JValdez
Forum Veteran
- Joined
- Oct 10, 2010
- Messages
- 1,143
- Location
- en route
[courtesy The Telegraph]
A “demonic” killer with a hatred of women “butchered” two girlfriends, dismembered their bodies, and disposed of them in bags dumped in canals in London and Holland, a court heard yesterday.
By Andy Bloxham 2:15PM GMT 03 Mar 2011
John Sweeney, 54, killed Melissa Halstead, 33, a former model, and Paula Fields, 31, who had two children, and removed heads, hands and feet so they could not be identified.
The murders baffled police in the two countries for 18 years until a Dutch “cold case” team matched DNA from Miss Halstead’s family to their files.
The discovery sparked the first joint Anglo-Dutch investigation of its kind, which had to be sanctioned by the European Union.
Yesterday, Brian Altman QC, prosecuting, said Sweeney, a “jobbing carpenter”, as a “hateful and controlling possessor of women, prone to outbursts of rage and murderous violence”.
Investigators who raided Sweeney’s mother’s home in Skelmersdale, in Merseyside, found “demonic and lurid” poems, paintings and drawings which reflected his violent tendencies, the Old Bailey was told.
The images included depictions of “bodies in a state of dismemberment”, weapons including an axe “dripping with blood”. One was titled “The Scalp-Hunter”.
Sweeney, from Skelmersdale, in Merseyside, was extremely controlling of his girlfriends and would fly into a rage when challenged, the court heard.
Stools, knives, an axe, an air pistol, a hammer and a loaded revolver held to the head “and the trigger pulled” were all used as tools of intimidation, it was claimed.
After Miss Halstead, who was born in Dayton, Ohio, left him at the home they shared in Sloane Square, in Chelsea, west London, he “stalked” her across Europe, to Paris, Amsterdam, Belgium and Vienna.
Mr Altman said Sweeney travelled to Austria after learning where she was staying, broke in with a jemmy, and was waiting for her when the model, who was by now a photographer and beautician, returned.
They went out but returned together and, once they reentered the building, Sweeney hit Miss Halstead with a hammer on the back of the head.
Sweeney served time in prison in Austria for the attack and was deported but Miss Halstead’s “nightmare” did not end.
When her sister Chance O’Hara visited her, she predicted with what the court heard was “chilling accuracy” that: “If ever I go missing, when you will know that he did it.”
The Old Bailey was also told that Sweeney had made three “confessions” to the murder of Miss Halstead, to friends and his ex-wife, Ann Bramley, who he told he had done something that “would make your hair stand on end”.
He told them similar stories more than a decade before the ex-model’s body was found, the court heard, claiming to have killed Miss Halstead and two German men after going to the flat and finding them having sex, before “chopping up” the bodies and disposing of them.
Miss Halstead’s body was found in a grey duffel bag in a Rotterdam canal in May 1990. Miss Fields’ body was found by boys fishing in the Regent’s Canal in London in February 2001.
Sweeney, of no fixed address but from the Kentish Town area of northwest London, denies two counts of murder and one count of perverting the course of justice by disposing of the body of Paula Fields.
He can not be charged with disposing of Melissa's body because UK law allows this only for counts of murder and manslaughter, the court heard.
The trial continues.
A “demonic” killer with a hatred of women “butchered” two girlfriends, dismembered their bodies, and disposed of them in bags dumped in canals in London and Holland, a court heard yesterday.
By Andy Bloxham 2:15PM GMT 03 Mar 2011
John Sweeney, 54, killed Melissa Halstead, 33, a former model, and Paula Fields, 31, who had two children, and removed heads, hands and feet so they could not be identified.
The murders baffled police in the two countries for 18 years until a Dutch “cold case” team matched DNA from Miss Halstead’s family to their files.
The discovery sparked the first joint Anglo-Dutch investigation of its kind, which had to be sanctioned by the European Union.
Yesterday, Brian Altman QC, prosecuting, said Sweeney, a “jobbing carpenter”, as a “hateful and controlling possessor of women, prone to outbursts of rage and murderous violence”.
Investigators who raided Sweeney’s mother’s home in Skelmersdale, in Merseyside, found “demonic and lurid” poems, paintings and drawings which reflected his violent tendencies, the Old Bailey was told.
The images included depictions of “bodies in a state of dismemberment”, weapons including an axe “dripping with blood”. One was titled “The Scalp-Hunter”.
Sweeney, from Skelmersdale, in Merseyside, was extremely controlling of his girlfriends and would fly into a rage when challenged, the court heard.
Stools, knives, an axe, an air pistol, a hammer and a loaded revolver held to the head “and the trigger pulled” were all used as tools of intimidation, it was claimed.
After Miss Halstead, who was born in Dayton, Ohio, left him at the home they shared in Sloane Square, in Chelsea, west London, he “stalked” her across Europe, to Paris, Amsterdam, Belgium and Vienna.
Mr Altman said Sweeney travelled to Austria after learning where she was staying, broke in with a jemmy, and was waiting for her when the model, who was by now a photographer and beautician, returned.
They went out but returned together and, once they reentered the building, Sweeney hit Miss Halstead with a hammer on the back of the head.
Sweeney served time in prison in Austria for the attack and was deported but Miss Halstead’s “nightmare” did not end.
When her sister Chance O’Hara visited her, she predicted with what the court heard was “chilling accuracy” that: “If ever I go missing, when you will know that he did it.”
The Old Bailey was also told that Sweeney had made three “confessions” to the murder of Miss Halstead, to friends and his ex-wife, Ann Bramley, who he told he had done something that “would make your hair stand on end”.
He told them similar stories more than a decade before the ex-model’s body was found, the court heard, claiming to have killed Miss Halstead and two German men after going to the flat and finding them having sex, before “chopping up” the bodies and disposing of them.
Miss Halstead’s body was found in a grey duffel bag in a Rotterdam canal in May 1990. Miss Fields’ body was found by boys fishing in the Regent’s Canal in London in February 2001.
Sweeney, of no fixed address but from the Kentish Town area of northwest London, denies two counts of murder and one count of perverting the course of justice by disposing of the body of Paula Fields.
He can not be charged with disposing of Melissa's body because UK law allows this only for counts of murder and manslaughter, the court heard.
The trial continues.
