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Hello and welcome back to Cult Leader. I'm your Cult Leader, Spencer Henry, and I am confused. So I was going through my list. I keep this list. It has all of the potential episode topics that I want to cover for the rest of the year. And I came across Dennis Nilsen and I was like, there's no way I haven't done an episode on him.

I know the story very well. So I dug through all of my notes. I went on Cult Leader's Instagram. And honestly, I am shocked because I swear I have done this episode already. And maybe I'm just finally losing my mind, but who knows? That's probably one of the feelings that I hate the most, though. It's kind of like when you're locking your car, right? You know you locked it. But if you sit there and you start thinking about it, you're like, did I lock my car? And then you go outside, you check, and you did lock it. Or you're like, I'm going to lock it. And then you go outside, you check, and you did lock it. Or you just go, I'm going to lock it. And then you go outside, you check, and you did lock it. And then you go, I'm going to lock it. And then you go, I'm going to lock it, and then you go, I'm going to lock it, and then you go, I'm

going to lock it, and then you go outside, and then you go outside, and then you go, I'm going

to lock it. Oh, the attending school named Martinito de

Elizabeth, Dennis, and Olaf Jr. were living at Elizabeth's parents' house and then on a visit from the father, Olaf, they have their third child, Olaf Jr. in 1947, but just a year later, the couple divorced.

And according to Elizabeth, they had just kind of rushed into the marriage without really thinking. And I guess the hot goss is that Olaf was not the marriage type.

He didn't take the marriage seriously and he spent more time than necessary with his work with the free Norwegian forces.

It was basically just never at home with the family. Now they were living with Elizabeth's parents and they were honestly kind of relieved when the two decided to divorce. They agreed that it was rushed and they continued to support their daughter and grandchildren following the divorce.

Elizabeth's father really like stepped up, took on a bit of like a father type role with the children, but especially Dennis, the grandfather would often take the children primarily Dennis on these long walks all across Scotland, exploring the countryside.

They would go on family picnics and overall it seems like they had somewhat of a pretty enjoyable childhood. The grandparents were definitely strict and very religious, but they did their best to make things fun and keep things upbeat, especially knowing that the kids,

were having a hard time without their dad there. Now Dennis was around five years old during this time of picnics and walks, but there's some of his earliest memories and he later recalled his grandfather being his great hero and protector.

So it seems like the two of them had a really sweet relationship.

Tragedy struck the family on October 31st of 1951 when Dennis's grandfather passed away from a heart attack while he was at work as a fisherman. He was out on a boat at the time. They brought him back. He was only 62 and Dennis describes the funeral as another one of his earliest childhood memories.

He remembers his mom like in grandma crying over the coffin and his mom Elizabeth invited Dennis over to see his grandfather in the casket, told him that he was sleeping and he had gone to another place like wow, I don't know.

Way to ruin Halloween, Major Bummer. The death took a toll on young Dennis. He changed a lot after this happened, became much more of an introvert over the next few years. He would go and he would kind of sit on the docks where his grandpa used to go out on the boats and it made him feel closer to him.

About four years later, there was another significant event that happened. This was in 1955 where Dennis almost drowned at the beach. It was a near death experience for Dennis who was quickly saved by another kid who pulled him back onto the shore.

Dennis recalls feeling tranquil when he was in this drowning state and he had an overwhelming sensation that his grandfather would end up pulling him out of the water.

So that same year the family ends up moving to Strychan, Stricken, it's STR, I see H.E.N. I don't know, you tell me in 1955 after Dennis' mom marries a guy named Andrew Scott, they have four children of their own together like damn, that is too much.

You don't need seven kids, you don't need them. What do you even do with that many? I grew up with three siblings and I feel like that was enough. Seven is too much.

We're going to move into kind of his early teen years because this was another pivotal time in his life because this was around the time that Dennis realizes he is in fact a homosexual.

And okay, it gets a little weird because I guess the guys that he was attracted to were all guys that looked like his sister Sylvia leading him to eventually molest his sister in hopes that he wasn't actually gay and was just attracted to guys that looked like his sister.

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