Hey, weirdos.
I'm Alina.
I'm Ash.
And this is Morbid.
This is morbid.
This is morbid and there's a lot going on.
My goodness, doesn't it just feel like that every single day you wake up?
Truly.
More and more going on.
Something very.
This is one of those things.
It's very chilling and it's like something that I can't stop thinking about.
And like checking in on.
So the Today Show anchor Savannah Guthrie.
Her 84-year-old mother, Nancy Guthrie, has been missing since Saturday night, I believe.
The last time she was seen was Saturday night.
And this story is just amazing, wild and heartbreaking and horrifying.
I can't stop thinking about it.
No, i can't either.
We i mean we we, i.
We haven't been so much recently just because life has gotten busy, but we used to be such a today show house, oh my god.
I used to come over like every single day and we would just watch hours of the today show, the today show, um and like so.
We've been watching savannah forever yeah, and it's years, destroying my soul to think of how much pain she must be going through.
Right now.
My heart is with her and her family, and this story is just wild.
I mean, nancy is 84 years old.
She's just described as sharp as attack, has a little bit of mobility issues, so she wasn't going to be getting up and leaving on her own right.
She lives in Arizona and there's not a lot coming out which leads me to believe that they might have something that they're working on.
Or at least they're trying to chase something down that maybe they don't want.
Or something happened that they just don't want us to know.
Yeah, because they've said they don't believe it's a home invasion.
They don't believe it's a robbery gone wrong.
But there is evidence of foul play.
Yeah, it sounds like they're pretty much stating now that she was abducted from her bed.
An 84-year-old woman abducted from her bed.
Yeah, it's horrific.
It's just horrifying.
She needs medication every 24 hours to literally survive.
It's life-threatening if she doesn't have it.
And the medicine was left in the home, which is very concerning.
And now her pacemaker's not connecting to her Apple Watch any longer.
Yeah, that was the newest update, so...
It's all really horrifying and I'm just thinking about how her family is feeling right now.
I can't even imagine.
I can't even put my brain in that space, but I feel really bad.
You just hope that like by some miracle she's found alive and well.
I hope they know more than they're saying.
Yeah.
And I hope that they find Nancy because it's really, it's ugh, the world.
Yeah.
And Savannah has gone through a lot.
Yeah, she just i think she just came back from like a vocal cord surgery or something.
Yeah, and just like their family in general, like it's just yeah, that's so sad.
But yeah, we loved the, we always loved the today show and you know it.
Just i was like, oh yeah damn, you like you have these people in your house on the daily, so you feel this like strange connection to them.
So i felt like super, what?
As soon as i heard i was like oh, my god, it's like your friend is going through this.
It feels like It's really sad, but just let's hope they find Nancy.
Yeah, and Savannah's asking for prayers.
Yeah, like, damn.
But yeah, just wanted to point that out.
Hopefully there's an update and a good one.
A good one, I know.
Let's manifest that for her.
But yeah.
On another level.
I was going to say going going into another hopefully a little bit of positivity.
Yeah.
Just bring obviously everybody knows how we feel about ice.
Fuck ice.
Yeah.
We want them out of Minnesota.
We want them out of everywhere.
Yeah.
But we were thinking of just like anything we can do to help.
Yeah.
And Mikey was nice enough to help us find this on Twitter.
Uh minnesotaorg, and we will link this in our show notes.
They have a full list of small businesses that you can support.
Yes, so we'll, we'll link those in the show notes and we'll link them.
We'll try to link them on it's.
I don't think instagram allows links it's.
I don't think it does.
It drives me nuts.
I'm like can you allow links?
I know it matter.
Well, we'll link it in the show notes.
Go find those.
It's just wherever you're listening to, if you hit like more info, it should be right there.
Yeah.
I know sometimes people struggle to find them.
Yeah.
So check those out.
Support some local businesses.
Yeah.
It's a great way to just.
Because they're going through a lot more than what we're seeing.
Yeah.
Too.
We're being like that's the thing.
The news is being suppressed for sure.
So just like they need all the support they can get.
And anywhere else that you hear advice.
A great way to fight back and spend your money in a good way is to shop local.
Exactly.
Any Etsy shops you can find in areas like that.
Yeah.
You know, we love Etsy.
Support local businesses.
Just in general.
It's good to do anyway.
Yeah, that's just good to do anyway.
On a more like lighter note, and this is... We need it.
We're really segueing.
Yeah.
I can't believe I'm segueing here.
I mean, we need a segue.
We need a segue.
That's just, you know, that's just, that's the way the show goes.
Yeah, that was the business at the top and now we're at the banter.
Do you know what a flow state is?
Yeah.
What is a flow state?
I think like a flow state, isn't that when you like really lock in?
I don't.
Everybody says that like.
I keep seeing it on TikTok, people being like I ate this ice cream, or one thing that I keep seeing people saying is like they take a sip of like the most delicious latte and they enter a flow state.
Yeah, I think it's like a really locked in state of just like ready to fucking go.
I just looked and I just looked it up.
It says, like being in the zone complete absorption, focus and enjoyment in whatever activity you are engaged.
Okay, I've enjoyed a lot of things in my life.
I don't know that I've ever been in a flow state.
Oh, I've been in a flow state so many times.
Tell me when you're in a flow state.
I'm in a flow state.
Give me examples.
When I can sit down in front of a computer and a Word document and write more than three words.
That's a flow state.
I enter a full flow state.
If I'm tap, tap, tapping and shit is rolling out and it's happening, flow state.
Okay.
