All language subtitles for Memories.of_.a.Murderer.The_.Nilsen.Tapes_.2021.1080p.WEB_.H264-BIGDOC

One, two, three,
four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.

I think this recording machine

might be under some kind of strain.

Speech oscillates
from one speaker to the next.

Anyway, let's begin the recording proper.

My name is Dennis Nilsen.

My companions, as you can hear,

are a couple of mating budgies,
Hamish and Tweetles.

He's a good boy, Hamish.

I sit here,

smoking a Scaferlati roll-up cigarette.

Oh dear.

Yeah, we are ruining our healths-ssss.

Well, we've all gotta die of something,
haven't we?

This morning, a friendly screw
kindly lent me his News of the World,

an amusement sheet posing as a newspaper...

and he brought to my attention page 21.

"Dennis Nilsen
makes a sick joke of his crimes

by having pinned up in his cell

a poster of The Silence of the Lambs star
Hannibal Lecter."

"And he believes that one day,

his grisly exploits
will be immortalized in a film."

End of story.

What a load of rubbish!

Good evening. Scotland Yard launched
its biggest murder investigation today...

...after the discovery of bodies in London.

In the next few hours,

the scale of this crime
will begin to unfold.

Well,
what is this article's accuracy?

Oh yes,
I was definitely convicted for murder.

Eh, but apart from that,
most of the stuff is just pure fiction.

The prosecution
alleged a pattern of murder.

The public gallery
of No. 1 Court has been full every day.

Those who'd expected to hear horrors
were not disappointed.

Great. "Des Nilsen, the monster."

"Oh, Nilsen."
As soon as you mention the name,

people have made their mind up about it.

Dennis Nilsen,
the man who once called himself

"the murderer of the century"...

They are still trying
to plug this image

of the dangerous creature
so beloved of fiction,

the movie monsters.

Now Nilsen wants
to publish his autobiography

from behind prison bars.

It's a tale beyond comprehension.

Right, let's go!

London, 1983.

Good afternoon to you.

Well, it's decidedly parky
to say the least.

And, in fact, it's not gonna get
any warmer, really, in the next few days

because we're going to keep
these north to northeasterly...

I certainly remember the day
because it was cold and miserable outside,

and I was sitting in my office

when a colleague of mine told me

that he had been called
to Cranley Gardens,

where suspected human remains
were pulled out of a manhole there.

When we got there, the tenants
were standing around the manhole.

The toilets had been blocked,

and an engineer had been called
to clear the drains,

and he discovered
huge amounts of flesh and bone.

I have a limited knowledge,

but very heavily suspected

that it wasn't, um, animal, shall we say.

Did anyone express
any particular interest in what you found?

Yes. The guy, I believe,
was living in the top-floor flat.

Then the tenants told me
that the previous evening,

around about midnight,

they had heard a scraping noise outside.

When they went to the front door
and opened it,

they saw the man from the upstairs flat.

He was dressed in just a simple vest.

And bearing in mind,
this was February, freezing cold.

And they asked him if he was all right.

And he said,
"I am. I've just been outside for a pee."

I made further inquiries
at Cranley Gardens

and found out he was
at the local Jobcentre where he worked.

And he normally returned from his work

at half past five every evening.

We then found out
that the pieces of bones from the drains

were indeed from a human body.

And the pathologist said
that the piece of flesh

appeared to have
strangulation marks on it.

And lo and behold,

we saw a man walking up the road.

♪ Oh, the time is coming ♪

♪ The time is coming! ♪

He was very calm indeed.

When I arrived
to Cranley Gardens,

the police were unsure of their ground.

They were fishing tentatively
in the hope of gaining information

concerning the samples of human flesh
found down the house...

...drains.

Nilsen then said, "Very strange
that police officers should come

and talk to me about my drains."

But he let us into the house...

...and we went up to the attic flat.

And as soon
as he opened the door,

the smell just came at you.

I knew that awful smell.

So we said to him...

"Stop messing about.
Where's the rest of the body?"

And he looked at me,

and he pointed

to the wardrobe.

And when I opened it,

there were
two huge, black bin sacks, sagging.

So I got him by the cuff,

and he was told that he was being arrested
on suspicion of murder.

On the way back
to the police station,

I sat beside him,

but something was bothering me.

Those two bin sacks were huge.

In the car, on the journey
to the police station, I was asked...

"Are we talking
about one body or two here?"

I immediately replied with...

"15 or 16."

It made the hair
on the back of my neck stand up.

And I could see
the detective chief inspector

looking into the mirror at me.

And I had to tell him
to concentrate on the driving

'cause he started to veer across the road.

And it hit me.

"We have a serial killer here."

I glide
down a long corridor with my escort,

and I'm lodged in the first cell
at the end of the line.

I am deposited there,
in this antiquated room,

with a small bench

and rough, upright,
small stool of a table.

I sit there,
light up a cigarette, and pause.

We didn't know for sure

if what Nilsen was telling us
was actually truthful.

You think, "15 or 16 people?"

But we've only had the authority
to keep him in custody for 48 hours,

and that's it.

You've gotta get
everything out of this guy that you can.

But you don't wanna put
that much pressure on him

that he doesn't wanna talk to you.

Wary of the expected
long train of questioning,

I surprised the CID trio

by interjecting
that I would tell them everything.

Nilsen wouldn't stop talking.

He started telling us
exactly what had happened.

He would go into a pub

and speak to someone,

take them back to his flat.

They would be drinking.
They'd be listening to music.

The following morning,
Nilsen would wake up,

and there would be a dead body beside him.

And when he was pressed on this,
he just said

he couldn't remember what had happened.

Normally, in a murder case,

you'll have a victim,

and then
you will go looking for the murderer.

In this case, we had a murderer,

but he didn't know who the victims were.

So we had to go backwards, if you like,

and trace all the victims.

There was no questions
I refused to answer.

Going into minute detail.

