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- [00:02]
Katya
This episode contains descriptions of violence, sexual assault, grief and depression.
- [00:12]
Katie Strick
As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods. They kill us for their support.
- [00:20]
Katya
Here's Katya reading a quote from the announcement of Alex's death, published in several Swiss German newspapers in January 2015, just a few weeks after he was killed. It's a line from King Lear, one of Shakespeare's tragedies. And Katya, Alex's mother, thought it spoke to one of the cruelest lessons she came to learn in the aftermath of her son's death.
- [00:44]
Katie Strick
And it kind of struck a chord because it speaks to this question of somehow we are marionettes, really, that the gods just play with us and they can take our life away because they just feel like it.
- [01:03]
Katya
Katya's thought about this often in the years since Alex's death. She wanted justice for her son. But what does that mean exactly? Vengeance. Rehabilitation. Can justice ever be truly served after an act of such sick brutality? But Shakespeare's famous quote points to a truth about another element of this story too. This idea that we're just pawns on a chessboard, powerless to the cruel whims of some great uncaring power. Except, well, in this case, this great uncaring power has a face and a name. Bennett Von Wertes. And he is certainly no God.
- [01:51]
Katie Strick
And this is actually what the wealthy can do too. That they can somehow play with us, us normal mortal people. Those of us who actually, you know, go to work and live normal lives and that they. They kill for their sport. And I thought it was actually very fitting.
- [02:17]
Katya
Before Bennett's trial began, Katya didn't know much about her son's killer. But she did know that he came from a specific world. A world where money equals power, and power makes the law, or thinks it's above the law altogether. Early on, Bennett claimed that he was acting in self defense. That bludgeoning Alex with a candlestick that night had been an accident. But can anyone be expected to believe that? Could Bennett, a 6 foot 5 kickboxer, really have just been protecting himself when he rammed that candle down his friend's throat? His past behavior was certainly starting to suggest otherwise. Because what Katya did not know when she wrote that announcement of Alex's death back in January 2015, was that Bennett wouldn't just be going on trial for Alex's homicide. When the case reached court two years.
- [03:09]
Katie Strick
Later, I couldn't have foreseen that there would be other allegations and the indictment would be expanded to include other crimes. There was no way I could have.
- [03:21]
Katya
Known that It turns out 2014 had been a year of escalating violence for the young art dealer. And the truth about his past behavior was quickly about to unravel. I'm Katie Strick and this is Injustice Killer Privilege from the London Standard and message heard. Episode 3 Ticking Time Bomb.
- [03:53]
Christine Brand
I remember it was a sunny day and I. I have in my memories also spring flowers.
- [04:00]
Katya
It's the 27th of March, 2017, and Bennett von Vertes is just about to begin his five day trial at the Milan district court near Zurich. Swiss court reporter Christine Brand was there.
- [04:13]
Christine Brand
The house of justice is in a little village, so it's also actually a pretty little house. It's not a huge house of justice. It looks rather like a schoolhouse from the 70s. And that's also the reason why the whole building was reserved for this one case.
- [04:32]
Katya
Katya hadn't slept at all before the first day of Bennett's trial, which was hardly surprising. She was still in a place of raw grief and nervous about what she might hear, and even more nervous about the potential outcome. She knew how easily these things could go wrong.
- [04:49]
Katie Strick
It was hard. It was very hard. And I know that the word hard doesn't even come close to describing what it felt like to be there with everything that I felt and the fact that my children were there and the hurt and the grief and the nerves and the unknown and the fact that it was going on and on and on.
- [05:12]
Katya
She'd come face to face with her son's killer for the first time a year and a half before during the preliminary examination hearings. These are non public hearings in which the prosecutor has the opportunity to ask questions of the accused and witnesses ahead of the trial. If you're unfamiliar with Swiss criminal procedure like I was, hearings like this tend to be held in a small room and families of victims rarely if ever, sit in on them. That's what their lawyers are for. So Katya sitting in on that first hearing was highly unusual at this point. It was just less than a year after Alex's brutal killing and Katya found herself within touching distance of the man who'd committed it.
