Content Warning: This article contains graphic depictions of violence.
John Sweeney, who is the focus of a new ITV drama Until I Kill You, is a horrifying serial killer who removed the heads of his victims from their bodies.
Sweeney is currently serving life in prison, after he was found guilty of attempted murder and later two counts of murder.
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ITV's Until I Kill You tells the tale of the woman who survived his reign of terror, Delia Balmer.
After the two began dating, his behaviour towards her began to change at the start, according to her 2017 memoir, and when she left him, he broke into her home and tied her to a 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.
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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.
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Sweeney was then released on bail and, in 1994, he attacked her on the street with an axe, taking off her finger and leaving her with several stab wounds.
She only survived because a neighbour hit Sweeney over the head with a bat.
Known as ‘the scalp hunter’, he was only arrested in 2001 and upon his arrest, as per The Liverpool Echo, the police found several harrowing paintings, as well as a series of ‘demonic’ drawings.
There were also thought to be several clues in the paintings.
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One painting titled 'A Romantic Weekend for two in Austria', was of a man in red stabbing a woman, and the prosecution of Sweeney later said it depicted him and Melissa Halstead, who went missing in Amsterdam in 1990, as per The Mirror.
Meanwhile, another drawing shows a woman beheaded and with their feet cut off.
The position of the body in the drawing is how Halstead’s corpse was found in a suit case when it was fished out of a canal.
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Another collage he did featured her head in the centre, with a caption above it covered up by corrective fluid titled: “RIP Melissa Halstead”.
One of his other horrifying drawings was titled 'The Scalp Hunter', which is thought to be where he got his nickname from.
Brian Altman QC, the prosecutor at the scalp hunter’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."
Topics: Crime, ITV, True Crime
Michael Slavin