How brutal serial killer John Sweeney was finally caught after six years on the run

The ITV series, Until I Kill You, based on Delia Balmer's memoir, Living With A Serial Killer, continues this week. It narrates the harrowing story of John Sweeney who, from being a caring partner, gradually became aggressive and controlling.

Sweeney repeatedly trapped Delia in her own home, subjected her to torture, and even confessed to murdering his ex-girlfriend, Melissa Halstead. After a final violent incident that almost took Delia's life, Sweeney went on the run.

Remarkably, it took six years for the police to find him and convict him of several murders. Before the savage attack outside Delia's home, Sweeney had already had encounters with the law due to a previous assault on her.

Despite this, he breached police conditions by visiting Delia's house and attacking her with an axe and knife, inflicting severe, life-changing injuries on her. Following the 1994 attack, he managed to evade capture for six years until he was finally caught at a construction site in central London.

Before returning to London under a false identity, he had murdered another woman, Paula Fields. Police were eventually able to connect him to both murders through a collection of disturbing drawings and poems, reports the Manchester Evening News.

Over 300 pieces of artwork were found, including one titled the Scalp Hunter, which depicted a female victim and a bloody axe. On a scratchcard, the police found disturbing poetry scribbled about his former girlfriend: "Poor old Melissa, chopped her up in bits, food to feed the fish, Am*dam was the pits."

During 1990, Melissa's dismembered remains surfaced in Rotterdam's Westersingel Canal, following her mysterious vanishing from her Amsterdam residence. Melissa's case lay dormant until Dutch law enforcement revisited this cold case in 2008 and implemented familial DNA testing to establish her identity conclusively.

Sweeney encountered his next known victim, Paula Fields, from Liverpool, in 2000. Just three months after they met, Paula was reported missing and later parts of her body were discovered in bags in Regent's Canal, near King's Cross, during February 2001.

After a lengthy manhunt, Sweeney was apprehended in 2007, a full six years following the grim find of Paula's dismembered body. It was Sweeney's own macabre collection of art that ultimately implicated him in the crimes and tied him to both murders.

Within one haunting piece, named One Man Band, was the image of a woman, likely Melissa. Tellingly, a patch had been obscured with correction fluid. Under ultraviolet light scrutiny, this hidden section betrayed a tombstone marked with the epitaph "Melissa Halstead, born 7 November 1956. Died."