Dennis father, Olav
Magnus Nilsen, was a Norwegian soldier who came to Scotland
after the German invasion of Norway in 1940. He met Betty
Whyte outside a cafe
and married her in 1942. The marriage
lasted seven years.
After the devorce from Olav Nilsen, Betty Whyte remarried with Adam
Scott.
Dennis Nilsen grew up
sharing a single room with his mother, brother and sister at
47 Academy Road,
his grandparents house. It was a happy, but
severely religious house. Swearing and the subject
of sex
were forbidden at all times and Nilsen's childhood was spent
in an atmosphere
of pious self-denial.
Nilsen in the army.
In 1972 Nilsen joined the
Metropolitan Police Training School at Hendson. He passed
the 16-week course
and was sent to Willesden Green Police
Constable Q287. He performed his duties without incedent,
made some arrests and became used to giving evidence in
court. After barely a year he left the force.
He had shone
his torch into a parked car and discovered two men 'behaving
indecently'.
He could not bring himself to arrest them, so
he decided to resign.
During the last few
months in he army, Nilsen met a man, and they developed a
close friendship.
Nilsen was clearly in love and he got the
young man, who was not gay, to pretend to be dead
while he
took home movies. Their parting was a source of great pain
for Nilsen.
He destroyed the films he had made and gave the
projector to his friend.
When Dennis Nilsen moved
into the flat in Melrose Avenue whith David Gallichan in
1975 he was alated.
He had finally found someone to share
his life. Gallichan was given the pet-name 'Twinkle'.
While
Dennis went to the office, David decorated the flat. But the
relationship was fragile
and Gallichan moved out in the
summer of 1977. Nilsen was convinced that he was unfit to
live with, and his thoughts became increasingly dominated by
feelings of loneiness and despair.
Nilsen's one companion
was a black and white mongrel bitch with a bad eye, called
Bleep.
She paid no attention to the death bodies in the flat.
But she could sense when a body
still had life in it. It was
she who saved Carl Stotter by licking him and alerting
Nilsen,
who subsequently revived him. On Nilsen's arrest,
Bleep was taken to Hornsey Police
Station where Nilsen could
hear her whining from his cell. Bleep died under
anaesthetic
a week later.
