Dennis Nilsen killed his victims so they could keep him company.
Over four years he turned his cramped, north London flats into grotesque theatres where corpses were used as props for acting out fantasies of devotion.
At least 12 young men, most of them homeless homosexuals, were butched once lured behind the doors of Nilsen's homes between 1978 and 1983.
After strangling them, he would bathe their lifeless remains and dress them up; placing them around his home and sleeping at their side.
READ MORE: Prolific Scots serial killer Dennis Nilson dies in prison aged 72
When this grotesque illusion of intimacy drew to a close, he would stow the bodies under floorboards, eventually dismembering and burning them.
It was only the most prosaic of observations from a neighbour that halted Nilsen's murderous spree - that the drains had become blocked.
A further inspection found pipes packed with human flesh, a discovery which unlocked an entirely undetected tale of mass killing which shocked Britain.
A controversial Central TV documentary Murder in Mind featured extracts from an interview Nilsen gave in Albany Prison, Isle of Wight, in 1993.
Describing how he liked to dress the bodies in Y-Fronts and vest, then undress them, he said he enjoyed the feeling of power when he carried their limp bodies.
He said he was physically sick after cutting the innards from some of his victims to tackle "the smell problem".
"In the end it was when there were two or three bodies under the floorboards that come summer it got hot and I knew there would be a smell problem," he said.
"I knew I had to deal with the smell problem. I thought 'What would cause the smell more than anything else?'
"I came to the conclusion it was the innards, the softer parts of the body, the organs, things like that.
"On a weekend I pulled up the floorboards. I found it totally unpleasant. I got blinding drunk so I could face it.
"I started dissection on the kitchen floor. I would then go and be sick outside in the garden."
Asked about "the first young man" - his initial victim - he said: "He is now me. He is now my body in fantasies.
"I carry him in and make him appear even better. I had some Y-fronts in cellophane and a vest.
"I put it on him because it enhanced his appearance. I would undress him and he would be there."
READ MORE: Prolific Scots serial killer Dennis Nilson dies in prison aged 72
Nilsen said: "The most exciting part of the little conundrum was when I lifted the body and carried it.
"It was an expression of my power to lift and carry him and have control.
"The dangling elements of his limp limbs was an expression of his passivity. The more passive he could be, the more powerful I was."
In the final section of the interview, used in the programme, Nilsen said: "The bodies all gone. Everything's gone, there's nothing left. But I still feel spiritual communion with these people."
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