- [05:59]
Katie Strick
He seemed quite relaxed. In fact, he seemed almost bored by what was going on. And he was very well dressed. He didn't look like a criminal at all. He looked like somebody who'd kind of casually walked in off the street and just kind of meandered in by mistake to this hearing.
- [06:20]
Katya
She compares that first hearing to being thrown into a lion's den.
- [06:24]
Katie Strick
And Bennett was so tall that he towered over Everybody, including the policeman who was holding open the door. And that's the first time I realized, gosh, he really is huge. And so they started walking down the desks, shaking everybody's hand. And I remember thinking, what are we doing? What on earth is going on? Why are we shaking his hand? And nothing could have prepared me for that. Absolutely nothing. And so the defence lawyer was shaking the hands of the other people and so was Bennett. And eventually they were standing in front of me and I was frozen to the spot. I couldn't stick out my hand. I mean, I didn't want to shake Bennett's hand. It was such an extraordinary way to actually meet. Inverted commas. The man who had killed my son. And then he plunked himself down at the table next to mine, literally an arm's length away. It was very, very hard to just sit there and remain composed and not to suddenly get up and just start shouting.
- [07:48]
Katya
Bennett had seemed almost disdainful in that first hearing. And there had been a resounding silence from his family towards Katya up until this point. No letters, no phone calls, just an evolving set of statements from Bennett in the months after the killing that he'd killed Alex because Alex had told him he was the devil, that Alex had choked him and he'd acted in self defense. And he also said this.
- [08:14]
Christine Brand
He said Alex had red eyes and he had a green face and he looked like an alien and hunted him and wanted to kill him. He came up with this story after one year.
- [08:24]
Katya
Bennett claimed he hadn't shared his alien anecdote from the start because he was afraid of the psychiatrists at the time of the initial hearing. In all autumn 2015, he'd played to the self defense line of argument. And by the time the trial came around 18 months later, in March 2017, that's two years since the killing. His lawyers were claiming that he had killed Alex during a drug induced psychotic break, giving him diminished culpability. Katya's brother and sister had come along to support her at the trial, as had Alex's father, some friends, too many of Katya's, and many more of Alex's. They'd been rallying as Team A for years now, supporting each other over WhatsApp and gathering at the grave in Zolikon, a village near Zurich, on Alex's birthday each year and on the anniversary of his death each December.
- [09:20]
Katie Strick
There were all the people that I cared about, you know, my children and my family and my friends and Alex's friends, and I felt so protective of them and I Couldn't protect them. And I knew that they had to go through this process that for them, this was the first time that they were being exposed to the reality of what was happening. So I inhabited various levels of stress.
- [09:48]
Katya
There was a sea of journalists in place when Team A arrived at the courthouse. Swiss privacy laws meant names couldn't be reported during the trial, but they could still make reference to the killer's background as a wealthy gallery owner and supposed aristocrat. The Gold Coast Killer. That was the go to nickname for Bennett among reporters at the time. Christine Brand was one of those reporters in court.
- [10:13]
Christine Brand
He was actually a handsome young man. He looked good. He had long blond hair, sleeked back, and somehow he looked like an adult child, like an overgrown child. He seemed kind of ungrown to me. He didn't show any emotion. He just. Yeah, he seemed emotionless.
- [10:34]
Katya
Unlike Christine and her fellow court reporters, this was Katya's second time in a room with Bennett. But this time felt different somehow.
- [10:45]
Katie Strick
He seemed less sure of himself during the trial. And I observed how his hair had grown and how he had his hair in a different style. That. That kind of impacted me somehow. That time had passed.
- [11:04]
Katya
Andre, one of Alex's friends from Zurich, was hit with a confusing cocktail of emotions when he locked eyes on Bennett in the corner courthouse. It was during a break in the trial, and he spotted Bennett being escorted back into a holding room. Remember, this was someone Andre had hung out with in nightclubs as a young adult, now standing there as the killer in a homicide trial.
- [11:28]
Andre
He was standing there and I looked down the hallway holding the two cups of coffee in my hand, looking to my right, and then I see him look over also down the hallway. And then, I don't know, it must have been a split second, but I reckon he recognized me. I had felt kind of in one way, good, in another way, weird because I knew him through so many, you know, different social events and things, and he was just, you know, the German guy, party guy.
