The Chilling Home Movies Of Serial Killer Dennis Nilsen | Born to Kill? | Absolute Crime

foreign [Music] bloody hell don't you don't ever watch movies you'll see thousands of movies you must know what it's like the training chimpanzee is a Cape Canaveral to operate a car anybody can do it these are the home movies of a murderer can you go back a bit I mean you're you're far too in here a man who in the 1980s would be uncovered as the most prolific serial killer in British history and you ain't seen nothing yet a civil servant whose extraordinary Behavior would see him named with cruel irony the kindly killer battery's a runner that's why the camera went up the creek okay fair enough you think you know how to use that all you do is pointed down and press a button but was this murderer of young men driven by nature or nurture was the kindly killer Born To Kill cut [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] in the early winter of 1983 we had a problem arise in the muswell Hill area of London it was initiated by us receiving a call for a blocked toilet number 23 cranley Gardens had been split into flats and bed sets the residents had experienced problems with the plumbing for days [Music] an engineer at the time went to attend the block toilet cleared the toilet big remark to us afterwards that it never smelled such a bad smell in an apartment before in his life still lavatories at the property continued to block a plumber was sent around very urgently that on Saturday morning and he looked down in the drains beneath the house and he saw what he knew was not what should be there he observed what he said looked like some butcher's prepared meat and a few bones he discovered that what was blocking the toilets was actually human flesh [Music] on the 9th of February 1983 sitting in my office minding my own business and suddenly got a phone call from Peter Slade who was the early turn uniform inspector and he asked me if I'd go up to cranny Gardens he had a bit of a problem up there and I just got into the CID car and drove up there I always remember it's bitterly cold it had been snowing and we stood outside this awful house and looked down the uh the pit where the the drains were and he showed me four little pieces of Flesh each about three inches by half an inch maybe an inch and also three bones with a knuckle at each end and my first thought when I saw them was that they were from a human hand the drains were blocked over halfway up the building so we knew that the blockage was originating from the very top the tenant of the top flat was a 37 year old executive officer at a nearby job center Dennis Andrew Nielsen he was due to return from work at 5 30. when my two colleagues and I walked up to the front door of the place in order to wait for him inside we had no idea what we were going to find we knew we had a killer we didn't know what he'd done Nielsen walked in bang on cure at Harper's five and leading up to that I had been thinking for two or three hours about what I was going to face I knew that for someone to have flushed a dead body down the loo in small pieces it was going to be somebody a little bit different when Nielsen came in through that front door I'd already made a decision to be very light-hearted with him and I remember saying to Mr Nielsen and he said yes that's me and I said I'm detective Chief Inspector Jay I've come about your drains and a little smile came across his face and he said well since when have police been interested in Block trains and I said to him will you take me up in your flat and I'll tell you all about it [Music] the first thing that caught me was the smell of decomposing flesh I said to him I'm here because she drains were blocked with human remains and he said oh my God how awful and I just got a little bit closer to him face to face and looked him straight in the eyes and said don't mess me about where's the rest of the body and he just paused momentarily and he said in plastic bags in the other room Nielsen was immediately arrested and taken to the station for questioning my Deputy detective inspector Steve mccuska sat in the back of the police car and I drove and I don't know what prompted Steve to do this but he suddenly said to Neil snow we're talking about one body here or maybe two and Nielsen said neither he said I think it's 16. [Music] well I can remember the steering wheel in the car sort of shaking in my hands [Music] please hardly could leave their ears because this was all said in a very matter-of-fact for us very dispassionate why dispassionate because this is a man without passion his only passion came when he was in a murderous impulse when he was overtaken by the other self in Nielsen's wardrobes were two black plastic bags and several air fresheners the bags contain dismembered body parts and two severed heads in a tea chest was found another torso bones and a skull under a draw in the bathroom were legs and a pelvis it constituted the remains of three men [Music] in the garden of an address in cricklewood investigators would identify the fragmented remains of at least eight more [Music] he told me off the Record that if it hadn't have been 15 it would have been 150 if we hadn't caught him when we did because there was no stopping the whole thing was