Serial killer Dennis Nilsen confesses to first murder
DAILY MAIL online
09 November 2006
Serial killer Dennis Nilsen (above) revealed in a letter how he killed Stephen Holmes (below)
In an extraordinary letter sent from his prison cell, Nilsen tells how he picked up Stephen Holmes in December 1978 in a Cricklewood pub.
He took the boy to his home where he killed him. It was the beginning of a series of gruesome murders of young men that went on until his arrest in 1983 after human remains were found in a blocked drain at his Muswell Hill home.
In the letter sent to the Evening Standard Nilsen, 60, confesses: "Stephen Dean Holmes was the first of 12 homicide victims."
In fact it is known he killed at least 15 men, among them rent boys, students and the homeless he lured back to his homes in Cricklewood and Muswell Hill. At least seven victims remain unidentified.
Nilsen promises to help police identify the rest of his victims although Scotland Yard has ruled out ever knowing definitively the names of the other men he murdered, usually by strangulation. Nilsen, a civil servant who had previously worked in the Army and police, was never charged with the offence because at the time of his trial in 1983, Stephen could not be identified.
But a photograph of the boy, who was reported missing by his family, was shown to Nilsen last year by police visiting him at Full Sutton.
The killer confirmed to detectives that the boy in the photograph was his first victim. He said Stephen spent the night with him after drinking heavily. Nilsen says he decided to strangle him the next morning because he was fearful the boy would leave.
He kept the body stuffed under the floorboards of his flat in Melrose Avenue, Cricklewood, for eight months before burning the remains in the back garden. He used the same method to dispose of several victims.
Nilsen was only caught out after moving to a flat in Cranley Gardens, Muswell Hill, where he lived in the attic and had no access to a garden. He chopped up three victims and stuffed their bodies down the drain. After complaints about the smell, a plumber found 30 to 40 pieces of human flesh beneath the manhole cover, leading to Nilsen's arrest and eventual conviction on six counts of murder.
A file on Stephen's murder has been passed to the Crown Prosecution Service which will decide whether to charge Nilsen. A decision is expected within weeks although sources suggest the prospect of a second Old Bailey trial is remote.
Nilsen appears in the letter to baulk at the prospect of another trial. He refuses to divulge "graphic details of the incident", adding: "I say this out of consideration for this victim's family."
In the letter, Nilsen says: "Oddly enough I did point out to police that a positive ID could, perhaps, be confirmed from the teeth and bone fragments unearthed by police at Melrose Avenue. To my surprise they told me that all such evidence had long been disposed of and was no longer available for analysis."
Stephen's identification by Nilsen ended any faint hopes his family may ever have had that the boy could still have been alive. Stephen's father Francis now lives in Highbury and still finds it too painful to talk publicly about his son's death. The teenager's sister, Deborah Mallerman, lives in Dublin and said that the family had no comment to make on the letter. Stephen's mother Kathleen campaigned tirelessly to find her missing son but died four years ago, unaware of his fate.
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