- [12:00]
Katya
The trial was expected to last five days, and by day two, the press had. Tension had spread across the world. Mexico, Japan, Hungary, Indonesia.
- [12:12]
Andre
You only know that kind of media frenzy from television, local news, movies and whatnot. Standing there watching, all the media reporters being like hungry dogs, trying to get a picture, trying to get information. I was just totally overwhelmed.
- [12:32]
Katya
British journalists in particular had got wind of the story and flown in, lured by the initial reports in the Swiss press. For them, the story had everything. Youth, class, glamour, violence. An ex public schoolboy killed in a gruesome attack by a playboy socialite. And the British media had the one thing the Swiss press didn't the ability to name and photograph the killer. Stories of Bennett Von Vertes, the drugged up son of an art dealer, quickly rippled across the Internet. For Katya, the media frenzy was overwhelming.
- [13:12]
Katie Strick
And we almost drove into the back of a TV van, you know, with sort of satellite dishes. I mean, I was absolutely shocked. The whole place was overrun by journalists and many had come from the uk, but also many had come from Germany. So somehow the. The story had broken and had spread.
- [13:39]
Katya
Swiss privacy laws meant that Katya and her family weren't being named in the local press at least. But even under her cloak of anonymity, Katya was completely overcome.
- [13:50]
Katie Strick
There are these kind of strange moments when you are either outside the court, waiting in the corridor or the lobby and you see the lawyers and they're.
- [13:59]
Christine Brand
All kind of like, ha, ha, ha.
- [14:00]
Katie Strick
Ha, yeah, we got some, you know, they're talking about their weekend and oh well, blah, blah, blah. And of course they're doing that. This is, this is normal for them. But it's so disrespectful. You know, you're standing a couple of meters away from them, your child is dead and has been killed the most awful way. And it's really hard because you feel like going up to them and shaking them and saying, how dare you talk in this way. Don't you realize what this is about?
- [14:29]
Katya
Katya and I have spoken a lot about this lack of agency that she felt during the trial. She wasn't representing anyone as a barrister now. She was just the nameless mother of a nameless boy who was killed by a nameless attacker.
- [14:44]
Katie Strick
I mean, covidim is a term that is used nowadays. Some people call it survivors of homicide. I don't like the idea of survivor of homicide, but it is a term that is used. So when you're a co victim and you're at court, whether you're part of the family of the victim or somebody that loved the victim, there are all these little things that happen.
- [15:08]
Katya
Appearing in court as a co victim came with its more practical challenges.
- [15:12]
Katie Strick
For example, you know, just going to the bathroom. It had never occurred to me as a lawyer that this might be something that is a problem, but it is. You know, there's one lady's. And we suddenly realized, I and my, you know, women friends that we had to kind of keep a watch out because otherwise we were going to be in the bathroom at the same time as Bennett's mother or anyone else who was there on his behalf. So, you know, you kind of think, well, am I going to be, you know, in the cubicle next to the mother peeing and are we going to be washing our hands and saying, oh, it's a lovely day today? I mean, what, how do you deal with that?
- [15:57]
Katya
The facts of the trial itself quickly took their toll.
- [16:00]
Katie Strick
And then to have to watch the defense lawyers and listen to the defense lawyers say what they say, it's their job, I know, but it doesn't somehow take away from the pain of hearing them say what they say.
- [16:16]
Katya
Alex's friend Andre remembers it vividly too.
- [16:21]
Andre
A really odd feeling, seeing someone sitting there being held accountable for something he did to a really good friend of yours. And just so many mixed feelings of, you know, sadness, hate, being lost. But then again, stuck in a court listening to whatever's happening, hoping for, yeah, some kind of justice.
- [16:45]
Katya
The details of the case were horrifying. Forensic scientists determined that the attack on Alex lasted at least an hour and that Bennett strangled him after stabbing him with a shard of glass and battering him with that candlestick. By the time Bennett arrived at the Milan district court where his trial was being held, his lawyers had submitted references from 200 people who knew him, attesting to his good character. They described their client as a gentleman and a teddy bear. They were sticking to the psychosis line of argument by this point. You might remember diminished culpability as a result of drugs. Bennett's lawyers even claimed that Alex had said something on that fateful night that had somehow provoked Bennett's psychosis.