just totally bizarre [Music] Dennis Nielsen was born in 1945 in fraserburgh a remote fishing community in Northeast Scotland his mother's family had lived there for Generations his father was a visiting Norwegian Soldier he was one of three children the middle child he had an older brother a younger sister he never really knew his father Nielsen as a child was a bit of a loner he didn't really have friends because everybody thought he was adored his mother said she could never cuddle him he didn't have tactile relationships with anyone except his grandfather Nielsen's father is absent from the household and so he had formed a bond with his grandfather they would walk together fish together and so forth the boy's grandfather would often be away for weeks at a time trawling the fishing grounds of the North Sea one day he came home from school and his mother said to him oh do you want to see your granddad he didn't know he was there even so he was very pleased about that and he went into the kitchen and there on the kitchen table was a long box and then it was his grandfather nobody had prepared him for the fact that he was dead Nielsen's grandfather had died at sea and his corpse had been brought home for burial he had this picture in his mind imprinted of seeing his grandfather white as a sheet and I think that affected him deeply [Music] Nielsen would later say that when he saw his grandfather laid out in the front sitting room after his grandfather's death but this was when Nielsen first began to associate love with death an inert body from that moment I'm convinced I can't prove it but I'm convinced that his idea of love and his idea of death fused and became linked inextricably linked when his mother said to him your granddad's gone to a better place he the little boy aged six thought well if he's gone to a better place why didn't you take me with him it would sometimes even go out into the sea and simulate drowning as a means of being with him aged 15 Nielsen would leave his home behind Nielsen would join the Army specifically he joined the catering Corps which is of course where he'd learn his butchering skills skills that were going to be put to use in a different context when he's back in civilian life in 1983 the discovery of human flesh blocking the drains at 23 cranley Gardens had led to the arrest of civil servant Dennis Nielsen he claimed to have taken the lives of at least 15 young men investigators learned that he'd had a lonely childhood punctuated by the death of a beloved grandfather [Music] at 15 years old he joined the army catering Corps foreign the young Nielsen would stand out from his fellow new recruits he was quite argumentative in as much as not picking an argument in a nasty sort of way but if you said that photograph is black and white you didn't know he was saying it was white and black and so forth he was quite contrary as a person really we used to sit listening to The Beatles Rolling Stones we'd read the parade magazines which are like girly magazines the other day and he'd probably be reading broadsheets and he'd also listen to classical music remember there was once scrap in the mirror crew and I think he scratched and slapped he didn't thump like the rest of us remember somebody saying oh you're a Nielsen you're weird the teenage Nielsen harbored a secret what's interesting about the Army experience is that it would be have been impossible for Nielsen to have shared the fact that he was gay with any office colleagues basically they just didn't accept homosexuals at all so if somebody was gay they'd keep very very quiet about it during his time in the Army Nielsen began a lifelong interest in photography he maintained he was a it was his hobby photography but it was much more important than a hobby it was self-realization he used to get his colleagues in the Army to pretend that they were corpses as if they'd been slain in battle and he would take photographs of that they thought this was a bit odd but they went along with it Nielsen would spend 11 years in the armed forces catering Corps rising to the rank of corporal I think he was a bit of a bully underneath with his rank you know once he was in charge of a room sort of thing I think he tended to be I think he tended to bully a bit but just before his 27th birthday Nielsen would reject the familiarity and Order of army life and strike out on his own thank you in 1970s London he found a thriving gay scene he's living in a large Urban metropolitan area where clearly there are gay pups that he would be able to visit for the first time people were more friendlier back then people were away chatting and life in London was exciting at that time he wasn't a bad lucky man and he seemed quite educated quite quite good to talk to he chooses his words well fluently uh but after a few minutes you'd realize that he's not talking to you or with you but he's talking to himself because he doesn't pay attention to anything is it what he himself is saying what are you doing switching the bloody thing on and off for he never make a cameraman you know no no no no no no no I'm not gonna do anything pornographic Nielsen joined the Metropolitan Police This Is Not Unusual for these individuals to seek out a profession of authority whether it's a police officer