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Posted: 13-12-2004 22:38 Post subject: Dennis Nilsen's sandwiches...

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?

Posted: 13-12-2004 23:02 Post subject: Re: Dennis Nilson's sandwhiches...

Posted: 13-12-2004 23:15 Post subject:

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.

Posted: 13-12-2004 23:24 Post subject:

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.... Shocked

Posted: 14-12-2004 01:55 Post subject:

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

Posted: 14-12-2004 02:11 Post subject:

Posted: 14-12-2004 10:48 Post subject:

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.

Posted: 14-12-2004 11:07 Post subject:

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.

Posted: 14-12-2004 11:50 Post subject:

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

Posted: 14-12-2004 13:02 Post subject:

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 Shocked

I heard a rumour that he actually cooked curries for his work colleagues, that rumour went around the Police service at the time!

Posted: 14-12-2004 13:18 Post subject:

Posted: 14-12-2004 13:56 Post subject:

And change to fit the environment, curry being very popular in the Met Police.

Posted: 14-12-2004 14:02 Post subject:

Posted: 14-12-2004 14:45 Post subject:

Posted: 14-12-2004 14:54 Post subject: