Police hunting Paula Fields' canal killer link case to murder in Amsterdam

Published: 1 April 2010
by JOSIE HINTON

THE murky waters of Camden Town’s canals have more than once ­given up the deadly secrets of some of London’s most unthinkable crimes, but one has continued to haunt detectives for almost a decade.

The nine-year old ­riddle surrounding the death of Paula Fields, a woman whose dismembered body parts were found in bags floating in the water, has never been solved.

But for the first time, on Monday night, the murder squad at Scotland Yard publicised what has become a major line of inquiry and overtly linked her death to the strikingly similar circumstances in which a former model’s body was found butchered in Amsterdam.

Detectives in both London and Holland made TV appearances in the search for new leads, the British arm of the investigation taking its appeal to the BBC’s Crimewatch programme on Monday night.

The deaths of Ms Fields, 31 – whose body parts were discovered in 2001 by three boys fishing – and Melissa Halstead were 11 years apart, but there are similarities in the cases and connections which detectives say are now at the heart of their enquiries. 

Both women’s bodies were chopped into pieces and placed in bags before being dumped in a canal. Ms Fields’ head and hands were never recovered, just as in the case of Ms Halstead, who died in 1990. 

She was only identified as the victim three years ago with the help of DNA technology.

Both women spent time in London and detectives pointed out in their appeal that they each shared a romantic association with one man: a carpenter from Kentish Town with a ­violent past.

John Sweeney, 56, was the former boyfriend of both women and has been questioned in the past on both cases.

He is currently serving four life sentences for attempted murder after attacking another ex-girlfriend, Delia Balmer, with an axe in an attack so vicious the woman lost a finger. For that crime, Sweeney evaded arrest for six years by lying low in Europe before police finally caught up with him in 2001 after he had returned to England and took up a flat in Kentish Town. 

Officers were shocked to find hundreds of violent poems and sketches about attacks on women and police officers.

One of his poems read: “On the run from the law, with my back to the wall. Watching the windows and the door. ‘I’m not afraid to do or die’. Maybe when this life is over I will get some sleep.”

It is known that when he was dating Ms Halstead he had also attacked her and served six months in an Austrian jail for assault.

Ms Fields’s relationship with Sweeney – then more commonly known as “Scouse Joe” – began in 2000 after she had moved to Islington from Liverpool in search of a better life, before slipping into drugs and prostitution.

Detective Chief In­spector Howard Groves, Homicide and Serious Crime Command, said: “Two young women murdered in two different countries 11 years apart, stripped of their identities and dumped in city centre canals, their head and hands still missing: we don’t know how, when or where Melissa and Paula were killed but something must link these victims, and we believe someone here has the answer.” 

The nightmare investigation began with Dutch detectives when an unidentified body is found floating in the Westersingel canal in Amsterdam. The remains of Ms Fields were found in the canal between Royal College Street and St Pancras Way. 

As part of the new appeal, pictures of the six bags used to hide away Ms Fields’s body were released. They include a green holdall with green piping, a grey nylon shopping bag marked “hot shot” and a duffle bag with a beige and brown diamond pattern.

DCI Groves said: “For the first time we have joined forces with our Dutch colleagues to investigate the killings. Together we need your help uncovering a challenging mystery as to why two young women’s lives were so cruelly cut short.”

Ms Fields’ sister Irene said: “Paula was the baby of the family – she was the happy child. She always had a smile on her face, and she’d do anything to help anybody. I miss her smile. She was so pretty. I just picture her face every day, and her smile.”