by Russ Coffey
Such musings, however, were short-lived. Ironically, just at the time he was thinking about whether an appeal might ever be possible, his descriptions of life sound like the words of a man who was becoming comfortably institutionalised. Indeed, throughout 1994, Nilsen’s life sounds more like a man at college than a Category A prisoner. He describes an almost never-ending series of hobbies and extra-curricular activities. Nilsen says he contributed a column to a magazine for inmates called The Insider, under the humorous moniker ‘Nilsen, The Pink Panther’ (as distinct from Donald Nielson, The Black Panther).
There were also regular contributions to a small circulation adult comic called Bozo, described as the ‘the mad uncle of Viz’. Elsewhere, he acted in a play, John Godber’s Up ’n’ Under. Nilsen’s aspirations as a visual artist were satisfied when his friend Jonny Marling sent in a large canvas. The result was a large oil painting-cum-collage called ‘Bacardi Sunrise’ which included a cut-out photograph of a naked youth.
Marling had now been a regular visitor for some years. When a visit wasn’t possible, they would sometimes exchange tape recordings. Nilsen would send recordings that showed progress with his new favourite hobby – writing music on his electronic keyboard. His rudimentary musical doodles were given grand names like ‘Symphonic Suite’, and ‘Nilsen’s Prelude’.
The relaxed atmosphere abruptly changed on 9 September 1994. Life at Whitemoor was turned upside down in the prison when six IRA prisoners from the Special Secure Unit escaped. When they were apprehended, a pistol was retrieved; it had been used to shoot a dog handler. Semtex was discovered in their property.
The authorities reacted to the breach with a massive clamp-down. Special searches were conducted on every prisoner. In Nilsen’s room, the guards found copies of two soft-core gay magazines, Vulcan and Him, that Nilsen enjoyed. He was livid. ‘The establishment reeked of active homophobia,’ he moaned, adding, ‘Their attitude had not changed since Wakefield in the mid-80s.’
Some years later, stories about Nilsen’s belief that gay pornography in prison was an equalities issue would become national news. In April 1995, however, the Daily Mirror felt they had better stories to run. They printed a three-part series. First was a story about Nilsen’s grief over a dead budgie; then they showed photographs taken by warders in Nilsen’s cell on a disposable camera sent in by Marling; finally, they published a long piece about a pilot scheme in Albany that had included Nilsen in its testing procedures. It involved the deployment of a Penile Plesythmograph (PPG) machine which was used as part of the Sex Offender Treatment Programme. The Mirror’s story was headed ‘250 JAIL PHOTOGRAPHS TURNED ME ON TO GIRLS’.
The PPG technology was not originally intended to be used on sex offenders. It was pioneered by the Czechoslovakian military in the 1950s to ascertain whether conscripts who claimed to be homosexual to avoid national service really were what they claimed to be. The device works by attaching two bands on the body: a strain-gauge on the penis to measure engorgement, and a cuff on the finger to measure sweat. A series of images are then shown to the patient to determine the trigger of sexual arousal. The images include controls – images of ‘appropriate’ sexuality – and scenes depicting ‘deviant’ interest. Along with polygraphs, or lie detectors, the PPG is considered an extremely important tool for offender rehabilitation.
The Daily Mirror reported that while the tests were being set up, Nilsen had quipped, ‘I suppose I’ll have to pay you for this.’ Once completed, he complained, ‘You should be paying me for this – it’s rubbish.’ When the results came back, Nilsen mocks them by saying that they were so off target they indicated he was primarily attracted to middle-aged women. As for the pictures intended to arouse paedophiles, he said they were ‘so boring I couldn’t concentrate’.
Nilsen simply wasn’t prepared to enter into the spirit of the programme. But still, in History of a Drowning Boy, where Nilsen talks about the PPG machine, his observation are humorous and, probably, perceptive. His says that while the images were presented to him, his mind was wandering off. If his fingers were sweating, he tells his would-be readers, it was probably because he needed a cigarette. He wondered if other subjects simply became turned on by having a female psychiatrist ordering them to drop their trousers before placing a cuff on their penis.
Nilsen had considered the PPG machine to be the stuff of fiction, and not even particularly good material. Still, such experiences and, no doubt, also stories he would hear from fellow cons, contributed to an idea that he might try to write fiction himself. Around this time, he had heard that his pen-pal P-P Hartnett had given up his day-job teaching to become a full-time writer. How hard, he wondered, could it be?
