'Scalp Hunter' killer John Sweeney may have murdered seven women in total

A suspected serial killer dubbed the Scalp Hunter is linked to seven murders.

, 66, is already serving a whole life sentence for killing and chopping up US-born Melissa Halstead, 33, and mum-of-three Paula Fields, 31. He also attacked ex Delia Balmer with an axe at her London home in 1994 but she survived. The London nurse, played by Anna Maxwell Martin in the , lived with Sweeney unaware he was a killer.

and then bravely faced him years later in court. Detectives are convinced Sweeney could have even more victims because the "jealous and obsessive" gun fanatic had dozens of lovers as he drifted across Europe under different names.

Sweeney murdered former model Melissa, originally from Ohio, in Holland. Her body was found in a Rotterdam canal in 1990.

Mum-of-three Paula, 31, who lived with Sweeney at a flat in Kilburn, North London, was killed in 2000. Paula's body was found in the nearby Regent's Canal by two boys fishing the following February. Sweeney mutilated both women, chopping off their heads and hands, roping up their torsos inside bin bags and putting them in weighted holdalls he later threw in canals hoping they would sink without trace.

Detectives feared three women who have been missing for years may have been murdered by the monster, who depicted his appalling crimes in paintings and poems. When he was convicted of the two murders in 2011, police appealed for information about a woman called Sue, who vanished in the 80s. A devoted churchgoer from the Derby area in her 30s, she fled North London for Switzerland, followed by Sweeney who had become obsessed with her.

Officers also wanted to trace a Brazilian known only as Irani, in her mid-40s. She lived in North London around 1996 and may have worked as a cleaner. And they feared a Colombian called Maria in her late-30s, who lived around Finsbury Park and Holloway Road, from 1997 to 1998, is yet another victim.

Sweeney also confessed to several people that in Amsterdam he shot dead two German tourists he found with Melissa. Dutch police are believed to have taken the claim seriously because he has a string of firearms convictions. After Sweeney's trial at the Old Bailey finished in 2011, Det Chief Insp Howard Groves said: "As he contemplates a life behind bars, I can assure him this investigation will continue as we seek to identify and trace other potential victims in the UK, Netherlands and elsewhere in Europe who may have suffered a similar fate to that of Melissa and Paula."

The drama is based on Delia's memoir, Living With A Serial Killer, and charts the former nurse's relationship with Sweeney, whom she first met in a London pub in 1991. Three years later, Delia became alarmed after finding rope, tape and gloves under the bed they shared. Sweeney then attempted to kill her with a wooden axe, chopping off one of her fingers.

In 2017 she told The she still remembers the moment she almost died. “On the doorstep, I saw this finger fly through the air, and I thought: ‘That’s it. I don’t want to live anymore. I don’t want to live in this anger and pain’. So I wasn’t happy when I woke up in an intensive care unit. I thought: ‘Oh no, I am alive. Now what hell'.”

Sweeney went on the run but was finally arrested six years later at a central London building site after the discovery of Paula's remains. Police found clues of his hatred of women at his home when they discovered a hoard of more than 300 violent paintings and poems. One, entitled the Scalp Hunter, depicted a female victim and a bloody axe.