Dennis Nilsen: The Kindly Killer (Part 1)

Hey, weirdos, I'm Melina. I'm Ash. And this is Moorbed. This is Moorbed. This is Moorbed, and there's a lot going on. My goodness, it doesn't just feel like that every single day you wake up. Truly Moor- Moor-going-alm. Something very- This is one of those things. It's very chilling and it's like something that I can't stop thinking about. And like checking it on. So the today's show, anchor Savannah Guthrie, her 84 year old mother, Nancy Guthrie, has been missing since Saturday night, I believe. A lot of times I've seen Miss Saturday night. And this story is just wild and heartbreaking and horrifying. I can't stop thinking about it. No, I can't either. We haven't been so much recently just because life has gotten busy, but we used to be such a today's show. Oh my god, I used to come over every single day and we would just watch hours of the today's show. Love the today's show. So we've been watching Savannah forever. And it's just destroying my soul to think of how much pain she must be going through right now. My heart is with her and her family. And this story is just wild. I mean, Nancy is 84 years old. She's just described as sharp as attack, has a little bit of mobility issues. So she wasn't going to be getting up and leaving on her own. Right. She lives in Arizona and there's not a lot coming out, which leads to me to believe that they might have something that they're working on that or at least they're trying to chase something down that maybe they don't want or they something happened that they just don't want us to know. Yeah, because they've said they don't believe it's a home invasion. They don't believe it's a robbery gone wrong. But there is evidence of foul play. Yeah, it sounds like they're they're pretty much stating now that she was abducted from her bed. And 84 year old woman abducted from her bed. Yeah, it's horrific. It's just horrifying. She needs medication every 24 hours to literally survive life threatening if she doesn't have them. And she the medicine was left in the home, which is very concerning. And now the pacemaker is not connecting to her apple law. Yeah, that was the newest update. So it's all really horrifying. And I'm just thinking about how her family is feeling right now. And I can't even put my brain in that space. But it's really bad. That like by some miracle. Yeah, I'm really hoping to live and well. I hope they know more than they're saying. Yeah. And I hope that they find an answer because it's really the world. Yeah. And Savannah has gone through a lot. Yeah, she just I think she just came back from like a vocal cord surgery or something. Yeah. And just like they're finally in general. Like it's just so that's so sad. But yeah, we loved the we always love the today show. And you know, it's just I was like, oh, yeah. So you like you have these people in your house on the daily. So you feel this like strange connection. So I felt like super what as soon as I hear I was like, oh my god, it's like your friend is going through this. It feels like it's really bad. But just let's let's hope they find Nancy. Yeah. And Savannah's asking for prayers. Yeah, like damn. But yeah, just wanted to point that out. Hopefully there's an update and a good one. A good one. I know it's manifest that for her. But yeah, in another level, I was going to say going going into another hopefully we a little bit of positivity. Yeah, just obviously everybody knows how we feel about ice. Fuck ice. We want them out of Minnesota. We want them out of everywhere. Yeah. But we were thinking of just like anything we can do to help. Yeah. And Mikey was nice enough to help us find this on Minnesota.org. And we will link this in our show notes. They have a full list of small businesses that you can support. Yes. So we'll we'll link those in the show notes and we'll link them. We'll try to link them on. It's I don't think Instagram allows links. It's I don't think it drives me nuts. I'm like, can you allow links? I know, Meta. Well, we'll link it in the show notes. Go find those. It's just wherever you're listening to if you hit like more info, it should be right there. Yeah. I know sometimes people will start going to find them. Yeah. So check those out. Support some local businesses. Yeah. It's a great way to just because they're going through a lot more than what we're seeing. Yeah, too. We're being like that's the news is being suppressed for sure. So just like they they need all the support they can get. And anywhere else that you hear of ice, a great way to fight back and spend your money in a good way is to shop local. Exactly. Any any Etsy shops you can find in areas like that. Yeah. You know, we like local businesses. Just in general. It's good to do anyway. Yeah, that's just good to do anyway. On and more like lighter note. And this is we need it. We're really segue. Yeah. I can't believe I'm segue here. I mean, we need a segue. We need a segue. That's just a if you know, that's just that's the way the show goes. Yeah. That was the business at the top and now at the banter. Do you know what a flow state is? Yeah. What is a flow state? I think like a flow state isn't that when you like really lock in? I don't everybody says that like I keep seeing it on TikTok people being like, I I ate this ice cream or I had one thing that I keep seeing people saying is like they take a step of like the most delicious latte and they enter a flow state. Yeah, I think it's like a really locked in state of just like ready to fucking go. I just look and I just looked it up. It says like being in the zone, um, complete absorption focus and enjoyment in whatever activity you are engaged in. Okay. I've enjoyed a lot of things in my life. I don't know that I've ever been in a flow state. Oh, I've been in a flow state so many times. Tell me when you're in a flow state. I'm in a flow state. Give me examples. When I can sit down in front of a computer in a word document and write more than three words. That's a flow state. I enter a full flow state. If I'm tap, tap, tap and and shit is rolling out and it's happening flow state. Okay. If I make a perfect coffee in the morning, immediately enter a flow state. Okay. So I've probably been in a flow state. I'm sure you have. You're just not recognizing it as a flow state. I got to recognize my flow states. When I, um, when I like organize and feel like I've actually accomplished my kind of organization. Okay. I will enter a flow state. Okay. When I work in as my pantry, I was in a flow state. Yeah. You're in a flow state. All right. All right. Yeah. Like I decorate for and Ash actually helped me this this time. I decorate for every holiday. Like the bathroom that like my kids generally use. And we decorate it for every holiday. Like