ITV viewers were shocked after hearing Delia Balmer describe her terrifying experience escaping a serial killer.
Over the past week, the four-part series Until I Kill You has told the true story of former agency nurse Delia, who in the 1990s discovers that her boyfriend of three years, John Sweeney, has a darker side.
Based on the 2017 memoir, Living with a Serial Killer, it stars Motherland’s Anna Maxwell Martin as Delia and Vigil actor Shaun Evans as serial killer John.
It follows the beginning of the couple’s relationship after meeting in a pub in London in 1991 until Delia tries to leave him after he becomes increasingly violent, until John attacks her with an axe.
After the crime drama series aired, the broadcaster also aired a documentary, which saw Delia talking on camera about her ordeal.
After explaining the details of their relationship, Delia then shows the camera the exact bed where her partner assaulted her after she told him she wanted to end the relationship.
‘These ropes came out and they tied me to the bed and then they tied my ankles and held my hands and held me down,’ she recalled.
‘At first I struggled and then I realized it’s best not to struggle because he fixed it, and it would be tighter if I struggled.’
Sweeney then pulled out a knife and gun hidden in the bed and began interrogating her about her ex-boyfriend.
‘He threatened to cut my tongue out if I screamed,’ she said.
Sweeney later admitted to killing his ex-girlfriend and two others and ‘cutting up the body and throwing it in the canal’ a few years earlier.
Hearing the shocking details, the audience was shocked, some were surprised that Delia decided to keep the furniture that was attacked.
‘Wow…Delia still has all the furniture and the bed the monster made (& the mattress from the looks of it). My goodness! I will burn a lot,’ Nicola posted on X.
‘I’m surprised Delia still has all the furniture John made tbh,’ user Flopsy shared.
‘I don’t know why the real Delia Balmer would keep anything to do with John Sweeney – the table she made, the bed she made, the picture of her… I want it out!’ DVDFever added.
Many others also praised her courage to talk about her harrowing experience.
‘My God, this is horrible. Delia you are a brave woman, and I’m so glad you found a happy future after this hell,’ Charlotte wrote.
‘Watch Till I Kill You: The True Story. It’s unbelievable what humans can do. It hurts to see Delia come back to life,’ Jacky shared.
“What a brave and resilient woman Delia Balmer is,” added Laura.
After spending a week as a hostage and being attacked several times, Delia is freed by Sweeney.
However, his life was again in danger when he was attacked twice after he was released on bail.
After being saved by a neighbor, who hits Sweeney over the head with a baseball bat, Delia spends months in hospital recovering from the horrific injuries she sustained when she ran away.
As one of the officers recalls in the documentary, they found ‘a bag full of things that needed to be removed from Delia’s body’, including knives, rubber gloves, rope, tarps and duct tape.
When he initially held Delia hostage, Sweeney had confessed to killing his ex-partner, Melissa Halstead, whose dismembered body was found in a canal in the Netherlands in 1990.
After fleeing in 1994, six years later he was arrested in 2001 and given a nine-year sentence for trying to kill Delia.
A year earlier he also killed Paula Fields and was eventually found guilty of murdering her and Halstead in 2011 as well.
According to the BBC, authorities believe he may have killed three more women between 1970 and 1990.
The former carpenter, 67 years old, is still in prison.
Until I Kill You and Until I Kill You: True Stories are streaming on ITVX.
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