'I Work With Serial Killers. There Are Tell Tale Signs'

I became interested in crime and punishment when I was at Cambridge University in the early 1980s. I was a winger on the rugby team, which meant my role was to run fast across the side of the pitch to score goals, known as tries, while evading defenders trying to tackle me. During one particular match, another player behaved very poorly during a physical altercation, so when we stopped playing, I punched him and broke his nose.

Everybody, including the man whose nose was broken, thought nothing of it. If anything, they said: "Well done you." My violence was seen as something which was acceptable, almost aspirational. That week, I read a story in the local newspaper of a young man, who was the same age as me, and had also broken someone's nose.

This young man did not go to the university, he was just a lad who lived in the town of Cambridge, and his violent altercation had taken place under the influence of alcohol after a night at the pub. He was sent to prison for two years.

Becoming a prison governor

I wanted to know how my violence, in my context, led to people slapping me on the back, while his violence, in his context, led inexorably to him going to jail. Clearly, I felt it had something to do with class. I could see the situations were different, but the actions were exactly comparable. I thought: "What is happening here, how can these same cases, in the same city, have such different outcomes?"

So, after completing my PhD and leaving university, I sat my civil service exams and joined a scheme which recruited people like me directly to become prison governors. I finished my studies on a Friday, and by the following Monday I was assistant governor under training at Wormwood Scrubs, a Category B men's prison in west London.

It was very odd, but I survived because I was good at rugby. I was put into the prison's staff team, so even though I was this 23-year-old, wet behind the ears, university graduate, some of my colleagues took me under their wing and socialized me. They made sure I could survive what really was a baptism of fire.

Working with Dennis Nilsen

I came across a wide variety of offenders, but the first ever murderer I met was a man called Dennis Nilsen. He was a serial killer convicted of six counts of murder and two attempted murders. His case was all over the papers, so I knew a great deal about him, but our first meeting was completely banal and ordinary. He reminded me of a weedy geography teacher who would struggle to keep control of his class, he wasn't this extraordinary figure at all.

Nilsen was a killer of young men, which I was when I met him, so, I think he simply regarded me as someone nice to talk to, a distraction from being locked up. I think he kind of fancied me. At the time, I simply managed that. I know it sounds dull, but it was my job; I had to compartmentalize and be psychologically robust.

In my opinion, Nilsen was more concerned about managing his public image than the crimes he had committed. He initially claimed to have murdered 15 people, before carrying out cannibalism and necrophilia, but then denied that afterwards. In my view, there was nothing he said that you could count on as being authentic.

Until his death, he and I would regularly correspond with one another, usually about ordinary things. I wanted to try and understand his crimes more, but I did not like Nilsen. It's often difficult as a criminologist, you have to use the skills of trying to establish a friendship, but you're not trying to actually make a friend. You're using those methods simply because if you came across as critical of them, they would not be prepared to open up and tell you the information that you need to know.

Nilsen would often talk at me, rather than with me and I certainly didn't feel that he adequately explained a number of different things when it came to the circumstances surrounding his offending, several of which would have been good to get to the bottom of.

Trying to understand the minds of serial killers

My work with Nilsen is where my lifelong academic disagreement with several FBI profilers stems from. Some believe that by interviewing convicted serial killers, we can build up an understanding of serial murder as a phenomenon, but personally, I wouldn't believe a word they told me. In fact, if a serial killer told me it was raining, I would put suntan lotion on.

These were people, I came to understand, who disassembled the truth, hid and lied, rather than telling me things I could use to build a real knowledge of why they offended. I don't believe in the "entering the mind of a serial killer" trope we often see in popular culture.

However, after meeting Nilsen, I became incredibly interested in why people commit murder and would deliberately chose postings within the prison system which would allow me to develop my interest in that type of offender.

I worked at HMP Grendon Springhill, which is the only prison in the U.K. working as a psychodynamic therapeutic community, meaning inmates are in therapy everyday and have to talk about their offending. This meant I was constantly listening to violent men talking about their crimes and why they committed them.

