Alex Morgan, the son of wealthy aristocrats, was choked to death and bludgeoned in a Swiss chalet. His mother got an email from his office asking for her permission to return his possessions.
Katja Faber seemed confused. Alex (23 years old) had brought the bag for her ill-fated ski trip. It was already returned to Alex.
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. The correct list 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”. The candle’s length was also indicated. It was so clear that I needed to look at it again. I sat there, looking at this list, thinking: “Am I seeing things? Am I going mad?” ’
It is hard to believe. Alex attended the Gordonstoun School in Scotland and was the victim of the brutal attack by Bennet von Vetes, his friend who is impeccably connected to a Zurich art gallery.
Alex Morgan died four years ago after being bludgeoned in a Swiss chalet, choked to death by the playboy child of a wealthy Aristocrat. In 2004, his mother was sent an email asking her if she wanted his personal belongings back.
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.
They had a great time and enjoyed a raucous evening, which also included a game of drug-fuelled chess. After that, they went back to the chalet. Here, at the drawing room overlooking Lake Zurich was where Von Vertes unleashed his wild attack.
Katja was never able to bear looking at court-examined photos, but she is very familiar with every forensic detail down to bloodsplatter.
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. The severity of his injuries required a coffin.
He was killed when the candle was rammed into his throat and 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. It is the absolute horror. 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.
Alex, a pupil at Gordonstoun School (Scotland), was the victim of Bennet von vertes’ most vicious attack.
She tells me that two weeks after Alex’s funeral she received a bill from the company that had removed his body from the chalet. ‘I thought the State was responsible for these things, but apparently not.
‘They sent an itemised bill —to me — charging me for the plastic sheeting they had used to lay Alex’s body on. It was the first time I cried. I thought: “I cannot do this.” ’ And yet she has. Katja was in court, again, this week, in Switzerland, in what she hopes is the ‘final, final’ bid to secure justice for her son.
Since before her 2017 trial, she has seen courtrooms numerous times. Von Vertes was sentenced to 12 and a half years for intentional murder.
It was enough to make the trial difficult. Von Vertes was also found guilty for raping another woman in London. In Switzerland, defendants may be tried simultaneously for different offenses.
After his attorneys successfully argued that he had been drug-stricken, his 2019 appeal saw his conviction reduced.
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 (above), in the exclusive enclave of Kusnacht, where residents include Tina Turner
He was given a three-year prison sentence, though he was released due to time served — on condition he entered a drug rehab unit.
Katja felt distraught after downloading a brochure about the clinic. ‘Only in Switzerland would it have a glossy brochure,’ she says. ‘It looks like a spa, a lovely old building with cloisters and a beautiful garden.
‘I discovered that a couple of times a week he was attending art history lectures in Bern.’
She was also dumbfounded when the von Vertes family offered her 47,000 Swiss Francs (£39,000) to cover funeral costs and as ‘emotional compensation’ for her son’s death.
‘The reduced charges were saying that it was unfortunate Alex had died, but it really wasn’t anyone’s fault. That was insane. Does this mean that anyone who is high on drugs, or alcohol, cannot be held accountable?’
The prosecution — on her insistence — launched a counter appeal, and on Tuesday, after a marathon battle, victory was hers. Von Vertes was found guilty and the original sentence was reinstated.
It may still be that he can serve the rest of his sentence in the rehab unit, ‘but that’s not the most important part. The important thing is that I can call him a killer,’ insists Katja.
She says she ‘lost the plot, and started crying’ at the defence’s summing up.
‘The tactic they went for was to stress the awfulness of what had been done to Alex — the argument being that it was so depraved that Bennet mustn’t have been in control of his actions. To have to hear it in a closed courtroom filled with people wearing suits, artificial lighting and microphones. . .
‘They were talking about Alex as if he wasn’t a human being.
Alex with a Chelsea FC FC hat (left) along with a poster in his memory featuring Alex Morgan’s date of birth, and the day he died.
‘The problem with the justice system — and I am not just talking about Switzerland — is that it is not there to bring justice to the victim. It’s there to enforce law. But there is a distinction.
‘The prosecutors were not representing Alex. They were representing the State.’
However, she was actually representing Alex. Katja played an important role in the struggle for justice for her son’s cause.
Not only did she push the prosecution lawyers to continue fighting but also engaged her own legal team including her brother, a barrister.
‘He was also called Alex, and they are buried in the same cemetery,’ she says.
Alex was her detective, and she turned to her own detective skills, looking through every piece of evidence that she could find. Even sat down as witnesses gave statements. This, because of the vagaries of the Swiss system, brought her face-to-face with her son’s killer.
‘I had to sit three feet from him [von Vertes]His cashmere jumper. His lawyers — he had three top lawyers — seemed to bring in everyone who had ever met him, including his manicurist.’ Every night, Katja would study the paperwork. Once, she tells me, she asked for her son’s socks to be sent for forensic examination.
