THE ARCHITECTURE OF LONELINESS
Dennis Nilsen, Narrative Control, and the Systems That Let Him Work
By Richie D. Mowrey
Dicking Around With Richie: A True Crime Feed
Little Dickies,
THE CASE FILE OPENS
Between 1978 and 1983, at least twelve men and boys were killed in North London by Dennis Nilsen. Some estimates place the number higher. The precise count matters less than the pattern: these were young, marginalized men, many unhoused, many estranged, many already invisible long before they encountered the man who would kill them.
This was not a spree defined by spectacle.
It was defined by silence.
Nilsen did not hunt.
He waited.
He did not rage.
He invited.
And for five years, institutions mistook quiet for harmlessness and politeness for safety.
INTO THE SHADOWS: STILLNESS AS A SUBSTITUTE FOR LOVE
Dennis Nilsen’s crimes are often misunderstood because they do not fit the public’s preferred image of a serial killer. There was no taunting of police, no public performance, no grandiose mythology while the crimes were ongoing.
Instead, there was a man who killed because people leaving him felt unbearable.
From a forensic perspective, Nilsen’s behavior is frequently categorized as “romantic necrophilia.” That phrase is clinically familiar and ethically disastrous. There was nothing romantic here. What Nilsen sought was permanent availability. A body that could not reject him. A person stripped of autonomy.
A more accurate description is this:
Attachment-based lethal objectification masquerading as intimacy.
He did not kill to hurt.
He killed to keep.
THE FIRST SYSTEM: WHERE SKILLS ARE LEARNED
Before he was a civil servant. Before he was a killer. Dennis Nilsen was a cook in the British Army.
This fact is often mentioned, then quickly brushed aside. It shouldn’t be.
Army kitchens train precision. They normalize carcasses. They teach how to separate joints, manage flesh, and stay emotionally neutral while doing so. This is not a moral failing of military service. Millions serve without harming anyone. But when such training intersects with unresolved trauma and severe attachment pathology, it becomes relevant.
By the time Nilsen needed to dismember bodies for disposal, there was no learning curve. No chaos. No panic. The actions were procedural.
Institutions prefer to describe killers as aberrations.
But aberrations don’t acquire skills in a vacuum.
THE SECOND SYSTEM: WHO POLICE CHOOSE TO BELIEVE
The most damning part of the Nilsen case is not what happened in secret.
It is what happened in plain sight.
At least three men survived attempts on their lives and reported Nilsen to police. Each time, the response collapsed the moment sexuality entered the room.
Reports were minimized as:
- “lovers’ quarrels”
- unreliable accounts
- interpersonal disputes unworthy of follow-up
No search was conducted.
No serious investigation followed.
Had police searched his flat after any one of these reports, bodies under the floorboards would almost certainly have been discovered.
This was not ignorance.
It was operational bias.
Homophobia was not background noise.
It shaped outcomes.
THE CRIMES, WITHOUT SPECTACLE
Nilsen’s victims included boys as young as fourteen and men in their twenties. Many were unhoused. Some were migrants. Several were estranged from family. Their disappearances did not trigger alarms because society had already learned to tolerate their absence.
He invited them in with warmth, food, and alcohol.
He killed quietly.
He kept their bodies for companionship.
When space or logistics forced him to, he disposed of them.
This was not impulsive violence.
It was maintenance behavior.
The timeline matters because it shows something else: time. Years in which intervention was possible. Years in which survival reports were ignored. Years in which a man learned exactly how invisible his victims were.
THE CONFESSION: HOW THE NARRATIVE WAS SEIZED
When discovery finally came in 1983, it was not through police brilliance. It was through plumbing. Human remains blocked the drains at his Cranley Gardens flat.
When confronted, Nilsen confessed immediately. Fully. Clinically.
This confession is often misread as honesty.
It was not.
It was editorial control.
By confessing before police could reconstruct events independently, Nilsen positioned himself as the primary narrator of his own crimes. He framed killings as “destructive binges,” emphasized trauma, and recast choice as compulsion.
The media followed his lead.
Coverage pivoted away from:
- police failure
- ignored survivors
- institutional neglect
And toward:
- his psychology
- his loneliness
- his introspection
Confession became camouflage.
THE PRESS: WHEN SPECTACLE REPLACES ACCOUNTABILITY
Tabloid headlines did what tabloids do. They made Nilsen the story. His face. His oddness. His “kindly” demeanor.
Victims were reduced to:
- lifestyles
- risk factors
- anonymous bodies
This framing persists even in retrospective portrayals. Dramatizations focus on interrogation rooms and killer psychology while victims remain unnamed or narratively disposable.
Media didn’t just report the case.
They cemented the hierarchy: killer first, victims second, systems never.
THE BOOK: A FINAL ATTEMPT AT CONTROL
While incarcerated, Nilsen wrote an autobiography titled History of a Drowning Boy.
It is often described as introspective.
It is better understood as curated self-analysis.
The book reframes violence as inevitability, replaces remorse with theory, and treats victims as emotional symbols rather than people. It continues the same pattern established at arrest: Dennis Nilsen explaining Dennis Nilsen, on his terms.
The book is not insight.
It is evidence.
Evidence that narrative control mattered to him more than accountability, even after conviction.
THE VICTIMS, NAMED
These are the confirmed, named victims whose identities could be established:
- Stephen Dean Holmes (14)
- Kenneth Ockenden (23)
- Martyn Duffey (16)
- William Sutherland (26)
- John Howlett (23)
- Graham Allen (27)
- Malcolm Barlow (23)
- Peter Walters (20)
- Brian West (23)
- Stephen Sinclair (20)
Others remain unidentified.
That is not mystery.
It is record-keeping failure layered atop social neglect.
WHAT THIS CASE ACTUALLY TEACHES
Dennis Nilsen did not succeed because he was a mastermind.
He succeeded because institutions were predictable.
- Skills were taught without follow-up
- Bias dismissed credible warnings
- Media preferred psychology to accountability
- Victims were already unseen
Calling him “smart” is not praise.
It is diagnosis.
He understood silence.
And silence cooperated.
CLOSING STATEMENT
This case is not about an unknowable monster.
It is about how many systems quietly stepped aside.
When we focus only on the killer’s mind, we miss the machinery that made his crimes sustainable. When we romanticize language, we dull the violence. When we fail to name victims, we repeat the erasure that killed them.
This file stays open not because the killer deserves attention, but because the failures do.
And because silence, left unchallenged, always finds another address.
WHAT’S NEXT: WHEN THE STORY IS STILL BEING SOLD
Up next week, this casefile closes, but the work doesn’t.
Our next investigation turns to Courtney Clenney, a case that exposes a different kind of rot: not silence, but visibility weaponized.
Where Dennis Nilsen hid behind politeness and institutional neglect, this case unfolds in real time on social media feeds, in public narratives, and through a media ecosystem quick to choose sides before facts settle.
This is a story about:
- influence and credibility
- gendered narratives of violence
- how money and image shape public sympathy
- how domestic abuse is framed depending on who controls the camera
It is not a trial recap.
It is not a morality play.
It is a forensic look at how narratives are built while the truth is still being contested.
Stay with me.
The files are still open.
Thanks for dicking around with Richie.
Keep being a voice for the voiceless.
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