Dutch officials said the first victim was Melissa Halstead, 33, a model and photographer who grew up in Oakwood.
Joan Callahan Halstead, Melissa’s step-mother who lives in Kettering, said Melissa left home at 19 after being recruited to model for the top New York City agency Ford Models.
Melissa grew up the daughter of Dayton dentist Jack Halstead, who died in 2006 — two years before her remains were positively identified.
After 12 years that included steady work throughout Europe, her career in modeling at an end, Melissa Halstead opened her own photography studio in The Netherlands, Joan Callahan Halstead said.
According to a BBC report, British authorities suspect a carpenter named John Sweeney killed Halstead. Sweeney, now in jail on a life sentence for the attempted murder of an ex-girlfriend with an ax, had a relationship with Halstead.
Sweeney met Halstead in 1988 while she worked as a photographer in London. They had a volatile relationship but nevetheless moved to Austria together at some point, the BBC said.
Sweeney was convicted there of assaulting her with a hammer and spent six months in jail. She moved far away from him to Amsterdam, but Sweeney followed her after he was released from jail. He managed to persuade her to allow him to move in.
In July 1992, Sweeney left The Netherlands suddenly and returned to London.
A few days later, a torso was found floating in the canal. Halstead’s body was originally buried in a grave without a name before she was finally identified in 2008 using new DNA techniques. Her remains have since been returned, according to prosecutors.
Step-mother Joan Callahan Halstead said that at one point in her conflict with a man who was stalking her, Melissa telephoned her father in a desperate tone asking for money to come home. But before any money was sent, she disappeared.
Jack Halstead was haunted by the event until his death at the age of 85, Joan said. “He was a quiet man, but I know it bothered him deeply all his life,” she said.
A second victim linked to Sweeney is Paula Fields, a 31-year-old British mother of three and a crack cocaine addict, found in 2001 by children fishing in the Regent’s Canal in London.
Prosecutors spokeswoman Jeichien de Graaff told the Associated Press: “We assume that these two women were killed by the same person.”
As part of their investigation of Sweeney, British police have seized “hundreds of grisly drawings and poems depicting bloody attacks on female victims and the police,” the BBC reported. In one passage, he wrote: “I’m just a manimal, twisted and confused, very dysfunctional.”
Dutch prosecutors and police appealed on national television Tuesday night for information that could help crack the cases. Their British counterparts made a similar appeal Monday night on the British Broadcasting Corp.’s Crimewatch show.
Crimewatch said both women were in their early 30s when they were killed, both had lived in London and were reported to have been in violent relationships and become addicted to drugs.
John Huffman, 53, now a businessman in San Luis Obispo, Calif., said he attended school in Oakwood with Halstead in the 1970s. He read about her on the DaytonDailyNews website and recognized her photo.
“From what I remember, this would be the same girl that I knew,” he said. “I am sorry to hear of this unfortunate end. She was very beautiful, funny and smart. It’s a tragic shame.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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