Dennis Nilsen - Conversations with Britain's Most Evil Serial Killer

by Russ Coffey

  Mackeith analysed his problems as starting in childhood, where he thought he had developed ‘maladaptive patterns of behaviour’. These included an inability to express feelings other than through anger, which came suddenly and forcefully. This lack of emotional development meant that when Nilsen felt anxious about a failing relationship, such as that with Gallichan, he would run away – both literally and metaphorically. Mackeith had noticed in his own interviews that Nilsen’s anxiety might cause him to jump to conclusions about what others were thinking.

  None of this, in itself, though, was more than neurotic. Something else in Nilsen’s mental development was much more disturbing. Mackeith related two stories that demonstrated how Nilsen had expressly associated unconsciousness with sex. Both stories are mentioned in Nilsen’s autobiography, and have appeared in the narrative of this book. The first was walking into the sea at the age of 10 and being rescued by an older boy who masturbated over him. The other was the story of the Arab taxi driver he claimed to have killed in Aden in self-defence. Mackeith said that these stories demonstrated an ‘extraordinary’ interest in the concept of unconsciousness in a sexual context.

  The psychiatrist proceeded to talk about how he’d heard Nilsen would masturbate with mirrors and beside corpses prior to dismemberment. He believed this was more than simple sexual deviance. It was part of the repeated instances of Nilsen’s personality breaking down.

  Mackeith thought Nilsen’s personality breakdowns were far more significant to the crimes than the massive quantities of drink that had also been consumed. He explained how they had come about. First, there was the so-called ‘compartmentalisation’ – what Mackeith described as Nilsen’s ability to separate out his psychological functions ‘in an exceptional way’. He thought this split in his personality, in combination with a reduced sense of identity, made him prone to bouts of ‘depersonalisation’, or ‘dissociation’. In these states, Nilsen would have felt ‘removed’ from himself, as if watching someone else. These instances are strikingly similar to the ‘trance-like ritual’, and ‘dreamlike states’ which Nilsen describes.

  Another constant character trait in Nilsen that Mackeith perceived was his aggression. He considered it to be especially pronounced when his point of view wasn’t being met. It seemed to Mackeith that, in interpersonal situations, Nilsen was suspicious, paranoid, grandiose and craved attention. Mackeith even suggested that some killings might have been triggered when people didn’t listen closely enough to him. In a written report, he said that were Nilsen to go to prison, if he didn’t get enough attention he might develop a florid, psychotic mental illness or become extremely depressed.

  Alan Green’s strategy was to try to make Mackeith’s opinions seem like imprecise waffle. He asked the jury to consider whether by attributing to Nilsen almost every disorder in the book, it actually showed that Mackeith was undecided. More to the point, Mackeith’s account didn’t explain precisely was going on when Nilsen killed. He seemed undecided, for instance, as to whether it was in blackouts or fits of rage.

  Green then asked Mackeith how he knew everything he claimed to about Nilsen’s past. Mackeith admitted that all he had had to work on were Nilsen’s own self-reports. Green wanted to know what literal truth he ascribed to these, in particular Nilsen’s drowning and Aden stories. Mackeith replied that their literal truth was beside the point; Nilsen was capable of believing quite contradictory things at different levels of functioning. What always mattered was his truth.

  The question still remained of how one could actually believe anything generated by Nilsen. Green claimed he was an inveterate liar whose talking was designed just to deceive. He reminded the court how, for instance, Nilsen had told guests he was married or had seen active service in Northern Ireland. Green added that it stood to reason that, if Nilsen hadn’t been so deceptive, he would not have managed to kill 15 men before being caught.

  Green thought that, between night and day, he didn’t so much ‘separate out mental functioning’ as put on an act. When strangers came back to Nilsen’s flat, it didn’t ‘just happen’ – he deliberately asked them back. Green read out some of Nilsen’s statements about how he had invited victims back, and then turned to Mackeith and asked him whether or not he thought, by the evidence of Nilsen’s own stories, he showed resourcefulness and cunning. Mackeith didn’t think so.