I always put a big all out there. And just because it's fun, they get home from school and or like they go to brush their teeth and they're like, oh my god. It's all the lights and stuff. And so for Valentine's Day this year, we went like all out and Ash helped me like use the markers that you can write on the glass to like make little candy hearts on the, I thought that was so cute. The little like conversation hearts. And I think in those moments, I enter a flow state. Okay. I was when I was doing those hearts, even though my knees were hurting really bad. Um, I was in a flow state. Yeah. Yeah. See? All right. Okay. Thank you. I thought of this last night because I saw a talk of a lady being like, oh my god, I just entered a flow state because this latte is so good. And I felt like that was very Gen Z. And I said, have I been in a flow state? What is I said, I wonder if Alina knows what a flow state is. And I saved it for the pod. I was going to tell you about flow states, but but you let it happen. I think I'm in a flow state when I shop. Oh, you definitely are in a flow state. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm definitely. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Hopefully we can all get into flow states with things we enjoy right now. I like another tip of the day. Make sure to make it your fucking mission tomorrow. Yeah. Tomorrow. Right now. I mean, try it now, but it's okay. If you're not like in that place right now and you need a minute to like really, you know, get it or figure out what your flow state thing might be. Okay. Tomorrow wake up state attempt flow state. Okay. Whatever you need to do, watch one of those late 90s, early 2000s movies. That'll get you to that flow state. Make an awesome coffee. Organize, decorate, just read a book, write down some shit, like do whatever you need to do, and to make sure you do not go to bed tomorrow night until you have entered your flow state. Even for a second, even if it's just a quick flow state. Oh, I think we all need that every day. This is like a glass shatter moment. I enter a flow state when I do, I almost had a slow fate. I enter a slow fate. I enter a flow state when I do my skincare or in every, in everything shower, that's a flow state. I get it now. I get it. So see there you go, have a good shower or something. Like tomorrow, make your business to enter a flow state and then try to enter a flow state just for one second, even every day. I give yourself that one. Does a flow state need to be a little bit longer though? A flow state feels longer than one second. I don't think there's a there's no timeline on flow states. All right. I think as long as you feel like you entered a flow state, even for a second, if you drank every time we said flow state during this, you don't die. You just that's crazy. But yeah, do that. That's my advice for the day. I like that. My advice to get I'm all about flow states right now. We ordered Jersey Mike's cookies. I'm going to eat one after this. Oh my god. We forgot we had that. Oh baby, not only did we order like one, not only did we order two boxes? We got two mini boxes. And if they had more than many boxes, we would get two of those two hell yeah, those put me in a flow state. We're going to need that because we're starting a three part series that is going to be a harrowing journey. I have to tell you something. When you say we're starting a three part series, I know it's about to get dark. Yeah. But you try to enter a few state. That's what I know. But you know what, you're three part. I got to say, let me just like, let me, let me brown nose you real quick. I really love your three partners because they feel cinematic to me when I sit and listen to them. Oh, thank you. You got Jats highest praise I can imagine. I mean, wipe my nose off. I love that. I appreciate that. This one's going to, it's about Dennis Nilsen, the kindly killer. He was referred to. Feel like I recognize the name. Yeah, we've definitely talked about him before. He's come up on crime countdown. Okay. He's a lot. I bet. He's three parts. He has many many victims. And he's got a lot going on. Just as a quick little trigger warning, he has necrophilic tendencies. So that's going to be part of this. He's not the vampire one, is he? Nope. Okay. No. Just another guy. Like that's isn't that wild. That would just like, no, that's a whole other guy. Yeah. Yep. So he's again. So we're going to talk about him. And this, this took place in the 80s. So, so that usually that's a fun time for some other things like pop culture. But whenever anybody says anything is the 80s anymore, all I can hear is the 80s in my head saying, yeah, it was the 80s. It was the 80s. So we'll start just get by giving a little overview. It was on the morning of February 8th, 1983, which I did not even realize that by the time when this comes out, it's going to be right before it. And then I think the second part will come out like the day after. I didn't do that on purpose. That happened so frequently. I did not do that on purpose. That's so weird. That just, I forget which case, but that just happened to me too. And I just didn't refer to it. It happened so often. Like, that happened to me too. I want you to know we literally never do that on purpose. I never chose in a case based on the date being the day to come out. No, it's very strange. Yeah. So weird. So those like anomalies. Yeah. So on that day, February 8th, 1983, a plumber working in London's Muzzwell Hill neighborhood opened a drainage cover behind a crannly garden's apartment building. And in that drainage cover, he made a horrific discovery. The drain was completely blocked by pieces of bone and human tissue. Oh, fuck. So he called police. That's the best people to call. Yeah. And detectives arrived on the scene and they traced the blockage back to one apartment in the building. And when they went into this apartment, there were additional pieces of evidence in this apartment that suggested that things were exponentially worse than they had even originally thought they were. And they probably thought things were pretty bad originally. And that apartment building belonged to Dennis Nilsen. That's crazy. I didn't expect that. Yeah, I know. It's a twist. We the fact that they can trace like the drainage pipes back in as nuts, pipes are nuts. Pipes are crazy. I would talk about pipes for all week. Pipes really go crazy. I had a pipe burst in my garage. I said, why is there even a fucking pipe in my garage? True. And you said, I don't know. I don't know. Don't talk to you about it. So let's talk about Dennis Nilsen who he was before he became this Dennis Nilsen. What happened to him? So he was born November 23rd, 1945. Does that make him as agitarious? Yes. I think. Does