British serial killer dubbed ‘the scalp hunter’ dies without revealing what he did with victim’s heads
A notorious British killer who was sentenced to life for murdering and dismembering two women has died in prison.
John Sweeney, 69, was given a whole-life tariff in 2011 for the murders of two of his former girlfriends, Paula Fields and Melissa Halstead.
After killing the women, he dismembered their bodies and dumped them in canals in the Netherlands and London.
The women’s remains were found decades apart and police have long suspected he had murdered other former partners who had not been seen for years.
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His first victim was American model Melissa, 33, who was killed in 1990.
Her dismembered body was thrown into a canal in Rotterdam in the Netherlands.
She was only identified 18 years later by DNA, although her head and hands have never been found.
The body parts of Paula, 31, were found in six holdalls floating in the Regent’s Canal in Camden, north London, in February 2001.
Her head, hands and feet are still missing.
After spending more than a decade behind bars, Sweeney has now died.
Sweeney is understood to have died at HMP Whitemoor in Cambridgeshire on 14 August.
A cause of death has not been publicly disclosed, but The Times reported he had cancer.
A Prison Service spokesperson said: “These were horrific crimes and our thoughts remain with the victims and their loved ones.
“As with all deaths in custody, the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman is investigating, and it would be inappropriate to comment further before the conclusion of its findings.”
Sweeney, a carpenter, boasted of his violence in lurid paintings and verse found at his home – and in one picture, showing a bloody axe, he called himself the Scalp Hunter.
At his trial at the Old Bailey in 2011, prosecutors said his dismemberment of the bodies was an attempt to prevent them from being identified.
Brian Altman QC, the prosecutor at Sweeney’s murder trial, said: "Police discovered amongst his possessions often lurid and demonic sketches, paintings as well as pages of verse which reveal an obsessive and virulent hatred of women and a preoccupation with dismemberment.
"It is a picture of a hateful, controlling and possessive man.
“Prone to outbursts of rage and murderous feelings."
His crimes were turned into an ITV drama series
As well as the two murders, Sweeney attacked his then-girlfriend nurse Delia Balmer with an axe in 1994.
Fortunately, Balmer was saved after a neighbour heard and ran to her rescue with a baseball bat.
Balmer wrote a memoir about her near-fatal experience living with Sweeney which was adapted into the ITV miniseries Until I Kill You in 2024.
In her memoir, published in 2017, Balmer wrote that not long after meeting his behaviour changed and she decided to end things, but after she left, he broke into her home and tied her to her bed for several days.
In that time, in which he held her at knife and gunpoint tied to the bed, he told her of three murders he committed in Amsterdam.
She has later stated that the first red flag that would eventually lead her to leave him is a green bag of his that she found.
Inside it was masking tape, a saw, a plastic sheet, Marigold gloves, and rope, and she later referred to it as ‘a body disposal kit meant for me'.
After she escaped her hostage situation, she went to the police, who then arrested Sweeney but later released him on bail.
And it was while he was on bail that committed the violent axe attack.
But thanks to Balmer’s bravery in reporting the attack, Sweeney finally faced justice for his crimes.
Claire Reid