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Dennis Nilsen's Sandwiches

OneWingedBird

OneWingedBird

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This is sort of a civil service UL that I heard a few years ago, it's obviously untrue but I'm curious if anyone else has heard it or variations on it.

The true part is that Nilson did work as a civil servant for several years, though I don't know which department with. Basically this is about a FOAF who shred an office with him and remembered that he always brought in very tasty sandwiches that he shared with the other staff there. Very tasty meat sandwhiches.

And then one day he gets busted and they have a bad feeling about what the meat in the sandwiches might have been - ie his victims.

It's kind of daft 'cos as far as I know he wasn't into cannibalism, though he certainly did cut up his victims, often into very small pieces.

Anyone else heard this UL?
 
Re: Dennis Nilson's sandwhiches...

BlackRiverFalls said:
...

It's kind of daft 'cos as far as I know he wasn't into cannibalism, though he certainly did cut up his victims, often into very small pieces.

Anyone else heard this UL?
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And cook up the remains and stuff some of them down the overloaded sewage system and yes, I did wonder how far his depravity actually went.

:shock:
 
He worked in the Jobcentre. He was very well liked. He was also an active member of the Union.

Don't know about the sandwiches, though.
 
His neighbours did comment how the smell of a sunday roast was often wafting from his house. Roast pork by all accounts. Apparently human flesh smells much the same when roasted because we have a similar fat content.... :shock:
 
There has never been any mention of the manipulation of human tissue by Nilssen other than for the purposes of his parasexual gratification and disposal of evidence so as to evade prosecution.

Unless I'm wrong
 
drjbrennan said:
There has never been any mention of the manipulation of human tissue by Nilssen other than for the purposes of his parasexual gratification and disposal of evidence so as to evade prosecution.

Unless I'm wrong
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Well, no. But, these rumours do persist. Perhaps the thought of revealing to the public that a civil servant had been not only been befriending and slaughtering some of his clients, but also cooking and eating them might have been too much for British Bureaucracy to bear?

He certainly had means, motive and opportunity.
 
FTMB exclusive!!! The following story might be the actual seed from which that UL grew.

My parents most loyal friends were a gay couple from London - both confusingly named Michael. One of the Michaels was a career civil-servant who worked in London and was, at the time of his trial, Nilsen’s boss. According to him everyone who worked with Nilsen was shocked by the accusations of murder and, at first, most people assumed the whole thing was a mistake that would eventually be sorted out. However as time passed, the trial began and evidence mounted his former colleagues began to realise with mounting horror that the man they had worked with quite happily was most probably a serial killer.

At around 04.00 one morning during the trial Michael received a phonecall from an extremely distressed female colleague who had worked in the same office as both himself and Nilsen. This was around the time the revelations about the dismembering and "cooking" of body parts came out and that the ruminations about Nilsen’s culinary habits were aired in the press. The following is a rough transcript of the conversation as Michael used to relate it.

Woman: "Ohmygod Michael all that stuff in the papers. I've just realised - Dennis used to cook Christmas dinner for the office party!"

Michael: (Sits up in bed groggily. Rising panic. Brain kicks in. Reboots memory. Relief). "Calm down! No, no, it's okay. We all club together for the food and then send someone out to buy it. Remember? Dennis never supplied the food. We haven't eaten anyone love, go back to bed.

Woman: "Oh...yes...sorry Michael. I feel a bit silly now!"

Goodnights were said and phones were hung up. All was well until about half an hour later when just as Michael's nodding off the phone rings again.

Michael: "What now?"

Woman: "Ohmygod, Michael. When Dennis comes in to cook the Christmas dinner...HE BRINGS HIS OWN POTS!!!!!"

Now as befits a man who eventually made it to be a quite high-powered civil-servant Michael was a conscientious, pragmatic and at times crushingly boring man to whom flights of fancy were unfamiliar - he was a man who ironed his underpants while listening to The Archers for god's sake. I have absolutely no doubt that the phonecall occurred and its details were more or less as he related it to me and as I've passed it on. And Nilsen did indeed use his own cooking utensils when cooking the office Christmas dinner - although there is of course no real reason to believe that they were the same ones he used to boil down body parts. Being a conscientious cook even if they were the same pots I expect he had washed them thoroughly between uses anyway. (Ulp!)

Interestingly what really affected Michael was the letters Nilsen sent from prison to one of his female friends in the office. These were incredibly mundane. One suggested that he be taken off the coffee rota as he wasn't sure he'd be around for a few weeks.
 
Similar to the above a colleague of mine (who worked with one of Nilson's colleagues at another job centre in London) confirmed that he did use his oversized cooking pot to cook food for his Job Centre colleagues, the same one he had used to boil down the body parts to flush down the toilet.
 
These things have a habit of evolving in the retelling, I grew up in Highgate which is stones throw from Muswell Hill, and people I know there have convinced themselves that there was a funny smell around that area, this they attribute to the bodies of victims of Nilson.
Personnelly I can't remember it smelling any worse than anywhere else in London
 
I have actually seen the said cooking pot as it is in the Met Police's Black Museum (or Crime Museum as it is now known). It is larger than the average pan. It is displayed with Nilson's cooker and bath that he used to cut them up in!!!! In true Police 'humour' when I saw the cooking pot it had a piece of hair poking out the top of it :shock:

I heard a rumour that he actually cooked curries for his work colleagues, that rumour went around the Police service at the time!
 
Elffriend said:
I heard a rumour that he actually cooked curries for his work colleagues, that rumour went around the Police service at the time!
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Curries, I heard Chilli, as mentioned above these things tend to evolve in the retelling.
 
And change to fit the environment, curry being very popular in the Met Police.
 
