All language subtitles for Britains.Most.Evil.Killers.S04E06.WEBRip.en

- NARRATOR: 2nd November, 1989,
Amsterdam, Netherlands.

32-year-old Melissa Halstead
phones her mother in Ohio.

- MELISSA: I just called
to wish you a happy birthday,

have a good time
and take care of yourself.

Goodbye, I love you.

- NARRATOR: It was her last
call home.

Six months later,
her headless torso was found

dumped in a bag in the
Westersingel Canal, Rotterdam.

Her hands were also missing.

- STEVE: The fact that he can
kill women is one thing.

But then to dismember the bodies
and remove body parts

that even to this day have
still not been recovered

is just a horrendous
and shocking thing to do.

- NARRATOR: Melissa's murderer
was her British boyfriend,

33-year-old John Sweeney,

otherwise known as
the Scalp Hunter.

After brutally dismembering her,
he created macabre pictures

about the killing.

- LOUIS: You look
at his artwork

and it speaks for itself

as to the depth of his
very grotesque fantasies,

and that tells you what's
going on inside of him.

- NARRATOR: In the ten years
that followed, back in London,

he brutally dismembered
a second woman,

and subjected another to
a violent campaign of assault.

- DELIA: I saw my small
finger fly through the air,

and then I thought, "That's it,
I've had enough, I want to die.

I don't want to live
in this pain."

- NARRATOR: Driven by jealousy,
he maimed and even held

his so-called lovers prisoner
in their own homes.

He hacked two women to death
in a moment of rage.

That makes John Sweeney one of
the world's most evil killers.

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♪♪

- NARRATOR: When 33-year-old
Melissa Halstead's body

was found in Rotterdam's
Westersingel Canal

on May the 3rd, 1990,

police at the time were
mystified as to the identity

of this unknown woman.

- No one knew who she was.

Obviously, it was a female,
but there's no head,

there's no hands,
so there's no dental records

to be found, there are no
fingerprint records to be found.

Remember, this is a long time
before DNA really became

significant in
the identification of a body.

- NARRATOR: Former detective
inspector Steve Smith

would later investigate
the murder

for London's
Metropolitan Police.

- Identification was impossible.

What they could say was
that it was the body

of a...a young, white female.

In around late 20's, early 30's.

She was trussed up with rope,

but there was really
nothing else to go on.

- NARRATOR: Eighteen years later
the police finally identify

the body as Melissa's by DNA
during a cold case review.

It was then they linked it
to a strikingly similar killing

of 31-year-old Paula Fields
in December 2000.

She'd also been found
savagely dismembered

and dumped in bags in
Regents Canal, London, England.

- ELIZABETH:
When you dismember somebody,

you are essentially obliterating
them,

you are cutting them
into pieces,

and that expresses an anger
towards the victim,

that they are something
that should be destroyed,

that they're not worthy.

- NARRATOR: The chilling common
thread found between them?

They both had a relationship
with London-based John Sweeney.

For the first time,
British and Dutch polices forces

launched a joint European
murder inquiry

into the suspected killer.

- STEVE: This was a violent,
controlling individual

who in every relationship
with women throughout his life,

he had behaved in the same
reprehensible way,

just exploding in fits of rage
and violence.

Culminating in murder.

- NARRATOR: Those who knew
the happy-go-lucky

bohemian carpenter were
horrified to discover a man

with a long history of domestic
violence against women.

- Sweeney's attacks on women

that he was
in relationships with

put him in the category
of domestic abuser,

and domestic abuse is not
taken as seriously

as it should be.

This really,
really frustrates me

about this kind of case,

because there's a failure to see
how dangerous

a serial domestic abuser is.

- NARRATOR:
This killer's story begins

on the 13th of October, 1956.

John Patrick Sweeney was born
in Kirkdale, Liverpool,

in the northwest of England.

He had a brother and a sister.

After spending his early years
in Merseyside,

the family moved 14 miles
further north,

to Skelmersdale, in Lancashire.

- STEVE: There was some evidence
that we discovered

that his father was violent,
and John Sweeney did receive

beatings in his youth,
and I think this would have

possibly made him resentful
of any sort of authority.

- ELIZABETH: He comes from
quite a working-class background

so there's this idea that
men should be tough,

they should be stoic,
they should be resilient,

so the kind of stuff he's
being exposed to

during his childhood is kind of
teaching him something

about women; who they are,
how they should behave,

and that they are
inferior to men.

- NARRATOR: Young Sweeney
had a creative mind.

He developed a passion
for drawing and painting.

At the age of 15,
he considered art school,

but instead trained
as a carpenter.

