Dennis Nilsen - Conversations with Britain's Most Evil Serial Killer by Russ Coffey Read Free Book Online Page B

would make nests for them in fish boxes and shoe boxes. Nilsen’s favourites were called Tufty and Jocky. One day, when the boys went to play at the shelter, they discovered some local tearaways had killed the pigeons. With a display of emotion absent from later life, Nilsen says he sobbed his eyes out. A similar occurrence happened when his rabbit died of cold in its hutch some months later. The animal’s pen had been outside in the back yard.
    In
History of a Drowning Boy
, Nilsen complains bitterly that the reason such things happened was because his mother wouldn’t allow animals inside the house. In interviews, she would say it wasn’t practical to keep them. But Dennis was always convinced the real reason was because she didn’t share his love of nature.
    Nilsen’s relationship with animals recurs throughout his writing. He calls himself a ‘critter person’ and said to Matthew Malekos: ‘I like them, and they like me.’ Even as he wrote those lines, he was being kept company by budgies in his cell. But the dynamic between Nilsen and animals is morecomplicated than simple affection on his part. From his manuscript, we now learn that that, when younger, there were occasions when he wanted to be cruel to animals.
    The act of deriving sexual pleasure from hurting creatures – known as ‘zoosadism’ – has been observed in a number of serial killers. It’s often seen as a precursor to violent sex attacks. Nilsen’s new confessions about these moments of cruelty, however, don’t sound as though he’s trying to copy something he’s read. He writes with the same detached confusion as with his murders, as if he simply can’t explain his actions. What his behaviour shows, though, is that as early as the age of nine, Nilsen’s ability to empathise with any other creature was badly malfunctioning.
    In
History of a Drowning Boy
, he says: ‘In 1955, I did something which thoroughly ashamed [sic] me, then as now. I slipped a wire around a friendly cat’s neck [in a disused toilet]. I pulled up the cat by the wire attached to the cistern pipe. It struggled briefly under the wire. After it was dead, I prodded it and turned away disgusted by my own cruel behaviour. I wanted to see the reality and process of killing and death. I was not excited by the act.’
    Shortly after the cat incident, Nilsen finally escaped the harsh atmosphere of Fraserburgh. The family moved into a larger council flat in the village of Strichen, a small village about eight miles inland from Fraserburgh. There is a short main street with a few streets running parallel to it. The focal points are a couple of pubs and a village store and, like Fraserbugh, most of the buildings are in the granite style.
    The family’s new address was 16 Baird Road, and it was where Nilsen spent what many would assume to be the mostformative years of his childhood. Nestling at the foot of Mormond Hill, Baird Road is one of Strichen’s nicest streets. Its houses stand out by being faced with red stone and are generously sized. Although Nilsen never says so, one imagines it would have been a comfortable place to grow up. And, most importantly, although the village was dull, it was not hard like Fraserburgh.
    Nilsen, however, gives the impression of disliking both the village and his school. The teachers weren’t much better than those ‘schoolmarm spinsters’ in Fraserburgh who would bully him with mental arithmetic or make him feel like a ‘scruffy urchin’. He resented the way his mother spoke to them. Nilsen claims she would kowtow to any figure in authority. Others simply remember Betty Scott just conscientiously trying to make everyone understand their financial circumstances. One teacher, Melita Lee, said that when there was a school trip to Belmont Camp in Perthshire, Nilsen’s mother offered all she could afford – 10 shillings – and even though it fell short, the school accepted it.
    Melita Lee was one of the locals who remembered Nilsen best