After Grendon, I was asked to manage two units at HMP Woodhill, a category A prison in Milton Keynes, where I worked with the twelve most disruptive prisoners. Again, that experience brought me into contact with murderers, rapists and serial murderers regularly.

I was governor for fourteen years and got to know a great deal about violent men, specifically those who had committed homicide or serial murder. Gradually, I wrote about those experiences academically and more popularly. I have also helped train the police in handling serial murderers and offered practical advice about particular cases or crimes of violence.

Why police can miss criminals on their radar

I don't believe the police are very good at catching serial killers, although there are several media tropes about the dogged detective always finding the killer in the end. However, in several cases, it happens by accident—sometimes even if that murderer has been on the police's radar for committing smaller crimes.

When it comes to the case of serial killers like Jeffery Dahmer, who had been arrested on several occasions before his murders were discovered, including for indecent exposure, I believe that homophobia and racism played a huge part in why he was not caught.

Dahmer targeted predominantly Black, homosexual men and in my opinion, the police did not see those young men as having the same worth as white, heterosexual men. Often, serial killers will target those people thinking they will not be missed. He was choosing a victim group who he thought would not be noticed.

But the tragedy is, many of his victims were noticed as having gone missing, I just think they didn't have the same social capital to have people banging on the police's door saying: "Why are you not looking for my friend, uncle, brother who has gone missing." To find a serial murderer, you need to get the police to treat the disappearance with importance. I believe that Dahmer would have been caught much sooner if the police had taken his missing victims more seriously.

What motivates serial killers?

Every single serial killer I have worked with was motivated by sexual fantasy. Indecently exposing themselves to strangers, as Dahmer did in 1982, is a part of that. The flashing is about the reaction they're going to get, they want to feel powerful, shocking and like they're in control. Often they want to feel ultra masculine and enjoy their victim being at a disadvantage.

All the murderers I have worked with had an underlying personality disorder, so many of them do not act in a rational way, they are operating on a totally different platform. Often, by the end of a killing cycle, murderers just feel so omnipotent that they don't think they're ever going to be caught. By that stage, they are operating in a totally different moral universe and don't think their behavior is odd. They're just in a completely parallel world where everything they're doing seems OK.

Often, serial killers are depicted as evil geniuses like Hannibal Lecter or dysfunctional loners, but that's a fantasy. The majority are normally ordinary, charming people who have very seductive personalities. They're good at mirroring you and your language, tapping into your needs, hopes or aspirations and telling you what you need to hear.

What can we do to stop serial killers?

After years of experiencing violent offenders, I no longer care about understanding the psychological motivation of the serial killer, instead I look at who they were able to victimize over a period of time; which groups in our culture are vulnerable to attack from these people.

In the U.K. there is a small number of groups who, generally, are likely to be victims of serial killers, including sex workers, homosexual men and women over the age of 60, the latter of which are the most regularly targeted. In my opinion, the killing of older women is so common because people don't usually question their disappearance and murderers are able to exploit that phenomenon.

My own research suggests there are two active British serial killers at any given time who, between them, will murder on average seven people a year. Although we may not know who their victims are for many years to come, if I was a betting man, I would say these victims are likely homeless people, who are simply not missed and are already dying in quite high numbers.

I think that to reduce the incidents of serial murder in our culture, we must first look at protecting at risk groups. For example, challenge homophobia, have a grown up debate about how we police sex work and give older people in our culture a voice. I believe that just by doing that we can reduce the incidence of serial murders.

People want to understand how somebody can behave in such an abhorrent way, what is it that drives serial killers to do the things they do, but I don't care what motivates them. I care about who it is they are able to kill, which groups of people are regularly targeted, because in my opinion, if we worried more about protecting those groups, we would have less serial killers.

David Wilson is an author and Professor Emeritus of Criminology at Birmingham City University. Prior to taking up an academic appointment, he was a governor at various prisons across the U.K.

All views expressed in this article are the author's own.

As told to Monica Greep.