Rachel Nickell's son has spoken publicly for the first time about the day he saw her stabbed to death on Wimbledon Common.

Alex Hanscombe, now 21, was one month short of his third birthday when his mother was stabbed 49 times by serial rapist Robert Napper.

Mr Hanscombe told the Daily Mail the killer featured in his nightmares for years after the attack, but he had forgiven him even before he knew who he was.

Remembering the day of the attack in 1992, he said: “I was only a small child, but I knew she was dead. I wasn't frightened, there was no time to be scared. I just remember the shock of knowing my mother was gone forever.”

He said he had never been back to Wimbledon Common and does not visit his mother's grave because he did not brood on the past.

Napper was convicted of Miss Nickell's manslaughter on grounds of diminished responsibility in December 2008.

Last October it emerged the Metropolitan Police had refused to compensate Mr Hanscombe or his father Andre, despite admitting mistakes during Miss Nickell's murder case.

The police had already paid out £706,000 to Colin Stagg, who was wrongly accused of the killing, and £150,000 to a policewoman who suffered “stress” after being used in a flawed honeytrap operation on Mr Stagg.