Aristocrat who killed Briton with candelabra after mistaking him for alien in drug-addled rage freed after three years

Bennet von Vertes also cleared of seperate sexual assault charge by Zurich court

An aristocrat convicted of manslaughter in 2017 after choking, stabbing, and beating a man to death with a candelabra has been freed after judges ruled he had not known what he was doing at the time of the incident.

Bennet von Vertes, 34, was initially found guilty by a Swiss court of voluntary manslaughter after killing 23-year-old UK citizen Alex Morgan in 2014 in a drug-fuelled rage – with lawyers claiming he had mistaken his victim for a green-faced alien, according to Swiss newspaper Blick.

The son of a Hungarian-German aristocrat and art gallerist was initially ordered to spend twelve-and-a-half years in prison – a sentence that included punishment for one separate charge of raping a woman in London.

However he will now walk free after receiving a course of drug addiction therapy having served only three years behind bars – with judges finding him guilty of the lesser crime of negligent killing, while clearing him of the sexual assault charge entirely.

In 2014, Morgan had arranged to meet Von Vertes at his family’s chalet near Lake Zurich as part of a skiing holiday with his mother, Katja Faber. The 23-year-old had previously met the aristocrat through Regents University in London where they both studied business administration.

However during the visit a day before New Year ’s Eve the killer is said to have flown into a psychosis-induced rage after an argument over Swedish folk music.

During an assault in which he bludgeoned his victim around the head and body 50 times, von Vert stabbed Morgan with glass from a broken coffee table and proceeded to beat him with a candelabra before ramming a candle down his throat and strangling him.

The Swiss high court in Zurich heard Von Vertes had taken sleeping pills, cocaine and ketamine before the incident.

After the hearing the victim’s mother, a former criminal barrister who now works as a bereavement councillor, said in a statement: “There are no words for how I feel this morning.

“The justice systems the world over are broken. Victims have zero rights. My son’s killer goes free”.

Von Vertes went on to deny the sexual assault charge against him, with his lawyers arguing that the woman had visited an art fair with him the day after the alleged incident.

The high court ruled that they had reason to doubt his accuser’s claim despite acknowledging they did not believe she had “invented anything”.