I went to the armchair and under the cushion there was a length of loose upholstery strap. I approached to where he was lying in bed under the blankets. I wound this material round his neck. I think I said, ‘It’s about time you went.’ I was astride him and I tightened my grip on the material. He fought back furiously and partially raised himself up. I thought I’d be overpowered. Summoning up all my strength I forced him back down and his head struck the rim of the headrest on the bed. He still struggled fiercely so that now he was half off the bed. In about a minute he had gone limp. There was blood on the bedding. I assumed it was from his head. I checked and he was still breathing deep rasping breaths. I tightened my grip on him again around his neck for another minute or so. I let go my grip again and he appeared to be dead. I stood up. The dog was barking in the next room. I went through to pacify it. I was shaking all over with the stress of the struggle. I really thought he was going to get the better of me. I returned and was shocked to see that he had started breathing again. I looped the material round his neck again, pulled it as tight as I could and held on for what must have been two or three minutes. When I released my grip he had stopped breathing. But I noticed as he lay there on his back and I checked afterwards his heart was still beating quite strongly. I couldn’t believe it. I dragged him through to the bathroom. I pulled him over the rim of the bath so his head was hanging over the bath, put the plug in still holding him and ran the cold water full on. His head was right at the bottom of the bath. In a minute or so the water reached his nose, the rasping breath came on again. The water rose higher and I held him under. He was struggling against it. The bath continued to fill up. There were bubbles coming from his mouth or nose and he stopped struggling. I held him in that position for four or five minutes. The water had become bloody and a substance as well as particles of food was coming from his mouth. I left him there all night. I washed my hands and went through to the bedroom and pulled off the sheets and soiled parts of the bedding … I placed a clean blanket on top of the under-blanket and went to bed. I was smoking and shaking in bed. I called the dog and it came through looking a bit sheepish. I tapped the bed saying, ‘Come up here,’ and it curled up by my feet and put its head down trying to keep as quiet as possible. I must have gone to sleep quickly induced by the alcohol – I was completely exhausted … For a week afterwards, I had his finger marks on my neck.9
Graham Allen was referred to in court as the ‘omelette’ death:
The thing he wanted more than anything else was something to eat. I had very little supply in but I had a whole tray of eggs. So I whipped up a huge omelette and cooked it in the large frying-pan, put it on a plate and gave it to him. He started to eat the omelette. He must have eaten three-quarters of the omelette. I noticed he was sitting there and suddenly he appeared to be asleep or unconscious with a large piece of omelette hanging out of his mouth. I thought he must have been choking on it but I didn’t hear him choking – he was indeed deeply unconscious. I sat down and had a drink. I approached him, I can’t remember what I had in my hands now – I don’t remember whether he was breathing or not but the omelette was still protruding from his mouth. The plate was still on his lap – I removed that. I bent forward and I think I strangled him. I can’t remember at this moment what I used … I remember going forward and I remember he was dead … If the omelette killed him I don’t know, but anyway in going forward I intended to kill him. An omelette doesn’t leave red marks on a neck. I suppose it must have been me.10
Stephen Sinclair was a ‘punk’ aged twenty, often to be seen loitering in Leicester Square. He was from Perth in Scotland, and his real name was Stephen Guild, but this name was never used as he had been adopted by the Sinclair family. He had severe personality problems. Not only did he take drugs whenever he could lay his hands on them, injecting himself with ‘speed’ – a stimulant – but he suffered from the habit of slashing his arms, for no apparent reason except to hurt himself. His arms were covered in scars as a result, and he might make an attempt to injure himself at any time of day, impulsively. He was known to welfare workers in the area, who usually tried to deal with him on street level, where his unpredictability might cause less harm. He once arrived with a can of petrol, which he threatened to pour over himself and ignite. He lived in ‘squats’, derelict houses, or Salvation Army hostels, stole, burgled, was generally a nuisance and had been imprisoned more than once. His ravaged body was riddled with hepatitis B. Yet there were times when Stephen contrived a degree of self-control, and then he could be a sensitive and agreeable companion. He had plenty of ‘mates’ in the West End streets, whom he knew only by their first names. On 26 January 1983 some of these saw him go off with a strange man, but did not disturb him in case he was ‘tapping’ for money, as was his custom.
Nilsen said he could walk with him to the underground station; he was going to stop at McDonald’s in Oxford Street on the way. ‘I haven’t eaten all day,’ said Sinclair, so Nilsen offered to buy him a hamburger. They stopped at an off-licence on Shaftesbury Avenue to buy spirits (for Nilsen) and six lagers (for Sinclair). Sinclair walked down to Centrepoint to talk to his friends, asking Nilsen to wait. After ten minutes, they took the tube to Highgate and walked to Cranley Gardens. It was some time after 9 p.m.
During the evening, Sinclair disappeared into the lavatory, causing Nilsen to assume that he was injecting himself. He then dozed off in the armchair, while Nilsen sat in the other chair wearing his stereo headphones and listening to the rock opera Tommy.