it? Yeah. Yeah. I think it's literally like right. I think 21st start, sage. There we go. He's very close to being a scorp. Oh, okay. Hold on. Let me make sure because sometimes I'm dumb. Sometimes I'm dumb. Sometimes I'm dumb when it comes to the zodiac. I'm a new. You know, I've started another thing I've started to do. I think I've said this before, but I started doing it again because I fell back into it. Tell me. I've started when I like, I'll do something. I forgot something in the house and I'm like, oh, you're so stupid. Like, go get, stop doing that. Okay. You're right. Stop doing that. You're right. Because I did it yesterday. I was like, oh, my God, I'm so dumb. And then I was like, and that you're literally, if anyone heard me doing this, they'd probably be like, you're losing. They'd be like, wow, you're who's like, I said, no, you're not dumb. You just forgot that thing. That doesn't make you dumb. Okay. Hold on. Ash, no, you're not dumb. You're still learning this and you're working on it. Exactly. And actually, you were correct this time. Yeah. There you go. So no, you're right. Because I saw, I saw an article. You saw an article that said, I watched an article. I watched an article that did say our brains believe what we tell them. It's true. Keep telling your brain you're dumb and you're your fat or your ugly or you're this or you're not going to believe it. It's going to be like, wow, I suck. Because your brain, who is it going to believe? It's you. Like, you are the one that it's wants to believe. You think you're going to sound kooky. I looked at myself in the mirror the other day and I said, you look beautiful today. As you should. Yeah. So start doing that too. You absolutely should. I truly believe like we need to be stopping so negative to ourselves because I think a lot of people who are complete bitch ass pieces of shit want us to out in the world. Well, and also, they're mean to themselves too. Yeah. Absolutely. And they've taught themselves to be these like toxicly negative people. Yeah. They put it and it makes them feel like shit. They've done it to themselves usually and then they put it out to everybody else. In the words of RuPaul, how the hell are you going to love yourself? How in the hell are you going to love yourself if you can't? I don't know. RuPaul said. I've watched so much drag race. How did I? I feel like I was just struggling with my LGBT car. I don't know. How in the hell are you going to love somebody else? You can't love your friend. What does he say? Mikey Mikey. Mikey. Help. Gay help. What does RuPaul say? How in the hell are you going to love somebody else if you can't love yourself? No. I'm saying it so wrong. I'm looking at that. Are we straight right now? Mikey. Mikey. If you can't love yourself, how in the hell are you going to love somebody else? Amen. Okay. Okay. Can I get an amen? Can I get an amen? Yeah. Oh my god. I don't deserve the amen. Don't give it to me. Oh my lord. Oh my god. That was crazy. That was crazy. I just looked it up. I just did the I just did the capricorn thing and I said I'll look it up somewhere. Guys, that was the opposite of a flow state. That was the opposite. How was the opposite? It was. Do you ever do something like that? And you say, yeah, do I have a cognitive issue? Yes. All the time. I'm going to do a Sudoku later. Anyways, anyways. The whole point of that was stopped telling it was saying your dumb and being mean to yourself. That's another piece of advice. Do that. Yeah. It's really hard right now. Do crosswords too. Do that. Fuck. So, yeah. So Dennis Nielsen was a Sagittarius. And he was born. That's where we fucking. That's where we're from. That's where he started. And he was born in Scotland. Oh, fucking for doing that. Right? Like being mean. We don't do that. No. Dick. That's not so. So this he was the second of three children born to Elizabeth and Olaf Mochim. Sorry, but it's always the middle child. They later adopted the surname Nielsen. Got it. They had met several years earlier when Olaf saved Elizabeth from being attacked by another man. Wow. That's a great meeting. What a meek you. Yeah. They started dating and very soon after they were talking about marriage. And on May 2nd, 1942, they married. Love. Olaf and Elizabeth's first child was Olaf Jr. He came a short time after they got married. And he was followed quickly by two other children, Dennis and Sylvia. Despite their whirlwind romance and growing family, Olaf Sr. never really took to the whole marriage and family life. So he was just frequently absent from home. Yeah. That was either due to his responsibilities in the military or his general uninterested being a father. Okay. We're not sure what your own kind of a little bit of both. Okay. As a result, Elizabeth continued to live with her parents and the children were raised as much by them as by their mother. Well, that's kind of nice. Yeah. I loved my parents. That can be great. And I still do in fact. Yeah. Years later, when he reflected about his parents' marriage, Dennis wrote because he did write a memoir. By the way. Oh, no. Yeah. They always do. They always do. He wrote, in the heat and uncertainty of war, my father married my mother primarily on lustful grounds and ignoring some irreconcilable cultural and personality differences, which doomed the match to failure. Oh, fuck. Which is like he read his parents' story insightful. Yeah. That is insightful. Although their father was hardly ever home and really only saw the children on rare occasions, his presence or maybe more his absence was pretty influential on the family. The detached nature of Olaven Elizabeth's relationship appears to have filtered down to their children and it kind of prevented them not just forming a bond with their parents, but with one another as well. Oh, yeah. This led to all the Nilsen children, but Dennis in particular, becoming very isolated and withdrawn. For Dennis, this meant spending hours alone every day, escaping into an increasingly intense fantasy world. In fact, Nilsen even described himself as quote, an unhappy, brooding child, secretive and stricken with inferiority. Oh, that's all like horrifying. Yeah. It's true that Dennis felt a very tenuous connection to his parents and siblings, but the family wasn't entirely fractured. Yeah. Because his grandparents were such a constant presence in his early life, he formed a very big, very strong bond with his grandfather, Andrew White. Unlike Dennis's mother, who is generally detached and permissive, Andrew was actually a harsh and deeply religious man with an incredibly rigid sense of morality. Oh, I was relieved for like one second. Well, the thing is, when he came to his grandson, he was very warm and compassionate. Okay. And it was really maybe the only