- ELIZABETH: He wanted to be
an artist,

but he ended up going
into carpentry and joinery,

because I think there was
that expectation

that the young men--young
working-class men--were not

going to pursue those kind
of artistic, creative endeavors,

so I think there's always
that frustration in him,

that he has to be a particular
type of man.

- NARRATOR: As a teenager,
the man's man Sweeney

showed a capacity for
extreme violence.

This resulted in a number
of run-ins with the authorities.

- STEVE: Sweeney had convictions
from his teenage years

because he was always showing
violent tendencies.

I certainly remember that
one of his earlier convictions

was involved in an affray
outside a fish-and-chip shop.

He got involved in an
altercation

with some other youths,

and I believe there was
certainly an axe

that was brandished.

I think it was by luck, really,
that no one got seriously hurt.

So he was on the radar
of the police

from a young age.

- NARRATOR: By 1974,
the wayward Sweeney

appeared to settle down,

marrying at the tender age
of just 18.

He and his young wife, Anne,
lived in Skelmersdale.

- GEOFFREY: They had two
children, a boy and a girl.

It's a very violent
relationship.

He beats her.
He hits her regularly.

- ELIZABETH: A lot of his
violence focuses around

the domestic setting,
he's violent towards

the women in his life,
and there are criminal incidents

that are connected to that.

- NARRATOR: Sweeney reportedly
threw bricks through the window

and abused the family's
pet turtles at home.

But it was his wife
who suffered the most.

- Sweeney had a proprietary
view of the different women

he was involved in
in his life.

In other words, he thought
he owned the women,

and as a result he was
extremely controlling,

he wanted to know everything
they were doing,

he wanted to control all
of their movements,

and if something is done
that's out of his control

or something that he doesn't
want, he explodes,

in a very violent way.

- NARRATOR: After just five
years of marriage,

Sweeney's wife decided
she'd had enough,

and divorced him in 1979.

But the ever-manipulative
Sweeney persuaded her

to make a fresh start
with him once again.

- STEVE:
Amazingly, they remarried.

It was about 1981,
but unfortunately,

after a very short period
of time,

the second marriage also
went sour, again,

entirely due to Sweeney's

unreasonable
and violent behavior.

- NARRATOR: The same old
sadistic Sweeney

had reappeared once again.

One evening, though,
the regular domestic violence

he inflicted on his wife
escalated to new heights.

- STEVE: One occasion,
she'd had a major operation,

and Sweeney got drunk one night,

and he was so violent towards
her when he attacked her,

that he assaulted her
and he had actually burst

her operation scar.

- NARRATOR: Enough was enough
for Sweeney's wife,

and once again,
she ended their relationship.

John Sweeney finally left
the family home.

However, one day, his ex-wife,
Anne, was with her neighbor,

when she suddenly heard noises
from her own house next door.

- STEVE: She chose to call
the police.

When an officer turned up
and helped search the house,

in her bedroom, Sweeney
jumped out of a wardrobe

with an axe and a knife,

stating that he just wanted
to surprise her,

so one can only imagine
what sort of surprise

that would have been if
the police hadn't been present.

- ELIZABETH: He intended
to do serious harm to his wife.

I think he actually
intended to kill her,

because she'd slipped out
of his control

and he wanted that back.

- NARRATOR: He was arrested
but later released

without charge,
on agreement that he'd stay away

from his wife.

She divorced him once again

and moved 150 miles south
with their two children

to Northampton.

Sweeney also decided
it was time for a change,

leaving his hometown
of Skelmersdale,

where he was under the watchful
eye of the police.

- STEVE: He went off
the radar for a while,

he went looking for work abroad

because there was more money,
more opportunity,

casual work was easy
to come by.

So he certainly traveled
to Germany,

and probably France
and the Netherlands,

but his actual movements are
really quite sketchy.

- NARRATOR: But before long,
26-year-old John Sweeney

would be back to his old ways.

- GEOFFREY: What I believe,
and absolutely believe,

is he was, in the end,
a predator looking for victims,

looking for a woman
who was vulnerable,

looking for someone whom
he could entice,

someone he could...draw
into the spider's web

of his control.

- NARRATOR: Soon, he'd ensnare
another victim on his travels,

another unsuspecting woman
he could control and abuse.

This time, though,

he'd return to his passion
for drawing,

and his gruesome artwork would
reveal more sinister plans.

1986. London, England.

30-year-old wife abuser
John Sweeney was divorced

and living more than 60 miles
away from his family.

Now, he's set his sights
on finding another woman

he could entice into his home.

Whilst working as a carpenter
on the set of a photoshoot,

he met Melissa Halstead,
an American photographer.

