Who was Melissa Halsted? Model and photographer killed by Scalp Hunter John Sweeney
10/22/2024 06:13 AM
MELISSA Halstead was a model and photographer who was brutally murdered by John Sweeney.
Known as the Scalp Hunter, John is suspected to have killed five women but Melissa was his first confirmed victim. So who was Melissa?
John Sweeney's first victim
Melissa was working as a freelance photographer in London when she met John, but she was originally from Ohio, USA.
John claimed to have met Melissa in December 1986, while he had been living in Hackney.
He also claimed that she was unpredictable when she drank and extremely quiet when she was sober, but that he stayed with her because he "loved her".
He was arrested in 1988 for hitting her in the head with a hammer, but received a suspended sentence and continued their relationship afterwards.
When Melissa's work visa ran out, the couple went on a trip around Europe.
Melissa's body was found in a canal in Rotterdam, Holland, in 1990 after it had been mutilated by an unknown killer.
Her head and hands were never found.
It wasn't until 2008 that Melissa was identified, after Dutch detectives matched family DNA to her body.
The murder of Paula Fields
It was later revealed that the Scalp Hunter had also murdered a second woman.
He killed his girlfriend Paula Fields, a 31-year-old mother-of-three from Liverpool, in a similar way to Melissa.
Paula was murdered almost 10 years after Melissa, but she was dumped in a canal and left without her head and hands just like John's first victim.
She reportedly met the killer while being as a sex worker in London in 2000.
John Sweeney is arrested
He went on the run in 1994, after attacking a nurse named Delia Balmer.
Like his other victims, Delia was his girlfriend at the time but she survived her encounter with the Scalp Hunter.
John was on the run for six years, but was caught after Paula's remains were discovered.
He was handed a life sentence for attacking Delia and refused to even leave his cell at Belmarsh prison when he was sentenced for his murders of Melissa and Paula in 2011.
In court, several poems written by the killer were used as evidence.
One read: “Poor old Melissa, chopped her up in bits, food to feed the fish, Am*dam was the pits.”
Another read: A bad trip in Vienna, blood spilled, Amsterdam was not much better, blood killed.
The prosecutor, Brian Altman KC, said that Melissa had confided in her sister that she was frightened of John.
He said: “She told her sister ‘If anything happens to me, if ever I go missing, then you’ll know that he did it.
"He will see to it that nothing is left of me’.”
