Nilsen Decoded

The Twisted Psychology of Britain's Loneliest Serial Killer

A blocked drain in north London. A polite civil servant on the doorstep with a briefcase and a bottle of rum. Fifteen or sixteen bodies he could not be bothered to deny.

Why did Dennis Nilsen, a quiet union man with a steady job and a friendly dog, spend five years strangling young men in his flat and then keeping them as company until the smell forced him to act?

This is not another rehash of the Muswell Hill case. This is a forensic psychological excavation of the man behind the wardrobe. From the open coffin in 1951 that welded love and death together in his six year old mind, to the suburban bonfires nobody ever bothered to question, every chapter takes you deeper into the architecture of Britain's strangest serial killer.

You will find the precise moment in an Aden bunkhouse when the fantasy became operational. The childhood ritual that prefigured every later crime. The single human relationship he ever managed to sustain, and the breakup that opened the floodgates.

This is the case decoded. Not the headline. The why.

If you have ever wondered how a polite man on a London street can end up boiling heads on his kitchen stove, the answer is in these pages. Just be ready to recognise more of yourself in him than you would like.

CraigBeck.com