EVERY day Jenny Croxford cooks and washes up in the kitchen where her son was murdered.

She says that remaining in the house is a bitter-sweet experience. The family home in Windmill Road, Headington, Oxford, is full of wonderful memories of her son Timothy.

"Leaving here would feel like abandoning him," said Mrs Croxford, 55. "Sometimes it is a comfort being here with so much of him all around. We have lived here for 30 years. But then when I'm washing up I imagine Tim just lying on the kitchen floor fighting for his life..."

It is now three and a half years since welder Timothy Croxford, 27, was stabbed to death at his parents' home by Adrian Steers, 26, of Balfour Road, Blackbird Leys.

Now his parents are to tell in a book of the agonies they have endured from the moment a police officer in Jersey interrupted their holiday to break the horrific news. Mrs Croxford said: "People read about a murder and then they forget it. Or people may see us and think it is three years, they must be over it by now.

"But I tell you it is still the last thing I think of every night before I sleep. And it is the first thing that comes into my mind when I awake."

They hope the book to be titled Some Mother's Son will underline the fact that all too often it is the victims of murder who are forgotten, while it is the killers who appear to receive all the available support.

But the couple had deeper reasons for re-living hour by hour the worst of all nightmares for a parent. Mrs Croxford said: "Soon after it happened we realised that we wanted to write a book at some point. We thought our story just might make someone think again about harbouring a murderer. And then if it could just stop one murder being committed..."

The book is being written with the writer Ivan Sage, who has already written a book about Ecstasy victim Leah Betts, with the full co-operation of her parents.

The couple also hope it will reinforce calls for longer sentences. They live in terror of meeting their son's killer eight, nine, ten years after hearing the judge sentencing him to life. The Headington couple's book, expected to be published in the autumn, describes what amounts to their life sentence.

The couple offer an honest account of just what has happened to them since the day that changed their lives forever. Tony Croxford, 58, accepted early redundancy from his job when it was offered him on compassionate grounds by Rover. Mrs Croxford recently won an appeal to have incapacity benefit restored after it was briefly stopped. She receives the benefit because of her depression, bad nerves and severe migraines. The couple now live with Timothy's long standing girlfriend.

Timothy was stabbed through the heart with an eight-inch carving knife by Steers, who was in a drunken rage. Police discovered more than eight books on serial killers in Steers' bedroom after his arrest.

Many still remember Mrs Croxford's cries from the public gallery at Oxford Crown Court as engineer Steers was sentenced. Her book will reveal that her cries may not be public now, but still they go on.

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