What Nilsen started to write was, quite incredibly, the premise for a serial-killer movie. It involved a fashion photographer called Sed Neslin. He owned an old Securicor van, into which he had fitted a lever from the cab which could divert exhaust gases to the back. In spring and summer, he would go and cruise up and down motorways looking for hitch-hikers, both male and female teenagers, whom he could lure with promises of taking modelling pictures. He would bundle old junk on to the passenger seat, so he could have an excuse that it was essential to travel in the back. The cargo area of the van was sound-proofed against screams, and whatever sounds might have still penetrated were blocked out by tapes he would play of ‘The Laughing Policeman’ and ‘My Old Man’s a Dustman’. At his home, Neslin has a studio in his basement with a preparation table in the middle, with vices to hold bodies and cosmetics to apply to them. He photographs the bodies in all kinds of poses before packing them into his freezer.
‘Cynics,’ Nilsen writes, in apparent ignorance of how utterly appalling his story is, ‘will say he [Nilsen] is planning his next crime.’ Nilsen was now, however, thinking of himself as much as a writer as a murderer, and he was encouraged to do so by others. He would soon even see his name appear alongside Edgar Allan Poe, P D James, Truman Capote and Norman Mailer when Ruth Rendell published an excerpt of his essay, ‘The Psychograph’, in an anthology she had edited. It was on the subject of why people murder and was called The Reason Why: An Anthology of the Murderous Mind (1996).
In the summer of 1996, the former television newscaster Gordon Honeycowmbe rekindled an earlier interest in writing a study on Nilsen’s crimes. Honeycombe had been a familiar figure to British audiences first from 1965–77 as an ITN newscaster. From 1984–89, the 6ft-4in Cornishman presented the news bulletins on ITV’s new breakfast show, TV-am. On screen, with his prominent receding hairline, he looked authoritative, if slightly stern. Off camera, he was a hearty character with a successful sideline as an author. One of his most successful books had been about Scotland Yard’s Crime Museum, being published just before Nilsen’s arrest. In April 1983, Honeycombe wrote to Nilsen suggesting that he might consider supplying him with information to help him write a study on the case. Nilsen asked his solicitor Ronald Moss to reply that he would rather have Masters write about the case.
After leaving TV-am in 1989, Honeycombe retired to Australia, and would occasionally return to the UK to visit friends. In September 1995, a chance conversation in a London pub led to him discovering that one of Nilsen’s surviving victims, a Scotsman called Douglas Stewart, was living nearby. Now he saw another opportunity to deal with the subject. Apparently, Stewart wanted to talk. Honeycombe had also read about Carl Stottor’s letters to Nilsen from an article in the Observer newspaper. The author wondered if there might be enough material available to tell the Nilsen story from the victim’s perspective.
When Honeycombe met Stewart, however, he found him odd. The young Scotsman told a far-fetched story about Nilsen having an accomplice. Even though it seemed outlandish, Honeycombe decided to follow this up on his next trip. He also wondered if Nilsen himself might co-operate in his project. Back in Australia, Honeycombe wrote to Nilsen reminding him how, in 1983, he had written to him with a proposal to write about the case. Then he told of his meeting with Stewart and e
xplained the rationale behind his ‘victims’ book. In the letter, Honeycombe also made a suggestion that Nilsen might consider contributing his own thoughts and memories.
Nilsen replied with a long letter. He said he would be happy to contribute, but warned that Honeycombe might find Stewart untrustworthy. It seemed very odd to the author that someone might want to volunteer such judgements about someone they’d tried to kill. In the end, however, Stewart did indeed prove unreliable – or, at least, unavailable. When Honeycombe tried to reach him again, he had disappeared.
Now that Honeycombe was in touch with Nilsen himself, and he seemed prepared to talk, he started to wonder if he might actually use the killer’s confessions as the starting point for a project that would look at the case from all sides. If Nilsen would co-operate, Honeycombe thought, he could start by looking at how Nilsen remembered events and then fill in the other parts of the story with later research. He wrote to Nilsen with a series of questions.
