Burned and Flushed: The Dennis Nilsen Serial Killer Case

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"You're listening to 10 Minute Murder."

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Between 1978 and 1983, Dennis Nielsen murdered at least 12 young men in North London.

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He kept their bodies as companions, burned them in his garden,

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and when that became impossible, tried flushing them down the toilet.

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Police ignored survivors who reported him.

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The case only broke open when a plumber found human fingers blocking a drain.

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This is the story of the killer, the victim's nobody looked for, and the system that failed them all.

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So there's this moment in February 1983,

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when a plumber named Michael Catrin was standing outside an apartment building in North London,

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looking down into a drain that's completely blocked.

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He's been called because residents are complaining about the smell and about backed up toilets.

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When he gets to the drain cover, takes it off and shines his light down there,

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he sees what looks like flesh, actual flesh, and four human fingers.

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Dennis Nielsen, the tenant from the attic flat, comes out to see what's happening.

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Michael shows him what he's found, and Nielsen completely calm,

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says it looks like someone's been flushing down their Kentucky Fried Chicken.

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Kentucky Fried Chicken, that's how Dennis Nielsen's five-year spree ended.

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Not because of brilliant detective work, not because someone connected the dots,

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because he was trying to flush pieces of his victims down a toilet

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that couldn't handle what he was asking it to do.

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But let's rewind and go back to the beginning.

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Dennis Andrew Nielsen was born in November 1945 in Frazierburg, Scotland.

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When he was six years old, his grandfather died.

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Nielsen was close to him, really close, and that death hit really hard.

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What came next might have been worse.

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His family took him to view the body at the funeral.

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For a six-year-old kid, seeing someone he loved, lying there dead,

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created this twisted connection in his brain between affection and death,

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between love and loss and corpses.

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Later in life, Nielsen would point to that moment as the thing that broke something inside him.

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Whether that's true or another convenient explanation, we'll never really know.

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There's some debate about whether Nielsen was being honest about his childhood

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or constructing a narrative that absolved him from any responsibility.

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At 16, Nielsen joined the army.

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He worked in the Army Catering Corps as a cook and a butcher.

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He learned how to break down animal carcasses, how to cut through bone and tissue,

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how to portion things out efficiently.

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These were practical skills for military food service.

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They also turned out to be practical skills for something much darker.

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After leaving the military in 1972, Nielsen tried joining the police.

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During his training, he developed this fascination with morgue visits and autopsied bodies.

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The people who knew him said he seemed drawn to death in a way that wasn't normal,

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even for someone training in law enforcement.

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He didn't last long in police work.

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Eventually, he ended up working a civil service job,

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helping people find work at a job center in Kintish Town.

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But underneath that ordinary exterior, Nielsen was struggling with something that he couldn't resolve.

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He was gay, living in a time and place where that came with its own challenges.

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More than that, he desperately wanted companionship

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but couldn't handle the emotional complexity of an actual relationship.

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He wanted someone there, someone who wouldn't leave, someone who wouldn't reject him,

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someone who wouldn't make demands or have their own needs.

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His solution was murder.

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On December 30, 1978, Nielsen committed his first confirmed killing at his home on Melrose Avenue in North London.

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The victim was 14-year-old Stephen Holmes.

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The boy had been to a rock concert and was trying to buy alcohol at the Crickle Wood Arms Pub.

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Nielsen brought him home.

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They drank and the next morning when Holmes tried to leave, Nielsen strangled him with a necktie.

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He then drowned him in a bucket of water in the kitchen.

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Stephen Holmes, 14-years-old, his family had no idea what happened to him for almost three decades.

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It wasn't until 2006 that police confirmed he was Nielsen's first victim.

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After the murder, Nielsen did something that would become his signature.

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He bathed the body, dressed it, kept it in his flat for days, sometimes weeks.

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He would sit with it, talk to it, create this illusion of companionship.

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The body became what he wanted.

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Silent, compliant, unable to leave.

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This is Necrophilia, the attraction to corpses.

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For Nielsen, it wasn't only sexual.

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It was about control and connection and this deeply broken need for presence without the risk of emotional pain.