If anything...

no other British murderer

has ever been so forthright...

in confronting his offending behavior
than I have been.

He was giving very limited information,
but they were mainly young men.

But I thought,

if what Nilsen was telling us
was truthful,

how on earth, in a place like London,

could 15 people have been murdered
without anyone noticing?

T he police had all the ingredients

to lay a charge against me.

This would have placed the whole matter
under the protection of sub judice

and out of reach
of the sensation-hungry media.

This was to be the biggest case
in all of their careers,

and in order to enhance their own place
in the professional public spotlight,

they made sure
that the entire nation knew about it

when they sat down
to their breakfast tables.

I was up at the office,

and the news desk called me over
and gave me this sheet of paper

that said
that a plumber working for Dyno-Rod

had found pieces of human flesh
down a drain.

I phoned Scotland Yard,
but they knew nothing about it.

So I carried on and wrote the story.

But there was resistance
to the story being used,

because in those days,

you never really wanted
to upset people over the breakfast table.

And there's no doubt

that the reality of Cattran's discoveries

would make people dry heave
over their cornflakes.

So I had no idea
if the story was gonna be used.

Well, I was told
there had been a... a murder inquiry

at Cranley Gardens,

and could I get up there
as quickly as possible?

Well, I wasn't too excited about it.

I thought,
"This is a... a fairly mundane story."

"If I'm lucky, I might get a lead that'll
get me a piece on the Six O'Clock News,

and it'll be forgotten."

Well, normally,
when you get to a scene like that,

the road's already been cordoned off.
Never mind the house, the road.

No sign of that here.
We were right up on the doorstep.

But we did interview one or two people
who had noted him, you know.

They had seen him. They thought
he was a bit strange, a bit quiet.

Is he a man
whom you'd seen in this area before?

Oh yes, I've seen him out walking his dog
and just nodded hello to him.

And then, half an hour later, uh,

we hear that this, uh...

...this killer
hasn't just killed one person.

He's killed 15 or 16.

What?

In some ways... This sounds awful,

but I had this great flow
of adrenaline at the time.

I have to admit, you know,

I was totally transfixed on this.

As yet, few in Cranley Gardens
have been able to gather

the enormity of what's happened.

For, within hours,
what seemed just another inquiry

developed into
one of the biggest mass murder inquiries

ever conducted in Britain.

The news editors are asking,

"What more do you know?
What more can you give us now?"

Nobody else knew the published details

but for the officers on the case and me.

As I was incommunicado,
there was no leaks from me to the press.

It was the police
who gave the press all the information

that hit the headlines
in the next couple of days.

Then we hear that this man has a job
as an executive officer

at a Jobcentre interviewing people!

For the past six months, he's been working
here at the Manpower Services Commission,

known to his colleagues at work as Des.

Well, I thought, you know...

"This guy's a psychopath, all right."

A clearly prejudiced picture

had been allowed to form
in the public's mind,

even before I was charged
with any offense,

giving the media
full latitude to milk their property.

This allowed the images of monstrosity

to take full flight

to whet the profitable public imagination.

As a newspaper reporter,
nothing really shocks or surprises you.

As a human being,
things do shock and surprise you.

When I heard that he'd killed
15 or 16 people over four years,

I thought,
"How can that happen for four years,

in this so-called civilized country,

and we had no knowledge of it?"

We were all talking about
how the big problem for any killer

is getting rid of the body.

But how did he get rid of 15 or 16?

We only found the remains
of three bodies at Cranley Gardens.

So I asked him,

where did he kill the other people at?

My memory rolled back the fact
that I killed three at Cranley Gardens

and the others

at 195 Melrose Avenue.

Which is only
a few miles from Cranley Gardens.

It was absolutely freezing,

icy cold.

But we got the call
from the detective chief inspector,

who said,
"Right, everybody in. Everybody in."

"We will go down to Melrose Avenue."

"We'll be briefed there."

Bear in mind we didn't know
what we were gonna walk into there.

There was no prep. We were the first wave.

So off we went.

But when we got to Melrose Avenue,

the officers
who were investigating the crime said,

"Right. We've had information

Dennis Nilsen
used to live in Melrose Avenue,

and that he has admitted
to killing quite a few people,

and that they're buried in the garden."

So there was this stunned silence.

And then we were given green overalls.

"There you go, Karen.
Put your overalls on."

"There's a pitchfork. Start digging."

A few minutes ago,

a police van
suddenly drew up outside the house,

and a squad of half a dozen officers,

equipped with spades,
sieves, and other digging implements,

hurried down the side passage
to the back garden.

"Find what you can. Is this guy lying,
or is he telling us the truth?"

He could have been a fantasist.

Nilsen told us
about his system of disposal

of the bodies at Melrose Avenue.

I was putting the corpses
under the floorboards...

but eventually, there was the smell,

and the rot, and the maggots.

And at one stage,
there was no room under the floorboards.

There were so many bodies there.

He had to come up with an idea.

I spoke to a neighbor
who said she remembers

thathe had a series of bonfires.

Er, mostly in the evening time

'cause I used to work evenings.

Um, that's all.

Did you think rubbish was being burned?

Yes. Yes.

Does it appear
that the bodies have been burnt

in the back garden before burial?

Uh, it's a possibility.

What he'd done
filters through to us.

He burned them in the back garden,

and when they were down to ash,

he would spread them out over the garden
and dig them in.

But there would have been
regular bonfires in that garden.

I am unaware
of anybody making a complaint.

The whole area
has now been completely cordoned off,

and newsmen ordered away from the scene.

Come on, move back!

It was numbing work
because the ground was frozen.

I said,
"We're never gonna get through this."

We felt we were gonna be there a year
digging that place up.

By late afternoon,

a grim and somewhat dispirited squad
packed up and left,

shaking their heads when asked
if the day's work had yielded anything.

Then you start asking,

why hasn't there been this huge outcry of,

"Yeah, my son... My father's missing"?

