“May you never die until I kill you.” These are the eight chilling words, scrawled on a piece of paper by serial killer John Sweeney, that give ITV’s new true crime drama its name. Until I Kill You is the story of Delia Balmer, the sole known survivor of Sweeney, who is now serving life for his crimes. Actually, as is very clear from the harrowing events we witness, Balmer is also a victim of the British criminal justice system, which spent years gaslighting and further traumatising her in various courts and police interview rooms.
She has, in short, suffered for most of her life. Delia’s experiences may have been extreme – to the extent that she almost died on a number of occasions, and has been left with pain and disfigurement from the injuries Sweeney inflicted on her – but we all know only too well, from any number of other real-world cases, that the failures of the system to defend and protect women only vary in degree. In at least two other cases (those of Melissa Halstead and Paula Fields, which are alluded to in the drama), Sweeney did murder them, dismember their bodies and dump their remains in canals in Holland and London.
