World's Most Evil Killers - Season 4, Episode 1 - John Sweeney - Full Episode | Forensic Files

- 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. - ♪ ♪♪ - 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]

John Sweeney killed two of his former girlfriends and then dumped their dismembered bodies in canals in Rotterdam and London. He was sentenced in 2011 and was given a whole life tariff.

An in-depth look at the lives and crimes of some of the world's most evil killers, including Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, Richard Ramirez, Cary Stayner, Leonard Lake, Dorothea Puente and more.

Brief Summary

John Sweeney, a serial abuser, murdered and dismembered Melissa Halstead and Paula Fields, evading justice until his eventual arrest.

Key points

Melissa's Last Call. On November 2, 1989, Melissa Halstead made a heartfelt call to her mother, which would be her last.
The Chilling Discovery. Six months later, Melissa's dismembered torso was found in Rotterdam's canal, shocking authorities.
A Fatal Relationship. Melissa's relationship with John Sweeney quickly turned abusive, leading to tragic consequences.
Sweeney's Dark Artwork. In prison, Sweeney created disturbing artwork that revealed his violent fantasies.
The Police Investigation. Despite extensive inquiries, the police struggled to identify Melissa's remains due to missing body parts.
Delia's Descent into Fear. Delia realizes she’s living with a killer after Sweeney's confession.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

This was a violent, controlling individual.

Steve's description of John Sweeney's behavior.

3:58WatchAug 12, 2021

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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