Justice at last for Briton killed with a candlestick by aristocrat
A BRITISH mother last night won a seven-year battle for justice after the aristocrat who brutally murdered her son with a candlestick was jailed.
Alex Morgan, 23, died after Bennet von Vertes went on a drugfuelled rampage and subjected his friend to a night of depraved violence, convinced his victim was an alien, during a skiing holiday in Switzerland in 2014.
Originally jailed for 12 years, Vertes’s conviction was downgraded to ‘negligent killing’ and his sentence cut to three years, sparking a marathon legal battle by Mr Morgan’s mother, Katja Faber, a former barrister and BBC journalist.
Last night, after Swiss appeal judges reinstated the initial punishment, plus a conviction for the rape of a woman in London in a separate case, Miss Faber told the Daily Mail: ‘Vertes is a killer and rapist. I am delighted and happy that justice was finally done. I am hugely relieved that he has got to go back to prison.’
Her son, a former pupil at Prince Charles’s school, Gordonstoun, was a ‘witty, funny and bright’ young man, she said.
Vertes is the son of an aristocratic Hungarian-German art dealer, but his drug addiction led him on a downward spiral of violence. He met Mr Morgan while studying at Regent’s College in London.
‘Nothing comes close to child loss for any parent,’ said Miss Faber, who now lives in Spain. ‘In Alex’s case the brutality in which he was killed is another thing altogether. Every day, as a parent, you have to say, “I will get up and I will survive”.
‘I have had to fight to get justice. By chance I used to be a barrister and I know people with more money get a better deal.
‘Most families of homicide victims do not have the energy to take this up. I may have been a barrister but this has not helped me deal with the grief. It has been horrendous to sit in court day after day.’
In 2014, Mr Morgan flew to spend New Year with his family on a skiing holiday. When he arrived in Zurich, he stayed with Vertes after losing the keys to his mother’s flat.
Following a drug-fuelled game of chess, the pair took a taxi to Vertes’ parents’ villa in Kusnacht. A powerfully built 6ft 5in kickboxer, Vertes threw Mr Morgan against a glass table which shattered. The Briton was stabbed with a shard of glass and hit with a 3ft candlestick.
During a hearing in Zurich, Vertes told judges: ‘I am sorry but I don’t have any reasonable memories of the crime.’ As for the rape, Vertes said: ‘I’ve never hurt a woman’s hair.’
‘He’s a killer and a rapist’