The sink and stove have probably been replaced, so you're good to go. Photo via Rightmove/Paul Simon Residential Sales.
What Nilsen meant by "new kind of flatmate," as he'd later admit, is that he would keep his victims hanging around—often for months—taking them from underneath floorboards, unwrapping them from plastic and curtains, and lying with them to catch up on a bit of telly, listen to a few tunes, or masturbate.Now, almost 40 years after that first murder, 23D Cranley Gardens (one of two homes Nilsen used to commit his crimes) is finding it near-impossible to find any tenants, never mind roommates—despite it being £300,000 [$460,000] of "prime real estate" in the world's most expensive city, at least £60,000 [$90,000] less than comparable homes. It's now been on the market twice in less than a year.Why? In short: bad vibes. When he moved to the attic flat in Muswell Hill on October 5, 1981, Dennis Nilsen had already killed between nine to 12 young men, and before his capture 16 months later, he'd lure another three there and murder them. But it's not just the fact that three men were murdered in the home that's putting potential buyers off; it's the method of their disposal. Unlike at his previous place in Melrose Avenue, Cricklewood, Nilsen didn't have floorboards to stash bodies under or access to a garden to burn them in. So, instead, he dismembered his victims, boiling body parts in his kitchen so the flesh would evaporate, shoved smaller body parts down the toilet, and stashed other bits around the apartment.
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That's something Reuben John—of Paul Simon Residential Sales, the company tasked with shifting the flat—is up against. "If it was 'just' a shooting, for want of a better way of putting it, it's not so gruesome," he said. "But it's a fairly gruesome history. If you look at the forensic photos with the pots and pans on the cooker, we've got an angle that's very similar… it was gruesome stuff." Gruesome."BUYERS ARE KINDLY ASKED TO RESEARCH THE HISTORY OF THIS PROPERTY OR ENQUIRE WITH THE MARKETING AGENT PRIOR TO VIEWINGS," the Rightmove listing screams in capitals. But it seems some people really can't handle the stress of a quick Google search. In its first week on the market, up to 80 people expressed an interest, then refused a viewing when the poor estate agents had to call and tell them about, you know, "the flushings." Of the 14 viewings booked in, seven cancelled, despite, as Reuben understands it, the place having all new pipes and fittings."Personally, I'm sitting on the fence, like any good estate agent," said Reuben. "Would I want to live there? Probably not. But on the other hand how many things have happened in London over thousands of years? Down the road, in Finsbury Park, Henry VIII massacred a load of people, and you see people picnicking there." If you think about it that way, pretty much everyone's house has had a murder in it."Dead people is one thing, but chopped up people in walls and plumbing is another!"
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