  Green then reminded the jury how Nilsen had allowed Duffey’s knives to rust, and picked up his belongings from the left-luggage at Euston Station. As for the so-called ‘depersonalisation’, how, he asked, was he able to stop midway through killing Stottor? When he killed Barlow and John the Guardsman, he clearly wasn’t in a trance; he did it consciously just because they had annoyed him.

  Mackeith interjected, stating that just because Nilsen seemed to be saying he killed without motive, it certainly didn’t mean that was really the case. Nilsen, he pointed out, had personality problems and it needed expert judgement to interpret the truth behind his statements. He remained resolute on his opinion, but he wouldn’t say whether Nilsen’s mental problems were sufficient for a verdict of diminished responsibility. That had to be up to the jury.

  ‘Quite,’ said Green. He read out the statute, and then asked if there was anything in Nilsen’s statements that could constitute an ‘arrested development of mind’. He was, after all, an intelligent and lucid man. Mackeith suggested that the definition be widened to ‘arrested development of personality’. The judge agreed.

  Dr Patrick Gallwey, the defence’s second psychiatric expert witness, had receding hair and a professorial demeanour. Like Mackeith, he felt Nilsen suffered from a retardation of personality, but not intelligence. Unlike his colleague, however, he didn’t think Nilsen’s condition could be found in the ICD classification. He attempted his own definition, which was so complicated it ended up confusing both judge and jury. It was called ‘Borderline, False-Self as if Pseudo-Normal, Narcissistic Personality Disorder’.

  It was a ‘borderline’ disorder in that Nilsen was unstable and suffered from emotional extremes and black-and-white thinking. Gallwey called the condition ‘pseudo-normal’, as throughout Nilsen’s adult life, he appeared to be normal, whereas he was really always on the verge of tipping into a ‘false-self’. The latter was a paranoid and schizoid personality that took over during times of high stress. Being ‘schizoid’ meant Nilsen’s emotionally blunt tendencies were intensified to the point that he couldn’t feel ‘normally’ at all.

  Even during his ‘pseudo-normal’ periods, however, Nilsen’s emotional responses were poor. Gallwey said he constantly sought power because he felt so cut off, inferior and worthless. He also explained how Nilsen’s schizoid behaviour was of the type that involved a rich, elaborate fantasy life – a trait now more commonly associated with schizo-typal cases. This, however, was generally well hidden. His narcissism was more obvious. It showed in Nilsen’s constant grandiosity. He told the court: ‘He really does think he is the murderer of the century.’

  In response to some blank looks from the jury, Gallwey then tried to clarify the relationship between Nilsen’s various mental states. Normally, he said, Nilsen was able to keep his paranoid and schizoid disturbances in check. But there was always conflict going on; psychological pressure would build up, and need release. This happened in episodic breakdowns where he was now predominately schizoid. Gallwey clarified the meaning of the word – it didn’t mean Nilsen was delusional, but that his emotions had stopped functioning. The breakdowns were ‘psycho-sexual’, violent, sudden and seemingly without motive. When they happened, Nilsen wasn’t in control.

  Gallwey tried to explain why these breakdowns happened. He said Nilsen particularly needed close relationships to stave off his ‘false self’. Life in London had been a recipe for disaster. The break-up with Gallichan may well have been the last straw. He said it left Nilsen ‘drowning in his own nightmares’. With no anchor, his schizoid tendencies started taking over. These were very distinctive – of the t
ype, Gallwey said, that ‘indulges imagination for its own sake’. He explained that while such tendencies might also be found in some artists, in Nilsen they were just destructive, removing the last of his emotions. At the time of the murders, then, the victims had no meaning to him as real individuals. He was so lost in a depersonalised state that he became muddled as to their identity, and sometimes thought of them as part of himself. Nilsen echoes this when he talks about ‘fantasy props’ and ‘dualism’.

  Gallwey said he saw the murders as being entirely consistent with a ‘false-self’ personality finding itself in the wrong set of circumstances. Even though the killing of Malcolm Barlow and John Howlett seemed to contradict the theory of episodic breakdowns, the psychiatrist believed, in truth, Nilsen had simply misremembered his thoughts and feelings.

