From necrophilia to sick skull trophies, Jeffrey Dahmer and Dennis Nilsen share 7 uncanny similarities!
MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN: The US serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer and the British mass murderer Dennis Nilsen had a lot in common, from the way they collected gruesome "trophies" to the people they killed.
Both killers had limp hair and a love for wide-rimmed aviator goggles, but besides these superficial similarities, there are even more chilling parallels between the lives of these two serial killers.
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Dahmer, nicknamed the "Milwaukee Cannibal," murdered and dismembered at least 17 men and boys during his 13-year murder spree. An investigation revealed pictures of severed human bodies, a freshly severed head in the refrigerator, and a huge drum filled with acid in which the torsos of several men rotted, inside his apartment of horrors.
He also performed morbid experiments on his victims while they were still alive, including drill holes in their skulls and injecting acid into their brains to try to induce a "zombie-like" state. As a result, he was sentenced to life in prison, where he was beaten to death with an iron bar by another prison inmate, Christopher Scarver, when they were left unaccompanied for 20 minutes.
Dennis Nielsen was born in Fraserburg, Scotland, 15 years before Dahmer. It is believed that he began his terrifying killing spree the same year as Dahmer, in 1978, and then he was arrested in 1983. The Muswell Hill Murderer killed and dismembered 12-15 men and boys within five years, mostly in his north London apartment.
Although Nielsen did not die violently in prison like Dahmer, he did die in prison. Complaining of severe stomach pain, he was transferred to York Hospital in May 2018, but died two days later of pulmonary embolism and retroperitoneal hemorrhage.
Here are the seven frightening parallels between Dahmer and Nielsen.
Socially inept
Growing up, both Dahmer and Nilsen were social outcasts. As a child, Dahmer's parents argued frequently, with his father away working, and his mother being a hypochondriac. So they were not a part of his life in any significant way in terms of nuture or care.
The young boy's elementary school teacher described him as quiet and timid, displaying signs of abandonment early on. John Backderf, a former classmate of Dahmer, told The Mirror that he was a "shy, troubled" person who was "well below the social ladder". Nevertheless, he said he liked him at school and that he had a few friends.
When it comes to Dennis he also had troubled childhood. When he was just two years old, his father Olav was away with the Free Norwegian Forces and got divorced. After the sudden death of his grandfather when he was just six years old, his contemporaries described him as a "quiet" child.
Death-obsession
Since he was a small boy, Dahmer was fascinated with dead animals. His father supported his hobby by gathering roadkills that he and his son would later dissect in the garage. But his mother was outraged by the practice.
When Nilsen's grandfather passed away in 1951, robbing him of the one relative he actually felt connected to, that was the turning point in his life. When Nilsen's mother asked him if he wanted to visit his grandfather after he died, Nielsen was "excited" to be taken to a room in which the embalmed corpse was laid out.
In his autobiography, 'Killing for Company', written by Brian Masters: "The taboo against the mention of death had dire consequences for the boy, merging his beloved image with his dead image." According to Nielsen himself, he liked to spend time with the corpses of his victims because they allowed him to express "sacred feelings" about his grandfather.
Militiary career
Dahmer and Nilsen sought refuge in the military, possibly looking for a place to call home. Dahmer enlisted in the US Army for the first time in 1979, when his father urged him to do so. In 1991, he was discharged due to his worsening performance and alcoholism after undergoing basic training and being deployed to West Germany.
Nilsen had a more distinguished military career than Dahmer did. During his military service, he trained as a chef and was also stationed in West Germany. Nilsen later described those three years of training at Aldershot as "the happiest of my life".
'Wanted them to stay'
There was one key similarity between Dahmer and Nilsen's first victims: their killers did not want them to escape.
In a pub, Nilsen met Stephen Holmes who was 14, and invited him back to his flat to listen to music. On the other hand Dahmer lured Steven Hicks,18, a hitchhiker, with the promise of beer. As soon as he realized Steven Hicks was leaving, he struck him over the head with a barbell before strangling him and killed him. In the same way, Nilsen strangled Stephen Holmes to death in order to stop him from leaving.
Both killers masturbated over their victims' corpses, though Dahmer disposed of Steven Hicks corpse while Nilsen kept Stephen Holmes's corpse in his flat for a long time.
Main target: Attractive men
As children, Nilsen and Dahmer grappled with their homosexuality. They slaughtered young men and boys, not because they found killing enjoyable, but because they wanted "ownership" of males they found attractive during their killing sprees.
According to Dahmer, he descended into cannibalism "to feel like I was part of them". Meanwhile, Nilsen would display the corpses of his victims in grotesque parodies of normal romantic situations, sitting them on chairs, lying them on beds, and even talking to them. Later, he described this as "misplaced love"
Kept sick trophies
The motivation for the murders of Dahmer and Nilsen was the desire to possess and enjoy bodies that were "unresisting". In fact, Dahmer brazenly took a severed head to work at the chocolate factory with him as a sick trophy. According to him, he envisioned the altar as a "place where I can collect my thoughts and feed my obsession". In a tea chest found in Nilsen's Muswell Hill flat, a skull and a section of the torso were also found. Having been bullied at school, Nilsen confessed to having fears of rejection and failure.
Narrow escapes
One of the most disturbing similarities between Dahmer and Nilsen was the fact that both were nearly arrested after attacking young Asian migrants.
A Hong Kong student named Andrew Ho, 19, whom Nilsen had brought back to his apartment, was the target of his 1979 murder attempt. Andrew Ho used a candlestick to successfully render Nilsen unconscious, and then he went to the police, who apprehended the murderer and detained him for two days. Ho was an immigrant and under the age of consent for gay people. Despite one officer writing in his report that Nilsen was "very dangerous," police didn't press charges against him.
When witnesses saw naked and disoriented youngster Konerak Sinthasomphone outside Dahmer's apartment in 1991, Dahmer came dangerously close to being apprehended too. Konerak Sinthasomphone was enticed back to his apartment by the sick killer, who attempted to transform him into a "zombie" by injecting hydrochloric acid into his head. Witnesses begged police to look into the case more thoroughly, but Dahmer was able to convince them that he was only his "lover" who had become too drunk, so they left. Strangely, Nilsen later discussed Dahmer's crimes with his own biographer, possibly noting the similarities of their killing sprees.