The former civil servant, 72, executed and dismembered many of his victims at his home in Muswell Hill, north London.
He was convicted of six counts of murder and two of attempted murder and jailed for life in 1983, with a recommendation he serve a minimum of 25 years.
Most of Nilsen's victims were homosexual or homeless men who he would pick up in bars across London or on the street.
After inviting them to his home, Nilsen would ply his victims with food and alcohol before killing then. His preferred method was strangulation.
Once dead, he dismembered their bodies by dissecting them in his house. In his first address, Melrose Avenue, he buried their remains in the garden. In Cranley Gardens however he was forced to take other measures.
Once arrested he told police how he boiled the heads of his victims in a large cooking pot to dispose of their brains.
He would cut up the rest of their bodies and store them in plastic bin bags at the property. When the stench of their rotting corpses became stronger, he tried to flush their limbs down the toilet and drains.
This caused a large blockage in the pipes. Seemingly oblivious to risk, Nilsen audaciously complained to a waste company about the blockage and asked for it to be resolved because he and other residents were suffering as a result.
When a worker Dyno-Rod arrived at the property in 1983 to unblock them, he discovered what appeared to be flesh and fragments of bone when he opened a drain cover outside the property.
The following day, after inspecting another section of pipe, he and his supervisor discovered what they thought were bones of a human hand.
They alerted police who arrested Nilsen as he returned home from work. While in custody he admitted to killing at least 15 people.
A controversial Central TV documentary Murder in Mind featured extracts from an interview Nilsen gave in Albany Prison, Isle of Wight, in 1993.
Dennis Nilsen, wearing glasses, a blue open necked shirt and handcuffed to police officers. Photo / Getty Images
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 put it on him because it enhanced his appearance. I would undress him and he would be there."
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."