If I make a perfect coffee in the morning, immediately enter a flow state.
Okay.
Okay.
So I've probably been in a flow state.
I'm sure you have.
You're just not recognizing it as a flow state.
I got to recognize my flow states.
When I like organize and feel like I've actually accomplished some kind of organization, I will enter a flow state.
Okay.
When I organized my pantry, I was in a flow state.
Yeah.
You were in a flow state.
All right.
All right.
All right.
Yep.
Like I decorate For, and Ash actually helped me this time.
I decorate for every holiday, like the bathroom that like my kids generally use.
And we decorate it for every holiday.
Like I always put a bunch of shit in there.
You go all out.
I love it.
Just because it's fun.
They get home from school and or like they go to brush their teeth and they're like, oh my God.
It's so cute.
It's all these like lights and stuff.
And so for Valentine's Day this year we went like all out and Ash helped me like use the markers that you can write on the glass.
To like make little candy hearts on the mirror.
I thought that was so cute.
The little like conversation hearts.
And I think in those moments I enter a flow state.
Okay.
When I was doing those hearts, even though my knees were hurting really bad, I was in a flow state.
Yeah.
See?
So that's a flow state.
Okay.
Thank you.
I thought of this last night because I saw a talk of a lady being like oh my God, I just entered a flow state because this latte is so good.
And I felt like that was very Gen Z. And I said, have I been in a flow state?
I said, I wonder if Alayna knows what a flow state is.
And I saved it for the pod.
I was going to text you about flow states, but you let it happen.
I think I'm in a flow state when I shop.
Oh, you definitely are in a flow state when you shop.
Yeah.
Yeah, I definitely am.
Yeah.
Yeah yeah, i think hopefully we can all get into flow states with things we enjoy right now.
There's another tip of the day make sure, make it your fucking mission tomorrow.
Yeah tomorrow, right now.
I mean try it now, but it's okay if you're not like in that place right now and you need a minute to like really, you know, get it or figure out what your flow state thing might be.
Okay Tomorrow, wake up, attempt flow state.
Whatever you need to do, watch one of those late 90s, early 2000s movies.
That'll get you into a flow state.
Make an awesome coffee, organize, decorate, just read a book, write down some shit.
Like, do whatever you need to do and make sure you do not go to bed tomorrow night until you have entered your flow state, even for a second.
Oh, wow.
Even if it's just a quick flow state.
Oh, okay.
I think we all need that every day.
This is like a glass shatter moment.
I enter a flow state when I do.
I almost said esclophate.
Esclophate.
I enter a flow state when I do my skincare or an everything shower.
That's a flow state.
All right.
I get it now.
I get it.
So see, there you go.
Have a good shower or something.
Like tomorrow, make it your business to enter a flow state and then try to enter a flow state just for one second, even every day.
Just to give yourself that one moment.
Does a flow state need to be a little bit longer though?
A flow state feels longer than one second.
I don't think there's a timeline on flow states.
I think as long as you feel like you entered a flow state even for a second.
If you drank every time we said flow state during this, you would die.
You just died.
That's crazy.
But yeah, do that.
I think that's my advice for the day.
I like that.
My advice to get.
I'm all about flow states right now.
We ordered Jersey Mike's cookies and I'm going to eat one after this.
Oh my God.
I forgot we had that.
Oh baby.
Not only did we order like one, not only did we order two.
We got two mini boxes.
And if they had more than mini boxes, we would get two of those too.
Hell yeah.
Those put me in a flow state.
We're going to need that because we're starting a three part series that is going to be a harrowing.
I have to tell you something.
When you say we're starting a three part series.
I know it's about to get dark yeah, but you try to enter a fugue state at that point.
That's no, but you know what your three part?
I gotta say let me just like, let me let me brown nose you real quick.
I really love your three-parters because they feel cinematic to me when I sit and listen to them.
Oh, thank you.
You betcha.
That's highest praise I could imagine.
Let me wipe my nose off.
I love that.
Wipe your nose off.
No, I appreciate that.
This one's going to be, it's about Dennis Nilsen, the kindly killer he was referred to.
I feel like I recognize the name.
Yeah, we've definitely talked about him before.
He's come up on Crime Countdown.
Okay.
He's a lot.
I bet.
He's a lot.
There's three parts.
He has many, many victims.
And he's got a lot going on.
Just as a quick little trigger warning, he has necrophilic tendencies.
So that's going to be part of this.
He's not the vampire one, is he?
No okay no just, uh.
No, that's another guy like that's.
Isn't that wild that we're just like.
No, that's a whole other guy.
Yeah yep, so he's a guy.
Um, so we're gonna talk about him and this uh, this took place in the 80s, so so that usually that's a fun time for some other things like pop culture.
But whenever anybody says anything is the 80s anymore, all i can hear is the 80s in my head saying yeah, it was the 80s, it was the 80s, uh.
So we'll start just get by giving a little overview.
It was on the morning of february 8th 1983, which i did not even realize.
Yeah, that by the time when this comes out, it's going to be right before it, and then i think the second part will come out like the day after or something.
Yeah, i didn't do that on purpose.
That happens so frequently.
I i did not do that on.
That's so weird that just i forget which case, but that just happened to me too and i just didn't reference.
It happens so often.
Like that happened to me too.
I want you to know we literally never do that on purpose.
I've never chosen a case based on the date being the date it will come out.
No, it's very strange.
Yeah, so weird.
So those like anomalies yeah.
So on that day, february 8th 1983, a plumber working in london's muswell hill neighborhood opened a drainage cover behind a cranley gardens apartment building And in that drainage cover he made a horrific discovery.
