This Man Dismembered His Girlfriends And Dumped Them In Canals | Most Evil Killers | Absolute Crime

foreign November 1989 Amsterdam Netherlands 32 year old Melissa Halstead phones her mother in Ohio and take care of yourself goodbye I love you it was her last call home six months later her headless torso was found dumped in a bag in the Vesta single Canal Rotterdam her hands were also missing the fact that he can kill women's one thing but then to dismember the bodies and remove body parts that even to this day have still not been recovered he's just a horrendous and shocking thing to do 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 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 in the 10 years that followed back in London he brutally dismembered a second woman and subjected another to a violent campaign of assault I saw my small fingerflies through there and then I thought that's it I've had enough I want to die I don't want to live in this pain 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 [Music] [Music] when 33 year old Melissa halsted's body was found in rotterdam's Vesta single 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 former detective inspector Steve Smith would later investigate the murder for London's Metropolitan Police identification was impossible what they could say would it was the body of a young white female in around late 20s early 30s she was trussed up with rope but there was really nothing else to go on 18 years later the police finally identified 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 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 the chilling Common Thread found between them they both had a relationship with london-based John Sweeney for the first time British and Dutch police forces launched a joint European murder inquiry into the suspected killer 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 with bits of rage and violence and culminating in Murder 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 it's 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 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 there is some evidence that we've 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 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 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 he wanted to be an artist but he ended up going to carpentry and joinery because I think there was that expectation that that 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 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 The 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 that there was certainly an ax 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 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 they had two children a boy and a girl it's a very violent relationship he beats her he hits her regularly 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 Sweeney reportedly through 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 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 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 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 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 actually burst her operation scar 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 she chose to call the police when an officer turned up and helped her search the house in her bedroom Sweeney jumped out of a wardrobe with an ax 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 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 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 he went off the radar for a while he went looking for work abroad because there was more money or 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 but before long 26 year old John Sweeney would be back to his old ways what I believe and absolutely blue 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 he then snare another victim of his travels another unsuspecting woman he could control and abuse this time though he'd returned to his passion for drawing and his gruesome artwork would reveal more Sinister plans 1986 London England thirty-year-old wife abuser John Sweeney was divorced and living more than 60 miles away from his family now he set his sights on finding another woman he could entice into his home whilst working as a carpenter on the set of a photo shoot he met Melissa Halsted an American photographer she wasn't model she was a really stunning young woman and she meets Sweeney you think what on Earth would 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 because 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 shortly after they met Melissa agreed to set up home with Sweeney in North London the initial relationship between Melissa and Sweeney it would have been full of charm and romance he would have 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 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 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 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 there that if anything ever happened to her then it would be Sweeney that had done it 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 on both occasions Sweeney was slapped on the wrist with a fine he never received a custodial sentence as a crime nowhere near as high as it should be so we will often find that that men convicted of domestic abuse in the sentences they receive are quite lenient they will get let off they'll be free to harm other people 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 Sweeney and Melissa were in Austria together and for a time being everything seemed fine work was good they were making a living and they were renting a property in the center of Vienna but the romance of a new city would soon wear thin one night after a drunken argument Sweeney Chase Melissa with a hammer and hit her over the head a hammer I mean not just a fist a proper blunt instrument he attacks her ruthlessly and is indeed taken by the police and thrown into jail 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 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 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 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 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 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. in November 1989 Melissa phoned her family in Ohio no one was in and she left a message 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 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 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 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 what we still don't know is how did he transport Melissa from Amsterdam to Rotterdam which is fair distant he was a big lad sweetie I mean he's strong and he could have got a train or a coach if he keeps the bag with him it's possible to do so we think that's probably what he did once in Rotterdam Sweeney made his way to the Vesta single Canal which runs through the heart of the city obviously when it was quiet maybe undercovered Darkness he chose his moment just slip this bag into the canal quite easy to do she simply chucked 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 self the denial of the individual the desecration of life that makes it so poisonous and so evil soon though the depths of the Vesta single 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 that 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 there was a formal police investigation extensive inquiries were obviously made into the possible identification of the victim but unfortunately it all came to nothing meanwhile Melissa's family were concerned as the phone calls home and stopped they hadn't spoken to her for more than a year it was completely out of character they did make inquiries with the Amsterdam police but I 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 are very worrying with a very frustrating time for them 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 before long the dangerously free-spitted 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 Thalia balma in their local pub he asked me if I'd like a beer and he told me that he traveled back and forth to Germany to find work and because I love traveling and I thought oh he's a travel he's the kind of guy I would like after their first encounter Weeks Later Delia bumped into Sweeney once again on the street he asked me out and I said oh no I'm too busy and then I felt terrible I because I'm silly and stupid and I thought oh he might think I'm awful and singing I wrote him a letter in the end I gave it to him and started something I should not have started 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 then he started bringing flowers and chocolates and then in the end he ended up moving in with me Sweeney put his carpentry skills to good use making stools tables shelving and even a bed that Delia couldn't afford to buy herself 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 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 why do you do that oh it's nothing so little things that they mounted up mounted