- [17:33]
Christine Brand
Alex told something like, it feels like we are the last human beings on the planet. And Bennett told afterwards that that triggered him somehow, that he was afraid of these sins or something like this.
- [17:48]
Katya
You might be wondering why any of this matters to the case, the killer being described as a teddy bear. That Alex had made an innocuous comment to him on the night he was killed. But here's the thing about criminal law. It's not based on the results of the act itself, but on the intention of the perpetrator. Bennett's self defense claim was quickly undermined by the lack of injuries on his own body. He had just one cut on his finger after the attack after all. But his lawyers pressed on, leaning deeper into the line that he had a psychotic episode.
- [18:25]
Christine Brand
The judge confronted him with the previous statements that he made at the police station and before the court case started. So he confronted him with everything that he said, he confronted him with the contradictions. And Bennett was just sitting There, not moving, not saying any word.
- [18:42]
Katya
Bennett refused to testify on the advice of his lawyers.
- [18:46]
Christine Brand
And it made me kind of angry. You know, I always think when you commit a crime like this, then be a man and talk. It's. For me, it's just I really dislike it when criminals don't open the mouth. And it was really annoying. The judge was really pushing and he said, what's about that? What's about that? And all he got was silence.
- [19:13]
Katya
The defence lawyers argued that Bennett had acted in a temporary fit of madness. One of them told the court, when you see pictures of the crime scene, it's clear that madness must have been the director here. But what Bennett was on trial for was more than just the supposed temporary fit of madness. In December 2014. We'll be right back. Bennett wasn't just on trial in 2017 for killing Alex. He was also facing charges of a rape and sexual assault of a former girlfriend. Earlier that year, in the autumn of 2014, the warning signs about the supposed teddy bear had in fact been everywhere.
- [20:04]
Christine Brand
Going back years, there was an incident where Bennett attacked his father while he was on drugs.
- [20:11]
Katya
As the prosecution made clear during the trial in 2011, three years before Alex's killing, Bennett reportedly attacked his father with a stick.
- [20:22]
Christine Brand
Bennett said afterward that he thought his sister and the stepmother were witches and his father was a wizard. I think it was not bad fight, but it was something. I mean, that's not normal in families, actually. And when the father fled to the neighbors, it also shows that he was afraid of his own son.
- [20:42]
Katya
Bennett was sent to rehab after this particular incident in 2011. But by 2014, the violence had resumed. Journalist Sasha Battiani calls this Bennett's year of escalation. There were, you know, several alarm flags and warnings. Bennett's ex girlfriend, who has chosen to remain anonymous, agreed to testify in court. She'd been Bennett's first great love, according to her testimony.
- [21:16]
Christine Brand
I think she really loved him and probably the relationship was good when he was clean, but when he was under drugs, it must have been terrible. She said that he could get very angry just because the little things, like when the potato was not really cooked the way he liked it and he was hitting her in the face from time to time. And she said that she always hoped that he gets clean, that he stopped taking drugs.
- [21:51]
Katya
She spoke about how he didn't go to work for days on end, he was so drugged up, how he'd fallen off his chair in a restaurant and collapsed in a club. She said there was never a day without Drugs and his friends had helped him sharing their urine. Even so, he didn't blow his cover at doctor's tests. He could go completely berserk over small things, she told the court. And she had spoken to Bennett's mother, warning that he could be dangerous. She spoke to his father too, but he said it was her own fault that things weren't going well in the relationship.
- [22:26]
Christine Brand
She was also taking care for him because when he lost control, she was the one who had to manage the situation.
- [22:35]
Katya
Towards the end of July 2014, five months before Alex's killing, Bennett supposedly tried to push this same girlfriend out of a moving cab. They were in Ibiza at the time and he was high on drugs and.
- [22:50]
Christine Brand
During this taxi drive, he opened the door at full speed and tried to push her out. And she was really. Yes, she was fighting for her life. She was afraid that she gonna die.