It wasn't happening.

It was as if they didn't matter.

Who were these people?

It's almost an impossible task.

But Nilsen had told us
we needed to search Cranley Gardens

for a tea chest.

And there,
we discovered more body parts...

...which we took to the mortuary.

One of the pieces
that were removed from the flat

was an arm,

with a hand.

We took the fingerprints of this hand,

and we were absolutely amazed

when we got a match.

It was a young man
by the name of, uh, Stephen Sinclair.

He was on police records

because he had been in trouble
for various minor criminal matters,

but he was never reported missing.

So we made every effort
to contact any family that he had.

One night,
we were talking about things,

and he said
that he would love to go to London,

that he was going to London.

And my husband said,
"Well, Stephen, you're silly

because it's no' a place
for a... a boy like you."

He says, "Oh, but I'm going."

Sinclair was a drifter

who'd come down from Scotland,
and he was swallowed up by London.

It was beginning to look
like most of these victims were

homeless youths,

down-and-outs.

It was that kind of class of people.

You have to look
at Britain at that time.

There was high unemployment
all over the country.

The consequence of high unemployment is

you get people drawn like a magnet
to London.

They think
the streets are paved with gold.

In fact, they're not paved with gold.

And you get down on your luck.

Nilsen went round with his vacuum cleaner,

swooping up these victims,

these vulnerable young men.

Efforts to identify the victims
are centered

among London's growing population
of young dropouts.

Police theorize the victims
were male runaways under age 21,

lured to the house with a promise
of food and a place to spend the night.

Leave the old autobiography alone.

Now I think
it's time to go and pick up lunch.

Excusez-moi.

All right, welcome back.
I've just collected my lunch.

It's a kind of a curry.

I don't think these cooks down there
have got much of a clue.

The curry seems to have been supplemented

by soya, texturized protein,
simulated meat.

I'll bang some
of this West Indian sauce on top,

and that might give it some taste.

Right. Let's taste this.

Mmm! That's quite pleasant.
I'm surprised myself.

Must have been the West Indian sauce
I put in it has given it some taste.

Anyway, where was I? Yes.

1983.

Good evening. A 37-year-old civil servant

has been charged
with the murder of a 20-year-old man

whose remains were found
at a house in North London

earlier this week.

Dennis Andrew Nilsen
will appear in court tomorrow.

I'm crushed
inside a security van,

en route from prison.

It is the first day

whereon I shall stand exposed
before my peers.

We knew the man's name,

but we'd never seen him.

We had no idea what he looked like.

You expect a big, beefy fellow.

Uh, strong.

You're expecting
a heavyweight boxer almost.

There was press everywhere,

waiting for the first picture
of this monster.

I said to the photographer,

"He's gonna come out
with a sheet over his head."

"We're not gonna see him."

But, of course,
he didn't have a sheet over his head.

I am a man,

not a monster.

Awkward, isn't it?

It was almost a feeling of...

It's a horrible way to put it.

...sort of disappointment.

Could this possibly be the man?

He just didn't seem to fit
the picture of a mass killer.

How could
a man like that do what he's done,

this ordinary-looking bloke...

...that you'd walk past in the street
without a second look?

The van made its way
to Hornsey Police Station

where investigations are continuing.

Obviously, now,
we want to know something

about Nilsen's upbringing.

Well, the only people
who can tell you that are his own family.

We knew that he came from Aberdeenshire.

So I looked up
the Aberdeenshire phone book,

and there's only one entry "Nilsen."

And I make a telephone call
to his mother and said,

"Obviously, you know
that we've got to do a program on this."

And she said, "Well, not today.
I don't really feel up to it."

I said, "Well, I just happen to be
in Aberdeenshire today."

"Would be a bit of a shame
if we had to come back again."

She said, "All right, then."

Outside her house was a little notice

to say that her garden had been
the best garden in the whole area.

The house inside was pristine.

Not a speck of dust anywhere.

She went into the kitchen.
She brought in a silver salver.

Homemade shortbread.

And I said to her,

"Well, you know, how did you..."

"How did you feel
when you heard this news about him?"

And she said...

I've tried to think
what could have gone wrong.

And, I mean, why the people
in London who worked with him,

why would they not see something there...

before this? It's gone on all this time.

I believe if he'd been at home,
I would have seen something was wrong.

Because normally,
you couldn't live with a person

unless you could see
that there was something bothering him.

Because it's not the Dennis I knew
that's doing this, somehow or other.

Oh dear! Deary, deary me!

He was really a quiet boy.

Nothing extraordinary about him, really,
when he was young.

Just a normal, quiet boy.

I was an inwardly troubled boy,

and nobody seemed to notice.

I remember... I remember

as if there was a Moviola
running in my mind.

I see a small, frail boy.

He is new against a background
of powerful forces acting on him.

I had the feeling
of being somehow different.

Perhaps being poor,
thin, and shabbily dressed

was that first definable assault
on my awakening self-esteem.

Not having a father to boast about
might well have been another.

His father,
he never was really a person

that was close to the family and that.

I had to bring them up myself.

Then there was this great gulf
between me and my mother.

I was a caring person,
and I just did my best.

He was brought up
just the same way as the others.

Well...

Damned lies.

When I was about eight or nine,

I was first afflicted
by that thing called love.

It was for another boy
with whom I'd never even spoken.

Visions of him, as seen in school,
filled my whole consciousness.

It was a strange,
vibrant, and compelling situation,

but the stern moral principles
of society and the church

were of such a magnitude

that my inner joys and longings
had to be kept secret from the world.

Men who choose
to love other men

are treated
not only with intolerance and contempt

but prosecuted and jailed.

For many of us, this is revolting,
men dancing with men.

Most homosexuals
must lead a secret, dark existence.

It is a great hurt

to begin to appreciate
that one's genetic personality

was considered
to be monstrous and detestable.