connection Dennis had to the world outside his fantasies. And because of this, Dennis was devastated when in the fall of 1951, 62-year-old Andrew died from a hard attack while he was on a fishing boat. That is so young. Yeah. In one of his earliest memories, Nilsen recalled being brought into the house during the funeral to view his grandfather's body. He said, granddad was wearing glasses and expensive long johns. He was barefooted and needed a shave. He looked as if he was sleeping. Oh, that's really sad. Yeah. Many years later, Dennis would trace his pathology back to this event. He wrote, my troubles started there. It blighted my personality permanently. I've spent all my emotional life searching for my grandfather and in my formative years, no one was there to take his place. Father and grandfather had walked out on me, probably for a better place, leaving me behind and this not so good place alone. Oh, man. Which if he wasn't such a complete piece of shit, you'd be like, oh my god, that's so sad. Yeah, you feel bad for the kid. Exactly. In the wake of his grandfather's death, Dennis became much more isolated. He spent his free time by the water, watching the fishing boats come and go. And during one of these occasions, he claimed to have walked into the ocean to try to end his life. Oh, fuck. But he was saved by an older boy who spotted him from the beach and pulled him back to shore. Now in his memoirs, he claimed that this savior of his potentially sexually assaulted him. Oh, but because he was unconscious at the time, he was unable to provide any details of the attack or his attacker. Okay. That said, Nilsen himself acknowledges his tendency to blend fantasy with memory and reality with not reality. When recounting events from his life, so it's kind of impossible to know which aspects of his early biography are true and which are pieces he made up. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's tough. Not because they've never were able to identify this person. They don't even know if he might walk into the ocean. Exactly. It might never happen. Okay. Now not long after the death of his father, Elizabeth married a second time to a man named Adam Scott. Adam Scott is not the one that was on Parks and Recreation. Oh, I forgot that was Adam Scott. Not Ben Wyatt. I just second guest myself immediately. Oh, that's why I was confused. I was like, is his name Adam? You were talking his government name. Yeah, his government name. I see. I see. Not Ben Wyatt. Unlike her previous husband, Scott was a local man with strong connections to the area and a solid work history in the building trade. He was according to author Brian Masters, quote, a quiet, solid and reliable man who gave her four more children in four years. Okay. Wow. Yeah. A lot of kids get busy. So if Elizabeth and Ilson had maintained a casual and detached relationship to her children before her second marriage, she definitely doubled that marrying Scott and they've, why do you have four more? An adding four more children. Yeah. Also, the additional kids in the house pushed Dennis further away from his mother in deeper anti-isolation. He wrote, in those days, I could hate Adam Scott very easily. I sometimes felt that we, the Nilsen kids, were an impediment to my mother's fulfillment in her new life and family. Very common feeling. It is. As he grew older, Dennis was able to make a few friends, but he still chose to spend a lot of his free time alone. When school ended every day, he would go home, put on his headphones and just lose himself in music for hours at a time, or he would go into the woods and just go on long walks. When he was 14, he joined Army cadet force, a military prep organization for teenage boys. His participation in the group gave him a structure that he was definitely lacking at home and he gave him kind of a sense of purpose in a life that was like a little chaotic at times. He said, I felt proud and useful in my battle dress. And he also tried to try to become like, he tried his hand at sports basically too, but that didn't really pan out for him. Okay. So it seemed like the military stuff like was the thing that really tickled his fancy. Yeah. But the most part, his early life was that kind of like most boys at the time, but an incident in his mid teens would definitely disrupt that path of normalcy and provide some pretty serious consequences in his later life, I think. One afternoon, when Dennis was about 14, a local elderly man from the village went missing and the whole town turned out to look for him. In Dennis and another boy, Gordon Berry, decided to search down by the river Uji, where they eventually stumbled upon this old man's body. The local doctor later said that in his confusion, the man had probably wandered out of his house in the middle of the night and fallen into the river and drowned. Oh, that's so sad. Nilson said, he reminded me of my grandfather and the images were firmly fixed in my mind. I could never comprehend the reality of death. It's very stand by me. Yeah. When he was 15, he decided to leave school and join the military. And in September of 1961, he reported to London for duty. It was he hoped an opportunity for a fresh start to get away from this tiny village and all the limitations he felt were there and to learn a new trade that hopefully was just going to carry him to adulthood. But if he was looking for like a whole new experience, which he definitely was, he was definitely disappointed with the reality of army life, especially for someone so young. Yeah. Rather than being sent off to some exotic location like you thought he would Dennis and his peers spent the next four years stationed in Aldershot, a military town in Hampshire, New England. So their life was pretty much the same as it had been when he before he left home with military responsibilities, just replacing schoolwork. And his fellow soldiers replacing his classmates. In 1964, he passed his exams and was promoted to the rank of private, which was an important step in what he thought was going to be a lifelong career in the military. And while this was a momentous occasion for him, his entire experience in the military had been undermined by his growing awareness of his own sexuality and his interest in men. Sure. Especially at the time period, this was tough. Yeah, not accepted. And especially in the military back then. He was repressing everything, though, in the repression and of those urges was always accompanied by like deep guilt and shame. Yeah. And he would carry that with him for a long time. He later said, I was always afraid that I must somehow look different and that my innermost thoughts would be exposed. Oh, what's that? Which is so sad. It is very sad. But he's such an asshole. Like it said, that's it's like