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MADE A KILLING
IT is one of the most notorious addresses in Britain — the Cricklewood flat where serial killer Dennis Nilsen stashed a dozen victims under the floorboards.
The monster — who died on Saturday aged 72 — had sex with rotting corpses that he kept for months at his maggot-infested House of Horrors in Melrose Avenue in suburban North London.
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Today it looks much the same from the street — but inside it is unrecognisable after being given a stunning Grand Designs-style makeover by its new owners.
Undaunted first-time buyers Bruno and Mathilde were not put off by its grisly past and have transformed it into their dream home — and now plan to start a family there.
They even grow fruit and vegetables in the garden where Nilsen once burned piles of corpses and raked the bones into the soil.
And they're planning plan to host a World Cup barbecue this summer.
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NHS manager Bruno, 38, admits many people would run a mile when they found out the history but he says it may have helped them get it for a good price.
Bruno, who moved to London from Portugal 12 years ago, told Sun Online: "We were struggling to buy — everywhere was too expensive.
"Then this place came up and it was everything we were looking for.
"It has a great location by the park, two bedrooms, its own garden and a ten-minute walk from the Tube.
"The first thing the agent said was, 'Have you Googled the property?'
"So we looked it up and read all about the history.
"But it was all 35, 40 years ago. For us it was never an issue.
"We know a lot of people would not live here. But from the moment people see what the place looks like, it puts that to rest."
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Mathilde said: "It's about what eyes you see it with.
"When we first visited we brought a friend who is from the area. She said, 'Hey — that's the murder house'.
"She told us she would never live here but it's a brilliant opportunity and good value.
"It's a long time ago and maybe because we are foreigners — you quickly forget about it."
The flat's history is "a curiosity", the couple say, an interesting story to tell friends and colleagues.
Bruno said: "We fell in love with it because we could see the opportunity to make a great home.
"Did you get a chill when you walked in? Of course not.
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"You wouldn't have any idea what happened if you didn't already know.
"It's not something I wake up in the morning thinking about."
His partner Mathilde, 32, said: "We read a lot about it to make sure we were fine with it.
"Of course you feel for the victims. But I'm sure in a street like this there have been a lot of deaths — maybe not as horrific and not as many as our house.
"If it bothered us we would not have bought it.
"This is a place where we always have friends. We ask them, how do you feel?
"Some people can feel bad energy but nobody ever says, I can imagine what happened here.
"You forget all about it."
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The professional couple, who asked us not to use their surnames, bought the two-bed flat in spring 2016 for £493,000 — around ten per cent less than similar properties nearby.
They moved in last July after a year-long revamp.
The floorboards that once hid trussed-up limbs and torsos are long gone.
In their place is waterproofed insulating concrete, covered by new wood flooring in an open-plan living space that leads out to a bright modern extension.
The kitchen where Nilsen carved up bodies on the stone slabs is now a smart study for French-born Mathilde, who works for a private healthcare company.
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They have also moved internal walls to create a second bathroom and installed a new kitchen with sleek made-to-measure cabinets imported from Portugal.
Bruno, whose architect sister helped on the project, said: "We are very pleased with what we've achieved here.
"No one would guess from outside what is inside.
"There is a lovely atmosphere and so much light. And it's so quiet you could be in the countryside.
"What's still here are the four walls. We've renewed everything — there's new pipes, concrete on the floor, new garden. There's nothing left.
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"If you compare what the flat was with what the flat is, it has nothing to do with what happened 35 years ago."
A larger two-bed flat a few doors down sold last year for £625,000 and a four-bed semi went for £1.4million in 2016.
Police found more than 1,000 teeth and bone fragments when they dug up the garden and a field behind the house in February 1983.
It was searched after Nilsen's three murders at another flat in Muswell Hill came to light.
He later confessed to cops he killed "15 or 16" victims, including around a dozen in Cricklewood, putting him second only to Harold Shipman as the UK’s most prolific murderer.
Around half of the victims were never identified.
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Scots-born Nilsen, a former Army chef and police constable, had moved to the rented Melrose Avenue flat with a boyfriend in 1975.
Three years later he was a 33-year-old Jobcentre clerk and living alone when he began his murder spree in December 1978.
He lured vulnerable young men to his home with the promise of booze and shelter then throttled or drowned them to stop them leaving.
The necrophiliac ritually bathed and shaved his victims and slept with them in his bed for up to a week.
He later admitted performing sex acts with the bodies.
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Nilsen also dressed them in Y-fronts and vests and used them as "props" in his fantasies.
He met his first victim, Irish lad Stephen Holmes, 14, walking home from a concert and invited him back for a drink.
Nilsen strangled him with a tie and drowned him in a bucket.
He wrote later: "I had started down the avenue of death and possession of a new kind of flatmate."
Nilsen kept Stephen's trussed body for eight months then burned him at the end of the garden and raked the ashes into the ground.
Canadian tourist Kenneth Ockenden, 23, was strangled with a headphones cable while listening to a record in December 1979.
Rampage of the Kindly Killer
Dennis Nilsen is believed to have killed 15 men and boys in a four-year murder spree driven by his sick fantasies.