- [23:04]
Katya
Bennett's defence, according to his lawyers, was that he had feared his ex girlfriend would, quote, lure him into the dark and kill him. Three months later, the violence against his ex girlfriend escalated further.
- [23:18]
Christine Brand
They were in this hotel in London. He was under drugs and he raped her against her will. And then he also choked her so long that she almost passed out. She just saw black in front of her eyes and she said, I was screaming, screaming, screaming. And then when she got sand, he stopped.
- [23:41]
Katya
The relationship ended after that. Bennett's ex girlfriend told the court that she had tried to contact him after hearing of Alex's death. She claimed, quote, his mother said dismissively that the dead person was a drug dealer. She told me to be careful about giving any statements to the police. Christine still remembers what it was like to sit in on her testimony.
- [24:08]
Christine Brand
You could feel it like a pressure in the air, like the air is heavy and it pushes you down and you just feel very sorry that she had to go through this.
- [24:20]
Katya
This ex girlfriend's testimony was paramount in moving things in favor of the prosecution. People close to Bennett should have seen Alex's killing coming, was the argument. They charted Bennett's history of violence in front of the judge and asked for a sentence of up to 16 years.
- [24:39]
Christine Brand
And the prosecutor said even when he was not aware what he is doing, he was aware when he takes drugs that he can become dangerous. And he had to be aware that he can become dangerous when he takes ketamine because he had attacked people before when he was on the drugs, he attacked his girlfriend, he raped his girlfriend, attacked his own father when he was under drugs. So he should have known when he takes drugs that he can be Dangerous that he can hurt people and even more maybe that was the words of the prosecutor.
- [25:16]
Katya
Prosecutors argued that Bennett had taken a cocktail of drugs that he'd been specifically warned against taking on the night he killed Alex. The ensuing disaster was in many ways.
- [25:29]
Christine Brand
When he went to a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist said, when you don't stop taking drugs, you're in danger to get a psychosis. And so he was aware that it can happen bad things when he takes drugs.
- [25:44]
Katya
He was a ticking time bomb. Alex's killing was far from random, was the argument. Naturally, Bennett's lawyers disagreed.
- [25:55]
Christine Brand
They, of course, they said the opposite. They said that when he took the drugs, he was out of his mind. He was not aware what he was doing, he was not aware that he commits a crime and so he is not responsible in the criminal sense.
- [26:11]
Katya
Bennett didn't look at Katya during the five day trial, which she thinks made it easier.
- [26:18]
Katie Strick
I mean, I would look at him constantly. Not once, not once did he look at me.
- [26:23]
Katya
Bennett's father, Laszlo, never showed up.
- [26:27]
Katie Strick
And I remember actually thinking, why isn't he here? I mean, from my point of view, whatever it is that your child has done, you may condemn their behaviour, you may disagree with what they've done, but you somehow still stand at their side because you love them. One part has nothing to do with the other. And in some ways I kind of felt sorry for Bennett because why wasn't his dad there?
- [27:02]
Katya
Bennett's mother, Geyser, however, came to court every day and Katya felt sorry for her too. Once during the trial, Katya went as far as to approach Geyser during a break.
- [27:15]
Katie Strick
And I felt so awful for both of us. It was just so. The whole thing was just so ghastly that I just opened my arms and we hugged. We just hugged for a while, in fact. And I realized as I was hugging her that I really needed that hug. I needed some kind of a acknowledgment on the part of her that she understood what I was going through. And eventually we kind of pulled apart and she said to me, I'm so sorry, yes, we've both lost our sons. She said this to me in German and then she says, two drugs. And honestly, it was as if she'd slapped me across the face. I was lost for words. I couldn't. I couldn't take it in what she'd said.
- [28:09]
Katya
It took Katya years to process that particular comment. The thought that Bennett's mother could really think that she and Katya were suffering the same kind of grief when her son was standing there in front of them and Katya's son was dead. Bennett's trial lasted five days. As expected, the verdict was announced in August 2017, several months after the trial was long done.
