On February 8, 1983, Dyno-Rod employee Michael Cattran responded to plumbing complaints made by the tenants of 23 Cranley Gardens, London.
After opening the drain cover at the side of the house, Cattran discovered that the drain was packed with a flesh-like substance and numerous small bones.
Fearing that the bones could be of human origin, Cattran and his supervisor called the police.
Fellow tenants told the police that the top floor apartment, suspected to be the source of the blockage, belonged to Dennis Nilsen.
Detective Chief Inspector Peter Jay and his two colleagues opted to wait outside the house until Nilsen returned home from work.
As Nilsen opened the door to his flat, police officers were hit with the stench of rotten flesh.
Little did they know, this chilling discovery marked the unmasking of one of Britain’s most prolific serial killers, who had murdered at least 15 young men in the 1970s and 80s.
Nilsen would strangle and drown his victims before performing sex acts on their corpses – then hide their remains under the floorboards.
When questioned as to whether he had any remorse for his crimes, Nilsen replied: “I wished I could stop, but I couldn’t. I had no other thrill or happiness.”
He also emphasized that he took no pleasure from the act of killing, but “worshipped the art and the act of death”.
Following his conviction for six counts of murder and two counts of attempted murder, Nilsen was sentenced to life imprisonment in November 1983. His sentence was later upgraded to a whole-life tariff, which is the UK equivalent of a life sentence without the possibility of parole in the US.
On May 10, 2018, Nilsen was found hunched over in his cell lavatory after suffering a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm.
“Des” was taken to the hospital, where he underwent successful emergency surgery but died two days later due to an inability to cope with the blood loss and the lengthy surgery.
In his autobiography, which he wrote in prison, Nilsen confessed to a number of other crimes, including sexually assaulting a drunk soldier a decade prior to his first killing, and strangling two other men to death.
However, the police did not take significant interest in his claims, given Nilsen’s initial claims of murdering as many as 15 people but refusing to name them.