There I was, not into my second decade,

and regarded as a criminal,
an outsider, an abomination,

had been convicted
and punished to serve a sentence

for the crime of what nature had made.

I was forced not to be anything true

outside of my head.

The interrogators
were happy enough

to let Nilsen tell his story
without pressing him too much

because he was free flowing with his talk.

So I thought,
"I'll sit down with Nilsen myself."

I wanted to see
if he could remember anything extra

about the pubs
where he picked some of the victims up.

And he told us a lot of them

were gay bars...

in the West End of London.

Of course I'm homosexual,

but I keep myself to myself.

The last thing
anyone would ever admit to is being gay.

So I concentrated my squad
in the West End of London.

Then we found out
he picked up men in gay pubs.

And once you've got something
that you can nail to it,

"the gay killer,"

it's gonna stick.

Whatever the reality,
whatever the truth of it,

it's gonna stick.

Exclusive!

Gay Killer Dennis the Mincing Menace.

Oh dear.

Even though, in 1983,

consenting adults of 21 and over
would no longer be prosecuted,

gay men and women were ostracized.

There was a lot
of institutional homophobia

in lots of aspects of Britain's society,
including the press and the police.

And as we were about to find out,
Nilsen knew that was the case,

perfectly well.

I remember sitting having a cup of tea

with a member of staff
from Scotland Yard's Press Bureau,

and he said, "This is an amazing story,

but it's even more amazing
'cause he's one of our own."

He's an ex-copper!

When we found out
he was a police officer, we...

Well, I thought, "That's why
he's got away with it for so long."

"He's a police officer.
He's gonna be one step ahead."

There were two officers I knew,
in uniform, who'd worked with him.

The detective chief superintendent
running the inquiry ordered me

to come over to his office,

'cause he wanted me
to come and tell them all about

my friend Dennis.

He was one of these people,

if you spoke to him,
he would drop his head.

He would avoid eye contact.

A real loner.

He wore a uniform

but didn't really achieve anything.

I don't think his interest was in it.

He went before he was pushed.

I don't think anybody batted an eyelid.

You know, there was no leaving do.

And then, a few years later,

before he killed anybody,

I got a phone call
ordering me to go to an address

to investigate a serious assault.

And the first thing I noticed was
the walls had been painted black,

which really wasn't my color.

The living-room window
had been completely smashed,

and there's blood everywhere.

A young juvenile
had been taken from the address

to the hospital.

And he was just a pale,
skinny waif of a kid.

And if I remember rightly,
he had over 100 stitches.

He had been picked up in a pub

by a man with a dour Scot's voice

and was taken back to the flat...

plied with alcohol,

and then he woke up

and discovered
that he was completely naked,

and this man was coming towards him.

So, fight-or-flight,

he just hurled himself through the window.

So I went back to the police station,
and this Scottish man was there,

and it was

my friend Dennis.

So I asked him,

"Why did this young juvenile
hurl himself through the window?"

And then he said,
"Well, I don't know why he did it."

"But if you got the evidence,
you charge me."

"If you don't, you gotta let me go."

And that was our Dennis. He knew the law.

We then discovered
that the juvenile was a missing person.

And we spoke to his parents,

but his father just said,

"He's not going to court."

And I remember saying to his father,

"Do you realize

what is going to happen

if you do not bring a prosecution?

"He's gonna do this to somebody else."

"No." They were adamant.

I was fuming.

I didn't say very much to him other than,

"You have no idea,
Dennis, how lucky you are."

Because he would have gone to prison.

Grievous bodily harm with intent,

potentially life imprisonment.

When you dealt with somebody,

it was incumbent upon you
to type out an intelligence card.

And at the top of the card, I typed,

"In my opinion,
this man is a dangerous psychopath."

I always think about
what if they had said,

"We'll prosecute him"?

Who would still be breathing today?

But there was a shame factor.

They would be shamed.

Um, and, "We want to take him home
and, you know, forget all about it."

He must have thought
he was the luckiest person in the world.

And he would never forget that.

The West End was a vibe.

Plenty of action, lots of people,

a way to get lost.

It was just teeming
with millionaires to paupers.

But one of the officers on my team
came back to me, and he said,

"I've been to the pub
and spoken to some people there."

And they had described a guy called John,
and he was known as John the Guardsman.

Nilsen had already told us
about a guy called John

who wore a woolly hat
that looked like a Guardsman's hat.

But we found out that John the Guardsman
was known in that area

as a rent boy.

It's the first time
that Ihad heard the term "rent boy."

Night bringeth the wild dance.

It is the prenuptials before the feast

where all appetites are sated.

Helter-skelter into the fray of the dance,

satisfying these appetites.

It was a playground, wasn't it?

And Nilsen could get whatever he wanted.

It was just a flesh market.

We went
to West End Central Police Station.

And they had an index
of all the rent boys,

and there was hundreds.

We were able to identify
John the Guardsman

as a man called John Howlett,

and I spoke to his mother.

Howlett had left home of his own accord.

He'd got involved in drugs,

and there was quite simply an acceptance
that her son had died.

Nilsen obviously knew that
if these young rent boys went missing,

usually, they just vanished
into the London ether.

It got easier,
digging that little garden,

but it became evident
that he wasn't lying.

We're finding dozens, and dozens,
and dozens of tiny bones.

But nothing was so intact
that we could identify people from it.

And then I started thinking

perhaps we weren't ever gonna find out
who these people were.

And you think,
"How on earth have you got to this place?"

"What journey did you go on

to end up here?"

The police contacted me.

They'd found
my National Insurance card in Des's flat.

I expect the police
did have suspicions about me at first

as to who I was, and why wasn't...

why wasn't I done away with?

It was a warm night.

I was playing a fruit machine,

and a guy behind me was watching me.

I could see him
from the reflection in the machine.

He said, "You won't win much on that one."

I said, "Oh, now you tell me."

And he said, "I think it's just paid out."