The prisoner responded to each point in turn. Above all, he said he wanted to make it clear he didn’t think Masters’ book was satisfactory, and he wanted to put the record straight. There was no need, however, for him and Honeycombe to embark on a lengthy autobiographical correspondence about his life as he was, in fact, already writing a book.
This presented a potential problem. If Nilsen was writing a book, Honeycombe was sure he would be doing things in his own, inevitably unreliable, way. But he remained undeterred. He was sure if he could persuade Nilsen to let him use his memoirs to form the backbone of a book, then he would be able to balance his words with the testimony of others.
Another letter was dispatched to Nilsen saying he could be able to help with a publisher but only if Nilsen relinquished any idea of editorial control. Honeycombe pressed on him the need for this to be a serious, credible study, not a volume of a serial killer’s propaganda. Honeycombe emphasised how it was imperative to include statements from people who had opposing perspectives.
Nilsen seemed to agree with these suggestions. He even volunteered a suggestion for what he might like to do with his royalties – he wanted them offered to a victim’s charity. The manner in which Nilsen expressed it, however, betrayed signs of his pathological ego: ‘I would never exploit revelations in my own life for personal financial gain. Now that would be immoral,’ he said. He then speculated whether, with film rights, his royalties might amount to half a million pounds.
Within months, Nilsen completed two more volumes of memoirs. But by the spring of 1996, Honeycombe’s publisher had now decided the project was too controversial for them. He told Nilsen not to worry, as he still had others in mind, and to make sure the serial killer didn’t go cold on him, he kept writing from Australia. Soon, however, he started noticing a difference in Nilsen’s letters. Direct replies to questions were avoided and increasingly replaced by Nilsen deriding the prison system or emphasising his achievements.
Honeycombe decided he might get further by talking to Nilsen directly. On his next trip back, in July 1996, he asked for a visiting order to be submitted. In response, he was granted a two-hour session. Honeycombe later told me that the first thing that struck him on arriving at Whitemoor was how incredibly tight the security was. Even tea and coffee could only be bought with plastic tokens.
Honeycombe said he bought a cup of tea and sat down. The visitors’ room was like a school hall. Despite the post-IRA escape atmosphere, the warders he spoke to recognised him from his TV work and were chatty and friendly. They also appeared to be slightly proud of their high-profile prisoner. When Nilsen finally arrived, he seemed taller than he had imagined. His manner was confident, and educated. But with the thick glasses, grey hair, bad teeth and pale skin his general appearance was ‘somewhat like a seedy academic’.
Nilsen spoke in a jovial, slightly bombastic manner. But at several points in the conversation, Honeycombe told me he couldn’t help looking down at Nilsen’s thin, white and peculiarly shaven hands that had robbed his victims of their lives. ‘How can I trust this man enough to work with him?’ he wondered. He was also curious about this friend, Jonny Marling, to whom Nilsen constantly referred.
Nilsen had now apparently developed a total and unquestioning faith in Marling. Just as Nilsen had wanted to offer up everything to Masters during the high point in their relationship, so Nilsen now sought to entrust everything to this new friend. All of his writing was sent straight to Marling’s lock-up in Bath. And so, after seeing Nilsen in prison, Honeycombe immediately scheduled a meeting at Marling’s home.
When Marling opened the door of his suburban home, Honeycombe was immediately struck by the normality of his married life. Marling was 29, with a pleasant, well-spoken manner. He had two daughters and ran a successful business. And yet he also had a garage full of Nilsen’s writing and correspondence. After the pleasantries were over, Marling went through the boxes on the kitchen table.
Looking through all the letters sent to Nilsen, Honeycombe noticed many of these ‘admirers’ included photographs of themselves. Many of these, Honeycombe noticed, looked just like Nilsen himself. After about an hour going through the letters, Honeycombe asked if he could see the manuscript itself. But now there was a problem; Des, it seemed, had actually placed it in the hands of a solicitor for safe keeping. And it wouldn’t be easy to get access.
Marling explained why. After sending the manuscript to the solicitor’s – Blakemore’s of Stratford-upon-Avon – one of the firm’s partners had become nervous about the extent to which they could legally act as an intermediary. They had decided to go to a QC for clarification. This resulted in a bill of £3,000. Honeycombe didn’t want to pay it, and so, Parts II, III and IV of Nilsen’s memoirs stayed in the solicitor’s safe until 1998 when Marling came up with the money. Honeycombe returned to Australia.
