The real story of Delia Balmer, the woman who lived with a serial killer – and survived to tell her story
For the past week, viewers have watched Anna Maxwell Martin play the role of a woman who escaped from her serial killer boyfriend and was let down repeatedly by the system meant to protect her. Forty years on, Zoë Beaty finds out what happened to her...
Delia Balmer is lying on her bed, in a small, sparsely furnished apartment. She’s now in her seventies, but the camera shows her re-enacting a painful memory from almost 40 years ago. “He tied my ankles,” she says, leaning back over the covers into a star shape. “He grabbed my hands; he tied that one first, to the top” – she points to her left arm – “And then the other to the top. At first, I struggled, but I found out it’s best not to struggle because he fixed it so that the rope would get tighter and tighter.”
The bed she is lying on is the very same one that John Patrick Sweeney made for her, the same they shared while living together after beginning a relationship years earlier. It’s the same bed that, in 1994, Sweeney bound her to before holding her hostage and repeatedly raping her for a week.
In that bed was where she learnt who her boyfriend really was: a serial killer who preyed on women. “He threatened to cut my tongue out if I screamed,” says Delia. She lay silent, and naked, as he made a chilling confession – that he had killed his ex-girlfriend, Melissa Halstead, before cutting her up and dumping her body in a canal in Amsterdam.
For the last week, ITV viewers have been watching the retelling of Delia’s harrowing ordeal in the astonishing four-part drama Until I Kill You, in which Anna Maxwell Martin plays the role of Delia to extraordinary effect.
Her critically acclaimed portrayal of Delia reveals an independent and socially awkward woman whose life’s purpose seems to be the pursuit of freedom, but who then becomes a prisoner of extreme male violence.
The powerful performance of Maxwell Martin, coupled with the astonishing incompetence of the police involved in her case, has left audiences in shock, curious as to what happened to the real Delia.
A follow-up documentary on ITV – Until I Kill You: The Real Story – goes some way to answering that question. In The 45-minute programme, Delia, who is still living in London, talks candidly to the camera, explaining her side of what really happened – and how her life has been since.
“She’s an astonishing person,” says the show’s producer Iwan Roberts, who spent a year making the film. They would go to the pub in Camden for a pint, he says, where she would tell “fantastic anecdotes about travelling the world”, he explains, adding: “She’s a delight to talk to.”
Maxwell Martin plays Delia as a difficult and often cantankerous loner, as well as showing flashes of her vulnerability. Her character brings to life the complexities that can surround victimhood – especially when it comes to male violence.
“I think she’s a very different person to many people,” Roberts continues. In a scene that will shock some viewers, Delia shows the filmmakers the massage table Sweeney constructed, pointing to his signature in black marker pen underneath. “One of the reasons she keeps all the furniture that Sweeney made her is because she doesn’t see objects like us. She wants to spend her money on travelling, so it doesn’t bother her.”
“She says that she wished she had died after Sweeney attacked her,” says Roberts. Today, Delia says that she died that night, despite the fact that she wasn’t killed – but Roberts adds: “I would imagine she might not say this, but she still has a huge passion for life.”
Delia’s story began after she settled in London to work as an agency nurse, though her childhood was spent mostly in Canada. She met Sweeney by chance in a bar. He was a carpenter by trade; tall, broad and dark, with long-ish hair. Like Delia, he valued freedom and exploration. The pair formed a relationship, which for a while was happy.
The abuse began quietly – comments about a short skirt she was wearing, about whether men had been looking at her. She knew she had to leave, Delia explains in the film. As in many cases of domestic violence, and as highlighted by The Independent’s ongoing campaign with Refuge, this proved to be the most dangerous point.
Delia asked Sweeney to leave, but he returned, threatening her with a gun and knife, and a week-long ordeal of imprisonment began. Astoundingly, she did manage to convince him to let her go, spending the next few months terrified that he would return – or seek revenge if she told the police.
