Dennis Nilsen homes are STILL standing today despite grisly past

They are some of the most notorious addresses in Britain – and the two houses where serial killer Dennis Nilsen slaughtered and cut up his victims are still standing today.

One of the Scottish-born criminal’s flats, in Cricklewood, north London, which was home to Nilsen when he carried out 12 of his estimated 15 murders in the late 1970s and early 80s, was even bought for nearly half a million pound in 2016.

The buyers, named only as Bruno and Mathilde, revealed in 2018 how they had transformed the property into their dream home – insisting that they were not put off by its gory history and were proud of how they turned the ‘house of horrors’ into a comfortable abode. 

Meanwhile, the flat in Cranley Gardens, Muswell Hill, where the Job Centre worker killed three of his victims, was last sold for £285,000 in 2015 – unbelievably making a £35,000 profit from its 2013 price.

The horrific story of Nilsen, who died at the age of 74 in 2018 at HMP Full Sutton, 34 years into his life sentence, is being told in Des, a chilling new three-part drama from ITV this week – with the first episode having aired yesterday to high praise from viewers.   

Nilsen, who is played by Broadchurch and Doctor Who star David Tennant in the series, was charged with murder after his drains at Muswell Hill had been found to be blocked with human remains.

Dubbed the Muswell Hill Murderer, Nilsen immediately confessed to as many as 15 murders – he couldn’t be quite sure – after being questioned by police in 1983.

During his killing spree, Nilsen would befriend his subjects in pubs and bars in London before luring them into his flat, first in Melrose Avenue, Cricklewood, and later in Cranley Gardens, where he would murder them and sit with their corpses before dismembering them. 

He stored many of their bodies beneath the floorboards of his homes before burying them in the garden or cutting them up and flushing them down the drains.

But despite the grisly past Nilsen’s former London houses share – they both remain standing and have been bought for hundreds of thousands of pounds. 

In 2018, a couple revealed how they transformed the Cricklewood flat into their dream home – insisting that they were not put off by its gory history and are proud of how they turned the ‘house of horrors’ into a comfortable abode. 

The house was bought by a NHS manager from Portugal and his French-born partner for £493,000 in 2016.

The couple, named only as Bruno and Mathilde, told The Sun: ‘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.

‘If you compare what the flat was with what the flat is, it has nothing to do with what happened 35 years ago.’

They admitted they did not know about the flat’s past when they viewed it, but the estate agent had advised them to Google the address.

They added: ‘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.’

The couple ripped up the old floorboards and replaced them with modern wooden flooring and smartened up the garden where Nilsen’s victims’ bodies once lay. 

Meanwhile, according to Rightmove, the flat in Muswell Hill was last sold in August 2015 for £285,000, a £30,000 price increase from its £250,000 sale in October 2013.

In 2017, the north London flat went on the market for around £500,000 – but it is unclear if it was ever snapped up at that price.

The property was on the market for more than £30,000 above the average price of a home in the area, according to Zoopla.

Although it had to be knocked down from the original asking price of £525,000 after it failed to sell.