Ep5 - DENNIS NILSEN: The Kindly Killer

One of Britain’s most infamous killers, Dennis Nilsen murdered fifteen young men, some as young as 14, in London during the late seventies and early eighties. Nilsen held on to the corpses of his victims for weeks on end, keeping them in pristine condition and talking to them on his return home from work and sleeping beside them. His horrific crimes were only revealed when a plumbing company found human remains in his drains. But what led this seemingly normal civil servant to start killing for company? How big a role did his lonely childhood in an isolated Scottish fishing village play? And how devastating was his cold and religious mother’s inability to feel any love for him or to acknowledge his homosexuality? Join MacIntyre and distinguished criminologist Dr Elizabeth Yardley as they unpick the psychology of one of the country’s most complex killers.

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