She found chilling drawings Sweeney had kept in a portfolio: women with their heads and hands missing, miniature carpenters hacking at a female body. When an advice centre she eventually went to for help called the police, she showed them to investigators as proof he was a killer. They dismissed her claims – and Sweeney was nowhere to be found.
Sweeney inevitably returned and attacked Delia again at her flat. A friend of hers called the police, feeling that something was wrong after Delia didn’t turn up at the pub. Finally, Sweeney was arrested but, shockingly, was released on bail for Christmas.
On 22 December, Sweeney attacked Delia outside her home as she returned from work. He was armed with an axe and a knife. “He brings the axe out, he bashes me on the side of the head,” Delia explains matter-of-factly to the camera, sitting on the very steps that she was attacked on all those years ago.
She explains how she raised her arm to protect herself, and it was fractured by another blow. Finally, Sweeney dropped the axe and lifted up the knife, stabbing her in the thigh before driving it through her chest.
Sweeney was interrupted by a concerned neighbour, a simple act that saved Delia’s life, but decades on she insists that, in her view, he killed her that day. She spent months recovering in hospital, and during the course of the documentary, she refers to “this body”, saying that even today she cannot recognise herself in the mirror. She still deals with depression and anxiety.
Telling her story was crucial, she says. She needed to be heard. And now, her incredible stoicism and strength in the face of horror are aired for all to see
It took police almost 10 years to bring Sweeney, who had gone on the run, to justice – and Delia was repeatedly let down by the law in almost every instance. Scenes where male police officers don’t take her seriously, or that show her shouting in court when first giving evidence at Sweeney’s trial, are difficult to watch. It’s a visceral indictment of how women and their bodies are routinely and casually dismissed by violent men – and often, by the systems that are meant to protect them.
Years on, that anger remains.
“She doesn’t let people see her vulnerability,” Roberts says of Delia. “She’s a very proud person and she doesn't want to show that emotion, or all that she carries. Sometimes she can be prickly, or appear grumpy.” But, he says, this is the result of a life beleaguered and defined by an ordeal that she “will not accept” happened to her.
Sweeney was eventually convicted for the attempted murder of Delia and, much later still, for the murder of two other women – Melissa Halstead and Paula Fields – becoming known as the “scalp hunter”.
In the documentary, Delia’s brother Stewart describes an eerie encounter with Sweeney that preceded this moniker. “I asked him, have you ever killed anyone? I don’t know why I asked it, he just had these vibes about him,” Stewart says. “He wouldn’t answer yes or no. He said, ‘The white men taught the Indians how to scalp.’ Really strange.”
After the law failed Delia again by offering Sweeney the option of parole after serving just nine years, his later convictions meant that his sentence was increased to a whole life order. He was convicted in 2011, while serving a life sentence for the attempted murder of Delia in Gartree Prison, Leicestershire, and will never be released.
Today, Delia is getting on with her life as best she can. She likes to dance – “Ballet is really important to her,” Roberts explains, “and she still loves to travel to India and Africa. She also visits her brother, Stewart, in America once a year.” She now works as a therapeutic masseur, after gaining a degree from the University of Westminster in the early 2000s. In 2017, she wrote a book – Living with a Serial Killer – about her experiences, and this formed the basis of the drama, which she wanted to be made, Roberts says.
Telling her story was crucial. She needed to be heard. And now, her incredible stoicism and strength in the face of horror are aired for all to see.
Still, she bears the scars of Sweeney’s brutal attack. But Delia, along with the makers of the ITV drama, hopes that her bravery in telling her life story will give us all a deeper understanding of survivors’ suffering – and highlight a system that fails women like Delia time and time again.
‘Until I Kill You: The Real Story’ is on ITV1 at 9pm tonight (7 November) and is available to watch on ITVX
Please donate now to the Brick by Brick campaign, launched by The Independent and charity Refuge, to help raise £300,000 to build a safe space for women where they can escape domestic abuse, rebuild their lives and make a new future. Text BRICK to 70560 to donate £15
The National Domestic Abuse Helpline offers support for women on 0808 2000 247, or you can visit the Refuge website. There is a dedicated men’s advice line on 0808 8010 327