And he said, um,
"Do you want to come home?"

We went back to Melrose Avenue.

And he put on classical music.

Who is this man?

A unit in the herd.

A ghost in society.

How is he formed?

Who and what has placed him
towards this fate?

He asked me where I came from.
He asked me about my family.

So he seemed quite caring,

and that impressed me.

And I thought, "Ah! Okay, I like you."

But I never said it.
But I thought, "I like this guy."

I told him
that I was from Exeter, outside London.

When I was younger,
a few people knew that I was gay,

but it was just, "He'll grow out of it."

All the kids seemed to think
I was a bit of a joke.

So I would go to my bedroom.

I just wanted to be in the darkness.

I was 14 when I ran away.

Think I had not much more than about £10
or something like that,

but it was enough to get me to London.

I remember thinking, "So this is London."

"I'm in London!
Nobody knows who I am now."

"I can get lost up here."

But I had no way of living.
I didn't know what to do.

And I was freezing.

So I found somewhere to sleep
in a car park behind Piccadilly Circus.

But then I could see
these other boys just hanging around.

"I wonder what that's about?"

I see money changing hands.

I see men kissing boys.

But then some old man was passing by,

and he explained we were on the meat rack,

where each lamppost
was owned by a rent boy.

And they all had nicknames.

You wouldn't call somebody
by their proper name. That's for sure.

And they weren't all gay.

They were just doing it
because they needed money.

Some of the customers
were not very pleasant sometimes.

But you'd do it
because you need to survive.

But Des was quite friendly,
very friendly, in fact.

And you ain't seen nothing yet.

The other week,
we got this TV here, 360 quid.

Stereo set, about 200 quid.

And budgerigar up here, Hamish.
Have a look at Hamish. Priceless.

He even showed me the gardens.

When we came here, this back garden
was like a bloody rubbish heap with...

There was tons of old cookers,
and tires, and debris,

and plaster, and wood,
and God knows what else.

It was completely overgrown with rubbish.

And we, the good old tenant,
trying to improve the property,

in three months,
managed to make it what it is now.

Look at it. It's quite neat and tidy.
There's a little fence there.

There's vegetables in abundance growing.

And what else can I say?

But then he had Bacardi in a bottle,

and he drank that as we were speaking.

Uh, and then,

we went to bed.

As is my desire,

the most beautiful creature in my universe

is sleek, slim, male youth.

The sight of him, in his adamant glory,

sends my mind
into a concentration of cathartic spasms.

The man obsessed.

The drive powerful.

The heart a-pounding!

He is oblivious to the future.

It must have been
about two hours later,

I opened my eyes,
and there was smoke in front of me,

and he was straddled across me.

And just pushing him backwards.

I said,
"What's happening? What's happened?"

And he said,
"You knocked the fire off the wall."

I got water, poured it over the floor,

and I left,
'cause I was really quite upset,

because I thought,
"I've caused that damage to his flat."

But it didn't make sense.

The fire wouldn't have been on
because it was a warm night.

Then I realized
he was trying to kill me that night.

But I didn't know who to talk to.
I didn't know where to turn.

London, at the time,
was extremely homophobic.

The police certainly were.

The press certainly were.

So I stayed quiet, in a room,

like I was used to
when I was younger, in the dark.

Silence, silence,
silence, silence, silence.

Looking back now,
I would've been the first victim.

This was just the beginning for him.

In London, police searching
for the remains of murder victims

today found what they called
"a significant amount of human bone."

It was... it was just a graveyard.

We have found
a considerable amount of human bones.

Uh, in particular,
a, uh, piece of thigh bone,

I would imagine in the...
measuring about six inches.

They were coming up all the time.

It wasn't as if,
after three or four hours,

"Oh, I found one."

It was every couple of minutes,

a fragment of this,
a fragment of that, teeth.

Police searching
the rear garden of a North London house

believe they may be
a step nearer identifying

some of the human remains
they've discovered there.

That story was like
a horror film had come to the real world.

But there's also
a kind of strange excitement

when something like that happens,
you know?

There's a macabre attraction
to that kind of stuff.

You want to know more details.

You don't want to know less.
You want to know more.

My mother
tells a very different story than that.

Police have half a dozen names

of people they believe
may have been victims.

Well, the news,
you know, had been breaking and...

I don't know. I...
Of course I was interested.

I mean, who wasn't?

It was horrific, and I thought,
"God, them poor parents."

And that was it.

But then there was a knock on the door,

and this police officer said,
"Can we come in?"

I said, "What's it about?"
He said, "Can we come in?"

"I think you better sit down."
I thought, "Oh God."

Still never entered my head.

And when we got indoors,
he showed me this photo.

He said, "Do you know this person?"

I said, "Yeah, of course I know him."

It was Graham, the love of my life.

And then he said,
"Have you heard of a man called Nilsen?"

Even then,
I didn't put two and two together

because they said that Nilsen
was only picking on homeless homosexuals.

So that put my mind
a bit at rest that he was...

It couldn't be him. He's not homosexual.

And then they asked me, "Had he had
any dental treatment just lately?"

I was thinking,
"Why do you keep asking me these things

about dental records,
and teeth, and jaws?"

Then it clicked.

Graham loved buying me records.

I remember he bought me
the Fat Larry's Band.

It was called "Zoom."

And every time that record comes on,
I'm straight back there.

♪ Zoom, just one look
And then my heart went boom... ♪

And that was
the very last record he ever bought me.

But I can't say
we were a happy family, 'cause we weren't.

♪...high in a neon sky... ♪

We didn't have much growing up.
We was very poor.

But we felt like a family,
and we loved our mother.

But most memories aren't fun.

Mostly, it was over drugs.

♪ Zoom, you chased... ♪

It was 31st October,

and Graham promised me that morning
that he wasn't gonna have a fix.

And I knew,

the minute he spoke to me,
I knew he'd had something.