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Psychologists who later studied his case described it as a way of deadening anything that felt threatening or dangerous in his desires.

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When he was finally done with the body, when it started to decay too much to maintain the illusion, he would dissect it in his bathtub.

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His butchering skills from the army came back.

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He treated it like any other task, breaking down the body into manageable pieces.

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At Melrose Avenue, he had a garden.

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He would burn the remains in bonfires.

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To cover the smell of burning human flesh, which has a distinct smell, he'd top each fire with an old car tire.

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The rubber would burn and create this thick, accurate smoke that masked what was really happening.

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Between 1978 and late 1981, Nielsen killed somewhere between 10 and 12 people at that address.

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Young men, mostly.

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Many of them vulnerable in some way.

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Gay men at a time in being openly gay could be dangerous.

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Homeless kids, runaways, sex workers.

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People whose disappearances often went unreported or were treated as low priority by police.

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Kenneth Ockenden was a 23-year-old Canadian tourist visiting relatives in London.

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Nielsen met him in December 1979 and strangled him with headphone cords.

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16-year-old Martin Duffy was homeless, lured back with promises of shelter and a meal in May 1980.

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Billy Sutherland was 26, a father who'd come to London looking for work.

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He visited the job center where Nielsen worked and never made it home.

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And that's a crucial part of this story.

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Nielsen wasn't some criminal mastermind.

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He wasn't particularly careful.

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There were survivors who got away.

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Andrew Ho, a student from Hong Kong, escaped after Nielsen tried to strangle him during what Nielsen claimed was bondage play.

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Ho reported it to the police in October 1979.

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Douglas Stewart overpowered Nielsen and escaped.

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Paul Nobs woke up with bruises and a cutthroat, confused about what happened.

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Carl Stoddard nearly drowned in Nielsen's bathtub before somehow regaining consciousness days later.

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These men reported attacks to the police.

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They described being strangled, losing consciousness, waking up confused and injured.

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The police didn't follow up aggressively.

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These were young men from marginalized communities.

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The systematic homophobia at the time meant that their reports were dismissed or minimized.

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Nielsen kept killing because the system gave him room to operate.

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By late 1981, the situation at Melrose Avenue was becoming unsustainable.

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He'd had to burn so many bodies that neighbors were starting to notice.

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The logistics were getting messy, so Nielsen moved to a new place,

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an attic flat at 23 Kranley Gardens in the Muzzwell Hill area of North London.

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This move changed everything.

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The new flats didn't have a garden.

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No space for bonfires.

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Nielsen needed a new disposal method, and the one he chose was catastrophically stupid.

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He started cutting bodies into smaller and smaller pieces and flushing them down the toilet.

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Human tissue doesn't break down and plumbing the way Nielsen seemed to think it would.

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Bones don't just dissolve.

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Flesh clogs pipes.

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Between late 1981 and early 1983, he killed at least three more people at Kranley Gardens.

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John Howlett, a 23-year-old guardsman, Graham Allen, 27, and finally Steven Sinclair,

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a 20-year-old struggling with addiction who Nielsen met on Oxford Street, January 26, 1983.

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With each murder, more remains went into the drains.

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The system was backing up.

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Residents started complaining about the smell and the blocked toilets.

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Nielsen himself even wrote a complaint letter about the plumbing.

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That's when Michael Catrenn got called on February 8, 1983.

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When he found the fingers and the flesh in the drain,

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he told a supervisor, Gary Wheeler.

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They came back the next morning and they found that someone had cleared most of the drain overnight.

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Only scraps of flesh and four bones remained.

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They called the police, like they should have done the day before when they found the fingers.

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Detective Chief Inspector Peter J showed up with colleagues and waited for Nielsen to come home from work.

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When he arrived at 5.15 pm, J asked him directly where the rest of the body was.

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Nielsen didn't hesitate. He invited them inside and immediately started confessing.

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He told J he'd killed 15 to 16 young men that he'd picked them up at pubs, brought them home and strangled them.

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The confession came fast, almost like a relief.

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Five years of secret murders, of maintaining this double life, of disposing of body after body.