you see here these things. And again, this was he's still a kid when this is on. Right. So you feel bad for that? That's that. That's that. And as is often the case, Dennis was only able to conceal this for so long. And in his mid-twenties, he was engaging in a lot of like, you know, one night stands with men just like quick, anonymous sexual encounter. Like you're I mean, you're living your life and you have to people have needs. It's a very interesting deny yourself forever. And he was he made sure they were devoid of a lot of emotion or attachment because that was kind of his life until that moment. It's so common too. And this is this works for some people, of course. But for Dennis, it was different. He's always been a loner. And he had created this rich fantasy life in which the needs and wants of others were relevant. His were the important ones. Okay. Now as an adult, it was as though he was blurring fantasy and reality, treating the real people he came in contact with who came and went in his life as though they were dolls that he could just act out life. And that's fucking disturbing. And then he could just put them away when he was done. And life does not work like that. Nope. In the fall of 1972, his career in the military came to an end when he was just charged after 11 years. Wow. The following day, he turned 27 years old and found himself right back where he started. That's crazy. Like almost all of the 20s just gone. And then you're yeah, that asked to start a new life or expected to. Yeah. Now he was living in his mother's house unemployed and alone again. His decision to leave the military was pretty simple. He just wanted to try a career outside the army. Yeah. But now that he was out, he kind of felt like unmoored. Like where do I go? I thought that happened so often. Yeah. For five weeks, he sat in his mother's house wondering what the fuck to do with his life. And his mother on the other hand was more concerned with his lack of interest in finding a wife. A short time later, Dennis's brother, Ola, Ola of junior told their mother that he suspected Dennis was gay. And this speculation, no. In this speculation, Dennis would never forgive him for. Yeah, I'd be pretty fucking successful. You know, all other people. But if she believed it was true, Dennis's mother never said anything to him about it, preferring instead to just ignore it and let Dennis have his private thoughts. And that was also not healthy. No, Ola of speculation about his brother's sexuality ruined their relationship. And it just wasn't something that was able to be recovered. That's really sad. It is sad. In December 1972, he moved to London and enrolled at the Metropolitan Police Training School. He was determined to parlay his pretty exemplary military service into a career in law enforcement now, which is a pretty, like, you know, lateral move. Yeah. Dennis completed his training in April 1973 and entered the Metropolitan Police Force as a junior cadet, which is an entry level position that while technically a member of the police force was more like admin shit and required the supervision of a parent officer. You gotta like work your way up the other. And when he enrolled in the training program, he envisioned finding the same level of camaraderie that he loved in the service, like his military brothers and sisters were like BFFs. Yeah. But he learned that the police force wasn't built around friendships. Yeah. And he found himself lonely and isolated. Yeah. Throughout his youth, he had dealt with the frequent isolation and loneliness by retreating into his fantasy world. And in his efforts to avoid loneliness, he started exploring, you know, the countless pubs and nightclubs around London, where he eventually discovered that, you know, that the culture that he could exist in as he was, like the gay culture. Yeah. Right. And in the small number of gay bars around the city, he kind of felt like he had felt somewhere. Yeah. For the first time in his life, he didn't have to hide who he really was from the world. But his unrealistic expectations made his early experiences with this community deeply disappointing. Right. He wasn't finding a lot of long-term relationship prospects here. Because he wasn't really looking for that or treating people that way. Well, he's like, he kind, he like wanted it, but he wasn't treating people that way. Right. So it's like he wanted that. He just wasn't doing to know how to go about it. Yeah. And for a man with such a deep and powerful fear of abandonment, the casual like culture of like hookups in one night stands that he was involving himself in now, especially in the early 70s. That was like the thing. It proved very destabilizing and demoralizing for him. Yeah. He wrote in his memoir, I was left with an endless search through the soul destroying pub scene and it's resulting one night stands. A house is not a home and sex is not a relationship. We would only lend each other our bodies and a vain search for inner peace. Wow. I know. It's like he comes up so like so like a deep. Yeah. Now, during his first year with the police force, he was developing like an identity and a philosophy that was very much at odds with his professional life. Throughout his time in the military, he had developed a pretty progressive leftist worldview that made it pretty impossible to ignore the imperialistic nature of the British military. Oh, okay. That was at least partially what motivated him to not seek a second term in the army. I was like, I just don't think it. It doesn't matter. It's like beliefs. Now as a young police officer, he was kind of in the same position. Enforcing laws that seemed outdated and targeting groups that he himself was a part of. Right. To make matters worse, in August 1974, he received word that his father, Olaf Senior, had died at the UK military base in Ghana. He had left his children a bit of money, but that was it. Given how disillusioned he was with the circumstances, he waited until the end of the year and in December, he quit his position with the police force. Okay. Now leaving the police force at the end of the year was intended to be a big life change that would set him on the right path. Unfortunately, it turned out to be just another exercise and disappointment. When the money his father left him started to run out, he was forced to go out and find whatever job he could, which at the time was not really easy. He ended up working a series of pretty unfulfilling jobs. He worked at a job center. He just did things that were not his passion at all. It was there that Nielsen would have another powerful experience that in retrospect would have sinister undertones. While working at the job center in 1975, Dennis met a young man named David Painter who came in looking for