Alex Morgan’s LinkedIn profile photo. Following graduation, Alex Morgan wanted to start a business.
Why? ‘Because they were arguing that this had been a fight that got out of hand and there was a suggestion that Alex got to his feet again. He would find shards of glass in his socks, I stated. They found no shards.’
Her legal training was not the only thing that she had to learn. The money came, as well. Katja, her family and friends are obviously wealthy even though they don’t belong to the same super-rich family as the von Vertes. Alex’s father is a financier in London (the couple are divorced, although he too attended the trial). Katja is the mother of two additional children. She owns a property in Switzerland and a farm in Spain.
The two are her main interests. She also paid legal fees that were beyond the reach of most. She won’t be specific about her total spend, but says she sold an apartment to fund her legal fight and confirms we are talking hundreds of thousands of pounds.
‘The money isn’t important. To fight for your kids, you would spend your last dollar. My kidney would be donated, but what about those who don’t have the money? I am 100 per cent convinced that if I hadn’t had a knowledge of the law and the financial means, we would not have got a guilty verdict.’
Alex Morgan was killed by a 1-metre-long candlestick and an iron sculpture.
This case is unusual and complex because of the quirks in Swiss law. Katja also says that justice is not always easy to find.
‘One of the things I found most upsetting in all this was being pitched against extreme wealth and entitlement. I’m am convinced that Bennet’s people, his family, thought we would just go away.
‘I don’t know if they thought Alex was an English kid who didn’t matter. However, they were not prepared for the power of a mom who lost her son. It is impossible to believe they knew I am a lawyer. The combination made me a thorn in their side.’
Katja is a strong woman. Katja is a meticulous and forensic lawyer who can recall dates and other details. As a BBC journalist, she worked for some time and wrote about her grief.
She is an articulate part of herself. Her farmer side (she cultivates lemons and avocados), is pragmatic and outdoor-oriented. It is her mother, however, that howls the loudest.
Alex — ‘darling Alex’ — was her eldest son. She remembers everything, from the first time she felt him move when she was pregnant, to his first steps, and ‘how he loved Power Rangers, how he was scared of water, what a good skier he was’. Alex was clever, complex, dyslexic, witty, funny, she says, ‘and stubborn, like me’.
Alex had made plans to see his mom in Switzerland, and then go skiing together with her after Christmas 2014.
Katja wasn’t at her apartment, however, because she was with her daughter, who was recovering from an operation, in Spain. ‘He’d lost his keys the previous November but it was no big deal because he was going to sleep on a friend’s sofa that night. I can see that the offer of kipping at Bennet’s would have been more attractive.’
Then things get more confusing. She knows Alex and von Vertes had been at a friend’s house, playing that drug-fuelled chess game, before they hailed a taxi to go back to the von Vertes’ chalet.
Brit Alex Morgan, as a baby. Before he graduated from Gordonstoun in Scotland.
The drugs were further ingested, which was then accompanied by fine wines. Alex was thrown against the coffee table by von Vertes (6ft 5in), a kickboxer. The glass top cracked. After he had stabbed him with shards, he reached for the 4ft candelabra.
The onslaught was such that Alex’s skull was caved in and his facial bones shattered. After showering, von Vertes called the police saying, chillingly, ‘my finger is bleeding and my friend is dead’.
Katja received the news from Interpol via a dispatched police officer. ‘There were two. It was obvious to me that there was another woman officer when I looked. Always sends a woman. Her age was just a teen. I shouted. You go mad. I apologised that she had to witness that.’
Katja’s first instinct was to run to her child. ‘I just wanted to get to him. I remember saying: “Oh my God, he will be cold, he is cold. I have to get him out of there.” I know it is irrational, but you cannot just turn that part of you off, the part that is always saying to your child: “Where is your coat?” ’
She’d wanted to stroke his hair, hug and kiss him, but due to the extent of his injuries, she eventually decided ‘Alex would not want me to see him like that, so every day until the funeral I just sat by the closed casket’.
The eulogy was written by her, she and Alex’s friends. They brought white roses to the funeral, and they also helped design the headstone. Alex was younger than her two children.
‘My daughter and I slept in the same bed for months after Alex died. Both of us needed it. My son was just 12. This was so much for him. Alex kept telling him that he would return as a spirit. He fell in love with the martial arts. What if someone wanted to kill him?’
She does have sympathy for von Vertes’ mother, however, who was in court every day, too. ‘Once I actually went up to her. I hugged her. She said: “We have both lost our sons to drugs,” but at that point I walked away. Her son hasn’t been lost to drugs. She is able to see her son, hug him, and plan for the future. Whereas my son is in the cemetery.’
She knows that the von Vertes parents cannot be held responsible for their son’s actions. But her mother struggles with the issue. They must also be able to see that the son they raised should bear all of the consequences.
‘He was able to do whatever he wanted. His access to all cars and drugs enabled him to make dangerous decisions that ultimately led directly towards disaster. It was not their catastrophe, though, it was ours.’