And, of course,
I got really cross with him.

And, oh my God,
I said this most awful thing.

I mean, I did.

I said,
"If you go back out and have another fix,

don't fucking ever come back."

That's exactly what happened.

He didn't ever come back.

So...

Yeah.

I was coming home
from the little sweet shop at the top,

and as I got down the road,
I could hear screaming.

And for some reason,
I knew that was my mother's voice

and that was my mother's pain,

and when we got in there,
my mother was in the kitchen crying.

My father had been murdered
at the hands of Dennis Nilsen.

The reporters were barbaric.

You know, they say,
"They're all homeless, all homosexuals."

They weren't, you know?

Don't clump 'em all in one box.
They were all individuals.

I phoned up newspapers
and blew my top at 'em.

And then
we had the press round at the door.

God, it was awful.

And one of the reporters asked me,
did I know all the facts?

I said, "I know as much
as the police have told me."

He said, "They haven't told you
what happened afterwards?"

I said, "No. Why?"

He said, uh,

"It's not very nice.
Do you want me to tell you?"

I said, "Yes."

It was just some compulsion,
that I had to know.

Nilsen was down the West End.

And he saw Graham trying to get a cab,

but no cabs would stop for him

because he was staggering
all over the place.

And Nilsen took him back to his place,

where he went behind him...

and strangled him.

That was his words.

And then he sat him in an armchair
for two days while he went to work.

He came back
and sat next to him on the settee,

and they watched TV together.

On the third night, he stripped him naked,

stood him up in front
of, like, a dressing table mirror,

and held him from behind,

covered him in talcum powder,
and then masturbated over him.

I just wanted to pretend

it didn't happen.

He overdosed,
and he was dead somewhere. No! No!

But you can't turn your mind off.

It's impossible.

♪ Oh, zoom, you chased the day away... ♪

Why would you do
something like that?

Even to an animal, why would you do it?

Tweetles, are you feeling better?

I think he's got
some respiratory infection.

Yes.

I think it was yesterday
I received a letter

from a reporter fishing for a story.

"I realize
you're producing an autobiography..."

Yak, yak, yak.

"What are you saying in it?"

Yak, yak, yak.

I was a young
wannabe investigative journalist.

I was completely green behind the ears.

And one morning I read in the paper

that there was this serial killer,

killed 15 people,

who was now writing
his own autobiography in prison,

and I was intrigued.

So then I started writing to Nilsen,

saying, "Dear Mr. Nilsen,

I believe your book will become
a landmark work of criminology,

and I'd like to cover it

for a serious
British broadsheet newspaper."

After a week, this letter arrived.

The first thing I noticed was

the Biro was pressed really hard
against the paper,

uh, like a man bursting to tell his story.

"Dear Russ, thank you for your letter."

"You're keen to know
how I justify the publication of my book?"

"Well, my first instinct
is to quote dear old Oscar."

"'There is no such thing
as a moral or amoral book.'"

"'It's either well written
or badly written.'"

When I first got
parts of his autobiography,

archive boxes
full of tapes and manuscripts,

I'd rung my editor
at The Sunday Times Magazine,

like, you know,

"You're just not gonna believe
what I've got."

The stuff that was of interest
was to do with his grandfather.

Along the moments of my life...

"...I return
to the mystery of my grandfather,

Andrew Whyte."

"I've gazed at a photograph
of him at his youth..."

...taken when he was a petty officer

during the First World War.

I remember playing
with the three medals he received

for serving his King Emperor, George V.

He was so fond of his granda.

I can just picture
the two of them together.

Everywhere he went,
he took Dennis with him.

I think
there was something great between them.

He was, to me, a great man.

The broad sweep of his 62 years
is too great for this short narrative,

but his mark upon me is indelible.

Grandfather died suddenly
when I was five years old.

He saw
his granda lying in this box,

and then, of course, the religious people,
they never say they're dead.

They just said,
"Oh, he's gone to a better place."

He says,
"He always took me everywhere with him."

"Why could he not have taken me
to that better place with him?"

He said that
when he saw his grandfather's body,

his ideas of love and death fused.

His abrupt disappearance
left a vacuum in my consciousness,

which was filled
by the drives of my imagination.

What a way to spend Christmas!

And I think,
because it's the festive season,

I think I should have a...
a magic cigarette.

Many years later,

Nilsen went through a period of reflection
about his life.

Let's have a wee spot of magic.

He said it was because he had
ready access to marijuana in prison.

Oh dear!

Oh God!

Bloody stoned as a bat here.

Ah, I've got the keyboard out
in front of me.

Before me
is a small portable mini keyboard

of 1980s vintage.

Here, in this splendid
and accustomed isolation,

I can use this audio brush

to paint
all the colored hues of my emotions.

I reach out to the keyboard,
and my hands are shaking slightly.

"There followed
an eight-hour trip."

"I am watching what unfolded,
like a movie,

with widescreen
and full Dolby stereophonic sound,

in full living Technicolor."

"For years,
the subject of my grandfather

lay simmering, unresolved
in the veil of my subconscious."

"I vaguely remember
that concrete, slit-eyed pillbox

where strange things had happened
between my grandfather and me."

"It is a most horrifying admission to make

that the only tactile contact
I had in my early formative years

was the painful
and confusing paradoxical embrace

of a pedophile."

Silence, silence,
silence, silence, silence.

But the most significant
turning point in his life

was when he became a cook in the army.

And that was when Nilsen,
for the first time, had his own room.

And he would strip himself naked
and put talcum powder over his body,

and he looked at himself in the mirror
as if he was seeing a dead body.

That fantasy figure

of my own necessary creation.

I am he, and he is me.

And he almost certainly had,
in his fantasies,

thought about
how he would make that a reality.

Dennis Nilsen
has been committed for trial

at the Old Bailey.

Four more murder charges
were brought against him this month.

By the time of the trial
at the Old Bailey,

we had identified
a total of seven victims.