- ELIZABETH: She was a model,
she was a really stunning

young woman,

and she meets Sweeney,

and you'd think, "What on earth
did she see in this guy?"

But actually, when you look
at people like John Sweeney,

they are very quick
to suck you in

and make you feel very special,

and Melissa was quite vulnerable

'cause she's in a country
that she doesn't know,

she hasn't got that strong
support network

of friends and family
around her,

and she is, in essence,
the ideal victim for Sweeney,

because he's able
to isolate her.

- NARRATOR:
Shortly after they met,

Melissa agreed to set up home
with Sweeney in North London.

- ELIZABETH: The initial
relationship between

Melissa and Sweeney,

it would've been full
of charm and romance,

he would've swept her
off her feet,

because that's
how abusers operate.

They come in as this knight
in shining armor,

they make themselves
indispensable to you.

- NARRATOR: Soon, though,
the charm melted away,

and John Sweeney,
the domestic abuser,

revealed his true self.

- This relationship was quite
quick to turn nasty,

and the following year,
he was already assaulting her,

and I think by that point,
he chipped away so expertly

at her self-esteem
and at her confidence,

that she finds herself
in this impossible situation.

- NARRATOR: Melissa's family
in Ohio, in the United States,

were becoming concerned
about this new relationship

that she'd been drawn into.

Her sister paid a visit
to London

and didn't like
what she discovered.

- STEVE: She took an instant
dislike to Sweeney.

Some drugs were found
in Sweeney and Melissa's flat,

and this really added to her
view that Sweeney

was not a good individual at
all for her sister to be with.

In fact, there was one
conversation that Melissa had,

in which she confided in her
that if anything ever happened

to her, then it would be
Sweeney that had done it.

- NARRATOR: And sure enough,
within 12 months

of moving in with Melissa,

serial abuser Sweeney
came onto the police radar

once again.

In 1987, he was reprimanded
twice by the authorities

for violent assaults
on his girlfriend.

- One of the assaults involved
Sweeney throwing a chair at her.

Causing injury,
I think to her legs,

and then on another occasion,

he punched her,
causing severe bruising.

- NARRATOR: On both occasions,
Sweeney was slapped on the wrist

with a fine, he never received
a custodial sentence.

- ELIZABETH: Domestic abuse
doesn't have a particularly

high status as a crime,

nowhere near as high
as it should be,

so we will often find that men
convicted of domestic abuse,

the sentences they receive
are quite lenient,

they will get let off,
they'll be free to harm

other people.

- NARRATOR:
Tragically for Melissa,

the abusive Sweeney would
disappear off the police radar

once again.

When her work visa ran out
in the summer of 1988,

the couple decided
to move to Vienna, in Austria.

- STEVE: Sweeney and Melissa
were in Austria together,

and for a time-being,
everything would seem fine.

Work was good,
they were making a living,

and they were renting a property
in the center of Vienna.

- NARRATOR: But the romance
of a new city

would soon wear thin.

One night, after a drunken
argument,

Sweeney chased Melissa
with a hammer,

and hit her over the head.

- A hammer! I mean,
not just the fists,

a--a proper blunt instrument.

He attacks her
ruthlessly,

and is indeed taken
by the police

and thrown into jail.

- NARRATOR: Melissa was
rushed to hospital

with a fractured skull,

and this time,
Sweeney was jailed for assault.

In prison, he built up
a seething resentment

towards his girlfriend
for his predicament.

Here, Sweeney the artist
began sketching again,

with terrifying results.

- STEVE: Some of the drawings
and the pictures

that Sweeney had done were--
apart from very graphic

and very gruesome--
were confessional.

- We are talking about
an incredibly warped individual

with an imagination
that is so violent,

that is so depraved,

it's very difficult
to actually describe.

- NARRATOR: The most alarming
sketch he drew

in his prison cell was one
he sarcastically dubbed

"A romantic weekend
for two in Austria."

It was anything but romantic.

- LOUIS: One of the things
psychologists use

when they evaluate somebody
is ask them to draw pictures,

because the individual
in his drawings,

are projecting what's going on
internally into his artwork,

and I think the same could be
said with Sweeney.

If you look at what he drew,
it's an x-ray of his mind,

it's exactly what he was
thinking about.

You see that he was thinking
about killing and violence.

- NARRATOR: Melissa, meanwhile,
was on the road to recovery,

blissfully unaware of Sweeney's
dark drawings.

She took pity on her abuser,
and in February 1989,

made an unexpected move.

- Due to the legal system
in place in Austria at the time,

it was possible for a victim
to petition the judge

and effectively ask
for clemency,

which is what Melissa did.

