I Survived a Serial Killer: The Delia Balmer Story tells the terrifying true story of how one woman survived living with serial killer John Sweeney, known as the canal murderer
When 40-year-old nurse Delia Balmer first met serial axe murderer John Sweeney in a pub in London in the early 1990s, she had no idea how a chance meeting would change her life.
The two embarked on a three-year relationship, but things turned nasty after Delia ended it. Now, 30 years since she escaped her attacker, a new TV documentary reveals the moment she realised her partner was hiding a sinister secret.
The terrifying true story of a woman who lived with a serial killer for three years before he revealed his true self and attacked her with an axe is the focus of a new TV programme starting on Channel 5 tonight. Delia was working as an agency nurse when she met John Sweeney – an artist and carpenter in a pub in Camden, North London back in 1991. The couple bonded over a love of travelling and soon moved in together, but she became suspicious that her lover was hiding a sinister secret when his behaviour turned aggressive.
It was 1994, three years into their relationship, when Delia became alarmed after finding rope, tape and gloves under the bed they shared. Sweeney held her captive for four days, repeatedly raping her before attempting to kill her with a wooden axe. Delia lived to tell the tale and see her former partner put behind bars for the attempt on her life and for the double murder of two of his ex-girlfriends.
But Delia doesn’t see herself as one of the lucky ones. The retired nurse was left with horrendous scars and lost the little finger on her left hand after the attack not to mention the mental scars she still carries. “As far as I’m concerned, I have died,” she said. “John Sweeney killed Delia on the concrete steps.”
In 2017 she told The Mirror 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?’”
She also revealed how she constantly hides her missing finger by covering it with a napkin and describing it as a ‘monster’. “He wanted me to die in pain, and he’s got his wish,” she added. “I am going to die in pain, mentally and physically.”
Now a new documentary I Survived a Serial Killer: The Delia Balmer Story explores what is was like to live with one of Britain’s most notorious serial killers – John Sweeney. Delia reveals how she met Sweeney in a pub but the violence infiltrated their relationship soon after. It began with constant phone calls and increasingly controlling behaviour, before graduating to throttling, death threats and rape.
Three years later in 1994, John held her hostage by tying her to a bed for four days and attacking her with an axe. Before he launched his last savage axe attack on her, Delia discovered a bag belonging to Sweeney, filled with masking tape, Marigold gloves, surgical gloves, a large plastic ground sheet, rope, and a saw.
Delia said it was “a body disposal kit meant for me”. While Delia managed to escape her attacker, not everyone was so lucky. Unbeknown to her, John Sweeney had already butchered a former girlfriend, before dumping her remains in a canal. And after his attempted murder of Delia, he went on to kill another girlfriend, before chopping her body into more than a dozen pieces. Detectives have still not located the whereabouts of three other women who were in a relationship with Sweeney fearing they too could have suffered the same fate.
Judge Mr Justice Saunders said the offences were so serious only a whole life term was appropriate. “These were terrible, wicked crimes. The heads of the victims having been removed, it is impossible to be certain how they were killed. The mutilation of the bodies is a serious aggravating feature of the murders. Not only does it reveal the cold-blooded nature of the killer, but it has added greatly to the distress of the families to know that parts of their loved ones have never been recovered.”
Following his attack on Delia Balmer in 1994, John went on the run but was finally arrested six years later at a central London building site after the discovery of Paula Fields’ 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. He has been told he will likely die in jail.
I Survived a Serial Killer: The Delia Balmer Story is on Channel 5 Tuesday October 22 at 10pm.