The drain was completely blocked by pieces of bone and human tissue.
Oh, fuck.
So he called police.
That's the best people to call.
And detectives arrived on the scene and they traced the blockage back to one apartment in the building and when they went into this apartment there were additional pieces of evidence in this apartment that suggested that things were exponentially worse than they had even originally thought they were and they probably thought things were pretty bad originally and that apartment building belonged to dennis nelson.
That's crazy.
I didn't expect that.
Yeah, i know it's a twist.
Wait, the fact that they could trace like the drainage pipes back to him is nuts pipes are nuts Pipes are crazy.
I've been talking about pipes for all week.
Pipes really go crazy.
I had a pipe burst in my garage and I said, why is there even a fucking pipe in my garage?
It's true.
And you said, I don't know.
I don't know.
Don't talk to me about it.
So let's talk about Dennis Nilsen, who he was before he became this Dennis Nilsen.
What happened to him?
So he was born November 23rd, 1945.
Does that make him a Sagittarius?
No.
Does it?
Yeah.
Yeah, I think it's literally like right.
I think 21st starts Sag.
There we go.
He's very close to being a Scorp.
Oh, okay.
Hold on.
Let me make sure because sometimes I'm dumb.
Sometimes I'm dumb.
Sometimes I'm dumb when it comes to the Zodiac.
I'm a new...
You know, I've started another thing I've started to do.
I think I've said this before, but I started doing it again because I fell back into it.
Tell me.
I've started when I like I'll do something or forget something in the house and I'm like oh, you're so stupid.
Like, OK, go get stop doing that.
OK, you're right.
Stop doing that.
You're right.
Because I literally, I did it yesterday.
I was like, oh my God, I'm so dumb.
And then I was like, and literally, if anyone heard me doing this, they'd probably be like you're losing it.
Because I said, no, you're not dumb.
You just forgot that thing.
That doesn't make you dumb.
Okay.
Hold on.
Ash, no, you're not dumb.
You're still learning this and you're working on it actively.
And actually you were correct this time.
Yeah.
There you go.
No, you're right.
Because I saw an article.
You saw an article.
You watched an article.
I watched an article that did say our brains believe what we tell them.
No, it's true.
So if you keep telling your brain you're dumb, or you're fat, or you're ugly, or you're this or you're that, it's going to believe it.
It's going to be like, wow, I suck.
Because your brain, who is it going to believe?
You.
You're the one that it wants to believe.
You think you're going to sound kooky.
I looked at myself in the mirror the other day and I said, you look beautiful today.
As you should.
Yeah.
So start doing that too.
You absolutely should.
I truly believe like we need to be stopping so negative to ourselves, because I think a lot of people who are complete bitch ass pieces of shit want us out in the world.
Well, and also they're mean to themselves too.
Yeah, absolutely.
And they've taught themselves to be these like toxically negative people.
Yeah, they're like the meanest.
And it makes them feel like shit.
They've done it to themselves usually.
And then they put it out to everybody else.
In the words of RuPaul, how the hell are you going to love yourself?
How in the hell are you going to love yourself if you can't?
I don't know.
RuPaul said.
I've watched so much Drag Race.
How did I?
I feel like I was just stripped of my LGBT card.
You said, I don't know.
How in the hell are you going to love somebody else if you can't love yourself?
Mikey, what does he say?
Mikey.
Mikey, help.
Mikey.
Help, gay, help.
What does RuPaul say?
How in the hell are you going to love somebody else if you cannot love yourself?
No.
I'm saying it so wrong.
I'm looking at that.
Are we straight right now?
Mikey.
Mikey.
Okay.
If you can't love yourself, how in the hell are you going to love somebody else?
Amen.
That's exactly it.
Okay.
Can I get an amen?
Can I get an amen?
Yeah.
Oh my God.
I don't deserve the amen.
Don't give it to me.
Oh my Lord.
Oh my God.
That was crazy.
That was crazy.
I just looked it up.
I just did the Capricorn thing and I said, I'll look it up.
Don't worry.
Guys, that was the opposite of a flow state.
That was.
That was the opposite.
That was.
Do you ever do something like that and you say, do I have a cognitive issue?
Yes.
All the time.
I'm going to do a Sudoku later.
Anyways, anyways.
The whole point of that was stop saying you're dumb and being mean to yourself.
Back to the program.
That's another piece of advice.
Do that.
Yeah.
It's really hard right now.
Do crosswords too.
Do that.
Holy fuck.
So yeah, so Dennis Nielsen was a Sagittarius and he was born.
That's where we fucking, that's the roundabout, that's where we started.
And he was born in uh, in scotland.
Oh, fuck him for doing that.
Right, like being people.
Don't do that, no dick, that's not scottish.
So this he was the second of three children, born to elizabeth and olav mokshim sorry, but it's always the middle child.
Um, they later adopted the surname nelson, got it.
Uh, they had met several years earlier um, when Olav saved Elizabeth from being attacked by another man.
Wow.
That's a great meet cute.
What a meet cute.
Yeah.
Uh, they started dating and very soon after they were talking about marriage and on May 2nd 1942 they married.
Olav and Elizabeth's first child was Olav Jr.
Uh, he came a short time after they got married and he was followed quickly by two other children, Dennis and Sylvia.
Despite their whirlwind, romance and growing family, olav senior never really took to the whole marriage and family life, so he was just frequently absent, not good yeah uh, he that was either due to his responsibilities in the military or his general uninterested being a father.
Okay, we're not sure which was an amalgamation kind of a little bit of both.
