Killers_ The Most Barbaric Murderers of Our Time - Cawthorne, Nigel [70]
As Ockenden had gone missing from a hotel, his disappearance made the news for a few days. Again Nilsen was convinced that he was about to be arrested at any moment. Several people in the pub, on the bus, at the sights they had visited and even in the local off-licence had seen them together. But still there was no knock on the door. From then on Nilsen felt that he could pursue his murderous hobby unfettered.
Although plenty of people visited the flat in Melrose Avenue and emerged alive, Nilsen now began to deliberately seek out victims. He would go to pubs where lonely young homosexuals hung out. He would buy them drinks, offer advice and invite them back to his flat for something to eat. Many accepted.
One of them was Martin Duffey. After a disturbed childhood, he ran away from home and ended up in London, sleeping in railway stations. He went back to Nilsen’s flat and, after two cans of beer, crawled into bed. When he was asleep, Nilsen strangled him. While he was still barely alive, Nilsen dragged his unconscious body into the kitchen, filled the sink with water and held his head under for four minutes.
Nilsen then went through the standard procedure of stripping and bathing the corpse, then he took it to bed. He talked to it, complimenting Duffey on his body. He kissed it all over and masturbated over it. Nilsen kept the body in a cupboard for a few days. When it started to swell up, he put it under the floorboards.
Twenty-seven-year old Billy Sutherland died because he was a nuisance. Nilsen didn’t fancy him, but after meeting him on a pub crawl Sutherland followed him home. Nilsen vaguely remembered strangling him. There was certainly a dead body in the flat in the morning.
Nilsen did not even know some of his victims by name. He was not much interested in them – only their bodies, their dead bodies. The murder routine was always much the same. That part was mechanical. But once they were dead, they really turned him on. Touching the corpse would give him an erection.
Nilsen would never think of his victims’ bodies lying around his flat while he was out at work. But in the evening when he got home, he could not help playing with them. He was thrilled to own their beautiful bodies and was fascinated by the mystery of death. He would hold the corpse in a passionate embrace and talk to it, and when he was finished with it he would stuff it back under the floorboards.
Some of his murders were terrifyingly casual. Nilsen found one victim, 24-year-old Malcolm Barlow, collapsed on the pavement in Melrose Avenue. Barlow was an epileptic and said that the pills he was taking made his legs give way. Nilsen carried him home and called an ambulance. When he was released from hospital the next day, Barlow returned to Nilsen’s flat where Nilsen prepared a meal. Barlow began drinking, even though Nilsen warned him not to mix alcohol with the new pills he had been prescribed. When Barlow collapsed, Nilsen could not be bothered to call the ambulance again and strangled him, then carried on drinking until bedtime. It was full of corpses under the floorboards, so the next morning Nilsen stuffed Barlow’s body in the cupboard under the sink. Now that he had completely run out of storage space, Nilsen decided it was time to move.
There were six corpses under the floor, and several others had been dissected and stored in suitcases. After a stiff drink, Nilsen pulled up the floorboards and began cutting up the corpses. He put the internal organs in plastic bags, emptying them out in the garden. Birds and rats did the rest. The other body parts were wrapped in carpet and put on a bonfire in the garden. A car tyre was put on top to disguise the smell.
At the end of 1981 Nilsen moved to a small attic flat at 23 Cranley Gardens. This was a deliberate attempt to stop his murderous career. He