Dennis Nilsen interview: What did the serial killer say and was it banned from TV?

IMAGINE sitting in front of a cold hearted serial killer to talk to them about their heinous crimes.

Well that’s exactly what happened in 1992 when evil Dennis Nilsen sat down to talk about being a mass murderer.

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What did Dennis Nilsen say in his television interview?

In September 1992, Central Television conducted an interview with Nilsen as part of the programme Viewpoint 1993 – Murder In Mind, which focused upon offender profiling.

By this point Nilsen had already been in jail for 10 years, having been convicted in November 1983.

He was sentenced to life after being found guilty of six counts of murder and one of attempted murder.

In the interview, he talks very candidly, and matter-of-fact about his crimes.

The key points of the Dennis Nilsen interview were:

WARNING: Contains graphic content, which some readers might find distressing.

• In the interview Nilsen said there were only 12 victims – not “15 or 16” as he had told officers upon his initial arrest.
• Nilsen talked in graphic detail about why he dismembered the bodies – claiming he was worried in the summer that there would be a “smell problem”, due to the fact that many of his victims were under the floorboards or in cupboards.
• The killer revealed he would carry out the grisly task of dismembering the bodies at the weekend.
• Nilsen said he found the task of dismembering “unpleasant” and got “blind drunk” so that he “could face” butchering the bodies.
• Nilsen revealed the process of dismembering would cause him “to be sick in the garden”.
• When asked if there was “a lot of blood” when disposing of the bodies, Nilsen went into graphic detail about how there was “little or no blood” as the bodies had been dead for a while.
• Nislen revealed he would cut open a dustbin liner in preparation, then “haul the body out from under the floorboards and place it on the sheet and then cut it up”.
• The killer also talked about how he would dress the corpses up so they “would look better”.
• He talked of the “excitement” and “power” at being able to lift the bodies over his shoulder, and that he liked the “dangling of limbs” and how “passive” his victims were.

You can watch a portion of the interview at the top of this article.

Was the Dennis Nilsen interview banned from TV?

A four-minute section of this interview was initially scheduled to be broadcast on January 19, 1993.

However, the Home Office banned the interview from being broadcast on the grounds that they had not granted permission for Central Television to conduct interviews with Nilsen.

Central Television challenged the Home Office ruling in court, citing sections of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and that full permission to conduct an interview with Nilsen had been granted in advance.

Then on January 26, 1993, Judge William Aldous ruled in Central’s favour, and the interview was screened that evening.

When was the Dennis Nilsen book Des released?

Brian Masters is the bestselling author who wrote Killing For Company: The Case of Dennis Nilsen.on which the ITV drama Des is based.

The book was released in 1985 and charted the crimes of Nilsen.

Brian interviewed the killer before AND after he was convicted and told The Sun he thought the murderer was “morally mad”.