At the end of this book there is a long account of the death of Stephen Sinclair, written after his killer had begun his sentence. For the moment, we shall restrict ourselves to the versions which Nilsen gave the police and which he wrote for the present author while on remand, awaiting trial:
I remember nothing else until I woke up the next morning. He was still in the armchair and he was dead. On the floor was a piece of string with a tie attached to it.11
… I entertained no thoughts of harming him, only concern and affection for his future and the pain and plight of his life. I saw him in the early hours of the morning at peace in my armchair, through a drugged haze. I remember wishing he could stay in peace like that forever. I had a feeling of easing his burden with my strength. He lay there. I later became aware of him still there, and I felt relieved that his troubles were now over. I noticed that his jeans were soaking wet with urine. I wanted to wash him clean. As if he were somehow breakable and still alive, I gently undressed him and carried him naked into the bathroom. I washed him carefully all over in the bath and sitting his limp body on the edge I towelled him dry. I laid him on my bed and put talc on him to make him look cleaner. I just sat there and watched him. He looked really beautiful like one of those Michelangelo sculptures. It seemed that for the first time in his life he was really feeling and looking the best he ever did in his whole life. I wanted to touch and stroke him, but did not. I placed two mirrors around the bed, one at the end and one at the side. I lay naked beside him but only looked at the two bodies in the mirror. I just lay there and a great peace came over me. I felt that this was it, the meaning of life, death, everything. No fear, no pain, no guilt. I could only caress and fondle the image in the mirror. I never looked at him. No sex, just a feeling of oneness. I had an erection but felt he was far too perfect and beautiful for the pathetic ritual of commonplace sex. Afterwards I dressed him in my clothes which remained on him until many days later.12
Of the other victims Nilsen has the haziest recollection. ‘I remember next day he was dead and I had probably strangled him’; ‘Next morning there was another body’; ‘My impression was that I’d strangled him because he had marks on his neck.’ It is not surprising that the one he recalls most vividly is the first, when he discovered that he was a murderer, and his degree of recollection of subsequent murders seems to depend upon the amount of alcohol consumed at the time, and/or the level of his attraction towards the person concerned. Not the least baffling of the ma
ny inconsistencies in this squalid saga is why he should have killed both people he liked and others for whom he cared not a jot, a question which makes the search for an emotional trigger all the harder. There was a break of nearly a year between the first and second killings, then a period of dense activity for eighteen months in 1980 and 1981, when ten people died, the last three victims falling in the eleven months preceding his arrest. It is significant that these three last occurred at the new address in Cranley Gardens, where Nilsen lived from 3 October 1981, and where the problems attached to the disposal of the bodies were, as we shall see, very much greater than at his previous address and may have acted as an impediment to further killings. But that presupposes a degree of conscious thought which the evidence does not always support. A fuller analysis of motive and psychiatric condition must await consideration in a later chapter, but there are three elements repeated often enough to be regarded as fairly consistent: alcohol as a means of breaking the inhibiting mechanism; music as an agent of emotional exhilaration; and loneliness as a prospect to be fought against. For the rest, the reader is invited to bear in mind some fundamental questions and relevant facts:
(a) There are minor contradictions in the murderer’s narrative, for example as to whether a victim was on the bed or on the floor. Are these to be attributed to the rush of memories brimming over and seeking release after a long silence, or does fantasy occasionally intrude as the events are relived, embellishing and confusing the strict truth? We already know that Nilsen’s imagination had travelled into dark, mysterious areas. On the other hand, his professional training and personal inclination both engendered a deep respect for accuracy.
(b) It seems incredible that he should so fiercely resent the ‘House of Horrors’ publicity which followed his arrest. Is his grip on reality so slight that he does not find it revolting that a man’s life should be squeezed out of him? Does he feel that in some way it was ‘another person’ who committed these acts, leaving Des Nilsen, the union branch secretary and responsible civil servant, inviolate? Does he confuse his feeling of doing good with the fact of doing ill? He told the author that he knew the killings were monstrous, but that he did not feel like a monster.
(c) There were sexual relations of a limited sort with six of the victims, and none at all with the other nine. The sexual element took the form of masturbation over the body, or intercrural sex, but never penetration. These are not, therefore, strictly homosexual murders. The sexual act did not take place before, during, or after death with any of them, unless intercrural sex is regarded as a hesitant variation of anal sex. He intended penetration with the first victim after death but did not persevere. Why, then, did he fondle six and ignore the rest? Were they those with whom he could most readily identify himself? Did he imagine himself as victim? The mirror fetish he had evolved was brought into play with these six men. ‘They had to be dead like my corpse in the mirror before we were fully in communion.’ Nilsen writes. ‘As my mirror fantasy developed I would whiten my face, have blue lips and staring eyes in the mirror and I would enact these things alone using my own corpse (myself) as the object of my attentions.’13 If the other nine men did not arouse him sexually, nor serve to feed his appetite for identifying himself with death, why were they killed?
