I stared Dennis Nilsen in the eye & heard his hideous chat, reveals forensic psychologist as she lifts lid on frontline

A FORENSIC psychologist has revealed all about her life on the frontline – including chats with serial killer Dennis Nilsen and getting stabbed at work.

Kerry Daynes has spent 25 years working with infamous murderers, rapists and paedophiles in prisons, police stations and secure hospitals.

She has now opened up about her haunting experiences in a new book, What Lies Buried, which is published today.

And despite coming face-to-face with Britain's worst criminals – including Ian Brady and the Yorkshire Ripper – Kerry insists she is "very lucky".

Speaking about her work, she told The Sun Online: "I want to help people and also create a world where there are less victims.

"It's not like Silence of the Lambs – although I have had bodily fluids thrown at me once."

Among the more infamous of Kerry's clients is Dennis Nilsen, who murdered at least 12 men during a gruesome five-year killing spree.

The monster strangled or drowned his victims in the bath before carrying out a chilling ritual of carefully clothing their bodies and keeping them in his home for weeks.

Bizarrely, Kerry began receiving lengthy phonecalls from Nilsen after she met him in prison.

She said: "Dennis loved to complain. He was a narcissist and just wanted to talk about himself all the time.

"He was always very keen to talk about his offending which is of course really grisly.

"I remember him telling me in explicit detail how to dismember a body and of course he was a trained butcher. He would want to go into detail but I'd have to stop him because I felt it was his way re-enacting the crime and sustaining his fantasy.

"And he did say he found it difficult and if he could go back and do it again he would as it was a consistent fantasy that stayed with him and a consistent need to have a dead body i.e. a completely passive partner as he saw it."

CHATTING TO EVIL

Although she didn't encourage the calls, Kerry was able to get a fascinating insight into the murderer's mind as he languished in a prison cell.

She added: "He'd talk about being gay and being effeminate growing up in this little Scottish village and having to hide his sexuality, which I thought was really significant.

"He also said about how he saw one of the bullies being pulled from the sea after he drowned and he thought 'well he's not going to bully me again, he's got no control, he's dead'.

"That gave him a real sense of satisfaction but he also felt sexually attracted towards the body of this boy. You can see how his very twisted sexual development occurred."

STABBED AT WORK

Despite working with violent offenders for more than two decades, Kerry says she has only ever been physically attacked once.

While at a halfway house, she was stabbed by an arsonist with a kebab skewer as he washed up.

She revealed she let out a sound like a "cow mooing" and looked down to find the cooking instrument embedded in her.

Kerry later discovered the man was being used by a group in the centre as a spice pig, someone who tests drugs, and wanted to escape.

She said she can now see the "funny side" – especially as her colleagues called her Donna for weeks afterwards.

But she has not always had such a light-hearted time and was once locked in a cell at HMP Wakefield with a rapist and murderer by prison guards.

Thankfully another inmate banged on the door and managed to help her before the "joke" took a sinister turn.

'JET OF BLOOD'

In another chilling experience, Kerry was called to help discover whether a confession had been coerced out of a young boy during a police interview.

The psychologist explained how midway through questioning, the lad – who was accused of battering a man with a metal pole – suddenly started banging his head against a wall.

She recalled: "Not only did he confess to being the person who beaten this man with a baseball bat but he said he was a serial killer and had a fascination with serial killers.

"In fact when he was being interviewed he was wearing a John Wayne Gacy t-shirt, which is probably not the best thing to wear when you're being questioned for a serious assault."

As the pair walked through the hospital after an assessment, a patient suddenly slit her wrists in front of them – with Kerry hit in the face by a "warm jet of blood".

She sprang into action and held the bleeding girl until nurses came to take over – only noticing after the boy had slid into a corner.

Kerry, who also appears as a profiler on TV's Faking It, said: "I just completely ashen white and it turned out he was afraid of blood.

"I'm thinking this doesn't sound right, you're afraid of blood but admitted carrying out this really violent attack.

"Turns out the confession wasn't really but everyone was so keen to believe him because he was the local weirdo."

'NO EVIL'

Kerry admits she only came close to leaving her job once in 2013 when she was "deluged" with a wave of paedophile referrals.

She had to later go to court where Mark Bridger was standing trial for murdering five-year-old April Jones and said she was "overwhelmed with anger" at listening to his shameless lies.

But other than the "handful" of people she has met that may never be saved, she believes there is no evil.

Kerry said: "We say people are mad or bad but there are shades of grey.

"I don't believe in evil and people are more than just their offences. Just because someone has done a terrible thing it doesn't make them a bad person.

"All criminality is a choice but some have more choice than others."

• What Lies Buried: A forensic psychologist's true stories of madness, the bad and the misunderstood by Kerry Daynes is published today by Endeavour, https://www.octopusbooks.co.uk/titles/kerry-daynes/what-lies-buried/9781913068592/

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