  Gallwey thought that during the period of the murders, Nilsen would have been unable to understand what was going on. He explained how he had tried cutting back on drink but said that that could not have helped at all. But he thought Nilsen had indeed suffered from diminished responsibility, not because he didn’t understand his mental problems, but because when he murdered he couldn’t emotionally distinguish between reality and fantasy. That meant there could be no ‘malice aforethought’. Gallwey explained that feeling was a crucial part of intent. He said that the episode with Carl Stottor, rather than showing a cold-hearted cover-up, demonstrated Nilsen had clearly gone in and out of a stage of dissociation and afterwards was ‘reassembling’ his personality. This showed the difference between the Nilsen who had emotions and the one who killed.

  Allan Green put it to Gallwey that Nilsen knew exactly what might happen when he deliberately invited people back. Gallwey replied he might have factually known but he may not have emotionally understood what he was doing. And if he didn’t feel his actions were wrong he would not have been able fundamentally to ‘know what he was doing’. He would have known the ‘nature of his acts’ but not the ‘quality’ of them.

  On Monday, 31 October, Lawrence asked Gallwey to recap. He focused on three main points. First, that the murders were part of a defence mechanism that prevented Nilsen from becoming completely psychotic by directing destruction outwards. Second, he said that if a person’s emotional make-up stops working, he can be unable to attribute meaning to the things he does. And finally, he emphasised his belief that Nilsen’s schizoid tendencies had pushed his fantasy life into an abnormal and destructive place.

  Lawrence then reminded the court what sort of abnormality they were looking for. He said it was one that would ‘substantially impair his judgement’ and was ‘a state of mind so different from that of ordinary human beings that the reasonable man would term it abnormal’.

  There was only one witness left – Dr Paul Bowden – again from the Bethlem and Maudsley hospital. His role was to ‘rebut’ the testimony of Mackeith and Gallwey. He had one big advantage over them – only he had really got to know the defendant. In fact, he had seen him 16 times dating back to Nilsen’s first week on remand. He’d also spoken to others who knew Nilsen, including Cathy Hughes and Roger Farnham from the Job Centre, former boyfriend David Gallichan, and the last person to stay with Nilsen, Trevor Simpson.

  Tall and moustachioed with combed-back hair, he approached the box in a cool, precise manner. On the Monday and Tuesday, he explained why he could find no abnormality in Nilsen which fitted the definition of the Homicide Act 1957. He admitted he did find Nilsen ‘abnormal’ in a loose, colloquial sense. But Bowden didn’t feel Nilsen suffered from a mental disorder; he said he was simply a man with deviant desires who used deception to make it look like he couldn’t help it. He immediately pointed to the way he would constantly revise his childhood accounts, to make himself seem more emotionally deprived than he had originally claimed.

  Bowden considered Nilsen to be a man with normal mental functioning who also had extreme guilt about his own sexuality. As he felt guilty, he figured he might as well do bad things. He said the murders were conscious, deliberate acts to satisfy his desires. Nilsen’s recollections, he said, were far too strong for there to be any question of the dissociation the other psychiatrists had talked about. He said he had other experience of such things and they invariably involved a long black-out.

  But, as much as Bowden’s testimony chimed with a ‘good sense’ view, his opinions soon became more counter-intuitive. It seemed odd to say, as he did, that masturbating by corpses wasn’t sexual or powdering of the bodies was just a practical measure to stop them from smelling. Furthermore, it seemed very peculiar to say that Nilsen’s grandiosity was merely a reaction to being caught.

  The defence asked why he had first said he found no ‘abnormality of mind’ in Nilsen, and then later changed that to an ‘insignificant abnormality’. Bowden replied he’d changed his mind. He had simply discovered more about him. It was like when he’d signed the papers to put Nilsen on suicide watch in Brixton. Nilsen had seemed agitated but, over the next few months, he felt he had got a deeper measure of him and his complaining nature.

