Rachel Nickell’s son: 25 years on from the murder that shocked the nation

Everything happened in a matter of seconds. I was grabbed and thrown roughly to the ground, my face dragged across the mud, and seconds later my mother collapsed next to me. The interesting thing is, even though there was an intensity of the moment, there was a sense of peacefulness and serenity at the same time.

It’s 25 years since Rachel Nickell’s brutal murder shocked the nation and became one of the highest-profile crimes of the 1990s.

On a hot summer’s day in July, the young mother was sexually assaulted and stabbed to death on Wimbledon Common - and the only witness to the horrific attack was her two-year-old son, Alex. He clung to his mother’s body, begging her to get up, and instantly became the most famous toddler in the land.

Now a 27-year-old man, Alex has broken his silence about the tragedy that changed his life forever.