And the judge, on hearing
her pleas for mercy,

released him.

- NARRATOR: Sweeney was
ordered to leave Vienna,

so the couple hit the road
once again,

traveling 700 miles northwest

to Amsterdam,
in the Netherlands.

- They rented a flat in
the center of Amsterdam,

very close to the central
railway station,

where they stayed for the whole
of 1989.

- NARRATOR: In November 1989,

Melissa phoned
her family in Ohio.

No one was in,
and she left a message.

- MELISSA:
Hi, Mom, it's Melissa,

I just called to wish you
happy birthday.

Have a good time,
and take care of yourself.

Goodbye, I love you.

- NARRATOR: It was her last
call home.

Six months later,
at the end of April 1990,

Sweeney exploded into a rage
from which there was no return.

- GEOFFREY: One of his fantasies
is dismembering female bodies.

It's horrifying to think of.

In this case, he kills Melissa.

We don't know for sure
exactly how.

I suspect with violence
of tremendous kind,

but we don't know because
he removed her head

and her hands.

He broke her spine in half,

collapsing the body,

and put it into a,
effectively, big, black bag.

- NARRATOR: Sweeney then
made a sharp exit

from Amsterdam to avoid
the finger of suspicion.

He took Melissa's dismembered
body with him

nearly 50 miles south,
to the Dutch city of Rotterdam.

- STEVE: What we still don't
know is how did he transport

Melissa from Amsterdam
to Rotterdam,

which is a fair distance.

He was a big lad, Sweeney,
I mean, he was strong,

and he could've got a train
or a coach.

If he keeps the bag with him,
it's possible to do,

so we figured that's probably
what he did.

- NARRATOR: Once in Rotterdam,
Sweeney made his way

to the Westersingel Canal,

which runs through the heart
of the city.

- STEVE: Obviously,
when it was quiet, maybe

under the cover of darkness--
he chose his moment just...

slipped his bag into
the canal, quite easy to do.

- GEOFFREY: She's simply
dropped into a canal

and left.

I think it is
a despicable crime.

Not just the matter
of the murder,

nor indeed just the matter
of the dismemberment,

but it's the denial of itself,
the denial of the individual,

the desecration of life

that makes it so poisonous
and so evil.

- NARRATOR: Soon, though,
the depths

of the Westersingel Canal
gave up its dark secret.

On May the 3rd, the bag
containing Melissa's torso

was spotted by a passerby
and reported to the police.

They opened it,
making the gruesome discovery.

The authorities were perplexed.
Who was this young woman?

- She was missing the key
body parts that you need

for identification,
so--there was no head,

so dental records couldn't
be used,

her hands were missing so
fingerprints couldn't be taken.

- STEVE: There was a formal
police investigation,

and extensive inquiries
were obviously made

into the possible identification
of the victim,

but unfortunately,
all came to nothing.

- NARRATOR: Meanwhile,
Melissa's family were concerned

as the phone calls home
had stopped.

They hadn't spoken to her
for more than a year.

It was completely
out of character.

- STEVE: They did make inquiries
with the Amsterdam police,

but they really couldn't provide
much information.

They didn't know where
Melissa had been staying,

they certainly didn't know
where Sweeney was.

So really, from the Halstead
family's perspective,

it was a very worrying but a
very frustrating time for them.

- NARRATOR: Melissa's family
reported her missing

in Amsterdam,

but Rotterdam came under
a different police district.

This meant that the authorities
didn't link her disappearance

with the inquiry into
the headless torso.

- After a fairly short space
of time,

the investigation was closed

and the body was interred
in a public cemetery

in Rotterdam,
and that's where it remained.

- NARRATOR: Before long,
the dangerously free spirit,

Sweeney, was on the road
once again.

He'd got away with murder,

and soon the killer
and domestic abuser

was looking for his next victim.

Camden, northwest London, 1991.

34-year-old John Sweeney
met 40-year-old nurse

Delia Balmer in their local pub.

- DELIA: He asked me
if I'd like a beer,

and he told me he'd traveled
back and forth to Germany

to find work and because
I love traveling and...

I thought,
"Oh, he's a traveler,

he's the kind of guy
I would like."

- NARRATOR: After their
first encounter, weeks later,

Delia bumped into Sweeney
once again, on the street.

- DELIA: He asked me out, and
I says, "Oh, no, I'm too busy,"

and then I felt terrible,
because I'm silly and stupid,

and...I thought, "Oh, he might
think I'm awful and thing,"

and I wrote him a letter
in the end, I gave it to him

and started something
I should not have started.