We found out
that some of them were homeless men.

Some of them were gay but not all of them.

They were just guys
who were drifting through,

but there was one connection.

Nilsen knew
that if they were to go missing,

no one would notice anytime soon.

All the victims were young men.

Martyn Duffey from the Wirral.

Malcolm Barlow from Rotherham.

Kenneth Ockenden,
a 26-year-old Canadian student

who was visiting this country
three years ago.

And William Sutherland of Edinburgh...

I just can't get over it.

Would you have any kind of warning

for the parents of youngsters

who were thinking in terms
of going down to London?

Never to go.

It's such a cruel,
horrible place.

The police told me
the trial was beginning, and they said,

"Listen,
we've just come to advise you not to go

because they will be talking about Graham,
and they will have some of the...

more or less,
tools of the trade that he used there."

And I thought, "No, I'm going."

I just had that compulsion,
that feeling that I had to go.

In a way, it was me...
in my frame of mind, really,

that I was paying
my last respects to Graham.

Sort of, you know,

saying goodbye to him, really.

You know, and I didn't want...

I didn't want them talking about him,

and, uh, you know,
he didn't have anyone there for him,

so I just felt that need that I...

That I had to go,

and that's what I did.

Morning of Monday, 24th October.

I'm inside a security van

en route to No. 1 Court
of Central Criminal Court, the Old Bailey.

It is now,

today, the reckoning.

The Central Criminal Court

is, without question,
the most famous court in the world.

It is a theater.

It is a theater of the absurd.

Parts have been written.

The actors clear their throats
for their oratorical delivery.

I can remember
the first time he walked up the steps

in No. 1 Court, the Old Bailey...

...and stood, um, all the eyes are on him.

We all had expected
that he would plead guilty.

I can imagine a Panavision camera

on a crane, idling round the court.

If there's a guilty plea,
there'd have been no trial,

but the journalists
would be very disappointed

because there's no story.

That's it. Story over.

At the Old Bailey, civil servant
Dennis Nilsen has pleaded not guilty.

I couldn't believe it.
He never flinched. Nothing.

I'm thinking,
"Are you human, actually? Are you?"

Silence in court!

Silence, silence,
silence, silence, silence.

Had you ever defended
a serial killer before?

No.

Nor since.

I mean, if you rule out the Krays.

Looking at it
from an ordinary person's point of view,

all this behavior was madness.

It didn't seem to us to be arguable

that the fellow wasn't deranged.

But the whole thing for me,

was he too mad to be sentenced
to life imprisonment for murder?

It has been said
that if he behaved normally...

He was, after all, a civil servant
working in the labor exchange,

and he'd been a policeman.

So if he was capable of rational behavior,

then he can't be mad.

Ah, but, you see, the law says

that you can be behaving
perfectly normally for a lot of the time,

and then on this particular incident
when you kill somebody, you were deranged,

and then you went back to being normal.

Then you're guilty
of diminished responsibility

and, therefore, of manslaughter.

I don't want him to be mad.
I want him to pay.

Let him pay.

Make him responsible for what he's done.

"He's not insane,"
insisted the prosecution,

"nor is he mentally ill."

"He has an abnormal mind."

"But his responsibility for his acts
was not substantially impaired."

"He knew what he was doing."
Nilsen is alleged to have told the police,

"I've taken a lot of people
back to my flat,

and I haven't killed them all."

We needed to prove
that he had premeditation

and had intent to go down
to the West End to pick these victims up,

which put us in a little bit of a panic.

We trawled, obviously, looking for anybody

who'd met him in a bar
that he'd just had a drink with.

"Have you met this guy?
Did you go to his house?"

But back in 1983?

Ah! Brick wall.

I didn't really want
to be standing in that theater.

'Cause that's what it was to me.
The whole world would be watching that.

I didn't want
everybody to know that I was gay.

I didn't want that.

Why should I have to go through that

because of what somebody else has done?
Why should we?

I was warned by people beforehand

whoever solicitor was against you
would tear you apart and expose your life.

So I didn't want to be involved
any more than what I was.

When we eventually found
some of these men,

they were afraid
people would think they were gay.

And that was a problem with the press

homing in
on this one aspect of this investigation.

My mind now turns to one night.

I met a wandering spirit like me.

Nilsen had talked
about a young man called Carl Stottor,

who'd actually survived him.

I'd seen the name Carl Stottor
appear in the autobiography,

so I felt that it was very important

that I get to know one
of Nilsen's survivors' side of the story.

We arranged for me to come down
and meet him in his flat near the sea.

I'm trying to put you

into the context of the Nilsen story.

Mmm.

How much can you recollect
of the night prior to the incident?

I was on my own.

It was a gay pub,

and he came over
and asked me if I minded if he joined me.

You know,
I found him quite comfortable to talk to,

and we hailed a cab
and went to Cranley Gardens.

We were just chatting.
And he poured a drink, which was Bacardi,

and, um, we ended up going to bed.

But before we got into bed,
he said, "Oh, be careful,

because you might get caught
in the sleeping bag zip."

- The zip had broken away.
- Yeah.

But I felt tired,
so we cuddled up, and I fell asleep.

And all of a sudden, I felt cold.

And then I realized
I was in a bath of cold water.

I tried to get out,
and he pushed me back down.

And three times I came up,
and I managed to say,

"Stop! Please, no more!"

And I remember just lying there.
I couldn't fight anymore.

I remember just breathing in the water.

It was like breathing solid air.

I remembered thinking, "You're dying."

"And this is what it feels like."

And a light...

We are moral creatures
of drives and conscience.

I am both strong and weak,

angelic and demonic,

both the cool hand
to soothe the fevered forehead

and the desperate, raging hand
at the throat.

The harbinger of both life and death.

I remember
coming round and the pain.

I could hardly breathe. It was awful.

But I was confused.
You know, I couldn't remember anything.

But I knew somebody had tried to kill me.

