Family of Dennis Nilsen Brighton survivor on his flashbacks

The serial killer murdered at least 12 young men between 1978 and 1983.

But Carl Stotter managed to escape Nilsen’s clutches in 1982, and went on to give evidence which helped convict the killer to life in prison.

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Carl was found dead at his home in Brighton in 2014 after falling into a diabetic coma. He had struggled with alcoholism ever since Nilsen's trial.

Serial killer Dennis Nilsen

Speaking publicly for the first time in an episode of the documentary The Nilsen Files, Carl’s brother Paul Stotter told how his brother relayed his ordeal over the phone.

“He used to phone us at 2am or 3am telling us someone had tried to kill him and he was absolutely drunk out of his head and we're going 'oh you know that's just Carl fantasising again',” he said.

"So, we just brushed it off, hung the phone up on him.

"At one point I actually pulled the lines out so we couldn't hear the phone ringing. We didn't know, we just thought he was drunk and making up stories."

Carl's sister Jill Palmer told the BBC Two show: “My mum used to say, ‘oh don't be silly, they're just dreams'.

"People were saying it was all in his head anyway. He started drinking to try to drown out the dreams, the reliving of it every day."

Carl Stotter managed to escape Nilsen’s clutches in 1982

Detective Sergeant Chris Healey, who worked for Hornsey Police at the time of Nilsen's attacks, told of the moment he revealed to Carl that his nightmares were real.

"We got a phone call from a nurse whose husband was a PC saying there's a guy who keeps saying he was strangled and held under water and was so close to death,” he said.

"He has these weird dreams about it and he's really psychologically not well now. Nilsen had told us about a potential murder victim - and then Carl Stotter related this dream about being strangled and held under a bath, and a dog licking him.

"And I said to him, 'actually what happened to you did really happen’. I remember his face saying crikey, it did really happen."

Nilsen — known for cooking his victims’ body parts — died at the age of 72 after an emergency stomach operation three years ago.

He is behind only Harold Shipman as the UK’s most prolific murderer.

Now, filmmaker Michael Ogden is taking an in-depth look at the crimes in a new documentary series, where he asks whether an era of homophobia left Nilsen free to kill.

In 1983, it was still a libellous offence to claim that someone was gay.

Nilsen previously revealed how he attacked a young soldier who had passed out drunk in the toilet of a train from London to Aberdeen in 1968.

He said he would have raped him “if it hadn’t been for the persistent knocking on the door by passengers wanting to relieve themselves”.

Nilsen also revealed he also assaulted at least two other men who he used as “sexual props” for his “drunken fantasies”.