Okay, As a result, Elizabeth continued to live with her parents and the children were raised as much by them as by their mother.
Well, that's kind of nice.
I loved my grandparents.
That can be great.
And I still do, in fact.
Yeah.
Years later, when he reflected about his parents' marriage, Dennis wrote because he did write a memoir, by the way oh no yeah, they always do.
They always do.
He wrote in the heat and uncertainty of war.
My father married my mother primarily on lustful grounds and ignoring some irreconcilable cultural and personality differences which doomed the match to failure.
Oh fuck, which is like weirdly insightful.
Yeah, that is insightful.
Although their father was hardly ever home and really only saw the children on rare occasions, his presence, or maybe more his absence, was pretty influential on the family.
The detached nature of Olav and Elizabeth's relationship appears to have filtered down to their children.
And it kind of prevented them not just forming a bond with their parents but with one another as well.
Oh.
Yeah.
This led to all the Nilsen children, but Dennis in particular, becoming very isolated and withdrawn.
For Dennis, this meant spending hours alone every day, escaping into an increasingly intense fantasy world.
In fact, Nilsson even described himself, as quote an unhappy, brooding child, secretive and stricken with inferiority.
Oh, that's awful.
Horrifying.
Yeah.
It's true that Dennis felt a very tenuous connection to his parents and siblings, but the family wasn't entirely like fractured.
Because his grandparents were such a constant presence in his early life he formed a very big, like very strong, bond with his grandfather, Andrew White.
Unlike Dennis's mother, who is generally detached and permissive, Andrew was actually a harsh and deeply religious man with an incredibly rigid sense of morality.
Well, I was relieved for like one second.
Well, the thing is, when it came to his grandson, he was very warm and compassionate.
And it was really maybe the only connection Dennis had to the world outside his fantasies.
And because of this, Dennis was devastated when, in the fall of 1951, 62-year-old Andrew died from a heart attack while he was on a fishing boat.
That is so young.
Yeah.
In one of his earliest memories, Nilsen recalled being brought into the house during the funeral to view his grandfather's body.
He said granddad was wearing glasses and expensive long johns.
He was barefooted and needed a shave.
He looked as if he was sleeping.
Oh, that's really sad.
Many years later, Dennis would trace his pathology back to this event.
He wrote, Oh, man.
Man.
Which if he wasn't such a complete piece of shit, you'd be like, oh my God, that's so sad.
Yeah, you feel bad for the kid.
Exactly.
In the wake of his grandfather's death, Dennis became much more isolated.
He spent his free time by the water, watching the fishing boats come and go.
And during one of these occasions, he claimed to have walked into the ocean to try to end his life.
Oh, fuck.
But he was saved by an older boy who spotted him from the beach and pulled him back to shore.
Now in his memoirs, he claimed that this savior of his potentially sexually assaulted him.
Oh.
But because he was unconscious at the time, he was unable to provide any details of the attack or his attacker.
Okay.
That said, Nilsson himself acknowledges his tendency to blend fantasy with memory and reality with not reality when recounting events from his life.
So it's kind of impossible to know which aspects of his early biography are true and which are pieces he made up.
Yeah, that's tough.
Because they never were able to identify this person.
They don't even know if he actually walked into the ocean.
Exactly, right.
It might have never happened.
Okay.
Now, not long after the death of his father, Elizabeth married a second time to a man named Adam Scott.
Adam Scott is not the one that was on Parks and Recreation.
Oh, I forgot that was Adam Scott.
Not Ben Wyatt.
I second-guessed myself immediately.
Oh, that's why I was confused.
I was like, is his name Adam?
You were talking his government name.
Yeah, his government name, not Ben Wyatt.
Unlike her previous husband, Scott was a local man with strong connections to the area and a solid work history in the building trade.
He was, according to author Brian Masters quote, a quiet, solid and reliable man who gave her four more children in four years.
Okay, wow.
Yeah, a lot of kids.
Getting busy.
So if Elizabeth Nilsen had maintained a casual and detached relationship to her children before her second marriage, she definitely doubled that marrying Scott.
Babe, why'd you have four more?
And adding four more children to the house.
Also, the additional kids in the house pushed Dennis further away from his mother and deeper into isolation.
He wrote, It's a very common feeling.
It is.
Or he would go into the woods and just go on long walks.
When he was 14, he joined Army Cadet Force, a military prep organization for teenage boys.
His participation in the group gave him a structure that he was definitely lacking at home and he gave him kind of a sense of purpose in a life that was like a little chaotic at times.
He said, I felt proud and useful in my battle dress.
And he also tried to become like.
He tried his hand at sports basically too, but that didn't really pan out for him.
So it seemed like the military stuff was the thing that really tickled his fancy.
Yeah.
For the most part his early life was that kind of like most boys at the time, but an incident in his mid-teens would definitely disrupt that path of normalcy and provide some pretty serious consequences in his later life, I think.
Uh-oh.
And Dennis and another boy, Gordon Berry, decided to search down by the river Uji, where they eventually stumbled upon this old man's body.
The local doctor later said that, in his confusion, the man had probably wandered out of his house in the middle of the night and fallen into the river and drowned.
Oh, that's so sad.
Nilsen said, he reminded me of my grandfather and the images were firmly fixed in my mind.
I could never comprehend the reality of death.
It's very stand by me.
Yeah.
When he was 15, he decided to leave school and join the military.
And in September of 1961, he reported to London for duty.
It was, he hoped, an opportunity for a fresh start, to like get away from this tiny village and all the limitations he felt were there and to learn a new trade that hopefully, was just going to carry him to adulthood.
