Forensic psychologist who worked with Dennis Nilsen says he killed due to necrophilia

A forensic psychologist who worked with serial killer Dennis Nilsen has claimed that he was a necrophiliac because of ‘abnormal sexual development’ in childhood. 

Nilson, known as the Muswell Hill Murderer, died at the age of 74 at HMP Full Sutton in 2018, 34 years into his life sentence for carrying out a murderous spree in the late 1970s and early 1980s. 

One of the nation’s most notorious murderers, Nilsen is believed to have killed as many as 15 gay men, most of them homeless, at his homes in Cricklewood and Muswell Hill, north London. 

Kerry Daynes, from Brighton, who came into contact with the killer in 2008 after he’d spotted her on a crime documentary and got in touch, dismissed the murderer’s’ previous claims that he killed ‘because he was lonely’, suggesting instead he was ‘attracted to dead bodies’. 

She explained on This Morning today that after an irregular sexual development as a child, he wanted to create ‘passive partners’ who he could ‘wash, pose and talk to’ and who ‘wouldn’t ask questions’. 

‘I think to understand Dennis Nilsen you really have to look at a series of events during his childhood,’ said Kerry, ‘and he had a very, very abnormal sexual development. 

‘I don’t believe he killed because he was lonely, I believe he killed because he was a necrophilic, he was attracted to dead bodies. 

‘But also being around them and being around death made him feel very powerful and created passive partners he could, pose and wash and talk to. Like his dog, who never asked questions and made him feel like he was in control.’ 

Nilsen had called Kerry to ‘give his version of events’ after seeing her on television, and stayed in contact until 2012. 

He had told her that the act of killing was ‘not important’ to him, and that his murder spree was a result of events in his childhood. 

‘He told me the killing was not important to him,’ said Kerry. ‘In fact he found it very, very difficult. What was important was the ultimate product  he made which was these dead men. 

‘He spoke to me, when he was at school he, was bullied because he was feminine and people didn’t accept he was gay, which he felt he could not hide.’  

She recalled an incident in his childhood, where he had seen one of the boys who had bullied him being pulled out of the sea, and felt ‘supreme and powerful’ after seeing his peer so defenceless.

The psychologist told: ‘There was one incident where he saw one of the boys bullying him being pulled out of the sea, he lived in a small fishing port in Scotland. 

‘He found it very sexually exciting, but also he realised he would never bully him again and he had no control. It made him feel supreme and powerful and confident.

‘From that point, he would fantasise about dead bodies who had been drowned or pulled from the sea.’ 

She added: ‘He was referred to as a ‘kindly killer’, there’s nothing kind about killing men, but then he would put them in the bath and wash them, and I think he was trying to recreate the scenario with this drowning boy. ‘ 

She was joined on the show by Steve McCusker, who was a Detective Inspector on the Nilsen investigation and agreed that his murders were pre-meditated, and a result of the killer being ‘pure evil’. 

Asked why the killer was able to go unnoticed for so long, Steve said: ‘I think probably because the people he approached were vulnerable young men.

‘A lot of the people we investigated and identified had left home under sad circumstances and they were people, normally, if they vanished off the face of the earth, nobody would ask any questions.’ 

He went on: ‘I think Nilsen went down to the west end to these bars, with the intention to murder them. I think he was absolutely without doubt evil.’ 

He added: ‘I think evil just came within him, he’s just pure evil, a nasty man.’