Alex allegedly saw Nickell’s killer wash the blood off his hands in the nearby stream. “He just disappeared off into the distance like a ghost,” he said.
Alex tried to revive his mother without realizing she had been killed. “There was blood everywhere. Everything was silent,” he recalled. “I said, ‘Get up, Mummy’ and she didn’t respond. Then for the last time, with all my strength I said, ‘Get up, Mummy.’ She didn’t. At that moment, reality came crashing down. I was very young but I knew at that moment she had gone and she was never coming back. The memory of that moment has remained with me to this day.”
Alex sought help from other parkgoers, who quickly called an ambulance after seeing the toddler wandering through the trees covered in blood. Alex’s father André met him at the police station, where he told Alex that there had been a “terrible accident” that led to Nickell’s death.
Despite being the sole witness, Alex was not questioned by detectives about his mother’s attacker for three weeks after the murder. But that was merely the start of the bungled case.
