Mr Sweeney, originally from Merseyside but lived in London, was serving a life sentence for the attempted murder of a third girlfriend but had been the prime suspect inthe killings, the court was told.
Born in Soviet Georgia in 1937, he received his first prison sentencein 1957 for resisting arrest and, during his thirdinthe 1960s, became a "thief in law", a Russian term comparable to a Mafia "godfather".