Hattie Llewellyn-Davies
(Picture: BBC/Wall to Wall)In February 1983, a plumber called out to unblock a drain was confronted with the evidence of the horrifying crimes of a serial killer. This accidental discovery launched one of the biggest murder investigations in Metropolitan Police history. On his arrest, the tenant from the top floor flat, 37 year-old Dennis Nilsen, confessed that not only had he killed the three young men whose remains were found in his Muswell Hill flat, but he had in fact murdered up to thirteen other people over a period of five years.
Nilsen’s victims were young men he had picked up in central London. They were, he claimed, “mostly” homeless, or what he called “rent boys”, and so his confession took police from the leafy suburbs of North London, to Piccadilly and Soho in the heart of London’s West End.