or some other civil servant type job where they could have control over someone else this is what is so stimulating to them he's living a double life he's living a life of the police Constable but at the same time he's also living a double life talking about being able to express his sexuality and of course that inevitably would lead to conflict after 11 months Nielsen tired of the police and quit he was also becoming disillusioned with the transient nature of the gay scene began to seek more permanent companionship what he was looking for was a relationship somebody to share his life with he didn't go out to find companionship in the club you just went out to pick up that's what generally people did they weren't there for an affair or a relationship they just wanted a one-night stand he got a job with Manpower services in the heart of the West End but the opinionated young Scot struggled to bond with anyone he's not somebody who's going to make friends very easily he's not somebody who's going to be the life and soul of the party he's far too self-centered he's far too self-obsessed harassed commuter harassed London tenant being screwed by the Department of Employment London transport big chain stores supermarkets can you like cut there let me think so he's got this quite isolated existence in which he finds it difficult to make friends in which it's very difficult for him to socialize in any normal way and that isolation would mean that he would return to his home and lose himself in alcohol he was a drunk frankly I'm not sure he was alcoholic but he did like to get drunk beard I cannot stand I got it for free at the bottle party no and he would listen intently to music [Music] Nielsen was more at ease with machines and objects than he was with people so music was a way of controlling what was being heard you can't control a person you can't control what he's going to say and how he's going to react and how he's going to respond but you can control the record player here's to you Mrs Robinson [Music] in 1976 Nielsen meets a young Drifter called David Gallatin galashian is unemployed and living in a hostel and although they're seemingly unsuited Nielsen seeks out a flat for them both to set up home together again it is turn your slippers or give it I'll ring is bloody not going to catch it again Melrose Avenue was a very old kind of building um it it was it had lots of furniture in it that likes it would have been bought during the war really it was quite old the carpets went very nice and it was kind of run down building kept us one last night it's time to sleep twinkle without me here perhaps crash bang walk have a look then move the camera up there have a look at that right we're gonna stay at that whole bloody ceiling falls down falls down on me for a start I ripped straight across hits the door pull off push but she goes up big rail that wakes you up as well great chunks bloody great chunks and Masonry I mean you could kill someday what's that they had French Windows which led into a garden nobody from upstairs could get into the garden he only he had the entrance through the French windows you're a big nincompoop right over here over here over here stand up I don't think it'll take me to take the garden don't stand there with your hand and your hip feeling a big poof Nielsen's overpowering and controlling nature would drive a wedge between the companions walked out on him after about 18 months and that really hurt Nielsen I'm sure it did [Music] she was essentially a lonely man by virtue of the fact that he bought everyone and they all left him oh so the thing he's searching for is companionship a relationship and it's the one thing that psychologically sociologically he's not set up to be able to do yeah like twinkle [Music] and then he used to invite more and more people back hoping that someone would stay he did ask me to move in but I said I don't think I can put up with you in the bottle the bottle comes between us it's too much of it you've got to stop that if you stopped it you'd be a lovely decent guy to live with but he couldn't stop that he couldn't stop that you seem to be very into himself it was all him him he never hardly asked anything about me I don't mind anything good you find in this kitchen it's probably intuitive to my having purchased it love your light doesn't even go on can you go back a bit I mean you're you're far too near that's the lonely Nielsen increasingly took refuge in his morbid private fantasies [Music] he used to Lion on the floor in front of a mirror and put Blue on his lips and make his eyes look bloodshot and he got satisfaction out of regarding himself in the mirroring in that way not I don't think an emotional satisfaction but a deep requirement of his nature which was obviously perverted they would make a he passed out and would fall to the floor and you go rushing up to him and he'd just be laying there but I actually know that he wasn't asleep he wasn't out he wasn't passed out he was awake and um and he would stay there and he would stay then you'd sit down you could you could cook a meal you could watch television still be there but I know that he wasn't asleep you just know and it would be in this position of a kind of arms outstretched position I believe he was pretending