work. During his visit, Painter mentioned he was currently at a work and without a place to stay. At the time, there were no jobs for the young man, so he left without anything. A few days later, however, Dennis ran into Painter on the street by chance and knowing his circumstances, he invited David Painter back to his apartment. What Dennis didn't know at the time was that David was only 17 years old and had run away from home and was reported missing by his parents. When they got to Nielsen's apartment, the two watched a movie, had several drinks, and then Painter became tired and went to Nielsen's bed to lay down. Miss reading that situation, Dennis followed and tried to engage in sex with David Painter. So, David immediately rejected him and was like, nope, that's not what I was doing. Yeah. And eventually, Nielsen gave up. And a few hours later. A few hours later. Yeah, exactly. Very telling. A few hours later, Painter awoke to find Dennis standing over him with a video camera, filming him while he slept. What the fuck? The details of what happened next are pretty murky, but in like kind of confusing, but when he woke to the camera in his face, he was clearly naturally very frightened and upset and tried to leave the apartment. And Nielsen tried to stop him, but David, apparently, according to Nielsen, became aggressive and began trashing the apartment. I think he was probably fighting to get out of the apartment. Yeah. He cut himself on a glass partition in the process. Oh, wow. It was only then that Dennis finally called the police in an ambulance. Okay. When he was interviewed by police at the same station, by the way, that he'd worked as an officer. Later that afternoon, he feigned ignorance, claiming that the young man, quote, went berserk for no clear reason. That usually happens. Yes. Although it seems highly unlikely that nothing happened in Dennis' apartment, David Painter's parents were reluctant to press charges. And the police were satisfied that if nothing else, Painter hadn't been sexually assaulted. So the whole thing ended that afternoon with Dennis being let off with the warning. You have to wonder if he was sexually assaulted. And I wonder if his parents didn't want to press charges because they just didn't want him involved in what they assumed was something untoward. Yeah. Now, obviously, most people don't end up going home with someone who ends up being a prolific serial killer. No. Luckily. Thankfully. And in the context of Dennis Nilsen's life and later murderous activities, that incident, even though it wasn't viewed as bad enough, quote, unquote, press charges at the time, it can be viewed as a like pre-contemplative phase. Yeah. For sure. Where he's beginning to explore these darker fantasies and considering whether or not to act on him. Yeah. Definitely. This was clearly an escalation, a slight one. Uh-huh. Now, while there's evidence to indicate Nilsen was at least considering his predatory impulses at the time, the period between 1975 and 1977 was a lot of like personal growth and contentment for him, which is interesting. Yeah. After a few years of, you know, one night stands on hookups and casual sex, Dennis met David Galachan in November 1975. And by the end of their first night drinking together at the bar, he and David agreed to move in together. Wow. Very quick. Using what remained of the money left him by his father, Dennis and David found a small apartment on Melrose Avenue and London. And Dennis even worked it out so they would have exclusive use of the garden and patio in the back of the house. Nice. Oh, no. Hate that, actually. That's not great. Dennis had finally found someone with who he could spend his nights. All right. Not long after moving in together, they got a dog, a black and white mutt they named Bleep. Bleep? Yes, stop. That's actually hilarious. I don't want them to have a dog. They spent their days working on the garden and their nights watching films and listening to music. Oh, I hate how lovely this is. Yeah, it seemed at least to Dennis as though he finally lucked into a stable relationship. Okay. Things though, they might have only been in his head that it was like that. What? According to author Brian Masters, quote, the relationship was nonetheless fragile because it was relentlessly artificial. Oh, as he'd done with several other men before, for much shorter period of times, Dennis had built up this relationship with David into something it almost certainly was not. Although it was true, they did share an apartment and occasionally, they slept together. According to Masters, quote, there was no deep bond of affection between them and David was remote and uninterested. Did they get a dog named Bleep? They did. Oh, in truth, David and Dennis's relationship was one of convenience. Dennis paid most of the bills and made all the decisions and David continued carrying on other relationship of other people. Oh, no. That the relationship lasted two years. It was due in large part to the fact that David had such a passive personality that he was willing to go along with whatever Dennis wanted most of the time. It's just going to like whatever. Yeah, it was more like roommates with benefits. That's rough. But Dennis saw it as like a relationship domestic life. Despite this, not a lot of relationships can last without 100% effort and commitment. And it wasn't just that David contributed far less to the household than Dennis or that he continued to see other men. There was also the fact that the two shared very little in common. And according to Dennis, David was quote, according to Dennis, David was quote, inferior intellectually and dependent socially. That's rude. Yeah. By the summer of 1977, both men had begun seeing other people and barely spoke to each other when they were at home. Oh, wow. Finally in late summer, it had become clear that this was coming to an end. Yeah. According to David, he simply packed up his bags one night and left in search of somewhere new. So in his version of events, Dennis says that he insisted that David move out. It's unclear which one of these is accurate, but because of Dennis's really deep fears of abandonment and his propensity for fantasy and embellishment, it's entirely possible that he created his complete own narrative just to protect himself from the psychological pain of this whole thing. Yeah. Damn, this is fucking tragic. In the months that followed this, Dennis filled most of his time with work, working his regular job at the employment center and picking up shifts with a catering company. And when he wasn't working, he could be found at one of the local pubs. But if he hoped either of these things were going to improve his life, he quickly learned otherwise. The bars were still full of people who seemed