A murder victim's mother today said she knows what the family and friends of dead prostitute Anneli Alderton are going through.

Ann Oakes Odger lost her son, Westley, in a knife attack in Colchester last September.

She wrote on the Evening Gazette's online forum: "I feel bitterly sad for the family and friends of Anneli.

"I pray for her killer and the killer of the other working girls to be caught quickly.

"As a parent who had a child taken by a violent act', the trauma is hard to bear."

Click here to post your tributes to Essex murder victim Anneli Alderton

Westley, 27, of Jack Andrews Drive, Colchester, was stabbed in the neck after an argument at a cash machine in Greenstead.

Earlier this year, Andrew Fredericks, 32, was jailed for life for murder and told to serve a minimum of 15 years.

His brother, Mark Fredericks, 36, was jailed for seven years for manslaughter. Both had denied murder and blamed each other for striking the fatal blow.

Westley was a former Colchester Boys' High School pupil and a poet and orator.

Ms Oakes Odger, who describes Westley as an "extraordinary son", is petitioning for tougher sentences on knife crime.