Notorious serial killer Dennis Nilsen spent his last day in prison lying in his own faeces as he died from internal bleeding, an inquest has heard.

Known as the Muswell Hill Murderer, the 72-year-old died at HMP Full Sutton last May, 34 years into his life sentence for carrying out a series of murders in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Nilsen is one of the UK's most notorious murderers and is believed to have killed up to 15 men, most of them homeless homosexuals, at his north London home.

An inquest at Hull Coroner's Court heard on Wednesday how the killer isolated himself from other inmates and staff but was a good prisoner, despite regularly refusing to engage with healthcare services.

The coroner was told he spent his final hours in prison in "excruciating pain", lying in his own filth as he suffered a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm.


Image: Dennis Nilsen pictured after his first sentencing

Former civil servant Nilsen was in a "pale" and "ashen" state before he eventually died, the inquiry heard.

Recording his verdict, Hull coroner Professor Paul Marks, simply said: "Dennis Andrew Nilsen died of natural causes."

Nilsen was jailed for life in 1983 on six counts of murder and two of attempted murder, with a recommendation he served a minimum of 25 years.

His sentence was later upgraded to a whole-life tariff.

On the morning of 10 May, the killer was found hunched over in pain in his cell, but after his pulse and blood pressure were found within normal range he voluntarily returned to his cell.

At about 5pm that day, an ambulance was called to the East Yorkshire prison as his condition had deteriorated, but a Prison and Probation Ombudsman report found there was an "unacceptable delay" of about 40 minutes in calling the ambulance.

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Paramedics found Nilsen had a "pulsing abdominal mass", which was then found to be the ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm, and a high aspiration rate of 40 - a normal rate is between 16 and 20.

The infamous murderer was taken to hospital in York where he had successful emergency surgery, but died two days later after being unable to cope with the blood loss and long surgery.

His medical cause of death was given as a pulmonary embolism and retroperitoneal haemorrhage, linked to the ruptured aneurysm.

The Prisons and Probation Ombudsman report also stated Nilsen "lay in his own faeces, deteriorating for two-and-a-half hours" after rejecting the opportunity to be seen for longer in the healthcare wing on the morning of 10 May last year.

But his initial treatment in prison was "commensurate with that which he would have received in the community", it added.

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