- NARRATOR: Before she knew it,
the killer Sweeney

had swept Delia off her feet
and they were dating.

He laid on the charm,
fixing her broken window.

- I had nobody to help me
with anything ever,

and I thought, "Oh,
he's doing this for me,"

and, uh, then he started
bringing flowers and chocolates

and then in the end,
he ended up moving in with me.

- NARRATOR: Sweeney put his
carpentry skills to good use,

making stools, tables,
shelving, and even a bed

that Delia couldn't afford
to buy herself.

- ELIZABETH: You've got
the classic pattern of behavior

with a coercively controlling
abuser here.

He's this knight
in shining armor character,

he makes himself
indispensable to her,

and it doesn't take long,
though, for that veneer to crack

and for the real Sweeney
to shine through.

- DELIA: He made new
kitchen cupboards,

and the next day he came along

and deliberately scratched
the top,

I says, "What did you do
that for?"

I said, "They were nice,
and look, why do you do that?"

"Oh, it's nothing."

So, little things,
they mounted up, mounted up,

and then it got worse,
and, uh...

I wanted to get rid of him,
but I was afraid to ask.

And I thought,
"What am I gonna do?

I want him out of here."

- NARRATOR: After more than two
years of threatening behavior,

in December 1993,

Delia finally built up
the confidence to ask Sweeney

to leave.

He agreed but kept on
putting it off.

In the meantime, his
controlling behavior continued.

- I couldn't go anywhere,
he'd always go with me.

We'd go to the pub together,
we did everything together.

I knew I was in trouble,

and I didn't know how
to get out of it.

- It gives you s good insight

into Sweeney's behavior
with women.

Once you got into his orbit,

he was totally controlling
of you,

he just wanted to dominate
every aspect of you

and terrorize you,
and this gave

a great deal of erotic
gratification to Sweeney,

this was arousing to him,
to terrify somebody

and to have them totally under
your control and dominance.

- NARRATOR: In early May, 1994,

Delia managed to escape
his clutches

and went out
with a friend for the day.

When she returned, though,

Sweeney flew
into a jealous rage,

tying Delia to their bed
and threatening her

with a gun and a knife.

- DELIA: "If you scream,
I'll cut your tongue out,"

I think he said.

I was lying there, tied up,
and he said,

"And I suppose you wonder
what happened

to my American girlfriend,
Melissa?"

And I thought, "Well, why
does he ask me this now?"

And he said, "We had a room
in Amsterdam, I went in,

"there was two Germans there
with her, I killed them all.

"I didn't know what to do
with the bodies,

"I sat with them for three days,

"on the third day I cut them up,
and I put them in bags

and I threw them in the canal."

- NARRATOR: Delia now knew
the terrifying truth.

She'd been living with a killer.

And now he had her
as his hostage.

- I knew there was no way
of trying to get away.

I knew--it was as if
he could read my mind.

I didn't dare think
of doing anything,

and I knew better not to,

because he was very quick
and if I tried anything,

I'd probably have ended up
cut up or whatever.

- LOUIS:
I think it's terrorizing.

He's basically saying,
"If you don't listen

"to absolutely everything I say,
I'm gonna kill you

like I killed the other person,"
and it's just terrifying.

What Sweeney did
with the women is,

he wanted to break their mind,

so that he could control
absolutely everything,

their emotion, their behavior,
everything.

- NARRATOR: After a week
being held hostage,

Delia was finally released
to go back to work.

- STEVE: Throughout the summer
of 1994, Delia and Sweeney

did stay together
in the same flat, her flat.

But Sweeney was playing games.

He continually told her
that he was going to leave,

and then he would leave,
he'd come back,

and this went on for months.

- NARRATOR: In July,
Delia sought help

from a woman's refuge.

The police escorted her home
to her flat

while Sweeney was out.

She told them about his
macabre drawings

and his confession
to Melissa's murder.

- DELIA: I said, "Look,
he was in Amsterdam

"with his girlfriend and he
cut up his girlfriend

and the two Germans."

They said, "Oh, come on, now,
he's just trying to scare you."

And I thought, "Oh, yeah, sure,

just what I thought
you would say."

Well, they didn't take that,

and then they didn't look
at the drawings.

- NARRATOR: Sweeney finally
moved out

at the beginning of November,

so Delia seized her chance
and changed her locks.

Sweeney was enraged
when he discovered this.

On Friday, the 11th of November,
he broke in and launched

a surprise attack by ramming
his fingers down her throat.

- DELIA: The pain was
excruciating.

Then, he took his fingers out,
he held his fingers up,

he says, "You bit me!"