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When he finally got called, Nielsen seemed almost eager to unload it all.

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Inside the flat, police found the smell of decomposition overwhelming.

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Nielsen showed them to garbage bags in his wardrobe filled with human remains.

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Body parts in a tea chest, more remains under a drawer in the bathroom.

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He calmly directed them to everything, like he was giving a tour.

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Police searched both residences. At crannly gardens, they found remains of three victims.

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At the old Melrose Avenue address, they found charred bone fragments in the garden, evidence of all of those bonfires.

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Nielsen went to trial on October 24, 1983, charged with six counts of murder and two counts of attempted murder.

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His defense argued diminished responsibility, claiming an abnormality of mind reduced his culpability.

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The diagnosis that seemed to fit was skitzoid personality disorder,

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a condition characterized by detachment from social relationships and emotional flatness.

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For Nielsen, that meant wanting companionship, but being psychologically incapable of handling the emotional demands of an actual living person.

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During the trial, prosecutors presented Nielsen's own writings.

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In one passage, he compared the murder process to a meal.

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The victim was the dirty platter after the feast.

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Disposing of the body was only washing up a clinically ordinary task.

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That metaphor tells you everything about how he viewed his crimes.

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The murder was functional. It gave him access to what he wanted, the body, the silent companionship.

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Everything after was clean up. The jury didn't buy it.

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On November 4, 1983, Nielsen was convicted and sentenced to life in prison with a recommendation of 25 years minimum.

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In 1994, that was upgraded to a whole life sentence.

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In prison, he spent nearly two decades writing his autobiography.

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Six thousand pages called "History of a Drowning Boy."

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The home office blocked its publication while he was alive.

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It was eventually published after his death, with a forward warning readers not to take Nielsen's self-analysis at face value.

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Dennis Nielsen died on May 12, 2018 at York Hospital. He was 72.

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The real legacy isn't only about one killer, it's about how society failed the victims.

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These were young men whose lives were already precarious.

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When they disappeared, nobody looked very hard.

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When survivors reported attacks, police didn't investigate thoroughly.

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The systemic homophobia created an environment where Nielsen could operate for five years.

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Twelve to fifteen victims. Multiple survivors who tried to report him.

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And it only stopped because of a plumbing failure.

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The Nielsen case is a reminder that protecting society means protecting all of its members, especially the most vulnerable.

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When we decide some lives matter less than others, when we allow prejudice to determine which disappearances deserve investigation,

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we create spaces where predators can thrive.

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Dennis Nielsen was a broken person who did monstrous things.

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The system that allowed him to continue for five years was broken too.

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Thanks for listening to "10 Minute Murder."

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Bingeable True Crime Stories. My name is Joe, and let's get to this email because it's a super strange one.

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Subject random but important.

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Joe, if you found a brief case full of cash on your doorstep, what's your first move?

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My friend group had a heated debate about this, and you somehow became the tiebreaker. Choose wisely.

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Sam and Flagstaff, Arizona. Sam, this feels like a setup.

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And I don't like it, but I will answer. Obviously, I called the police.

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And for no other reason, but whoever left this on my doorstep knows where I live.

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If they come back and go, "Oh shit, I left this on accident on your door."

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And I go, "I don't know what you're talking about." Clearly, they know I took it, and they'd probably inflict some kind of bodily harm.

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But if you call the police, you can go, "Hey man, there's a briefcase of cash on my doorstep. What do you expect me to do?"

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They still might do something to you, but at least the police are involved now.

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I know the obvious answer is, "You keep that. Why shouldn't you be the beneficiary?"

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And the reason is, like I said, they know where you live.

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Unless it's enough money to take it and just run, change your identity, and all that stuff.

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Which if it's in a briefcase, it's not going to be enough money. But you get what I'm saying.

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Hey, if you're a brand new listener to the podcast, this is a weird one to jump in on, but make sure you hit subscribe wherever you're listening right now.

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Go to 10minuteMurder.com, you can contact me, sign up for the newsletter, read the blog, all kinds of things about the podcast are there.

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And that's going to do it. That's your episode for today. Thank you again for listening to 10 Minute Murder.

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See you next time.