One section of the book, however – ‘Orientation in Me’, Nilsen’s so-called ‘sexual history’ – was waiting for him when he got back. This volume had been written separately from the rest of the book and Nilsen had managed to have it sent out independently. Honeycombe decided to start on this and deal with the gaps in Nilsen’s life separately. But before he started investing any more of his own time in the project, he wanted to clarify in writing that Nilsen was unambiguously in agreement with what they were doing. Despite Nilsen’s reasonable manner, he didn’t trust him one bit. He told me he felt that he was being manipulated, and that Nilsen sought to destabilise him by not answering his questions.
Honeycombe’s fears that Nilsen was playing some kind of ‘power game’ were soon confirmed. Nilsen now denied ever having been aware of any plans for the book to include other people’s opinions. This was – unequivocally – to be ‘his autobiography’ he said. Honeycombe says, ‘As with others before, like Brian Masters, and most of his correspondents, Nilsen lost interest and dumped me.’
Nilsen, however, was undeterred by the setback. He wrote to P-P Hartnett – now an established author – and asked if he might help edit the book. Hartnett agreed. But when Nilsen started to try to formalise this arrangement, he discovered that the prison authorities, who had previously seemed uninterested in what he was doing, were now well aware of the nature of the manuscript and wanted to prevent him progressing with it. Nilsen recalled in a letter to me, ‘[The Home Office imposed] a ban on all discussion of the project between me and P-P. Letters were stopped and sent back to him (contracts etc). I was also informed that no draft of the MS would be allowed into prison and that I would never be allowed to see or read the published book.’
There was still nothing, however, to stop the existing drafts being published. Furthermore, Nilsen felt he and Hartnett could make some progress through coded letters and by reading out extracts on audio cassettes. He told Hartnett he was happy for him to try to start generating interest. This led, in 1998, to a piece appearing in the Daily Mirror with the headline ‘EX-TEACHER WHO WANTS £30,000 FOR KILLER NILSEN’S SICK MEMOIRS’. This sum was the amount they claimed Hartnett wan
ted for the serialisation rights. There was also talk of a film. Hartnett was quoted as saying, ‘It is sensational. It is not the rantings of a madman. It is well written. Your readers will be astounded.’
Nilsen, however, felt that even if someone was prepared to publish the book as it was, the book was still far from satisfactory. And he had also now lost faith in Harnett’s ability to complete the project. He complained to me that, based on what he had been able to see, Hartnett’s ‘voice and style intrude too much’. On top of that, the attention the news stories had brought on him had again resulted in copy of the gay pornography magazine Vulcan to be confiscated along with a ‘sexy art book’ by Pierre and Gilles. This had made him furious.
It was the Daily Mirror article about Hartnett and the ‘£30,000’ autobiography that prompted my first letter to Nilsen. Having recently completed a journalism diploma, I was in the habit of scouring the news for stories to investigate. I had previously read Killing for Company. Between that and what I had read in the newspaper, I found the idea of him writing an autobiography intriguing. How could he or any publisher justify it? It wasn’t just the offence it would cause, it was equally the prospect of him being deceptive. But for the purposes of a newspaper story, Nilsen’s possible motives just made it all the more interesting. I decided to add him to my list of speculative letters that week.
Before writing, I thought hard about how to approach him. Gitta Sereny’s book on Mary Bell had just been released – Bell had killed children when still a child herself – and rather come straight out and interrogate him about his book, I decided to ask him what he thought of that one. A week later, I received a 16-page dissertation handwritten in thick, black Biro. The subject of Mary Bell had clearly struck a chord: ‘The Mary Bell controversy,’ he told me, ‘is generated by a fear, on foundations of hypocrisy, by society which becomes deeply agitated when the spotlight of close examination falls upon itself and our own hallowed myths. History had dismissed the traumas of Mary Bell from its consciousness merely by placing her outside the realms of human experience, with the expedient use of the label “monster”, and shelving her inside a penal institution. This method spared society from having to acknowledge their association with her name and saved them the bother of having to think too much of her actions as a human in a community. Justice was done and she was gone – out of sight and out of mind. Her voice is always the voice of others.’