So I went to the police.

They didn't believe me.
They didn't take any notice.

I was just a silly little poofter,
a drama queen.

Carl Stottor went to the police,
but nothing was done.

Then we found out
there was a string of about five of them.

They went to the police,
and lodged complaints,

or tried to lodge complaints,

and were treated
fairly disdainfully, really.

So no action was taken.

I thought,
"Maybe they're right."

"They know what they're doing.
They know their job."

"It was me."

"I imagined it."

Nilsen gave them information
that led to them finding you.

Hmm.

The detective
that interviewed me said,

"We just wanna ask you a few questions.
Do you know anyone called Dennis Nilsen?"

I went, "No."

He said,
"You ever been to Cranley Gardens?"

I went, "Where's that?"

And he went,
"Okay then, just one more question,"

and said, "Sleeping bag,"

and I started shaking.

And it all came back,

everything

in detail.

It was Nilsen.

He used the sleeping bag zip
to strangle me.

Right.

But before we got into bed,
he said, "Oh, be careful,

because you might get caught up
in the sleeping bag zip."

But by prewarning me,
he was already premeditating my death.

If he hadn't succeeded,
then he had an alibi.

He knew what he was doing.
There wasn't anything psychotic about him.

He was totally in control.

The simple reason why I'm alive

is because Nilsen had no more room
under the floorboards to house my body.

Carl Stottor's story proved
that Nilsen had premeditation.

But most of these victims
would tell you things,

but in no circumstances
would they ever want to be a witness.

It would have been
absolutely horrendous

for these young men to come forward.

They would have been vilified.

I've been in court hundreds of times

and seen victims,
witnesses torn to shreds.

So people are not gonna put themselves
in that position.

I hated
the way the press claimed

that all of Nilsen's victims were waifs,
and strays, and pathetic homosexuals.

It was awful.

I remember thinking, "No. I have worth."

And, in one respect,
I have to thank Nilsen for that,

because had I not died
and had that near-death experience,

I would never have known.

There's nothing to fear but fear itself.

Remove the fear,
and there's nothing left to fear anymore.

On the second day
of the Dennis Nilsen trial,

the prosecution
has continued outlining its case.

Carl Stottor told
of going to bed with Nilsen

and waking in the middle of the night

unable to breathe,
feeling pressure around his neck.

In a tiny, quiet voice, he told the court
he heard Nilsen whispering, "Keep still."

I have absolutely nothing
but admiration

for their courage
and strength of character

to come forward.

Well, the...
the thought that went through my mind was,

"You are drowning.
You are being murdered by this man,

and this is what it feels like,
and you're going to die."

At the Old Bailey, a number
of former partners of Dennis Nilsen

have been speaking of Nilsen's
alleged attempts to murder them.

I remember thinking to myself,
"You have to get through this."

"Just survive it."

I thought to myself,

"Let's do it. I can face it.
Whatever life throws at me, bring it on."

So I did attend the trial.

I fell asleep,
and about half past three in the morning,

I woke up, and he was right beside me.

I looked at him and said,
"What are you doing?"

And he said, "You knocked the fire over."

So I found that kind of freedom.
I can express myself a bit more.

I don't have to hide
what I feel all the time.

It's lovely.

First, though, at the Old Bailey,
the jury has now retired

to consider its verdict
in the case of Dennis Nilsen.

And indeed, if we hear
any more news from the Nilsen trial,

we'll bring it to you as soon as possible
later in the program.

How can you express
the contents of a trial?

Ten days of chatter posing
as ten days of relevant evidence.

When they returned to court,
they'd reached a verdict

on all counts of murder
and two of attempted murder.

Ten jurors had agreed. Two had dissented.
The foreman of the jury answered

that they'd reached majority verdicts
of guilty on all six murder charges.

The jury has, in effect,

found him to be fully responsible
for his actions,

not out of his mind.

Everybody
who's involved in the Nilsen story

eventually comes to a point

where they decide
that Nilsen was bad and... and not mad.

You just have to know him for long enough.

It's like the Wizard of Oz
behind the curtain.

You're left
with this little piece of dirt.

Nilsen could paint such a vivid picture
of a romantic outsider character

that made it hard to believe
that he killed out of pure evil.

He needed to see himself in a certain way.

And the grandfather story, it's possible,

but there's no evidence for it.

So I cannot help but feel

that it's simply Nilsen trying
to find another villain...

...other than himself,
to point the blame elsewhere.

At teatime today,

I was given this categorization review,
Category A.

"Your custodial behavior is satisfactory."

"Reports, however, describe you
as a cold and calculating individual,

who has shown little inclination
to confront your offending behavior."

"There are no recommendations
for downgrading

due to the absence of any real remorse."

Well!

So I took it upon myself
to provide a very short comment.

"This report
is just the sort of politically correct,

prejudiced hatchet job

which one can expect from petty officials
anxious to embroider the monster myth

than make any objective..."

Society didn't create Nilsen.
That's what he'd like you to believe.

But we've still got to take responsibility
for creating the prejudiced society

that enabled him
to kill over and over again.

It was easy.

He just knew from his experiences
and the circumstances,

nobody really cared.

I swear to you, in Cranley Gardens,

if the bodies
had not got stuck in the drain

and affected the people
who lived below him,

he'd have killed for another few years.

The only reason he was stopped

is because his activities
imposed on somebody else.

Nothing to do with the victims.

My Shane came in and told me.

I was in bed.
He come in and said, "Nilsen's dead."

And I said, "Don't lie."
He said, "I'm telling you. He's dead."

And I never mentioned it again because...

it just didn't mean anything to me.

And the newspapers again, you know,

"What do you think
now the monster's dead?"

I said, "I don't think anything.
I don't think about him."

"Even when he's dead,
I'm not letting him make me a victim."

You know?

But I just hope wherever he goes,
he don't meet Graham,

'cause Graham would be sober.