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Published: 17th March, 2011
by JAMIE WELHAM

A “DEMONIC” carpenter accused of butchering two of his girlfriends and dumping their remains in canals also confessed to shooting two German men whose bodies have never been found, a court has heard.

Retired Kentish Town builder Kevin Pratt told the Old Bailey that John Sweeney, 54, had boasted about killing the two men and his then partner Melissa Halstead after discovering them in bed together whilst living abroad.

Mr Sweeney, who had addresses in Kentish Town and Finsbury Park, is accused of being the so-called “scalp hunter”. He allegedly sawed up American model Ms Halstead, 33, and Paula Fields, 31, before disposing of their bodies in weighted duffle bags, the court hard.

Mr Pratt told the court Mr Sweeney made the confession and then said he should “grass him up” and collect a £10,000 reward that was being offered for his arrest in Holland, where the alleged murder of Ms Halstead took place. 

Mr Sweeney denies the murders of both women, whose remains were dredged up from canals in Camden Town and Holland more than 10 years apart in 1990 and 2001.

The divorced father of two turned up at Mr Pratt’s house in Islip Street, Kentish Town looking for a place to stay for a couple of days shortly before Christmas 1994, saying something “bad” had happened, the court heard. 

The jury previously heard evidence that Mr Sweeney had gone on the run after attacking another girlfriend, nurse Delia Balmer, with an axe and knife at the property they had shared since 1991 in Leighton Grove, Kentish Town. Ms Balmer was too unwell to give evidence in person.

Mr Pratt told the court: “He had a bag with him. He told us [him and his wife] about Delia. An incident had happened and that he had ‘done her’ with an axe or knife. He had a cut hand and some kind of bandage.”

He added: “He once told us he was in Austria with her [Ms Halstead] and went to jail because he hit her over the head with a hammer. Melissa went and pleaded with the judge to release him. 

“When he was in Holland with her he came home from work and found her in bed with two Germans so he shot the two Germans and shot her. He said he chopped them up and threw them in the canal. He said there was a reward out for him in Holland and suggested I claim the reward.”

Prosecuting, Brian Altman, QC, emphasised there was no evidence to support claims concerning the two Germans. The jury heard Mr Sweeney had followed Ms Halstead to Europe in the late 1980s before returning to London in the early 1990s. 

The prosecution alleges he hacked up the bodies of both women because he had a “preoccupation with dismemberment” and a “hatred of women”. Mr Altman said all the hallmarks of both killings pointed to Mr Sweeney, and that it was “improbable” it could be anybody else, given the murders were 10 years apart and separated by the North Sea.  

The court also heard evidence from the sister of Ms Fields, Angela Fields, who said her sister had come to London from Liverpool with two of her three sons in 1998. She said she stayed with family until finding a room at the Highbury Hotel, but her two boys were taken into care while she battled her addiction to crack cocaine. She told the court she had bumped into her sister with a man called Joe Carroll – an alias used by Mr Sweeney – on Seven Sisters Road shortly before she disappeared in 2000.

The trial continues.