Isabella Mueller (crime writer)
Delia Balmer experienced three years of living with a serial killer, knowing that she would be his next victim. In 1991, she met the sophisticated, 1.80-meter-tall, blond carpenter John Sweeney in a London pub. Delia Balmer, in her late 30s, was at the lowest point in her life at the time. Her long-term relationship had failed and she had lost her job as a nurse. She was eking out an existence in social housing. It was there that she met the charismatic John Sweeney, with whom she struck up a conversation one Sunday evening. She was taken with this charming man, but it was not until three months later that she met him again in the pub. John and Delia became a couple and moved in together. But over time, Delia realized that something was wrong with John. He drew violent pictures that were directed against women and constantly bossed Delia around. She found out by chance at a family gathering in Liverpool that John had once been married and had children. When she discovered a revolver in his sailor’s bag one day, she wanted to end her toxic relationship with Sweeney. But she just couldn’t do it. John Sweeney, who was prone to violent outbursts, tied her to the bed one day for no reason and shouted all his anger and jealousy at her. He confessed to her that he had murdered his former girlfriend Melissa, who had cheated on him with two men. He had then killed all three of them, dismembered them, and thrown the body parts into a river. He also told her about the beatings he had received from his father, the scars of which still adorn his body today. Then he untied her, and instead of fleeing, Delia stayed with him. She knew he was a ticking time bomb that would explode at some point, and that is exactly what happened one day. John Sweeney injured Delia, who had managed to end the relationship, with an axe blow to her head, broke her arms, and stabbed her several times in the chest and thigh with a knife, hacking off her left pinky finger. Then, miraculously, he let her go after 48 hours of torture. Delia Balmer survived the attack, but the woman she once was died that day. John Sweeney managed to flee after the attempted murder of Delia in 1994 and went into hiding for six years. He repeatedly used different aliases to avoid being caught. In 2001, he was sentenced to life imprisonment for the attempted murder of Delia Balmer and has been in prison ever since. Meanwhile, in 1990, police found the remains of a woman’s body wrapped in plastic bags floating in the Westersingel Canal in Rotterdam. Both the head and hands were missing. But it wasn’t until 2008 that police were able to identify the body as Melissa Halstead, John Sweeney’s former girlfriend, using advanced DNA testing, which led to his murder charge. Melissa Halstead, a former model and freelance photographer from America, had met John Sweeney in London. They had a passionate relationship, which Melissa ended because she was experiencing domestic violence from Sweeney. Sweeney was so obsessed with her that he followed her across Europe to Rotterdam, where he killed her. In 2001, the remains of a woman’s body, also packed in plastic bags, were found in Regent’s Canal in Camden Town. As with Melissa Halstead, both the head and hands were missing. The woman was Paula Fields, a mother of three. She was a crack user and worked as a prostitute. She had met John Sweeney in 2000. Three months later, she disappeared. The body parts of both women were extremely mutilated. He had literally slaughtered the women. Three other girlfriends of John Sweeney, a Brazilian woman named Irani, a Colombian woman named Maria, and a church nurse from Derbyshire named Sue, are still missing today. In John Sweeney’s house, the police found over 300 drawings depicting sadistic acts on women, as well as poems, including “The Scalp Hunter,” in which a female victim was killed with an axe. In 2011, John Sweeney was sentenced to life imprisonment again for the murders of Melissa Halstead and Paula Fields. However, John Sweeney refused to leave his prison cell at Her Majesty’s Prison Belmarsh, the toughest prison in England, for the sentencing hearing. To this day, John Sweeney, considered one of the most dangerous men in Britain, remains in prison, spending his time drawing women without limbs.
