Who is the ‘Scalp Hunter’ serial killer John Sweeney and where is he now?
JOHN Sweeney is one of the most notorious killers after committing murders in the UK and the Netherlands.
He has been in prison serving a whole life tariff since 2011.
Who is the ‘Scalp Hunter’ serial killer John Sweeney?
John Sweeney has been dubbed the “Scalp Hunter” as a result of his crimes.
He was given the name due to one of his many gruesome sketches depicting his murders.
Sweeney was born in Kirkdale in 1956 and married Anne Bramley in 1976.
The couple had two children but went on to get divorced in 1979.
The pair got back together and remarried two years later but in 1982 Anne told police her husband had threatened her.
Sweeney moved to London in the mid-eighties when the couple got divorced again.
Sweeney is serving time in prison for the murder of two former girlfriends who he cut up and dumped in canals in both Rotterdam in the Netherlands and London.
It is believed that he could be connected to multiple other deaths from across Europe going back to 1976.
Who did John Sweeney kill?
Sweeney has been convicted for killing two of his former girlfriends.
He was working in the Netherlands in the 1990s and one of his victims, 33-year-old model Melissa Halstead, was found there.
He killed US model Melissa Halstead, whose remains were found in a Rotterdam canal in 1990.
It has been reported that her head and hands have never been found.
Ten years later Sweeney killed 31-year-old mum Paula Fields and dumped her remains in Regent’s Canal in London.
Sweeney was tracked down by police in 200, before being convicted of the attempted murder of another girlfriend, Delia Balmer, in 1994.
The pair were together for three years during the nineties, in which Balmer suffered violence from Sweeney.
Just before Christmas in 1994, he attacked Balmer with an axe which left her with stab wounds and cut off her left little finger.
These were terrible, wicked crimes.
Judge Mr Justice Saunders
Where is John Sweeney now?
Sweeney is now serving a whole life tariff in prison and it’s been said that is where he will die.
After spending years on the run from police, Sweeney was arrested for the attempted murder of Balmer in 2001.
In 2011 he was convicted of the two murders.
While sentencing him, Judge Mr Justice Saunders said: “These were terrible, wicked crimes.
“The heads of the victims having been removed, it is impossible to be certain how they were killed.
“The mutilation of the bodies is a serious aggravating feature of the murders.
“Not only does it reveal the cold-blooded nature of the killer, but it has added greatly to the distress of the families to know that parts of their loved ones have never been recovered.”