The boy choked to death with a candle – and the rich kid killer who tried to get off lightly: How a mother finally got justice for her son, 23, whose life was taken by a drug-crazed aristocrat on a Swiss ski trip

Four years after Alex Morgan was bludgeoned and choked to death in a Swiss chalet by the playboy son of a wealthy aristocrat, his mother received an email from the office of the state prosecutor, asking if she would like his personal possessions back.

Katja Faber was confused. The bag Alex, 23, had packed for the ill-fated ski trip had already been returned to her.

His watch, passport and wallet had arrived, in plastic pouches with police numbers on them, which had been ‘pretty bloody tough’.

Katja, who had worked as a criminal barrister in London before Alex was born (‘and thank God for that,’ she says today), asked what items they meant. A list duly arrived.

She says: ‘I could not believe what I was reading. It listed all Alex’s clothes — jeans, shirt, underwear, and specified that they were all covered in blood.

‘Then at the bottom it said “a candle”. It specified how long the candle was. I had to look again. I sat there, looking at this list, thinking: “Am I seeing things? Am I going mad?” ’

It beggars belief. Alex, who attended prestigious Gordonstoun School in Scotland, had been the victim of the most brutal attack by his friend Bennet von Vertes, whose own impeccably connected family own an art gallery in Zurich.

En route to a skiing trip, where he was due to meet his mother, on December 30, 2014, Alex had accepted the offer of a bed for the night in the von Vertes’ family chalet, in the exclusive enclave of Kusnacht, where residents include Tina Turner.

Following a debauched evening which included a drug-fuelled game of chess, they returned to the chalet, and it was here, in the drawing room overlooking Lake Zurich, that von Vertes, high on cocaine and ketamine, launched his frenzied attack.

Katja has never been able to stomach looking at the pictures that were offered as evidence in court, but unfortunately she knows every terrible forensic detail, down to the reach of the blood splatter.

Alex — much smaller than his friend, whom he had met at university in London — had his head caved in, was slashed with glass and beaten with a sculpture and a heavy candlestick. His injuries were so horrific that a closed coffin was required.

What killed him, however, was having the candle rammed down his throat, while being strangled. ‘And yes, this was the candle I was being asked if I wanted,’ says Katja. ‘Apparently, because it was found in him, it was deemed to be one of Alex’s possessions.’ She pauses, searching for words.

‘This is what you go through, you see, as the mother. This is the utter horror of it. And nothing can prepare you for it.’

There have been ‘countless’ times over the past seven and a half years that Katja, 58, has wondered if she has stumbled into a horror movie.