The Muswell Hill murderer was also dubbed the Kindly Killer because of his belief that his methods were humane.
Seven victims have not been identified.
December 30, 1978: Irish lad Stephen Holmes, 14, was lured to Nilsen's home in Melrose Avenue. The fiend strangled him with a tie and drowned him in a bucket, and kept his body for eight months.
December 3, 1979: Canadian tourist Kenneth Ockenden, 23, was strangled with a headphones cord while listening to music. Nilsen poured himself a drink and put on the headphones himself. He was one of few victims reported missing.
May 17, 1980: Nilsen found runaway Martyn Duffey, 16, sleeping rough at Euston station and offered him a bed. He drowned him in the kitchen sink and defiled the body.
August 1980: male prostitute Billy Sutherland, 26, met Nilsen in a pub near Piccadilly Circus. The killer later claimed he didn't remember the murder but woke up to find "another dead body".
September 1980: An unidentified victim Nilsen described as an Irish labourer with rough hands.
October 1980: Another unidentified man. Nilsen met him in the Salisbury Arms and described him as a slim male prostitute who was either Mexican or Filipino.
November 1980: A vagrant Nilsen found sleeping in a doorway on Charing Cross Road. The victim span his legs in a cycling motion as he was strangled.
November or December 1980: An English "long-haired hippy" Nilsen met after pubs closed in the West End. He kept the body under floorboards for a year.
January 4, 1981: Nilsen met an "18-year-old blue-eyed Scot" in the Golden Lion pub in Soho and lured him home for a drinking contest. He chopped up the body eight days later along with the previous month's victim.
February 1981: A Northern Irish victim in his early 20s who Nilsen nicknamed Belfast Boy because he could not remember his name.
April 1981: A muscular English skinhead Nilsen said he met in Leicester Square. The killer recalled his victim has a tattoo round his neck reading "cut here".
September 18, 1981: Malcolm Barlow, 23, was the last victim at Melrose Avenue. Nilsen found him slumped outside the house and called an ambulance. He killed Malcolm when he returned to thank him the next day.
March 1982: John Howlett, 23, nicknamed John The Guardsman by Nilsen who invited him back to his flat in Cranley Gardens, Muswell Hill, and strangled him in bed.
September 1982: Graham Allen, 27, accepted Nilsen's offer of a meal. He strangled his guest and later claimed he choked to death on an omelette.
January 26, 1983: Nilsen's final victim Stephen Sinclair, 20, fell asleep drunk at the Cranley Gardens attic. Nilsen strangled him with a tie and a rope and fell asleep beside the body.
Nilsen wrapped him in plastic and hid him under the floor - but four times in the next fortnight he pulled the corpse out and sat him a chair for company while he watched television.
In May 1980 he throttled runaway Martyn Duffey, 16, and drowned him in the kitchen sink then defiled the body.
He too went under the floorboards and was followed by four more victims that autumn including 26-year-old Billy Sutherland.
Nilsen sprayed deodorant and insecticide twice daily to deal with maggots crawling out from his collection of corpses, and soon realised he had to tackle the "smell problem".
His solution was to bring up the bodies and remove their entrails which he dumped over the garden fence to be eaten by wildlife.
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At the end of 1980 he ran out of storage space so he burned six dissected bodies on a huge bonfire on in his garden and waste ground just beyond his back fence, disguising the stench with an old tyre.
Another five victims were incinerated on a third giant bonfire Nilsen lit in October 1981, the day before he had to move out so his unsuspecting landlord could be redecorate.
Nilsen moved to an attic flat in Cranley Gardens — the address that led to him being dubbed the Muswell Hill Murderer when he was finally caught in 1983.
Without a garden or space under the floorboards, he resorted boiling victims' heads and flushing chunks of human flesh down the loo.
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A plumber found the body parts blocking the drain and called cops, who found more remains in a closet and a tea chest in the flat upstairs.
Nilsen claimed diminished responsibility through insanity but was found guilty of six murders and two attempted murders.
His minimum 25-year jail term was later changed to a whole-life tariff.
On Saturday the fiend was rushed from Full Sutton prison to a hospital in York after complaining of stomach pain and died after emergency surgery.
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Today there is no sign of the horrors that turned the world's attention on Melrose Avenue 35 years ago.
Nilsen's flat was sold to a developer and changed hands several times before the current owners bought it.
Bruno said the complete refurb was not to erase the past — "I'm sure the forensics have done the right work", he says — but to future-proof the home they will live in for years to come.
He said: "When you buy a flat you need to connect to it. Forget about the history and feel yourself living in it.
"Everything else is irrelevant.
"This will be our first proper summer in the flat. We're going to have the barbecue, the friends, the World Cup.
"It will be great - especially if it's Portugal and France in the final."
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Mathilde added: "We're both down-to-earth people. We just want a nice place to live, invite people and have a good time and enjoy life. That's what we do.
"We will stay here for a good few years. We love it so much here.
"We are foreigners but this is our home now."
Serial killer Dennis Nilsen who murdered at least 12 young men dies in prison aged 72
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