Dennis Nilsen

Dennis Andrew Nilsen was a Scottish serial killer and necrophile. He murdered at least twelve young men and boys between 1978 and 1983 in London, England. He was sentenced to life imprisonment on 4 November 1983, with a recommendation that he serve a minimum of twenty-five years. He died at York Hospital on 12 May 2018 of a pulmonary embolism and a retroperitoneal haemorrhage.

About Dennis Nilsen in brief

Dennis Andrew Nilsen was a Scottish serial killer and necrophile. He murdered at least twelve young men and boys between 1978 and 1983 in London, England. He was sentenced to life imprisonment on 4 November 1983, with a recommendation that he serve a minimum of twenty-five years. He died at York Hospital on 12 May 2018 of a pulmonary embolism and a retroperitoneal haemorrhage, which occurred following surgery to repair an abdominal aortic aneurysm. His victims would be lured to addresses by guile and killed by strangulation, sometimes accompanied by drowning. He would observe a ritual in which he bathed and dressed the victim’s body, which he retained for extended periods of time, before dissecting and disposing of the remains by burning on a bonfire or flushing down a lavatory. All of his murders were committed at the two North London addresses where he resided between1978 and 1983. He became known as the Muswell Hill Murderer, as he committed his later murders in theMuswell Hill district of North London. NILSen was born on 23 November 1945 in Fraserburgh, Aberdeenshire, the second of three children born to Elizabeth Duthie Whyte, and Olav Magnus Moksheim. His father was a Norwegian soldier who had travelled to Scotland in 1940 as part of the Free Norwegian Forces following the German occupation of Norway. After a brief courtship, he married Elizabeth Whyte in May 1942 and the newlyweds moved into her parents’ house.

The couple divorced in 1948. All three of the couple’s children—Olav Jr., Dennis and Sylvia—had been conceived on their father’s brief visits to the mother’s household. Her parents, Andrew and Lily Whyte were supportive of their daughter following her divorce and considerate of their grandchildren. In the years following the death of his grandfather, Dennis became more quiet and withdrawn, often standing alone at the harbour watching the boats. On one excursion to the beach, he was closer to his younger sister, Sylvia, whom he often talked to or played games with. He envied Olav Jr.’s popularity and often showed no affection towards his older brother and stepfather, who he saw as displaying an unfair amount of attention towards his mother and later, stepfather. By 1951, his grandfather’s health was in decline, but he continued to work. On 31 October 1951, while fishing in the North Sea, he died of a heart attack at the age of 62. His body was brought ashore and returned to the family home prior to burial. After the birth of her third child, Dennis’s mother concluded she had ‘rushed into marriage without thinking’ and the couple later divorced. After his grandfather’s death in 1951, Dennis was taken into the room where his grandfather lay in an open coffin. He later described this stage of his childhood as one of contentment, and his grandfather being his ‘great hero and protector’

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