pretty uninterested in having a relationship with him and have both jobs. His employers frowned upon his politics and life in general. Yeah. And as a result, he was just let down by everything. Feeling aimless, he applied to the Branch Chairman's School in the fall of 1978. And he fell very at home there in the intellectual and political circles of academia. At 33 years old, he was somewhat older than the other students, but his passion for intellectual subjects and politics made him fit right in. The new environment of school was exciting, but it did little to curb his loneliness. He was still cripplingly lonely. Yeah. During this time, Dennis had many one-night stands, but every time he met someone that he even had a little bit of interest in like a long-term relationship with, they just rebuffed him. Well, it just wasn't working out. Yeah. He was clearly off-putting. I was going to say. Like clearly. You got to, yeah, there's got to be something up there. Some of these disappointments cause Dennis to retreat deeper into his fantasies each time, which by then had grown very dark. Well, you have to wonder, and this is obviously just speculative, but he becomes a necrophiliac and a serial killer. Yeah. I do wonder if some of these one-night stands, there had to have been some off-putting sexual tendencies or something like that. For sure. For there to not be repeat nights. Exactly. Yeah. And of course, that's speculative, but it kind of makes sense. You want that. And Dennis had a fetish for deaths. Yeah. So it was very interested in it. That could make sex weird. It could, for sure. But by this time, he had stopped resisting this and he started indulging it. Okay. He said later, I put talk on my face to erase the living color. I smeared charcoal under my eyes to accentuate a hollow dark look. I lie staring at on the bed in front of the mirror and let my saliva foam and drip from my mouth. I step outside myself and detach imagination. That might be the darkest shit you've ever said to me. Yeah. What the- Like what? Actual fuck. That's like some shit out of a horror movie. And he would just do this a lot. Yeah. That wasn't just a one-time thing. No. Even a one-time thing I could not get past. And fantasy wasn't the only place that he was starting to experiment with like risky and like interesting behavior. He'd also started creating dangerous situations where he could rescue his sexual partners from danger. Oh, which is very interesting because that's how his father and mother got together. Right. Yeah. One night in late fall 1978 after inviting three men back to his house for a drink. Damn. I know. Fucking the sharp shooter there. Yeah. He's hedging his back. Dennis waited until all three had passed out before placing his winter jacket on the stove and setting it on fire. After he gathered up his dog and went out into the garden, the apartment filled up with smoke. When the men woke up, Dennis burst back into the apartment, putting out the small fire and opening all the windows, appearing to have saved their lives. What the fuck? Yeah. Almost like, damn, you're going to risk your apartment just to be a hero. Just to be a hero. That's our complex and a half. And in retrospect, these dark fantasies and risky behaviors would be seen as clear indicators that Nilson was spiraling deeper into something bad. Big time. He later said I was becoming depressed in condition to a belief that I was impossible to live with. But rather than seek any kind of medical or psychological help, he found a new way to cope with his stress anxiety, an anxiety while also indulging his fantasies. It's probably not good. By the end of December, his isolation and loneliness had become unbearable. And on the night of December 30th, he mustered the energy to get dressed and headed out to a local pub. After spending weeks alone in his apartment, feeling sorry for himself, he was very vulnerable and precarious emotionally. And he was also desperate to find someone to just stop the negative thoughts that were running through his head. And on top of that, he was certain that anyone that he met that night was just going to leave him. Yeah. Like, he just didn't want people to leave him. That's all. It's very unjeffery dogma. Yeah. And he later said that night things began to go terribly and horribly wrong. I think they had already started. They certainly did. Rather than visit one of his usual bars, he went to a different one. He went to Crinklewood, the Crinklewood Arms, which was an Irish Bar near his apartment. He sat there and he drank pint after pint of Guinness. And he spent the first hour, I know I love Guinness. Dennis spent the first hour, so the night watching people in the bar, just kind of like chatting with whoever sat down next to him, but not really making any attempt for big conversation. Eventually, he found himself talking with a young Irishman who introduced himself as Stephen. Years later, Nilson would tell police police he had, quote, no idea who this youth was. As really as very jeffery dogma. Yeah. As Stephen had no identification on him at the time, or anything to indicate who he was or where he'd come from. That said, he wouldn't have needed a driver's license or some other ID to tell that who he was talking to was still very much a teenager. He looked at you. He was Stephen Holmes, a 14 year old runaway from Kilburn. Oh, God, a baby. Yeah. Stephen had been out at a rockabilly concert that night and was waiting for a bus outside the Crinklewood Arms when he decided to go inside to get warm. Nilson convinced Stephen to come back to his apartment where they spent a few hours drinking and listening to music until the boy passed out. He passed out on Nilson's bed. Though Dennis swore there was no sexual contact between them. He said, quote, I snuggled up to him and put my arm around him. Then he pulled the blanket down and looked at the boy who was undressed. That shocked. He said, I remember thinking that because it was morning he would wake and leave me. Oh, no. Dennis looked down at the pile of clothes on the floor beside the bed and spotted his necktie. He said, I remember thinking that I wanted him to stay with me over the new year, whether he wanted to or not. Oh, fuck. Dennis reached down and picked up the tie and then he slow-fledged slowly and carefully ran it underneath Stephen's neck. He said, I quickly straddled him and pulled tight for all I was worse. At that moment, Stephen awoke with a jolt obviously struggling and they felt at the floor, but Nilson ended up on top of him again. And unfortunately, Holmes was no match for his very much adult attacker and with a minute or two, he lost consciousness again. Aware that he could wake up at any moment now, Nilson went to the kitchen and filled a bucket with