up and then it got worse and uh I wanted to get rid of them but I was afraid to ask and I thought what am I going to do I want a mouth of here 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 gives you 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 he this was arousing to him to terrify somebody and to have them totally under your control and dominance 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 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 is it asked 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 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 their think of doing anything and I knew better not to because he was very quick and if I'd tried anything I'd probably have ended up cut up or whatever 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 after a week being held hostage Delia was finally released to go back to work throughout the summer of 1994 Dahlia 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 in July Delia sought help from a woman's Refuge the police escorted her home to her flat while Sweeney was out told them about his Macabre drawings and his confession to Melissa's murder I said look he was in Amsterdam with his girlfriend and he cut up his girlfriend into two Germans and he says oh come on now he's just trying to scare you and I thought oh yeah sure just what I thought you would see then they didn't take that and then they didn't look at the drawings 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 the pain was excruciating then he took his fingers out he held his fingers up he says you bit me fingers were covered in blood and I opened my mouth and large clots of blood about the size of the tablespoon Spilled Out of My Mouth onto the floor I said it's not your black and then he dragged me up and took me to the front room the next day Delia managed to escape to a police station but when she was escorting home Sweeney was nowhere to be seen the following day they 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 the Delia's door 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 and I rushed out of the door and down the street what we see in this second attack is an escalation in the level of violence that Sweeney is prepared to use to Take Back Control 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 and they turned up at the property when police searched Delia's flat behind her bath panel they found a mysterious bag in it were tools showing Sweeney's murderous intentions inside the holder was a tarpaulin masking tape surgical gloves and masks and also lengths of rope I would describe the hold all in its content as a Killer's kit bag but unfortunately they didn't realize the significance of what these items could really be Sweeney was arrested and held on remand in Pentonville prison for a week he was released on condition that he'd returned 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 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 got to face him out here if he gets inside there with me he's gonna cut me to bits Sweeney pulled out an ax and swung it at Delia's arms the killer then reached for a knife he cut his palm and he says you then he stabbed me through the breast into the lung then he stabbed me in the thigh then he swung the ax and he took my finger and he got the knuckles of the other two and I saw my finger fly through there to Next Door Delia threw her bike on top of herself to protect her from the blues the noise of the ax crashing down on the bike brought a neighbor outside he beat Sweeney with a baseball bat and the killer fled into the night she has the fourth hole 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 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 I wasn't fighting for my life I didn't want to live the medical that we're fighting for my life I wanted to die I didn't care anymore I wanted to be dead before the police could find him Sweeney went on the Run fleeing 65 miles north to Northampton then onto his hometown of skelmersdale then he vanished after the attack on Dahlia 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 Sweeney had the goal to write to Belize whilst On The Run sarcastically claiming Delia's attack was an accident 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 Sweeney has quite a lot of aliases names that he's known by he's not just John Sweeney he's he's Joe scouse scouse Joe and you know a whole list of other names Michael this Joe Johnson that was one of Sweeney's other Great Tricks they could hide in plain sight he also 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 so I think this adds to his comedian like quality and it allows him to present different versions of himself to different people Sweeney Rome building site to building site finding easy workers at Carpenter in a booming capital here he met fellow liver pandian 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 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 have honed in on that very very quickly he would have identified the fact that both came from Liverpool so there was that Affinity there unlike Delia Paula was 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 conning and how manipulative Sweeney was 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 scoutsy's window asking for payment and this would have upset him greatly I suspect 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 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 once again Sweeney disposed of his victim in a Waterway the Region's canal in Northwest 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 had a relationship with this tall liver puddling man who they called Joe scouse or scouse Joe before long police inquiries links cow's 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 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 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 after his arrest police seized over 300 pieces of his Sinister artwork and poems at his property 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 ax in his belt Etc also he's found two loaded shotguns and there's also a garage one drawing police found was menacingly entitled the scalp Hunter it's clear what it's supposed to portray is actually him with an ax 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 Delhi if I can call it that by Sweeney but he says to her may you die in pain and I think that to me sums up the contempt he had for Delia and after six years of hunting for Delia's attacker the police charged 44 year old John Sweeney with her attempted murder false imprisonment and Firearms offenses on March the 5th 2002 at the old bayley 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 feels murder to prevent him from getting out 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 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 Vesta single canal in 1990. what he had to tell me was quite amazing they'd managed to recover a file 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 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 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 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 one particular drawing of 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 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 as police delve deeper into Sweeney's sketches they found two drawings they also believed were clearly confessional one is of a female body with a head and hands 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 but a poem he'd scrolled on the back of a lottery card was the Golden Nugget that sealed the deal 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 senior investigating Officer Steve Smith was confident they'd now built their case against Sweeney 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 in these series of drawings that were confessional and a real nugget that we had that Sweeney was really going to struggle with was this confession to Delia in 1994 about killing Melissa nearly 21 years after Melissa's death and more than 10 years after Paula's the case was finally heard against John Sweeney at the old bayley 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 at least likely to be rehabilitated the most famous photographer 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 he not allowing the family of the victims complete closure it is utterly utterly depraved although he's never been charged for any other murders police believe Sweeney's Sinister artworks could contain Clues to even more killings 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 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 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 [Music] [Music]

Channel: Absolute Crime

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Keywords: Absolute Crime, Crime Documentaries, True Crime, True Crime Documentaries, Murder documentaries, True Crime Stories, True Crime Youtube Channel, True Crime Documentary, full documentary channel, full length documentary 2022, prison documentaries

Id: PWpDGGTXM0I

Length: 45min 14sec (2714 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 28 2023