But if he was looking for like a whole new experience, which he definitely was, he was definitely disappointed with the reality of army life, especially for someone so young.
Yeah.
Rather than being sent off to some exotic location, like he thought he would be, Dennis and his peers spent the next four years stationed in Aldershot, a military town in Hampshire, New England.
So their life was pretty much the same as it had been before he left home, with military responsibilities just replacing schoolwork.
Oh, yeah.
And his fellow soldiers replacing his classmates.
Mm-hmm.
In 1964 he passed his exams and was promoted to the rank of private, which was an important step in what he thought was going to be a lifelong career in the military.
And while this was a momentous occasion for him, his entire experience in the military had been undermined by his growing awareness of his own sexuality and his interest in men.
Sure, especially at the time period this, this was tough yeah, not accepted, and especially in the military back then.
He was repressing everything though, and the repression and of those urges was always accompanied by, like deep guilt and shame yeah um, and he would carry that with him for a long time.
He later said i was always afraid that i must somehow look different and that my innermost thoughts would be exposed.
Oh, that's which is so sad.
It is very sad, But he's such an asshole.
Like, it's like you hear these things, and again, he's still a kid when this is all happening.
Right, so you feel bad for the kid.
And, as is often the case, Dennis was only able to conceal this for so long, and in his mid-20s he was engaging in a lot of, like you know, one-night stands with men, just like quick, anonymous sexual encounters.
I mean, you're living your life, and you have to...
People have needs.
Exactly.
You can't just deny yourself forever.
And he made sure they were devoid of a lot of emotion or attachment, because that was kind of his life up until that moment.
That is so common, too.
And this works for some people, of course.
But for Dennis, it was different.
He was looking for more.
He'd always been a loner.
And he had created this rich fantasy life in which the needs and wants of others were irrelevant.
His were the important ones.
Okay.
Now, as an adult, it was as though he was blurring fantasy and reality, treating the real people he came in contact with, who came and went in his life, as though they were dolls that he could just act out life on.
And that's frankly disturbing.
And then he could just put them away when he was done.
And life does not work like that.
Nope.
In the fall of 1972, his career in the military came to an end when he was discharged after 11 years.
Wow.
The following day, he turned 27 years old and found himself right back where he started.
That's crazy.
Like almost all of your 20s just gone and then you're asked to start a new life or expected to.
Yeah.
Now he was living in his mother's house, unemployed and alone again.
His decision to leave the military was pretty simple.
He just wanted to try a career outside the army.
Yeah.
But now that he was out, he kind of felt like unmoored.
Like, where do I go?
That happens so often.
Yeah.
For five weeks, he sat in his mother's house wondering what the fuck to do with his life.
And his mother, on the other hand, was more concerned with his lack of interest in finding a wife.
A short time later, Dennis's brother, Olav Olav Jr, told their mother that he suspected Dennis was gay.
And this speculation, no.
And this speculation, Dennis would never forgive him for.
Yeah, I'd be pretty fucking pissed too.
Because it's just not your fucking place.
You don't out other people.
But if she believed it was true, Dennis's mother never said anything to him about it, preferring instead to just ignore it and let Dennis have his private thoughts.
And that was it.
Also not healthy.
No, Olaf's speculation about his brother's sexuality ruined their relationship entirely.
Yeah, I'm sure.
It just wasn't something that was able to be recovered.
That's really sad.
It is sad.
In December 1972, he moved to London and enrolled at the Metropolitan Police Training School.
He was determined to parlay his pretty exemplary military service into a career in law enforcement now, which is a pretty, like you know.
Lateral move.
Yeah, uh.
Dennis completed his training in april 1973 and entered the metropolitan police force as a junior cadet, which is an entry-level position that, while technically a member of the police force, was more like admin shit and required the supervision of a parent officer.
You gotta like work your way up the ladder, and when he enrolled in the training program he envisioned finding the same level of camaraderie that he loved in the service, like his military brothers and sisters were like Yeah.
But he learned that the police force wasn't built around friendships.
Yeah.
And he found himself lonely and isolated again.
Throughout his youth he had dealt with frequent isolation and loneliness by retreating into his fantasy worlds.
And in his efforts to avoid loneliness, he started exploring you know, the countless pubs and nightclubs around London.
Mm-hmm.
And in the small number of gay bars around the city, he kind of felt like he had fell somewhere.
For the first time in his life, he didn't have to hide who he really was from the world.
But his unrealistic expectations made his early experiences with this community deeply disappointing.
Right.
He wasn't finding a lot of long term relationship prospects here because he wasn't really looking for that or treating people.
Well, it's like he kind of he like wanted it, but he wasn't treating people that way.
So it's like he wanted that.
He just wasn't.
He didn't seem to know how to go about it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And for a man with such a deep and powerful fear of abandonment, the casual like culture of like hookups and one night stands that he was involving himself in now, especially in the early 70s, that was like the thing.
It proved very destabilizing and demoralizing for him.
Yeah.
He wrote in his memoir, Wow.
I know.
It's like he comes off so like deep.
Yeah.
Now, during his first year with the police force, he was developing like an identity and a philosophy that was very much at odds with his professional life.
Throughout his time in the military he had developed a pretty progressive leftist worldview that made it pretty impossible to ignore the imperialistic nature of the British military.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
That was at least partially what motivated him to not seek a second term in the army.
He was like, I just don't think it.
It doesn't align with my beliefs.
Now as a young police officer, he was kind of in the same position, enforcing laws that seemed outdated and targeting groups that he himself was a part of.
