British mother wins appeal against man who killed her son with a candelabra

The ruling by Switzerland’s highest court could have profound implications in the 2014 murder case of a British man, reports Graham Keeley

Katja Faber and son Alex (Katja Faber)

The mother of a British man who was beaten with a candelabra, stabbed and choked to death has won a court victory which could put her son’s killer in prison.

Katja Faber’s son Alex Morgan, 23, was killed by Bennet von Vertes, the owner of an art gallery in Zurich, while on a skiing holiday to Switzerland with her in December 2014.

Von Vertes, 35, was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in 2017, as well as the rape of a woman on a separate occasion, and was sentenced to a 12½-year prison sentence.

However, in 2019, the appeal court in Zurich ruled that Von Vertes could not be convicted of voluntary  manslaughter because he had taken a cocktail of drugs and under Swiss law he was not in control of his actions. He was subsequently put on a drug rehabilitation scheme and released from prison.

The Supreme Court sitting in Lausanne threw out the appeal court ruling on Thursday on the manslaughter and rape cases.

The highest court in Switzerland ruled the appeal court had made a legal mistake in accepting Von Vertes’ version of events without checking it independently. The case will be returned to the appeal court which, if it rules against Vertes, could reinstate the original sentence or impose a longer jail term.

“I never gave up fighting and now we have won a victory.  This could put Von Vertes back in jail where he deserves to be,” Ms Faber, a British former barrister who lives in Switzerland, told The Independent.

“The most important thing for me is that the court has said he (Vertes) is guilty. However many times they do a Google clean up, he is still a killer and a rapist. People should know this.”

Ms Faber, 58, said she would do everything in her power to ensure that her son’s killer was sent to prison. Vertes’ whereabouts are currently unknown.

She said: “I would much rather know that (Vertes) is back in jail than sunning himself on some Brazilian beach.

“He had all these private lawyers (at his trial) and was found guilty yet he appealed because he had the financial resources. Then the appeal court overturned the conviction, which was an obscenity. This latest ruling restores my faith in the justice system."

Alex Morgan, who was born to a British father and attended Gordonstoun, the Moray boarding school whose alumni include the Duke of Rothesay and the late Duke of Edinburgh, met Von Vertes while they were studying business administration at Regent’s College, now Regent’s University London.

On December 30, 2014,  travelled to Zurich to see his mother and join his family on a skiing holiday. Mr Morgan visited Von Vertes, the son of a Hungarian-German aristocrat, at his family’s chalet near Lake Zurich.

Both men were drinking and, according to Von Vertes’s lawyers during the trial in Meilin, near Zurich, started to argue about Swedish folk music.

Von Vertes’s legal team said that he began to suffer from psychosis after taking sleeping pills, cocaine and ketamine, and attacked Mr Morgan in a frenzy because he believed that the Briton was an “alien with green eyes and red ears”.

Von Vertes bludgeoned Mr Morgan with a 13lb candelabra, stabbed him with glass and forced a candle down his throat. Mr Morgan suffered 50 blows to his head and numerous injuries to his body. After taking a shower and changing his clothes, the killer then called the police who found Mr Morgan with the candle still in him.

“I don’t want to live in a world where people who are victims don’t have any rights,” said Ms Faber. “You cannot imagine how destructive it is to have to be up against the justice system.”

“I would much rather I didn’t have to do this and I didn’t have to spend such an amount of time and energy and money. It is exhausting.”

Prosecutors appealed against the appeal court ruling on points of law and will seek to increase the sentence for Vertes for homicide, the rape and a traffic offence.

Ms Faber travelled to the United States to train as a bereavement counsellor dealing with child loss.

“I adopt a holistic approach in which I use nature to help people come to terms with taking one step at a time to walk into a new way of life as bereavement never goes away.,” she said.

She owns an avocado farm in southern Spain and has invited people to come to terms with their loss by helping collect the fruit.

The Independent has tried to contact the legal team for Von Vertes without success.