Five-year-old Josh still has nightmares about the day police came with news his devoted grandmother Julie Butler had been murdered.

His mother, Charlotte Allison, in an exclusive interview, has spoken for the first time about the trauma endured by her little boy since the dreaded knock on the door last October.

She said: “We didn’t realize but he was sitting at the top of the stairs when the police told me mum had been murdered.

“Sometimes he says he wants to know what it’s like to die. It’s awful to hear something like that.”

David Kirsch, 42, of Aldershot, Hants, is expected to spend the next two decades behind bars after a jury found him guilty of killing the former Chatham landlady.