His fingers were
covered in blood.

And I opened my mouth
and large clots of blood,

about the size of a tablespoon,

spilled out of my mouth
onto the floor.

I said, "It's not your blood,
you've damaged me inside."

And then he dragged me up
and took me to the front room.

- NARRATOR: The next day,
Delia managed to escape

to a police station,
but when she was escorted home,

Sweeney was nowhere
to be seen.

The following day,
the determined abuser

attacked her as she left home,

and forced her back
into her flat.

When Delia missed an appointment
to meet a friend,

the police were alerted
and officers called

at Delia's door.

- DELIA: I went to the door,
he followed behind,

and just out of my mouth,
there was the policeman there,

the police female there,
I said, "Help me!"

and I rushed out of the door
and down the street.

- ELIZABETH: What we see
in the second attack

is an escalation in the level
of violence that Sweeney

is prepared to use
to take back control.

Um, Delia nearly had
her tongue ripped out,

and I think he possibly
would have killed her

in this second attack,

had her friend not called
the police

and they turned up
at the property.

- NARRATOR: When police search
Delia's flat,

behind her bath panel,
they found a mysterious bag.

In it were tools showing
Sweeney's murderous intentions.

- Inside the holdall was
a tarpaulin, masking tape,

uh, surgical gloves,
and masks,

and also lengths of rope.

And I would describe
the holdall and its contents

as a killer's kit bag.

But unfortunately,
they didn't realize

the significance of what these
items could really be.

- NARRATOR: Sweeney was arrested
and held on remand

in Pentonville Prison
for a week.

He was released on condition
that he'd return

to his parents' home
in Skelmersdale,

in the north of England,
200 miles away from Delia.

But on the 22nd of December,

he broke his bail conditions
when he once again

started staking out
her London home.

- This one night,
there was no one on the street,

it was the darkest day
of the year...

- NARRATOR: As usual, Delia
propped open her front door

with a brick,
then went back down her steps

to pick up her bike.

- I was halfway up the stairs
with the bicycle.

I kept looking from side
to side,

wondering if he was hiding.

Then I looked right,
and there his face was.

I quickly kicked the brick
and let the door shut.

I thought, "I've got to face
him out here,

"if he gets inside there
with me,

he's gonna cut me to bits."

- NARRATOR: Sweeney pulled out
and axe and swung it

at Delia's arms.

The killer then reached
for a knife.

- DELIA: He cut his palm,

and he says,
"You fucking bitch!"

Then he stabbed me through
the breast into the lung.

Then he stabbed me in the thigh.

Then he swung the axe,
and he took my finger

and he...got the knuckles
of the other two,

and I saw my finger fly
through the air, to next door.

- NARRATOR: Delia threw her bike
on top of herself

to protect her from the blows.

The noise of the axe
crashing down on the bike

brought a neighbor outside.

He beats Sweeney
with a baseball bat

and the killer fled
into the night.

- She has the forethought
to kick the brick away

so that the door to her flat
slams shut.

Had she not done that,
she would almost certainly

have lost her life.

- NARRATOR: Delia was rushed
to hospital,

she had two broken arms,
two stab wounds

in the thigh and chest,
a severed little finger,

and a punctured lung.

She was given 19 units of blood
as surgeons fought

to save her life.

Psychologically, though,
Delia felt defeated.

- DELIA: I wasn't fighting
for my life,

I didn't want to live,

the medical lot were fighting
for my life, I wanted to die.

I didn't care anymore,
I wanted to be dead.

- NARRATOR: Before the police
could find him,

Sweeney went on the run.

Fleeing 65 miles north,
to Northampton,

then on to his hometown of
Skelmersdale, then he vanished.

- STEVE: After the attack
on Delia,

he really goes off the radar.

He manages somehow to get out
of the UK and he goes on the run

effectively for six years.

- NARRATOR: Sweeney had
the gall to write to police

whilst on the run,
sarcastically claiming

Delia's attack was
an "axeident."

Soon, he'd return to his
disturbing drawings,

portraying revenge on the women
who'd scorned him.

London, England, the year 2000.

After six years on the run,
44-year-old John Sweeney

slid back into the UK capital
under a new identity.

- ELIZABETH: Sweeney has
quite a lot of aliases,

names that he's known by,
he's not just John Sweeney,

he's Joe Scouse--Scouse Joe,
and, you know,

a whole list of, uh,
other names.

- GEOFFREY: Michael this,
Joe Johnson,

that was one of Sweeney's
other great tricks.

He could hide in plain sight.

He was so--was quite adept
at looking rather different.

If you look at photographs
of Sweeney,

he can adopt different guises,

he is quite skillful
at disguise.

