Serial killer Dennis Nilsen died on 12 May this year, and in the days that have followed, several revelations have emerged about his life and crimes.
Most notably, it has been revealed that he was in a secret relationship with a fellow prisoner for several years, according to private letters that have been seen by the Daily Mirror.
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"My affair was called Jimmy. We were companions," reads one of the letters, which was written by Nilsen to a friend named Nigel, and contains homophobic language.
"The Home Office banned him from visiting me for the rest of our lives. They don't like ex-cons and they like ex-con puffs even less."
The letter continues: "The prison dept is run by a load of shits. Prior to Jimmy's release they confronted [stole] all 200 of my letters to him. That's the sort of trash they are when dealing with people's most private property.
"I too am not promiscuous and I've come to terms, in many ways, with the isolation and homophobia one feels in prison."
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Nilsen was serving a life sentence for the murder of at least 15 young men between 1978 and 1983, most of whom he picked up at gay bars in London and strangled at his home in Muswell Hill.
He would keep their corpses, bathing them and dressing them, so that he could lie with them and occasionally photograph them. He would dispose of the bodies by flushing them down the toilet or stuffing them under the floor boards.
Writing on his life in prison, Nilsen said: "Yes, there is a distinct pecking order in prison. There are gangs but I keep to myself because I find the tastes in the subculture extremely boring.
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"The average con is as thick as two short planks (all mouth and trousers). However on a social level most of them can be quite friendly whilst keeping their distance.
"Nobody likes to be seen associating with a known gay. I am the only man in this shithole who admits openly to being gay - there are others who are firmly locked inside the closet of their heads.
"I did a sex offender treatment course in 1994 lasting six months. It did me no good by their reckoning because after it they wrote that I was still very dangerous.
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"They keep my level of dangerousness artificially high and the same to justify the Home Secretary's political decision in making me a 'whole life' prisoner."
Nilsen was arrested in 1983 and subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment for his crimes. He was the most profilic serial killer in British history until he was surpassed by Harold Shipman in the 2000s.
Nilsen died last week in a prison hospital at the age of 72 after an operation on his abdomen.
Featured Image Credit: PATopics: UK News, Serial Killer