Right.
To make matters worse, in August 1974 he received word that his father, Olaf Sr, had died at the UK military base in Ghana.
He had left his children a bit of money, but that was it.
Given how disillusioned he was with the circumstances, he waited until the end of the year, and in December he quit his position with the police force.
Okay.
Now leaving the police force at the end of the year was intended to be a big life change that would set him on the right path.
Unfortunately, it turned out to be just another exercise in disappointment.
When the money his father left him started to run out, he was forced to go out and find whatever job he could, which at the time was not really easy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh.
Yeah.
During his visit, Painter mentioned he was currently out of work and without a place to stay.
At the time, there were no jobs for the young man, so he left without anything.
A few days later, however, Dennis ran into Painter on the street by chance.
And knowing his circumstances, he invited David Painter back to his apartment.
What Dennis didn't know at the time was that David was only 17 years old and had run away from home and was reported missing by his parents.
Oh, fuck.
When they got to Nilsen's apartment the two watched a movie, had several drinks and then Painter became tired and went to Nilsen's bed to lay down.
Misreading that situation, Dennis followed and tried to engage in sex with David Painter.
Uh, so he, David immediately rejected him and was like, nope, that's not what I was doing.
Yeah.
And eventually Nilsen gave up.
And a few hours later.
Eventually.
Yeah.
Uh, exactly.
Very telling.
A few hours later, Painter awoke to find Dennis standing over him with a video camera filming him while he slept.
What the fuck?
The details of what happened next are pretty murky and kind of confusing, but when he woke to the camera in his face he was clearly naturally very frightened and upset and tried to leave the apartment.
And Nilsen tried to stop him, but David apparently according to Nilsen became aggressive and began trashing the apartment.
Which I think he was probably fighting to get out of the apartment.
He cut himself on a glass partition in the process.
It was only then that Dennis finally called the police in an ambulance.
When he was interviewed by police at the same station, by the way, that he'd worked as an officer.
Later that afternoon he feigned ignorance, claiming that the young man quote went berserk for no clear reason.
That usually happens.
Yeah.
Although it seems highly unlikely that nothing happened in Dennis' apartment, David Painter's parents were reluctant to press charges.
And the police were satisfied that if nothing else, Painter hadn't been sexually assaulted.
So the whole thing ended that afternoon with Dennis being let off with a warning.
You have to wonder if he was sexually assaulted.
And I wonder if his parents didn't want to press charges because they just didn't want him involved in what they assumed was something untoward?
Yeah.
You know?
Now, obviously most people don't end up going home with someone who ends up being a prolific serial killer.
No.
Luckily.
Thankfully.
And in the context of Dennis Nilsen's life and later murderous activities, that incident, even though it wasn't viewed as bad enough quote unquote to press charges at the time, it can be viewed as a like pre-contemplative phase.
Yeah, for sure.
Where he's beginning to explore these darker fantasies and considering whether or not to act on them.
Yeah, definitely.
This was clearly an escalation, a slight one.
Now, while there's evidence to indicate Nilsen was at least considering his predatory impulses at the time, the period between 1975 and 1977 was a lot of like personal growth and contentment for him.
Which is interesting.
Yeah.
After a few years of, you know, one-night stands and hookups and casual sex...
Dennis met David Galachan in November 1975.
And by the end of their first night drinking together at the bar, he and David agreed to move in together.
Wow.
Very quick.
Using what remained of the money left to him by his father, Dennis and David found a small apartment on Melrose Avenue in London.
And Dennis even worked it out so they would have exclusive use of the garden and patio in the back of the house.
Nice.
Oh, no.
Hate that, actually.
Yeah, it's not great.
Dennis had finally found someone with who he could spend his nights.
Not long after moving in together, they got a dog, a black and white mutt they named Bleep bleep yes stop, that's actually hilarious, i don't want them to have a dog.
And they spent their days working on the garden and their nights watching films and listening to music.
Oh, i hate how lovely this is.
Yeah, it seemed at least to dennis as though he finally lucked into a stable relationship.
Okay things, though they might have only been in his head that it was like that.
What, According to author Brian Masters, quote Oh,
Although it's true they did share an apartment and occasionally they slept together.
According to Masters quote, there was no deep bond of affection between them, and David was remote and uninterested.
Did they get a dog named Bleep?
They did.
Oh?
In truth, David and Dennis' relationship was one of convenience.
Dennis paid most of the bills and made all the decisions, and David continued carrying on other relationships with other people.
Oh, no.
That the relationship lasted two years.
It was due in large part to the fact that David had such a passive personality that he was willing to go along with whatever Dennis wanted most of the time.
It's just kind of like whatever.
It was more like roommates with benefits.
Eee, that's rough.
But Dennis saw it as like a beautiful domestic life.
Despite this, not a lot of relationships can last without 100% effort and commitment.
And it wasn't just that David contributed far less to the household than Dennis, or that he continued to see other men.
There was also the fact that the two shared very little in common.
And according to Dennis David was quote.
According to Dennis David was quote inferior intellectually and dependent socially.
That's rude.
Yeah.
By the summer of 1977, both men had begun seeing other people and barely spoke to each other when they were at home.
Oh wow.
Finally, in late summer, it had become clear that this was coming to an end.
According to David, he simply packed up his bags one night and left in search of somewhere new.
To peace out.
In his version of events, Dennis says that he insisted that David move out.
It's unclear which one of these is accurate, but because of Dennis's really deep fears of abandonment and his propensity for fantasy and embellishment, it's entirely possible that he created his complete own narrative just to protect himself from the psychological pain of this whole thing.
