Dennis Nilsen died in prison ‘in excruciating pain’ after murdering at least 15

Dennis Nilsen is the notorious evil serial killer that claimed the lives of at least 15 men in the late eighties and early seventies.

He was finally caught in 1983 and given a life sentence, before he died in “excruciating pain” in prison in May 2018 at age 72.

Nilsen had been rushed to hospital when he began experiencing severe abdominal pain and then underwent an operation.

But he suffered a blood clot and his condition quickly deteriorated before he died in jail on May 12.

According to the post-mortem examination, his immediate cause of death was pulmonary embolism and retroperitoneal haemorrhage.

An inquest into his death heard that the underlying causes of this were deep-vein thrombosis and an “abdominal aortic aneurysm rupture repair”.

Nilsen murdered at least fifteen young men and boys between 1978 and 1983 in London.

But he was found guilty of only six counts of murder and one of attempted murder.

In November 1983 he was sentenced to life imprisonment with a recommendation that he serve a minimum of 25 years behind bars.

Police had found shopping bags full of body parts and ­organs in his home, with flesh blocking his drain.

Nilsen also admitted boiling heads in a cooking pot on his stove to dispose of the brains and it’s assumed that he ate the victims’ body parts.

His killing spree had begun in 1978 with the murder of 14-year-old Stephen Holmes.

Next he killed Kenneth Ockenden on December 3, 1979, a 23-year-old Canadian student.

He murdered Martyn Duffey, 16, on May 17, 1980 and William Sutherland, 26, the following August.

Malcolm Barlow, 23, was murdered on September 18, 1981, and John Howlett, 23, in March 1982.

Graham Allen, 27, was murdered that September and Stephen Sinclair, 20, was the final known murder victim and he was killed on January 26, 1983.

Nilsen admitted to murdering 15 young men and boys but it’s thought there could be more victims.