I’ve chosen 4 of the most darkly fascinating stories of men who chose to live with the dead. I’m a bit of a true crime aficionado so these are all cases I’ve read about extensively. I tried to chooe 4 of the lesser known ones, so hopefully there's something for you to learn here. They are not for the faint of heart and I really don’t recommend you read any further if you’re easily upset as they are quite disturbing but I have spared the really gory details so don’t be too afraid!
John Reginald Christie (8th April 1899 – 15th July 1953)
Also known as: The Rillington Place Strangler
Modus Operandi: Gassing, Strangulation, Necrophilia
John ‘Reg’ Christie, was a serial killer who made a dingy little flat in North-West London one of the most infamous addresses in all of England. You may have heard of 10 Rillington Place before as there is a fantastic movie about it, starring Richard Attenborough and John Hurt (named 10 Rillington Place, 1971) but the place is particularly infamous for a few reasons. Number two being that a man named Timothy Evans, who rented the flat above Christie, was hanged for the death of his wife Beryl and baby daughter Geraldine in 1949.
This immense miscarriage of justice will forever be a black stain upon the British justice system as their real killer – Christie, was the key witness for the prosecution at Evans’ trial and secured his conviction. But I digress; the number one reason for its infamy is that Christie liked to keep his victims close. As Beryl and Geraldine Evan’s bodies were found by the police, they failed to do a proper search of the house and grounds. If they had, they would have noticed a femur bone, the longest bone in the human body, casually propping up a piece of broken fence in the garden.
Above, Rillington Place during the investigation
As the police failed to spot this dramatically obvious piece of evidence, he was free to carry on killing and in total Reg had two ladies buried beneath the bedding plants, his wife buried beneath the floorboards of the front room and 3 women stacked up behind the walls of the kitchen before he was finally caught in 1953. His killings had spanned 10 years total.
Dennis Nilsen (November 23rd 1945)
Also known as: The Kindly Killer, The Muswell Hill Murderer, The British Jeffrey Dahmer
Modus Operandi: Strangulation, Drowning, Dismemberment, Necrophilia
Dennis Andrew Nilsen is a British serial killer who killed at least 15 young men and boys at his flats in North London between 1978 and 1983. Dennis picked up young men who were rent boys, students or just homeless and took them back to his home upon promise of food and alcohol. Once asleep or intoxicated, he’d strangle his victim with a ligature – ties, rope, headphone wires were a number of things used before drowning them in a bucket of water or the sink. He then liked to bath with the bodies. In his mind this way they could never leave him and he would then inter the corpses under the floor boards, pulling them out occasionally to lay with him or watch TV with him.
Above, Cranley Gardens during investigation
Once the smell got too foul and the bodies were decomposing he would start to dissect them and at his first flat on Melrose Avenue he was able to make bonfires in the garden. Forensic scientists would only find fragments of bone at this address. At his flat in Cranley Gardens, he no longer had access to a garden and as a result had to store the bodies throughout his home although he did attempt to dispose of the soft tissue by flushing parts down the drain. This would be his undoing as his neighbours complained of their drains being blocked and as a local plumber investigated, he found what appeared to be human flesh blocking the pipes. The next day the drains had suspiciously been cleared and the police were called. Upon requesting to enter Nilsen’s flat, the police informed him they were there about the drains and that they informed him the blockage had indeed been human remains. Nilsen feigned horror, “Good grief! How awful!” to which Detective Chief Inspector Peter Jay replied “Don’t mess about, where’s the rest of the body”
He calmly gestured in the direction of a wardrobe that was filled with two plastic bin bags. He was then arrested and casually informed them he’d killed “15 or 16 since 1978” but it didn’t take long for investigators to find various sets of human remains throughout his home.
Ed Gein (August 27th 1906 - July 26th 1984)
Also known as: The Mad Butcher, The Plainfield Ghoul
Modus Operandi: Shooting, Grave Robbing, Necrophilia
Edward Theodore ‘Ed’ Gein was an American murderer and body snatcher who lived in Plainfield, Wisconsin who has inspired a number of fiction writers. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Psycho are both movies inspired by Gein as well as the character of Jame Gumb from Silence of the Lambs who wants to build himself a woman suit.
Gein was raised by a domineering mother who drilled it into him all women were prostitutes and full of sin (herself excluded) and she forbid him and his brother from socializing with the outside world. His only outlet was school where the other kids and teachers found him quite strange and he mostly kept to himself. In 1940 his father died, in 1944 his brother then died (under suspicious circumstances) and then finally his mother went in December of 1945. Ed never really got over this loss and boarded up her rooms to keep them as they were the day she passed.
During the years after her death, it appeared to the outside world that Ed kept to himself. He did odd jobs and a handyman and worked on the farm but other than that he was inoffensive and quiet, or so he appeared. That was until 1957 when hardware owner Bernice Worden disappeared. Police initially suspected him as he was the last to have seen her alive and as a result they visited the farm house with a warrant. Upon entering the property they found Bernice, she had been decapitated and hung upside down in the shed and dressed out like a deer.
Above, the Gein farmhouse during the investigation
This was not the only thing they found however, as Gein had spent the years after his mother’s death body snatching and as a result had dozens of grisly trophies from hi habit. Throughout the home they found things like; soup bowls made from skulls, skulls on his bed posts, a box of noses, a pair of lips on a drawstring, a lampshade made from human skin. Among these items were the things he used to make his ‘woman suit’, so he could become his mother; leggings made of human skin, a corset made of a human torso, masks made of women’s faces. He literally wanted to wear these skins and transform, to be able to slip into his ‘mother’ at any time.
Above, the state of the inside of Gein's home
Now you might have thought I couldn’t possibly top the last one on the disturbing scale but I personally find this next one very sad and upsetting for a few reasons. Although this man did not murder anyone, he is obviously a very disturbed individual. Again, this is not for the faint at heart.
Anatoly Moskvin (1 September 1966)
Modus operandi: Grave Robber
Anatoly Yurevych Moskvin is a Russian academic and linguist from Nizhny Novgorod. A genius who speaks 13 languages, Moskvin has been diagnosed as suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and has been sent to a psychiatric facility indefinitely as he is unfit to stand trial. He was arrested in 2011 after police investigating a spate of grave desecrations, found his home to be filled with the mummified remains of 26 girls aged between 3 and 15. I want to make it clear that Moskvin did not kill any of these girls, nor was there any sexual motive but he was obsessed with what he thought was rescuing them. He even said to the parents of the girls “You abandoned your girls in the cold – and I brought them home and warmed them up.”
The images from inside his home could be considered graphic, so here are some creepy dolls to give you an idea
He clothed and posed them, played games with them and had tea parties. In his mind he was waiting for these girls to come back to life, for science to bring them back and he was their protector until then. He acted as if these were his personal dolls, listened to what he believed they were telling him and in effect, he had no idea what he was doing was wrong.
Thanks for reading!
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