meaning life’.
The passage in History of a Drowning Boy that deals with this is full of bravado. Nilsen proudly informs readers that his reaction to seeing his name there was stoic. He apparently doesn’t want people to think his emotions could be so easily affected by acts of others. More revealing about his psychology, however, may be how he describes reactions to the only woman on the list, the Moors Murderer, Myra Hindley. Nilsen comments on the public perception of her, and the feelings of her victims. His words show a disturbing perspective: ‘It also seems that some relatives of the cruelly murdered children have themselves been contaminated by perpetual active hatred of the hated object. Hate is not a very healthy foundation on which to build anyone’s life. It’s a sad indictment of the progress of the human spirit when the relative of a victim can announce, “Hate is all I have”.’
Even though Nilsen’s words are grotesquely offensive, it is lik
ely he isn’t really thinking about Hindley’s victims at all. By condemning the ‘hate’ he sees directed at Hindley, Nilsen implies that he feels any hatred similarly directed at him is also unfair. Throughout his writing, Nilsen frequently talks about other killers in terms that sound like a projection of feelings about his own case that he has difficulty approaching directly. Many years later, for instance, he observes that the Soham murderer, Ian Huntley, may have been far more ashamed that he could be aroused by two small girls than he was about killing them. And Nilsen says that Huntley, Brady and Hindley – in fact, most multiple murderers – could only kill because they were totally devoid of empathy for their victims. Interestingly, Nilsen may not have been forming this opinion without some first-hand evidence – in 1999, the Daily Star reported that Nilsen had had some correspondence with Ian Brady.
After discussing Hindley and the other killers on the ‘whole-life tariff’ list, Nilsen ends with a declaration of how in tune with morality he feels he has again become. He seems suddenly uncomfortable about how his previous words might be perceived: ‘Personally, I will not be pleading for release in my own case because the pain my actions have caused will only terminate with the deaths of the sufferers. When the pain of life touches me, I force myself to think of the pain of my victims (including relatives) and that brings me back to learning how insignificant my suffering is.’
Although Nilsen has never appealed his sentence, in 1992 and 1993 he started thinking about it. Among working drafts for History of a Drowning Boy are some scribbled notes entitled ‘Appeal Papers’. There were no thought-through plans of action, but he did devote a number of sheets of A4 to discussing – seemingly just to himself – how he exaggerated his confessions at the time of his arrest under what he says was pressure from Jay and Chambers at Hornsey Police Station. He then speculates as to whether, by bringing this to the attention of a court, he might persuade them to reduce his sentence to manslaughter.