water. He returned to the other room, dragged Stephen over to the bucket on the floor and held him by his hair, pushing his head under the water and held it there until he couldn't see bubbles anymore. Oh my God. Once Stephen was dead, Nilson dragged his body over to a chair and propped him up in a seat. And then he said, I just sat there shaking, trying to think clearly about what I had just done. It was still early in the morning so everything's quiet, but he knew everybody was going to wake up in a matter of hours. What am I going to do? So he spent the next hour so cleaning up the room where the murder had occurred. Then he moved Stephen's body to the bathtub where he carefully washed the entire body before putting it back in bed. Ew. All the while, he was fully expecting a knock at the door, certain that someone had traced Stephen back to his apartment. When a few days passed and he's kept Stephen's body and that no one ever came, Nilson's anxiety eased. And he said, there appeared to be no reports in the paper of the missing boy or the usual public anxiety that followed the disappearance of a child. It was only then that it occurred to Dennis that he'd gotten away with it. Yeah. That's not good. With the act of murder now behind him in the natural process of decomposition having said in, oh, Dennis grew disinterested in the body of his former guests and concluded that he needed to get rid of it. His former guests. At first, he thought it would be easiest to disarticulate the limbs and break down the body by boiling it. Oh my god. So he went so far as to buy a large electric carving knife and a stock pot for this purpose, but when he got home, it occurred to him that that was going to be pretty arduous. That does. So gnarly. And he said it would, he felt like it would be beyond his capabilities. And he said it was also unlikely to produce the desired results that he's looking for. Instead, he pulled up several floorboards in the kitchen of his apartment and found the space beneath to be pretty big and actually pretty cool in temperature. Perfect place to put a body. Oh. So after dressing Stephen in the clothes that he had come to the apartment and Dennis lowered his body into the space under the floor and put the boards back. And now he's got to make shift to him for Stephen under his kitchen. What the fuck? A week passed and Dennis's curiosity finally got the better of him. No. No, don't you say that to me. He said, I wondered if his body had changed at all or if he had continued to decompose. So he pulled up the boards and removed Stephen's body from beneath the floor to find that to his great surprise, very little decomposition had occurred. That'd be very cool. It seemed that the conditions under the floor were such that the natural processes of decomp had been stalled. Seeing the body in that state, and this is a trigger warning, Dennis was excited by this and he violated Stephen's body multiple times before returning it to the space beneath the floor where it would stay being periodically taken out for eight months. Eight months? Eight months. How fucking cold was it? I don't think it stayed in great condition. Oh my god. Yeah. Now in the months after this or the month after this month, what the fuck brother? So in the month after this, Dennis kept a pretty low profile. He went to work occasionally. He went to the bars, but mostly he stayed at home and avoided inviting anyone back to his apartment. I wonder why. At times he said he considered turning himself in and confessing. I doubt it. But the thought of spending the rest of his life in jail was enough to deter him from doing that. Besides, he had no intention of doing anything like that ever again. So he said, you know what? I fucked up. I don't think you can just like live the rest of your life. Yeah, he was like, you know what? I'm not going to do it again. I'm not going to do it again. Once you do that once, I don't think you necessarily stop doing that. So he continued to live his low key life for several months until the secret under his forebards became a little too much to bear, at least in his own mind. One night in October 1979, he pulled up the floorboards in the kitchen and removed the desiccated body of Stephen from the hiding space and carried it out to the back garden under the cover of darkness. There he had built a small bonfire and he placed Stephen Holmes' body into the bonfire and stood and watched the flames engulf every part that it would. Oh my god. Once the fire had burned away all it was capable of destroying. He put the fire out and removed the remaining bone fragments and he buried that in the backyard. Maybe it was because he'd rid himself of his terrible secret under the floorboards of the kitchen or maybe he'd just lost his ability to control his clear impulses here. Whatever the case within a month of destroying Stephen Holmes' remains, Dennis seemed to have forgotten his promise to himself about not committing another violent adafeelling. How to feeling. And we're going to end there for part one. That's probably good. Part two is going to be rough. All right. This was rough, obviously, but it's going to be rough. Why is he called the Kindly Killer? Do we get into that? We will get into that, yeah. Interesting. Yeah, because nothing about this so far is kind of kindly now. All right. What's your fun fact for me, Boyd? One in 18 people have a third nipple. Wow. It's called polythelia and it's caused by a mutation in an active genes. How many? One in 18? One in 18. That's a lot of people. Yeah. What you guys do now here with your third nipple, right? What you do it out here? It's easy to have a nipple removed. I wonder. I don't know. I wonder if you have a third nipple if you can just get it removed. I don't know. Do you have a third nipple, everybody? Let us know. I don't. You know, let us know. I don't. That's crazy. Think about like dinner parties are like at a wedding. Probably like two people there have a third nipple. I didn't know where you were going with that. And for a second, I thought you were being like, imagine at a dinner party, you just like have a third nipple. Like I was like, what? No, I'm like, I imagine that. I was like, I was saying like large guys. Yeah, like a people like, wow, like a couple of these people have a third nipple. Potentially. Yeah. One in 18 seems nuts. That is crazy. I don't know. But I'm saying. But you say it's a fact. So get crazy out here with your third nipple. It's crazy. We hope you do. We hope you keep listening. And we hope you keep it weird. Keep it so weird that you tell us if you have a third nipple. Yeah. I'd like to know is if you're willing to share. It's a weird and a cool way. Yeah. Rock on with your third nipple. We do bad self. We do bad. We do a third nipple.