to be dead all the while Nielsen continued to play the role of the unremarkable civil servant he gets up in the morning he's a civil servant he goes to work he comes home at night he tends his garden he cooks for himself he has a dog which he calls bleep so there's a sense in which these are the banality the ordinariness of suburban life but of course Nielsen doesn't really have a sense of how an ordinary life is actually what most people experience because Nielsen wants to be extraordinary [Music] thank you [Music] on New Year's Day 1979 33 year old Dennis Nielsen woke up next to a teenager he'd met in a pub the night before the lonely Manpower services employee later claimed he couldn't face the thought of the sleeping boy leaving there came a moment when the murder's impulse to keep this man not to let him go overtook him Nielsen took a tie wrapped it around the boy's neck and pulled he was astonished at his strength at the moment of the murder he was amazed at how strong he was because he was not normally a very strong man [Music] once the murder had occurred and Nielsen had before him a corpse he then in a very peculiar fashion looked after the course now for the first time Dennis Nielsen had the means to live out his darkest and most secret fantasies he would run a bath he would basic clean it he would then make it comfortable he would dry it put it into the bed put it into an armchair Nielsen lived with the corpse for a week he then placed the naked body under the floorboards where it remained for almost eight months if you have this body you have to find some way to get rid of it and you certainly don't want it to be identified as quickly as you possibly can Nilsson was efficient he couldn't relate to a person emotionally which could relate to a corpse as something that had to be disposed of it was a a problem that had to be solved that's much easier than dealing with people and their emotions Nielsen's Garden would provide the solution he burned his body in the garden of Melrose Avenue obliterating him and spreading his Ashes to the Four Winds it was not until 2005 that the victim would be identified as 14 year old Stephen Holmes [Music] his murder would prove to be merely the beginning I think the first murder that any serial killer commits is always the revealing murder he enjoyed doing it and I think it's that enjoyment that he got from that first murder that propelled him to kill again and again and again well this is uh Soho and the Heart of Soho Old Compton Street and this is the area that Nielsen used to favor and he'd come out in his spare time to this kind of area and to gay pubs in particular in order to make contact with with people so he had contact with a lot of youngsters who were coming to London thinking the streets were paved with gold and who were probably no fixed abode may have run away from home uh dropouts that kind of person the the people that Nelson went to meet were people he instinctively with an uncanny Knack recognizes people who were um lonely and would be most likely to accept an invitation to go home often there is no record of these people being reported as missing and therefore he's tackling a particularly vulnerable group that many other serial killers Target [Music] while living at Melrose Avenue Dennis Nielsen would pick up and strangle to death a further 11 young men if you strangle someone you feel it you can touch it you just grab whatever is at hand and pull I have always suspected that Nielsen would strangle the people that he really didn't want to go at midnight or one o'clock in the morning the ones that he wanted to stay the ones he didn't particularly want to be with they just go at the end of the night [Music] that may be true to some extent but I would look at it in a very different way I would say that he wanted the bodies to be there because it assured him how in control he was of other people this is what is arousing to an individual like Nielsen to be in complete control and domination of others Nielsen used the bodies of his victims sexually and in other ways Nielsen wanted to stay close to these bodies almost as if they were a form of trophy he wants to express his power his complete and utter domination of these young men even after they're dead after he killed them he would sometimes bring them out and put them in a chair and have conversations with them as if they were still alive they can watch television with him he can talk to them he even would go so far as to come home from work and find the corpse sitting in the same armchair that he'd left him in that morning and saying to him guess what happened to me today so this was a substitute for real human company Nielsen is so self-obsessed so desperate for his opinion to be the only opinion that counts and matters he finds it easier to relate to have a conversation with a dead young man who isn't capable of answering back he would then keep the calls for quite a few days until they became unbeatable he would eviscerate them he would be put into the garden the um spleen and stuff which might be proved impossible to live with and then put the what was left with the corpse under the floorboards an obsessive compulsive personality where somebody is attuned to details and orderliness and so on is very common