A cold case expert has called for a British double killer to be probed over a series of grisly unsolved murders in Belgium by “The Butcher of Mons”. The remains of five headless women were found scattered in and around the city in the mid-90s when carpenter John Sweeney was on the run in Europe.
Sweeney, 66, had already murdered and dismembered one woman in the neighbouring Netherlands. Sweeney was recently played by Shaun Evans in the gripping new ITV drama Until I Kill You.
Kurt Wertelaers – the founder of the Bureau van Meerbeeck, a group which investigates cold cases in Belgium – is now calling for the killer, known as the Scalp Hunter, to be probed over a total of eight unsolved murders.
As reported in the Mirror, Mr Wertelaers said: “A cross-border investigation involving the UK, the Netherlands and Belgium would be very interesting. I’m not saying all the unsolved cases are linked, but we at least should try to figure out or exclude if some of them are or are not. Killers don’t stop at country borders.”
Sweeney, from Merseyside, killed and dismembered his American model girlfriend Melissa Halstead, 33, in Amsterdam in 1990 after pursuing her across Europe. He went on to attack ex Delia Balmer, now 71, with an axe outside her home in Kentish Town, north London, on December 22, 1994.
The killer was on bail at the time after a previous assault on the nurse, played by Anna Maxwell Martin in the drama. He then managed to live off-grid for seven years until 2001 when he was finally brought to justice for Delia’s attempted murder.
However, by that point, he had already killed Liverpool-born mum-of-three Paula Fields, 31, with whom he lived in Finsbury Park, north London. Six holdalls containing Paula’s remains were recovered from a Camden canal in February, 2001. Her body had been sawn into 12 pieces. Melissa and Paula’s heads were never found.
Former Met Det Chief insp Howard Groves, who led the team that investigated the murders, said: “During the period when Sweeney was on the run for the attack on Delia quite a few women were found dead around Europe in similar situations to Melissa and Paula. We know he travelled extensively there during that time. The question has always been, why did that stop when he was arrested and put in prison?”
Mr Wertelaers has identified eight unsolved murders that share many of the highly unusual characteristics of Sweeney’s sick offending. All were women who were found headless, like Sweeney’s known victims.
Mr Wetelaers said: “He was living off-grid during this period, had four different aliases and the police have no idea where he was. Sweeney cannot be excluded as a suspect for these murders if you look at the timeline and how his profile fits. To cut women into pieces like that shows a very strange psychology and is a sexual connotation to all of these murders.”
Detectives were convinced Sweeney could have even more victims because the “jealous and obsessive” gun fanatic admitted to having dozens of lovers as he drifted across Europe. He left behind 200 lurid drawings, paintings and poems that gave clues to two unsolved murders.
One sketch, entitled The Scalphunter, showed women tied up and another showed Sweeney holding up blades dripping with blood. On the back of a scratchcard he had written a poem: “Poor old Melissa, chopped her up in bits, food to feed the fish, Am*dam was the pits.”
Another read: “On the run from the law, with my back to the wall. Watching the windows and the door. I’m not afraid to do or die. Maybe when this life is over I will get some sleep.”
Sweeney met his first-known victim Melissa in 1986 when they were both working on a film set. After he became abusive, she tried to escape to Austria but he tracked her down, stalked her, tied her up and attacked her with a hammer, cracking her skull.
After being released and ordered to leave Austria, Sweeney followed Melissa to Amsterdam where they were pictured together in a photo booth just days before he killed her. Her torso was found floating in a canal In the Dutch city of Rotterdam on May 3, 1990, after he transported her remains by train in a trolley.
Two years later, the first of the eight unsolved cases came to light when the hands and legs of a woman were found in an Amsterdam canal. A suitcase containing her torso was fished out of another canal in the Dutch capital, before more limbs were recovered in another nearby stretch of water. She has never been identified.
In November 1993, the head and a leg of Belgian mum-of-two Liliane Sek, 37, was discovered by gamekeepers in woods around 20 miles from her hometown of Charleroi. Liliane, a divorced painter, knew “strange people” who frequented the cafes close to her flat and her diary was never found. Her killer was never identified.
The following July the dismembered body of another woman turned up near a campsite in the Dutch seaside town of Retranchement. She has never been identified. That December Sweeney attempted to murder Delia with an axe before going on the run.
When the first remains were found in Mons by mounted police officer Olivier Motte on March 22, 1997, four of the serial killer’s victims were already dead. By the end of the year, beleaguered police had 38 body parts from five women who had frequented the slum neighbourhood around the railway station of the southern Belgium city.
Carmelina Russo, 46, Martine Bohn, 43, Jacqueline Leclerq, 33, Nathalie Godart, 21 and Begonia Valencia, 38, disappeared between January 1996 and July 1997. They were discovered in 15 rubbish bags. All had fallen on hard times and were vulnerable. Four left children behind. Arms, legs, hands and torsos were found in various locations with evocative names, fuelling suspicions the killer was taunting detectives.
Remains were recovered in Rue du Depot (dump), near the River Haine (hate), on the Chemin de l’Inquietude (the path of worry) and the banks of the River Trouille (jitters). A thigh, an arm, a forearm and a hand, were in an area known as La Poudriere, or the powder-keg.
Experts from the FBI were drafted in. Despite the murders all being linked, detectives drew a blank. Although the case remains open, cops are in a race against time before the statute of limitations comes into effect in three years – meaning no prosecution could be brought after that date.
Sweeney was finally arrested in 2001 while living under a false name in London. The killer was caught in possession of a revolver, two loaded Luger pistols and a sawn-off shotgun. He wasn’t arrested for Melissa and Paula’s murders until 2010 after the model’s remains were finally identified by Dutch police.
UK detectives unsuccessfully appealed for information about three more women who were linked to Sweeney, a trainee nurse called Sue, from Derbyshire, Brazilian Irani and Colombian Maria. Mr Groves said he understands Delia’s anger at the authorities for the failings in her case but highlights the “tireless work” his team did to get Sweeney locked up for life.
He said: “I was a police officer for 34 years and I never came across anybody as evil as him. The victims’ families will never know what happened to the remains of their loved ones that were never recovered. I’m sure Sweeney will take that secret to his grave.”
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