(d) With some victims he does not recall the act of killing, only having noticed later that they were dead. When he does remember the act of murder, he told the police that it felt like a compulsion. ‘My sole reason for existence was to carry out that act at that moment.’ Enlarging on this, he has since written: ‘I could feel the power and the struggles of death – a series of impressions – of absolute compulsion to do, at that moment, suddenly.’ At other times he seems to imply that he is performing a charitable deed, helping the victim, giving succour and comfort, releasing him from a miserable life. He felt keenly, for instance, that he wanted to help Stephen Sinclair, whom nobody else could tolerate. ‘He seemed a total symbol of failure and defeat, miserably ruined.’ This, too, might suggest that he is transferring his own unhappiness on to the victim. His whispering words of solace to the victim after death might well be addressed to himself.
(e) Music is frequently the catalyst for death, the creator of illusions, the exciter, and ultimately culpable as an accessory in the murderer’s mind. One victim was actually listening through headphones to the London Symphony Orchestra’s medley of classical tunes to a disco beat as he was being throttled.
(f) Alcohol is another stimulant often cited by Nilsen. Can one summon the energy to kill when one is intoxicated to such a degree? Some victims fought back and there was an almighty struggle in which Nilsen might have found it difficult to win if he had been very drunk. The first man, at least, was killed in the early hours of the morning after some sleep, when the worst effects (though not all) of alcoholic intoxication would have worn off. Has Nilsen exaggerated the power of alcohol to affect his behaviour? Following his arrest, he was examined by Dr Mendoza at Hornsey Police Station and declared to show no symptoms of alcoholic withdrawal.
(g) What, finally, was the significance of the ritual whereby the body was washed and dried? Nilsen talks of purification, and even uses words like ‘sacred’ and ‘holy’, not the usual vocabulary one might expect from a professed sceptic. Are we dealing with a corrupted religious instinct? In short, was Dennis Nilsen ‘possessed’? And if so, what is there in his life, as related in earlier chapters, which made him ripe for possession? Are there clues which might have indicated that his personality was likely to disintegrate and open the doors to some objective force of evil? If not, is he just like the rest of us?
Possible answers to these questions might be offered by psychiatry, by philosophy, or by intuition. They might also be suggested by Nilsen himself if we observe the way in which he coped with this new dimension to his life; how he adjusted (if he ever did) to a recognition of himself as a killer, and what thoughts assailed him from New Year’s Day 1979 to 9 February 1983 and beyond. One of the most astonishing aspects of the case is Nilsen’s ability to go about his daily work with energy and enthusiasm, to go out for drinks, walk the dog, and even entertain people peaceably at his flat, while all the time there was a collection of bodies under his floor or in his cupboard. Eventually, he would have to deal with their disposal. Does this ability display callousness and indifference, or merely a practical grasp of what had to be done? Most murderers are ordinary, banal people faced with the consequences of an extraordinary event. Is Dennis Nilsen one of them, or does his story set him apart as an unfeeling creature of scarcely human dimensions? Merely to consider the question is to inquire into an aspect of the human predicament, with its decisions, its catastrophes, and its responsibilities. The first step is to listen to Nilsen’s own account of how he saw himself during those years when he and he only knew that he had the hands of a killer.
7
DISPOSAL
‘I cannot judge or see myself in any of it.’1 During the course of 1980, when Nilsen had already killed two people and was forced to recognise that the initial event could no longer be dismissed as an isolated incident whose detection he had been lucky to escape, he felt bewildered and apprehensive. He now knew that what had happened before was likely to happen again, and by the end of the year there were several more bodies to confirm his worst fears. Should he give himself up? He told the police that one side of him was ‘talking about survival, shame, exposure, position, the future – even the dog, what’s going to happen to the dog. There was always this battle between doing the right thing and surviving and escaping the consequences of these actions. It’s a perfectly natural side of someone to want to survive and avoid detection.’2 He went so far as to say that if it had not been for the dog he might well have surrendered himself to the police, a possibility that the investigating officers treated with the greatest scepticism. After the third killing in May 1980 he says he was growing less and less ‘emotional’ about it and was simply resigned to the knowledge that he was a compulsi
ve killer. But in moments of introspection, resignation gave way to confused disbelief:
Hanging would have been no deterrent in my case. I was not even thinking clearly about what I was exactly doing. Power of responsibility was nil at these times. There was fear afterwards, with a massive and suppressed remorse. I looked at a photo of Martyn Duffey today and it shocked me seeing him so lifelike in that photo and dead, gone, destroyed by me, I can’t stop thinking about it. I am not full of self-pity, just amazed that all this – from beginning to end – could ever happen. I should feel like some two-headed monster – all I see in the mirror is me, just the same old respectable, friendly, helpful, responsible me. I do not feel mentally ill. I have no headaches, pressures or voices, nothing in my thoughts or actions to suggest insanity. Madness, as Quixote would say, is seeing life as it is and not as it should be; to seek treasure where there is only trash; to surrender dreams to be what you are not.3
Killing For Company Page 15