Yeah.
Damn, this is fucking tragic.
In the months that followed this, Dennis filled most of his time with work working his regular job at the employment center and picking up shifts with a catering company.
And when he wasn't working, he could be found at one of the local pubs.
But if he hoped either of these things were going to improve his life, he quickly learned otherwise.
The bars were still full of people who seemed pretty uninterested in having a relationship with him.
And at both jobs, his employers frowned upon his politics and life in general.
Yeah.
And as a result, he was just let down by everything.
Feeling aimless, he applied to the Branch Chairman School in the fall of 1978.
And he felt very at home there in the intellectual and political circles of academia.
At 33 years old, he was somewhat older than the other students.
But his passion for intellectual subjects and politics made him fit right in.
The new environment of school was exciting, but it did little to curb his loneliness.
He was still cripplingly lonely.
During this time, Dennis had many one night stands, but every time he met someone that he even had a little bit of interest in, like a long term relationship with, they just rebuffed him.
Just wasn't working out.
He was clearly off putting.
I was going to say.
Like, clearly.
There's got to be something up there.
These disappointments caused Dennis to retreat deeper into his fantasies each time, which by then had grown very dark.
Well, you have to wonder, and this is obviously just speculative but he becomes a necrophiliac and a serial killer.
I do wonder if some of these one-night stands there had to have been some off-putting sexual tendencies or something like that.
For sure.
For there to not be repeat nights.
Exactly.
Yeah.
And of course that's speculative, but you wonder.
But it kind of makes sense.
And Dennis had a fetish for deaths.
Yeah, like he was very interested in it.
That could make sex weird.
It could, for sure.
But by this time, he had stopped resisting this and he started indulging it.
Okay.
He said later, I put talc on my face to erase the living color.
I smeared charcoal under my eyes to accentuate a hollow, dark look.
I lie staring-eyed on the bed in front of the mirror and let my saliva foam and drip from my mouth.
I step outside myself in detached imagination.
That might be the darkest shit you've ever said to me.
Yeah.
What the actual fuck?
That's like some shit out of a horror movie.
And he would just do this.
A lot?
That wasn't just a one-time thing?
No.
Even a one-time thing I could not get past.
And fantasy wasn't the only place that he was starting to experiment with risky and interesting behavior.
He'd also started creating dangerous situations where he could rescue his sexual partners from danger.
Oh, which is very interesting because that's how his father and mother got together.
Right?
Yeah.
One night in late fall 1978, after inviting three men back to his house for a drink.
Damn.
I know.
Fucking sharpshooter there.
Yeah, he's hedging his bets, I guess.
Dennis waited until all three had passed out before placing his winter jacket on the stove and setting it on fire.
What the fuck?
Yeah.
Almost like, damn, you're going to risk your apartment just to be a hero?
Just to be a hero for a minute?
That's a complex and a half.
And in retrospect, these dark fantasies and risky behaviors would be seen as clear indicators that Nilsen was spiraling deeper into something bad.
Big time.
He later said I was becoming depressed and conditioned to a belief that I was impossible to live with.
But rather than seek any kind of medical or psychological help, he found a new way to cope with his stress anxiety, while also indulging his fantasies.
I feel like it's probably not good.
By the end of December, his isolation and loneliness had become unbearable.
And on the night of December 30th he mustered the energy to get dressed and headed out to a local pub.
After spending weeks alone in his apartment feeling sorry for himself, he was very vulnerable and precarious emotionally.
Uh-huh.
And just in general.
Exactly.
And he was also desperate to find someone to just stop the negative thoughts that were running through his head.
And on top of that, he was certain that anyone that he met that night was just going to leave him.
Yeah.
Like he just didn't want people to leave him.
That's all.
It's very Jeffrey Dahmer.
Yeah.
And he later said that night things began to go terribly and horribly wrong.
I think they had already started.
They certainly did.
Rather than visit one of his usual bars, he went to a different one.
He went to crinklewood, the cricklewood arms, which was an irish bar near his apartment.
He sat there and he drank pint after pint of guinness and he spent the first hour.
I know i love guinness.
Uh, dennis spent the first hour or so of the night watching people in the bar, just kind of like chatting with whoever sat down next to him, but not really making any attempt for big conversation.
Eventually he found himself talking with a young Irishman who introduced himself as Stephen.
Years later, Nilsen would tell police he had, quote, no idea who this youth was.
This really is very Jeffrey Dahmer.
Yeah.
As Stephen had no identification on him at the time or anything to indicate who he was or where he'd come from.
That said, he wouldn't have needed a driver's license or some other ID to tell that who he was talking to was still very much a teenager.
He looked it.
Ew.
He was Stephen Holmes, a 14-year-old runaway from Kilburn.
Oh, God, a baby.
Yeah.
Stephen had been out at a rockabilly concert that night and was waiting for a bus outside the Cricklewood Arms when he decided to go inside to get warm.
Nilsen convinced Stephen to come back to his apartment, where they spent a few hours drinking and listening to music until the boy passed out on Nilsen's bed.
That's sexual contact.
He said, I remember thinking that because it was morning, he would wake and leave me.
Oh, fuck.
Yeah.
At that moment, Stephen awoke with a jolt, obviously struggling, and they fell to the floor.
But Nilsen ended up on top of him again.
And unfortunately, Holmes was no match for his very much adult attacker.
And with a minute or two, he lost consciousness again.
Aware that he could wake up at any moment now, Nilsen went to the kitchen and filled a bucket with water.