- [28:36]
Christine Brand
The first court sentenced Bennett to 12 and a half years in prison for intentional homicide, but also for rape and attempt to kill his girlfriend.
- [28:47]
Katya
A panel of three judges ruled that Bennett had acted with direct intent and found him guilty of intentional homicide, a Swiss term that roughly translates to non premeditated or voluntary murder, but has no direct equivalent in the UK. Bennett was sentenced to 12 and a half years in prison, nine years for the killing, three for rape and six months for driving offences, plus addiction treatment during that sentence. On top of that, he was ordered to pay Alex's family over 57,000 francs for the pain caused and 55,000 francs for damages, plus some of the legal costs, amounting to around 130,000 francs. As a quick aside, we reached out to Bennett's legal team about the allegations we make in this series. They responded to just 2 of our assertions. One of them had to do with Bennett's intentional homicide conviction. Confusingly, in the Swiss criminal code, there's a separate homicide charge called simply murder or article 112, which basically translates to premeditated murder. That is not what Bennett was convicted of here, which his team was keen to point out. They wrote the term murder is untrue and does not reflect the true circumstances. Here's Andre again on Bennett's sentence.
- [30:17]
Andre
You know, it's obviously a long time, but definitely from my point of view, it's not fair justice or, you know, compared to different countries and whatnot. But yeah, again, if you have good lawyers and a lot of money, you can, you know, not bend justice, but definitely gets you ahead.
- [30:35]
Katya
It was at this point in the proceedings when the judge asked if Bennett had anything to say to the victim's family after his sentencing. That's when he finally looked at Katya.
- [30:46]
Katie Strick
And his exact words, I can't remember. But he said something along the lines of, I am so sorry, you must believe me. I would take back what has happened, but I couldn't really sense any true remorse. I felt more that he was really wishing it hadn't happened. I may be wrong, but somehow you can feel that. You can tell by looking into a person's eyes. And that's not what I saw.
- [31:20]
Katya
To Katya, it was an apology, sure, but in the way a five year old says sorry to a parent because they realise they've been caught, not because they're truly sorry. She was upset at Bennett's seeming lack of remorse, but told reporters that the sentence was the best she could have hoped for and was relieved that she could finally begin her recovery, that the whole thing was over. She could go home and attempt to pick up the pieces of her life. Except, well, the whole thing was far from over. In front of the steps outside the courthouse, just a few minutes after the verdict was announced, Bennett's lawyer, a stern looking media specialist called Andreas Miley, announced his intention to appeal the sentence.
- [32:09]
Christine Brand
And they kept the opinion that Bennett was not aware what he was doing, that he was not aware that he is killing a person, that he was not aware that he's committing a crime because he was out of his mind because he was so much under drugs. And in this case, when you really don't know what you are doing, the highest penalty that you can get is three years of prison.
- [32:36]
Katya
It was as if Miley was saying, watch out, prepare yourselves, this isn't over yet. And he was right. In episode four, Katya's friends tell us about her transition from mother to defender in the battle of a lifetime.
- [32:55]
Katie Strick
Cartier just went into legal mode and she said to me on more than.
- [32:59]
Katya
One occasion, if I don't do something.
- [33:02]
Katie Strick
About this, this guy's gonna walk free.
- [33:05]
Katya
A psychology professor tells us about a loophole in the Swiss legal system and how Bennett's lawyers took advantage of it.
- [33:12]
Katie Strick
The question is, when this guy started.
- [33:14]
Katya
Drug consumption, couldn't he know that he.
- [33:19]
Christine Brand
Could react in that violent way?
- [33:22]
Katya
And Katya talks us through her nine year legal marathon and the moment she was told that her son's killer would walk free.
- [33:30]
Katie Strick
And I remember thinking, I can't, I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I need to get out of here.
- [33:41]
Katya
Killer privilege is a London standard and message Heard production. I'm your host, Katie Strick. This episode was Produced by Sophie McNulty. Ari Stott is our senior producer and James Cox is our production coordinator. Sandra Ferrari, Anna Van Praagh and Jake Warren are the executive producers. Sound editing by Lizzie Andrews and Alan Lear and music composition by Tom Biddle.