- ELIZABETH:
So I think this adds

to his comedian-like quality,

and it allows him to present
different versions of himself

to different people.

- NARRATOR: Sweeney roamed
building site to building site,

finding easy work as a carpenter
in a booming capital.

Here, he met fellow
Liverpudlian,

31-year-old Paula Fields.

She'd led a happy life
in the northwest,

until she was drawn into
London's darker side

of drugs and prostitution.

- ELIZABETH: So Paula was
quite a vulnerable individual,

she'd moved from Liverpool
to London,

she had some drug
dependency issues,

and Sweeney, being the predator
that he is,

would've honed in on that
very, very quickly.

He would've identified the fact
they both came from Liverpool,

so there was that affinity
there.

- LOUIS: Unlike Delia,
Paula was, uh,

involved in prostitution
and she was somewhat

of a street person, so you would
think somebody like Paula

would have some street smarts
where she would be able

to detect somebody like Sweeney
trying to get over on her.

It tells you how crafty
and how cunning

and how manipulative
Sweeney was.

- NARRATOR:
Like other women in his life,

Sweeney,
also known as Scouse Joe,

built up a seething resentment
towards her.

- She would buy drugs
from a local dealer,

and without having the funds,

she would tell the dealer
that Joe Scouse would pay,

so the next thing that would
happen would be the dealer

would be banging
on Joe Scouse's window

asking for payment.

And this would've upset him
greatly, I suspect.

- NARRATOR: Sweeney also
accused Paula of stealing

his mobile phone.

His resentment continued
to build,

and one day in December,
it flew out of control.

He violently attacked Paula
and ended up killing her.

- GEOFFREY: Yet again,
those same fantasies

come to the surface,

those fantasies
of dismemberment,

and this time he, again,
cuts Paula's head off.

He also takes off her hands,
and this time, also her feet.

The remains of her...is cut up
into separate parts

and placed in holdalls.

- NARRATOR: Once again,
Sweeney disposed of his victim

in a waterway,
the region's canal

in North West London.

Two months later,
on the 19th of February, 2001,

a bag containing Paula's
body parts was found

by boys who were fishing.

The police were called,
and five more gruesome holdalls

were recovered.

Then, a full-blown
murder inquiry began.

- Within a very short
period of time,

they--they got a match
with the DNA from...

a woman called Paula Fields
from Liverpool.

They very quickly established
that she'd had a relationship

with this tall Liverpudlian man
who they called Joe Scouse

or Scouse Joe.

- NARRATOR: Before long,
police inquiries link

Scouse Joe
to John Patrick Sweeney,

and he soon became Britain's
most wanted man.

Just a month later,
police surveillance

found Sweeney working at a
building site off Fleet Street.

The net was finally
closing in.

- STEVE: So they then get
an armed surveillance team

from Central London
to tail Sweeney,

and of course, they jump on him,

just as he's entering
the building site,

and that's how he gets nicked.

- GEOFFREY: When the police
finally confront Sweeney,

he is armed, he has a gun,

and he has a knife
in his waistband,

but finally, finally,

this evil man
is brought to justice.

- NARRATOR: After his arrest,
police seized over 300 pieces

of his sinister artwork
and poems at his property.

- STEVE: In his room,
they find drawings and sketches,

a lot of them showing very
macabre subjects

like dismembered bodies,

and pictures of him with an axe
in his belt, etc.

Also is found two loaded
shotguns,

and there's also a garrote.

- NARRATOR: One drawing
police found was

menacingly entitled,
"The Scalp Hunter."

- GEOFFREY: It's clear
what it's supposed to portray,

it's actually him, uh,
with an axe in his waistband,

and hanging from his waistband
is a blonde scalp,

which is clearly meant
to be Delia.

And of course,
on the picture is a credit

to Delia, if I can call it that,
by Sweeney,

where he says to her,
"May you die in pain."

And I think that, to me,
sums up the contempt

he had for Delia.

- NARRATOR: After six years
of hunting for Delia's attacker,

the police charge 44-year-old
John Sweeney

with her attempted murder,
false imprisonment,

and firearms offenses.

On March the 5th, 2002,
at the Old Bailey,

he received four life sentences.

Despite his punishment,
the reality was

that Sweeney could be out
on parole

in as little as nine years.

Police needed to prove
he was responsible

for Paula Fields' murder
to prevent him from getting out.

- STEVE: The investigation
into the death of Paula

carried on for some
considerable time,

but unfortunately, due...
effectively to a lack

of evidence,
the inquiry really fizzled out

and no one was ever charged at
that stage for Paula's killing.