in prolific serial killers because that personality trait will help them elude uh law enforcement uh they're aware of forensic evidence they'll clean things up meticulously uh and so on ultimately the bodies that were serving as Nielsen's companions would become an annoyance to him they were in the way he needed to get rid of them for a variety of reasons firstly they'd smell also they were an annoyance to him because he keeps wanting to bring more live young men back to his flat I would actually stay there for the night or maybe for the weekend or whatever all I can say is that the smell the smell from Melrose Avenue which you put down to dry rot or whatever rising down I don't know animal smells it's not awful really smoked nasty but nothing other than this really stood out nothing at all with no further room under the floorboards the decomposing corpses were removed cut into manageable pieces and taken into the garden in the middle of the night he would have a huge bonfire in his garden burning the remains disguising the smell with rubber tires and the local children came and danced around the bonfire because they thought it was all rather fun having not the faintest idea what was going on really Dennis Nielsen had murdered and disposed of 12 young men without a rousing suspicion in 1981 he moved to a new address where his behavior would become increasingly more bizarre Between 1979 and 1981 civil servant Dennis Nielsen had murdered and disposed of 12 young men at his flat in cricklewood in October of 81 he moved to a rented top floor flat at 23 cranley Gardens muswell Hill where his Disturbed fantasies would take a new twist 21-year-old Carl stotter Met the seemingly kind and friendly Nielsen at the black cap in Camden hand took me about three space he was a nice guy he didn't have murderer tattooed across his face or anything like that he was nice and I slept with him what he did was first of all attack him from behind with a tie and throttled him he killed me hey um strangled me he thought he was dead but he wasn't and then he drowned in a bath and walks up while he thought he was dead he got himself a rum and coke and lit another cigarette and said to himself oh my God here we go again as if this had been done by somebody else he described it as being almost in a trance that he was doing this act without even realizing that he was doing it and that's fairly typical serial murderers will talk about almost waking up and realizing that oh my gosh what are they doing when he realized the man was alive he then got extra blankets out he rubbed his legs to get the blood circulating properly I put on an extra fire heart massage resuscitation he brought me back to life and I was there for three days you've got a classic example of Nielsen initially killing trying to kill believing he's killed the victim but then realizing that the young man is actually still alive and then Nielsen going into Good Samaritan mode trying to help the young man get better Nielsen is able to kind of inhabit a kind of parallel universe in which he no longer sees himself as being someone who's doing wrong but actually can interpret his actions as somebody who's doing good he told me that um what happened was um I've got caught up in the sleeping bag set and that was it and and I believe him because you don't think that somebody's gonna try and kill you anyway he did Carl stotter would not be the only recipient of Nielsen's Good Samaritan Act at least three more young men would be strangled and then allowed to live the attacks would remain uninvestigated by the police most of the police would say while you were in a bondage game and it's your fault you participated and the absolute humiliation of saying oh gosh I don't want to be known for this kind of behavior really protects the serial murderer it appears Nielsen's odd behavior was not only reserved for strangers I fell asleep on the floor I wouldn't get into the bed I woke up and he was straddled over me he had what I call an apple knife but behind him there was smoke and there was a gas heater that used to be on the wall had apparently fallen off now I couldn't possibly um have knocked that off with my feet and it was quite bad the room was full of smoke and I I said what's the knife for he said he was trying to cut it trying to get it right off the wall in case there was an explosion and I'm positive that when I went to sleep that gas fire wouldn't have been on because he was already asleep and because it was quite a very mild night that's all I remember thinking but then again thought no more of it I have to believe that he was going to to do something he was he was trying to asphyxiate me but not everyone would escape with their lives with every serial murderer although they start out slowly they then become more frenetic and they will start killing a lot more people a lot more close in time the addiction becomes so overwhelming that it's uh the corpses piled upon one another at cranley Gardens three men would suffer the same fate as the twelve at Melrose Avenue but unlike his previous residence Nielsen's top floor flat had no space under the floorboards he would boil their skulls to get all the flesh off and then he would chop them up into little bits to him the people were just about the same