After a young women returned home to find her flatmate lying in a pool of blood, it quickly became clear that her attacker had been a trained soldier who had recently served in Afghanistan

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Trimaan “Harry” Dhillon slashed Alice’s throat and left her to bleed to death on her bathroom floor (Image: PA)

An obsessed ex-boyfriend who made a five-hour journey to menace the woman who had rejected him left her a terrifying message saying: “I just wanted to give you flowers and chocolates to prove that I don’t want to kill you.”

Less than two weeks later, Alice Ruggles was dead. Her ex-partner, Trimaan “Harry” Dhillon, a British Army Lance Corporal who had plans to join the SAS, had scaled a wall behind her flat and climbed through a window before cutting her throat “five or six times” with a carving knife. She was 24.

A new documentary about the case tells how, in October 2015, Alice had gone on a trip to Sri Lanka with her close pal Gen. Naturally enough, they had posted dozens of photos of their trip on social media, and Gen recalled that Dhillon, who was “a friend of a friend”, had seen some of them and started messaging Alice after that.

“She thought he was very nice, very caring,” Gen told ITV True Crime. Another one of Alice’s friends, Harriot, described how the romance escalated very quickly: “[Alice] basically hit it off with him straightaway,” she said. Gen added: “She said they had an instant connection. Within the space of a month, it was a solid ‘I love you, you love me, we’re together, we’re going to be together forever’ sort of thing.”

It was a long-distance relationship at first — Dhillon had been stationed in Afghanistan when he started messaging Alice — but he came to stay with her in Gateshead while he was on leave.

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Alice’s father Clive realised ‘something wasn’t right’(Image: PA)