  Bowden simply considered Nilsen to be a liar and manipulator. As such, he chose to ignore many of the things he had been told by him. For example, he didn’t believe the death of Nilsen’s grandfather had had the damaging effect Nilsen claimed. As for Nilsen’s isolation, he said he believed this was a result of, rather than the cause of, being a murderer. Finally, he felt that Nilsen had been perfectly capable of forming personal relationships, but had forced himself to objectify people. Bowden spelt out what he meant by that: ‘It made it easier to kill people.’ To illustrate how Nilsen deliberately suppressed his conscious, he described how when talking about the killing of John Howlett, he had to leave the room until he regained his composure.

  Allen Green summed up his case over Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning. His message was simple: Nilsen was cunning and had used his intelligence to avoid being detected while continuing to murder for pleasure. The jury were reminded of the level of planning involved in warning Stottor about the sleeping bag zip, the preparation of the tie to kill Sinclair, and allowing Martyn Duffey’s knives to rust. The fact he had been drunk was no excuse for any of his actions.

  Ivan Lawrence’s final address appealed to plain reason. He went through Nilsen’s offences, crime by crime, and asked the court, again and again, ‘Is there not anything wrong with this man?’ Just because Bowden – or ‘Dr No’ as he called him – had failed to see anything wrong, it didn’t mean that the jury had to ‘ignore the blindingly obvious’. He might not have been insane ‘but he wasn’t normal either’.

  On Thursday morning, Judge Croom-Johnson instructed the jury. He told them if they considered it possible that Nilsen did not understand what he was doing when he was killing, they should return a verdict of manslaughter. He closed by saying, ‘There are evil people who do evil things. Committing murder is one of them. There must be no excuses for Nilsen if he has moral defects. A nasty nature is not an arrested or retarded development of mind.’

  The jury retired shortly before lunchtime on Thursday, 3 November. It had been expected that they would come back that afternoon. They were, however, deadlocked at 6-6.

  The next day, at 7.00am, Nilsen wrote a diary entry in his cell, which Brian Masters has kindly permitted me to reproduce here: ‘I rise early, still an unconvicted man, to pen this letter. The jury is still out (and so are the Leyland workers). It will be 5 November tomorrow and society’s turn to throw me on the bonfire.’ At 11.25am, the judge said that he was prepared to accept a majority verdict. That verdict came through at 4.25pm – on the attempted murder of Paul Nobbs, everyone agreed that Nilsen was guilty. On every other count, the jury was split 10-2 in favour of a guilty verdict.

  Dennis Nilsen was sentenced to life imprisonment with a recommendation that he serve a minimum of 25 years. He was taken down to the cells, and then off to Wormwood Scrubs. While he sat in front of the television in the hospital area of the Scrubs, his first thoughts were self-pityin
g ones about being ‘expelled from society’. The next morning, when he woke up, he penned a letter to Brian Masters, angry about what he had read in the News of the World by John Lisners, whom he knew was writing a book about him. Nilsen’s previously unpublished words are provided courtesy of Brian Masters: ‘I arrived at Wormwood Scrubs last night. I read John Lisners’ “sour grapes” as he, in his ‘professional knowledge’ of me summed up my life and trial. It can’t be much of a book, which is largely based on fourth-hand knowledge … I exercise a great sense of relief that the trial is now finally over. I will see Ralph Haeems soon in order to discuss the merits and practicalities of appealing or not.’

  11

  THE END OF THE ROAD

  ‘In a most staggering paradox, I only became mentally liberated as a result of my arrest.’

  DENNIS NILSON, TO MATTHEW MALEKOS

  On 9 March 2010, the European Court of Human Rights announced their refusal to hear a final appeal by Dennis Nilsen to have his manuscript returned so that he could work on it. Nilsen had now taken his case as far as it seemed he logically could, and had failed. The European judges had made final something that their British counterparts had ruled on seven years before. This was to uphold that the Prison Service’s verdict that, in his autobiography, Nilsen: (1) had nothing say in the public interest; (2) wanted to spread ‘highly personal’ details of some offences along with ‘lurid and pornographic passages’; and (3) sought both to justify his conduct and denigrate people he disliked.