- NARRATOR: Investigators
had hit a brick wall,

but six years later,
in 2008,

detective inspector Steve Smith
had a call out of the blue

from a Dutch policeman
about an unidentified body

they'd found in Rotterdam's
Westersingel Canal in 1990.

- STEVE: What he had to tell me
was quite amazing.

They'd managed to recover
a phial of blood

that was taken from
the post mortem examination

of the dismembered female,

but with the advancement
in DNA,

they had managed to obtain
a full profile of the victim.

The DNA match was that
of Melissa Halstead.

- NARRATOR: With this new
breakthrough and Sweeney's

earlier confession to Delia
about Melissa's killing,

Steve Smith and his Metropolitan
Police team formed

the first ever joint European
murder inquiry,

sanctioned by Europol.

Sweeney was their prime suspect.

- STEVE: Here we had Sweeney
that was involved

in relationships with both
Melissa and Paula.

And both women had ended up
as dismembered,

body parts had been removed,
and both put into canals.

I mean, that for us was
way beyond any coincidence,

so he had to be the man
responsible.

- NARRATOR: As Melissa's murder
had taken place

nearly 20 years earlier,
detectives would struggle

for any forensic evidence
linking Sweeney to her killing,

but scientific analysis
of one of his sketches

would help prove his guilt.

- STEVE: One particular drawing,
"One Man Band,"

what was of particular
interest to us was

some correction fluid
in the middle of the picture,

which, when the scientists
looked beneath the fluid

using particular
light techniques,

you could see that it was
an RIP message

to Melissa Halstead.

How would he have known
that she was dead?

Only the killer would know,
so to write "RIP" was, to us,

quite telling.

- ELIZABETH: He's so arrogant
that he thinks that just

correcting over it,
it is going to destroy

any evidence linking it
to Melissa's death,

but he's not going to let go
of this piece of artwork,

because it gives him power
and that sense of control

that he so wants.

- NARRATOR: As police delve
deeper into Sweeney's sketches,

they found two drawings
they also believed

were clearly confessional.

- STEVE: One is of a female
body where the head

and hands are removed,
in the fetal position,

which of course resembled
how Melissa was found

within the bag.

And then the other one
was of interest to us,

was a dismembered female form
cut into sections,

which is exactly, really,
how Paula was found

in the different bags.

- NARRATOR: But a poem
he'd scrawled on the back

of a lottery card was the golden
nugget that sealed the deal.

- STEVE: The poem read,
"Poor old Melissa,

"chopped her up in bits,
food to feed the fish,

Amsterdam was the pits."

Now, that to me, tells you
everything you need to know

about what he'd done
to Melissa,

and again,
that's really confessional.

- NARRATOR: Senior investigating
officer Steve Smith

was confident they'd now built
their case against Sweeney.

- STEVE: We did struggle,
really, with a complete lack

of hard forensic evidence.

We had what we described
as similar fact evidence.

So you had the relationships
with both women,

and these series of drawings
that were confessional,

and a real nugget that we had
that Sweeney was really

gonna struggle with,
was his confession to Delia

in 1994 about killing Melissa.

- NARRATOR: Nearly 21 years
after Melissa's death

and more than ten years
after Paula's,

the case was finally heard
against John Sweeney

at the Old Bailey in London.

On April the 4th, 2011,
the 54-year-old killer

was found guilty on two counts
of murder

and perverting
the course of justice.

- It's incredibly significant
for me that Sweeney received

a whole life order.

He will never be released
from prison.

This is reserved for the crimes
that cause the most harm,

for the offenders least likely
to be rehabilitated.

- GEOFFREY: The most famous
photograph of Sweeney,

the one that's used
almost everywhere,

there was just the faintest
hint of a smirk.

That smirk conceals
the serial killer's delight

in knowing something
that nobody else does,

and the delight in not allowing
the family of the victims

complete closure.

It is utterly,
utterly depraved.

- NARRATOR: Although he's
never been charged

for any other murders,

police believe Sweeney's
sinister artworks

could contain clues
to even more killings.

- STEVE Contained within
Sweeney's artwork

were some pictures
of other women,

in particular two women
which we've never actually

managed to trace.

It's quite possible that
there may be other victims.

- ♪

- NARRATOR: He was possessive
and controlling,

a serial domestic abuser
who thought nothing

of torturing his partners
and holding them hostage.

The women who escaped did so
through a sheer determination

to survive.

He brutally murdered
two lovers,

and removed their heads
and hands in the hope

they would never be identified.

That makes John Sweeney one of
the world's most evil killers.

- ♪

♪♪

- [swish]