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Case Study of Serial Killer Dennis Nilsen


Dennis Nilsen is a Scottish serial killer, born in 1945.  When Nilsen was just 4 years old, his parents divorced.  He was eventually sent to live with his grandparents when his mother remarried.  At just 16, Nilsen joined the army and worked as a cook and butcher for many years.  He also briefly worked as a police officer.  Nilsen craved sexual relationships with men and feared abandonment of his lovers leaving him (Murray).  During the late 70’s and early 80’s, Nilsen took men or boys back to his apartments for sex (Dennis).  He would strangle the men to death while they slept and would wash the bodies periodically and keep them over the course of several weeks or months hidden under his floor boards.  Nilsen would bring the men’s bodies out to be with him, “watch” television with him, and lay in the bed with him.  Later, he dismembered the bodies and burned them in the garden, along with a tire to mask the smell of burning flesh.  Nilsen’s next apartment did not have floor boards to hide the bodies in, nor access to a garden to dispose of the bodies.  His further victims were disposed of by cutting, boiling, and flushing body parts down the toilet.  The large amount of flesh and bones being flushed caused a major plumbing problem for all the tenants in the small apartment community in which Nilsen lived.  When the plumber came the first time, it was dark outside.  The pit under the manhole cover was about a foot deep full of flushed body parts, flesh, and bones.  Since it was dark and the plumber couldn’t see exactly what the problem was, he decided to come back the next day so that he could what was going on better.  Nilsen realized that the body parts he flushed would be found by the plumber and worked overnight taking bags of the body parts back up to his upstairs apartment to try to hide his crimes.  When the plumber came back the next day, most of the material was in fact gone.  There was an obvious piece of flesh and several bones still present.  The police were called, and this led to Nilsen’s arrest.  Nilsen eventually admitted to killing 15 or 16 men or boys (Murray).




Works Cited
"Dennis Nilsen Biography." Biography.com, A&E Television Network, 2 Apr. 2014, www.biography.com/people/dennis-nilsen-17169676. Accessed 17 Feb. 2018.
Murray, William. Serial Killers Notorious Killers Who Lived Among Us. Canary Press, 2007.

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