and equivalent to the meat he was chopping up in the Army had absolutely no reason or meaning emotionally to him it was just something he did [Music] half of one was under the boss pieces of another were in the wardrobe in black bangs on the day that I went back there on the very last day and he wouldn't let me into the flat he was in the strangest mood I've ever seen him in he was completely flustered and I couldn't I couldn't understand what was happening and the dog ran down the stairs he said hold the door but don't go in and I thought Charming I thought I've known you all this time you won't let me into your flat I said he doesn't trust me obviously if he brought the dog back up and he said to me he didn't go in I said no I'm just standing standing here aren't I and I couldn't write that out Nielsen's desperate efforts at disposal would be his undoing foreign on the 9th of February blocked drains would lead to his Discovery and arrest Scotland Yard launched its biggest murder investigation today after a pathologist confirmed that human remains found in a sewer Outlet were parts of three bodies for some strange reason the minute they said must were Hill they gave no address they gave nothing I seem to know that this is him it's him I don't know why I would think that and then an hour later I was listening more intently and then they said in Friendly Gardens and it was the house I've [Music] it's tough for a second in custody Nielsen would describe the murder of 15 young men in minute detail these are no reason to get worked up about it all right if you've arrested me you've arrested me so let's get on with it Nielsen gave us every bit of information that he could think of I mean we interviewed him 16 times over the next few months throughout the interviews Nielsen was totally matter of fact quite cold there was no remorse there was no indication of any remorse at all in November Dennis Nielsen was sentenced to life imprisonment Over a four-year period he had taken the lives of 15 young men but was the so-called kindly killer born to kill yeah this loser was clearly born with the gene which was flawed and which was bound to cause problems in one way or another just as some people are born with the gene which makes them prone to anger or to jealousy nobody is born with an inevitability about his future the future is shaped by the experience it may shape the gene which is flawed but that is not the same thing as saying that there is evil inherent so Nielsen could have turned out to be a completely different person not a stable person because of the inherited Gene he would still be flawed but he need not have become a murderer the idea that he was born evil is nonsense he was brought up in a relatively banal ordinary circumstances there were certain elements of his life which were odd or which were difficult for him to overcome but the circumstances of his childhood and the sum that the trials and tribulations of his childhood were not something that were unique to Dennis Nielsen but were common to many hundreds of thousands of young people and if Dennis Nielsen was born to kill so would those hundreds of thousands of young people who had similar circumstances that they had to deal with when they were growing up so no I don't believe that Dennis Nielsen was born to kill you can be born with the flaw which you've got to keep under control if you don't keep it under the control it's your fault [Music] I don't think he was born to kill but certain circumstances made him that way desert and necrophiliac it was control freak I think if he couldn't get what he wanted from a person like some nights he couldn't with me then he would if he wanted it and he was drunk and he was in the mood for it and I mean sex then he would do something to get it go out of his way to get it he would whatever it took I think all of these people are to a large degree born to kill it's a biopsychosocial problem but biology in my judgment has a very large component we don't know exactly what the specific biology or neurobiological problem is whether it's genetic hormonal chemical electrical brain damage a combination of factors but there has to be a number of things to go wrong in order for a Serial sexual murderer to be created Nielsen himself claimed to have wrestled to find a reason for his crimes it amazes me that I have no tears for these victims I have no tears for myself of those bereaved by my actions am I a weak person constantly Under Pressure who just couldn't cope with it and escapes to wreak revenge against Society through the haze of a bottle of spirits or maybe it's because I was just born an evil man self-serving crap for me this is just specious nonsense self-serving nonsense to try and justify his behavior he's nothing he's a liar he's taken human lives I feel sorry for his mother [Music] to give birth to such a monster [Music] oh [Music]

Channel: Absolute Crime

Views: 250,436

Keywords: Absolute Crime, Crime Documentaries, True Crime, True Crime Documentaries, Murder documentaries, True Crime Stories, True Crime Youtube Channel, True Crime Documentary, full documentary channel, full length documentary 2022, prison documentaries

Id: DnITS6drVlc

Length: 46min 7sec (2767 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 21 2023