Elffriend said:
And change to fit the environment, curry being very popular in the Met Police.
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Just what were Nilssen's culinary skills like?

Good enough to cook Christmas dinner for his colleagues, apparently. Perhaps, he liked to experiment?
 
AndroMan said:
Just what were Nilssen's culinary skills like?

Good enough to cook Christmas dinner for his colleagues, apparently. Perhaps, he liked to experiment?
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Somehow long pig with cranberry sauce just doesn't have that Yuletide feel to it
 
Swan said:
Somehow long pig with cranberry sauce just doesn't have that Yuletide feel to it
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"Hey look Pa we caught us a big red Turkey that fell down the chimney."

"Erm no I'm actually Santa Claus."

"Hey Pa this Turkey can talk too, get out the big roasting tin."
 
AndroMan said:
Just what were Nilssen's culinary skills like?
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He had been in the Army Catering Corps and fancied himself as a bit of a chef - an ambition which is normally, but not always, mutually exclusive to a career in Army catering.
 
Spook said:
AndroMan said:
Just what were Nilssen's culinary skills like?
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He had been in the Army Catering Corps and fancied himself as a bit of a chef - an ambition which is normally, but not always, mutually exclusive to a career in Army catering.
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So, he'd have been good for Christmas Dinners, chillis, curries and other sorts of solid, meaty fare as would fill the military's stomachs and, later, impress his friends and colleagues




This is getting more like Sweeney Todd, with every post. :(
 
AndroMan said:
So, he'd have been good for Christmas Dinners, chillis, curries and other sorts of solid, meaty fare as would fill the military's stomachs and, later, impress his friends and colleagues
This is getting more like Sweeney Todd, with every post. :(
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Thankfully we haven't been exposed to a Dennis Nilsen cook book yet.
 
Spook said:
AndroMan said:
This is getting more like Sweeney Todd, with every post. :(
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Yeah, but it's the plumber I feel really sorry for!
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The story goes that guy from plumbing company climbs down into drain on his first day on the job on his own and discovers a layer of fat an ich or two thick, has no idea what it is and decides to stop work and call supervisor. It being towards the end of the day no-one attends until the following day, meanwhile Neilson is seen entering said drain and appearing with black bags, when supervisor returns next day there is little evidence left apart from 'bits' left in the drain pipe but enough to alert him who calls the police who discover that it is human. All the time Neilsen was sitting at work according to his colleagues 'in a bit of a sad haze'. When the police knocked on his door later that night he met them saying "Oh you've come about the drains".
 
I don't know about it being the guy's first day on the job, but from what I recall of the reporting at the time, the plumber had scooped a couple of buckets of the fleshy sludge out of the drain without realising what it was and Nilson had gone out and removed them.

The truly remarkable part of that tale is that when a small sample of skin from the drain was presented to a forensic pathologist, he told them the victim was strangled. Apparently the skin was from the neck and had ligature marks on it. Seriously...
 
BlackRiverFalls said:
I don't know about it being the guy's first day on the job, but from what I recall of the reporting at the time, the plumber had scooped a couple of buckets of the fleshy sludge out of the drain without realising what it was and Nilson had gone out and removed them.

The truly remarkable part of that tale is that when a small sample of skin from the drain was presented to a forensic pathologist, he told them the victim was strangled. Apparently the skin was from the neck and had ligature marks on it. Seriously...
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Stop right there BRF.. you'll have him appealing on the grounds of an unsafe conviction!
 
I think the hacked up bodies in bin liners in his wardrobe were more of a give-away. And IIRC a few under the floorboards too?
 
I am going to my sisters boss's house party tomorrow and I joked that I hoped he wasn't like like Nilsen and that was before this thread was started.

So now I am definatley not eating anything home made or meaty at the party just in case and no pork scratchings either ;) .
 
BlackRiverFalls said:
I think the hacked up bodies in bin liners in his wardrobe were more of a give-away. And IIRC a few under the floorboards too?
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He used to put them under his floor boards but then he was relocated by the council to an upper floor flat that didn't have floor boards so he started putting them down the drain IIRC.
 
I work at the DWP and had pork sandwiches yesterday. I felt shifty all day, even though I'm fairly sure I've not been chopping people up of an evening.


I recall hearing that Dr Who's John Nathan Turner and Gary Downie either lived in a flat formerly resided in by Nilsen or met while guests of a friend who lived in said flat. UL or science fact?
 
Dennis Nielsen

"One suggested that he be taken off the coffee rota as he wasn't sure he'd be around for a few weeks."

I heard an interesting variant of this example of Nielsen's "wry" sense of humour. A colleague of a good friend of mine who works for Nat West bank had apparently worked at the branch at which Nielsen had his account. After his arrest, he returned his ATM card with a covering note stating that he didn't think he'd be needing it for a while...

The anecdote conecting Nielsen's flat to Dr Who producer John Nathan Turner and his partner Gary Downie comes, I believe, from a very bitter interview that Gary Downie gave to Dr Who magazine last year. Apparently, he met Jon Nathan Turner for the first time at a party at the flat that Nielsen subsequently rented..
 
He used to put them under his floor boards but then he was relocated by the council to an upper floor flat that didn't have floor boards so he started putting them down the drain IIRC.
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So then they were under someone else's floorboards? :_omg:
 
according to my dad (who was a prison officer in brixton dureing the early 80's) Nilssen's reasons for killing was that he couldn't ever bear being alone so if people wanted to leave him (after a one night stand or whatever) then he would kill them so he could keep them close by for company. This behavior started after the death of his grandmother when he kept her body on the bed upstairs for some time refuseing to accept that she was dead.

Don't know how accurate that is but as it was the tale going around the prison where he was being kept I'd presume it's not a million miles away from his motives.

Apparetly Nilssen took well to prison life quite well.
 
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