A killer known as the 'Scalp Hunter' who took the lives of two former girlfriends has been linked to three more killings, according to reports.
John Sweeney, 66, was found guilty of slaughtering Melissa Halstead and Paula Fields, whose headless and handless remains were found two decades apart.
The monster, who had a twisted gallery of drawings, poems and carvings celebrating his sick crimes around his flat, was seized by armed police at a building site near the Old Bailey in 2001.
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Now, police believe he can help after Interpol shared images of murdered women as part of Operation Identify Me, who were decapitated and had their remains left in canals in the Netherlands.
The techniques are shockingly similar to those used when Sweeney killed model Melissa Halstead, 33, an ex-girlfriend, in the Netherlands.
Her body was found in a Rotterdam canal in 1990 – but Sweeney wasn’t found guilty of the crime until 2011.
Her head and hands have never been found.
Melissa – repeatedly attacked by Sweeney – had warned her sister that if she ever went missing: “You’ll know that he did it.”
Body parts from his second victim 31-year-old Paula were found in six holdalls floating in the Regent’s Canal in Camden, north London, in 2001.
Her head, hands and feet were not found.
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Former Metropolitan Police Detective Colin Sutton urged Dutch police to look into the similarities, as Sweeney lived and worked in the country in the 90s.
"The Met will have lots of information on his movements. They will willingly share that," he told The Sun.
"The striking similarity of these murders is such that efforts should be made to eliminate or implicate him — and I am sure that will happen."
Sweeney was sentenced after he tried to kill girlfriend Delia Balmer in London with an axe in 1994.
While he had been on the run after his doorstep attack on Delia, he had taunted detectives by sending them letters claiming: “It was an AXEident” and calling his victim an “evil witch”.
Officers found a loaded pistol in his work locker and two loaded sawn-off shotguns at his home.
The woman-hater was convicted of attacking Australian Delia in 2001.
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