Dennis Nilsen - Conversations with Britain's Most Evil Serial Killer by Russ Coffey Page A
Authors: Russ Coffey
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Skinner. This one, however, also demonstrates a disturbing hostility that Nilsen was quietly harbouring towards some of his contemporaries. Nilsen seems to have been jealous of Skinner and the ‘insider’ types. Whereas he felt he was on life’s sidelines, Skinner was playing in the same ‘tough-kid’ gang as his brother Olav. On the day he drowned, Skinner had been showing off on the rocks near the lighthouse museum. He’d knocked his head and fallen into the water. Despite efforts to rescue him, he couldn’t be revived. ‘The sea doesn’t care how tough you think you are,’ Nilsen remarks. He then wonders what Skinner, in life, would have made of the indignity of an old nurse washing his dead, naked body.
Nilsen felt similar resentment towards his brother Olav, the ‘normal’ son who seemed to get all the attention. Nilsen’s older brother was gregarious and manly. He enjoyed football, billiards, snooker, cards, horse racing and, when old enough, chasing girls. Despite Dennis’s bitterness towards him, he was also fascinated by him. When he was 10 or 11, and his brother 13 or 14, Nilsen says he would grope his brother’s penis in their shared bed. To Dennis, this was part of natural development. He also feels sure Olav derived some pleasure from the experience. But shortly after, he remembers Olav calling him ‘hen’ in public, a local Buchan dialect term for woman. Others just thought it a funny name – he seemed to prefer being with the girls after all – but Dennis says he knew his brother was trying to humiliate him, and why.
As part of his further sexual experimentation, he thinks he might also have groped his sister, Sylvia, the sibling he likedthe most. He thinks he touched her mainly because he was curious about developing bodies. But he also wonders if it was his fondness for Sylvia that caused him later to be attracted to boys who looked like her. That, in turn, prompts him to classify the incident as an example of his potential bisexuality.
The prose in
History of a Drowning Boy
becomes more urgent when he recalls the ‘embryonic’ sex games he remembers in the ‘parks’ – little more than small play areas – of Strichen. He calls these ‘sightings’. They were occasions where boys would pin down girls and feel under their clothes. One summer afternoon in the park, the young Dennis saw his brother pin down a girl and put his hand up her skirt. Nilsen says he was upset to see that his brother was such a bully. But sometimes older boys would pin down younger boys, and Nilsen found this exciting. Once, he says, he was pinned down and fondled. He didn’t find it unpleasant but he was annoyed that the boy was bigger and stronger. And in his autobiography, he cites other occasions when he did the same to another boy:
There was no violence as such, just wrestling him to the ground and putting my hand up his short pants to feel him. I only did this on two occasions and it seemed to be a passing phase. It was a need to feel a surge of power over another person. It was an embryonic sex act … perhaps a rehearsal. On another occasion I had a wrestling match with a beautiful, almost delicate boy who lived next door.
He was about a year younger than me and his build and features had a feminine quality about them. Like me, he was no ‘football type’. I soon overpowered him and was
astride him, pinning him down by his arms held down on the grass. I held him there looking down at his close, handsome face … I held him there and we gazed into each other’s faces. We did not speak … only the language of our eye contact.
Nilsen writes this passage as though he feels some romantic understanding existed between him and the boy. The reader, however, is again left wondering whether this was just Nilsen’s imagination. Some of his fancies were even odder. For a while, he had a crush on a drawing of a boy who was on the cover of his French text book. He also remembers being attracted to two
Nilsen felt similar resentment towards his brother Olav, the ‘normal’ son who seemed to get all the attention. Nilsen’s older brother was gregarious and manly. He enjoyed football, billiards, snooker, cards, horse racing and, when old enough, chasing girls. Despite Dennis’s bitterness towards him, he was also fascinated by him. When he was 10 or 11, and his brother 13 or 14, Nilsen says he would grope his brother’s penis in their shared bed. To Dennis, this was part of natural development. He also feels sure Olav derived some pleasure from the experience. But shortly after, he remembers Olav calling him ‘hen’ in public, a local Buchan dialect term for woman. Others just thought it a funny name – he seemed to prefer being with the girls after all – but Dennis says he knew his brother was trying to humiliate him, and why.
As part of his further sexual experimentation, he thinks he might also have groped his sister, Sylvia, the sibling he likedthe most. He thinks he touched her mainly because he was curious about developing bodies. But he also wonders if it was his fondness for Sylvia that caused him later to be attracted to boys who looked like her. That, in turn, prompts him to classify the incident as an example of his potential bisexuality.
The prose in
History of a Drowning Boy
becomes more urgent when he recalls the ‘embryonic’ sex games he remembers in the ‘parks’ – little more than small play areas – of Strichen. He calls these ‘sightings’. They were occasions where boys would pin down girls and feel under their clothes. One summer afternoon in the park, the young Dennis saw his brother pin down a girl and put his hand up her skirt. Nilsen says he was upset to see that his brother was such a bully. But sometimes older boys would pin down younger boys, and Nilsen found this exciting. Once, he says, he was pinned down and fondled. He didn’t find it unpleasant but he was annoyed that the boy was bigger and stronger. And in his autobiography, he cites other occasions when he did the same to another boy:
There was no violence as such, just wrestling him to the ground and putting my hand up his short pants to feel him. I only did this on two occasions and it seemed to be a passing phase. It was a need to feel a surge of power over another person. It was an embryonic sex act … perhaps a rehearsal. On another occasion I had a wrestling match with a beautiful, almost delicate boy who lived next door.
He was about a year younger than me and his build and features had a feminine quality about them. Like me, he was no ‘football type’. I soon overpowered him and was
astride him, pinning him down by his arms held down on the grass. I held him there looking down at his close, handsome face … I held him there and we gazed into each other’s faces. We did not speak … only the language of our eye contact.
Nilsen writes this passage as though he feels some romantic understanding existed between him and the boy. The reader, however, is again left wondering whether this was just Nilsen’s imagination. Some of his fancies were even odder. For a while, he had a crush on a drawing of a boy who was on the cover of his French text book. He also remembers being attracted to two
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