He returned to the other room, dragged Stephen over to the bucket on the floor and held him by his hair, pushing his head under the water, and held it there until he couldn't see bubbles anymore.
Oh my God.
This is brutal.
Once Stephen was dead, Nilsen dragged his body over to a chair and propped him up in a seat.
And then he said, I just sat there shaking, trying to think clearly about what I had just done.
It was still early in the morning, so everything's quiet.
But he knew everybody was gonna wake up in a matter of hours.
What am I gonna do?
So he spent the next hour or so cleaning up the room where the murder had occurred.
Then he moved Stephen's body to the bathtub, where he carefully washed the entire body before putting it back in bed.
Ew.
All the while he was fully expecting a knock at the door, certain that someone had traced Stephen back to his apartment.
When a few days passed and he's kept Stephen's body and that no one ever came, Nilsen's anxiety eased.
And he said there appeared to be no reports in the paper of the missing boy or the usual public anxiety that followed the disappearance of a child.
It was only then that it occurred to Dennis that he'd gotten away with it.
Yeah, that's not good.
Uh-huh.
His former guest.
Oh, my God.
So he went so far as to buy a large electric carving knife and a stock pot for this purpose.
But when he got home, it occurred to him that that was going to be pretty arduous.
This is so gnarly.
And he said he felt like it would be beyond his capabilities.
And he said it was also unlikely to produce the desired results that he's looking for.
Instead, he pulled up several floorboards in the kitchen of his apartment and found the space beneath to be pretty big and actually pretty cool in temperature.
Wow.
Perfect place to put a body.
Oh.
So, after dressing Stephen in the clothes that he had come to the apartment in Dennis, lowered his body into the space under the floor and put the boards back.
And now he's got a makeshift tomb for Stephen under his kitchen.
What the fuck?
A week passed and Dennis's curiosity finally got the better of him.
No.
No, don't you say that to me.
He said, I wondered if his body had changed at all or if he had continued to decompose.
So he pulled up the boards and removed Stephen's body from beneath the floor to find that, to his great surprise, very little decomposition had occurred.
It seemed that the conditions under the floor were such that the natural processes of decomp had been stalled.
Seeing the body in that state and this is a trigger warning.
Dennis was excited by this and he violated Stephen's body multiple times before returning it to the space beneath the floor where it would stay being periodically taken out for eight months.
Eight months?
Eight months.
How fucking cold was it?
I don't think it stayed in great condition.
Oh my god yeah, now in the months after this or the month after this months, what the fuck, brother?
So in the month after this, dennis kept a pretty low profile.
He went to work, occasionally went to the bars, but mostly he stayed at home and avoided inviting anyone back to his apartment.
Gee, i wonder why.
At times he said he considered turning himself in and confessing.
I doubt it.
But the thought of spending the rest of his life in jail was enough to deter him from doing that.
Besides, he had no intention of doing anything like that ever again.
So he said, you know what?
I fucked up.
I don't think you can just live the rest of your life.
Yeah.
Yeah, he was like, you know what, I'm not going to do it again.
Not doing that.
Like, once you do that once, I don't think you necessarily stop doing that.
So he continued to live his low-key life for several months until the secret under his floorboards became a little too much to bear, at least in his own mind.
One night in October 1979 he pulled up the floorboards in the kitchen and removed the desiccated body of Stephen from the hiding space and carried it out to the back garden under the cover of darkness.
There he had built a small bonfire and he placed Stephen Holmes' body into the bonfire and stood and watched the flames engulf every part that it would.
Once the fire had burned away all it was capable of destroying, he put the fire out and removed the remaining bone fragments and he buried that in the backyard.
Maybe it was because he'd rid himself of his terrible secret under the floorboards of the kitchen, or maybe he just lost his ability to control his clear impulses here.
Whatever the case, within a month of destroying Stephen Holmes' remains, Dennis seemed to have forgotten his promise to himself about not committing another violent act.
Out of feeling.
Out of feeling.
And we're going to end there for part one.
That's probably good.
Part two is going to be rough.
All right. um this was rough obviously but horrific it's gonna be rough why is he called the kindly killer um we do we get into that we will get into that yeah interesting yeah because nothing about this so far is kindly now all right what's your fun fact for me boyd one in 18 people have a third nipple wow it's called polythelia and it's caused by a mutation in inactive genes how many one in 18 one in 18 that's a lot of people yeah what you guys doing out here with your third nipple right what you what you doing out here damn is it easy to have a nipple removed i wonder i don't know like i wonder if you have a third nipple if you can just get it removed i don't know do you have a third nipple everybody let us know i don't you know Let us know.
I don't.
That's crazy.
Think about, like, dinner parties or, like, at a wedding.
Probably, like, two people there have a third nipple.
I didn't know where you were going with that.
And for a second I thought you were being like imagine, at a dinner party.
You just like have a third nipple.
Like, I was like, what?
No, I meant, like, imagine that.
I was saying, like, large gatherings of people.
Yeah, like, wow.
Like...
A couple of these people have a third nipple.
Potentially.
Yeah.
One in 18 seems nuts.
That is crazy.
I don't know about that.
I'm saying.
But you say it's a fact.
So get crazy out here with your third nipple.
Get crazy.
We hope you do.
We hope you keep listening.
And we hope you keep it.
Keep it so weird that you tell us if you have a third nipple.
Yeah.
I'd like to know if you're willing to share.
It's weird in a cool way.
Yeah.
Rock on with your third nipple.
With your bad self.
With your bad self.
With your third nipple self.
