DIRTY DEN became one of EastEnders biggest villains after he manipulated half the Square.
Actor Leslie Grantham, who played Dirty Den, sadly passed away after a period of ill health but he will always be immortalised in this iconic role.
Who killed Dirty Den in EastEnders?
Dirty Den was one of few characters to suffer two deaths on EastEnders.
He first fleed Albert Square in 1989 after the criminal gang he was involved with, The Firm, tried to kill him.
Den was shot by a man hiding in a bunch of daffodils and viewers were led to believe he had died after a splash into a canal and his adopted daughter Sharon was left to identify his body.
Despite this, Den returned from the dead in 2003 after it turned out he had been living in Spain and marrying Chrissie Watts.
Following an intense reunion with Sharon, he moved back to Albert Square with his new wife.
However, Den was on borrowed time and it was actually his wife that ended up killing him off for good.
How did Dirty Den die?
Den finally gets his long-awaited comeuppance at the hands of his second wife Chrissie.
After discovering his affair with Zoe Slater, Chrissie persuades her to abort Den’s child and hatches her own plan to gain control of the Queen Vic.
Chrissie confronts Den after closing time alongside his past lovers, Zoe and Sam Mitchell, and concocts a way to lure Sharon back to overhear her dad’s true nature.
After Sharon disowns Den, he breaks out in a rage which is only stopped when Zoe, and then finally Chrissie club him over the head with an iron doorstop.
When was Leslie Grantham’s character murdered?
Den was always a central character to the soap, having the very first line uttered in the show.
He was finally killed off the 20th-anniversary episode of EastEnders, in February 2005.
The episode was watched by over 17 million viewers.
This means that nearly a third of Britain’s population at the time had tuned in to watch Den suffer a grisly end.
The aftermath saw Chrissie jailed after pleading guilty to murder, and Den was given a proper burial in his ‘original’ grave next to his first wife Angie.
