The devastated wife of a man stabbed more than 200 times just metres from their home has told of her struggle to comprehend his brutal death.

Clare Else, whose husband Andrew died last year following the savage and random attack in Selsdon, spoke out for the first time today after his killer was locked up indefinitely.

Ephraim Norman, 24, could spend the rest of his life in a high-security hospital after doctors concluded his paranoid schizophrenia had led to the stabbing. 

The Old Bailey heard on Friday that Norman, of Kensington Avenue, Thornton Heath, imagined voices ordering to him kill Mr Else, 52, and weeks earlier had attempted to murder a 15-year-old boy.

On April 24 he armed himself with two knives, tailed dad-of-three Mr Else onto a bus and followed him off onto Selsdon Park Road, where he launched the frenzied attack. He did not stop until police arrived to arrest him. 

Mr Else, who had been travelling home from drinks with his friends, died a short walk from his house in Woodpecker Mount, Pixton Way, on the Forestdale estate.

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Andrew and Clare Else

His wife, 52, said: "At about 12.30am I heard a knock at the door. I thought Andrew had forgotten his keys and locked himself out. Obviously it was the police.

"Nothing can prepare you for what happened. It is so far outside of normality. I was a rabbit in the headlights. It is almost like you shut down and go through the motions.

"It has almost been a year and I still can't believe it. If I am honest I just don't know how I have got through the year.

"Even now I hear things and think, 'That's awful, how do those poor people cope?' And then you remember what you are going through.

"A year ago I was just an ordinary person going about my life. Now I watch people getting a train or a coffee and think, 'This has happened to me'. It changes your life."

The couple - both estate agents - met 10 years ago and married five years later, when they moved to Croydon.

Mr Else, originally from Leicester, had three daughters, all in their twenties, from a previous marriage.

His wife, who has a 23-year-old son, said: "My heart goes out for them. It is so young to lose your dad."

She added: "Andrew was a hard-worker. He loved his job. He was just a normal, northern man. He loved talking to everybody. He was a caring person. If you asked for anything he would give you it.

"He was funny and always having a laugh. He had this great big belly laugh. We would be having dinner and he would be tormenting me and my son would be crying with laughter."

Mr Else was a cricket and football fan who supported Leicester City, and also loved nature.

He adored his two dogs Lancelot and Ciara, both now dead.

Mrs Else said: "He worshipped the ground they walked on. Hopefully wherever he is now she [Ciara] is up there too, because he will be walking the hind legs off her."

At the Old Bailey on Friday, Judge Anthony Morris described Mr Else as "a perfectly respectable man" who happened to be "in the wrong place at the wrong time".

Mrs Else was in court to see Norman, appearing by video-link from Broadmoor Hospital, plead guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. 

The court heard Norman had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in 2011 but stopped taking his medication because it made him impotent.

In the weeks before the killing, he grew increasingly delusional and heard auditory hallucinations compelling him to murder.

He told police after his arrest: "I could not take it anymore because it was constant. It is just my madness. I wanted him to die so much I just kept on stabbing him until he was dead."

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An x-ray of the knife Norman plunged into a 15-year-old's head

He also admitted plunging a knife into the head of 15-year-old boy on April 6 in Beulah Hill, Upper Norwood, last year.

The boy only survived because the blade snapped off while embedded in his skull. 

Norman stole the boy’s mobile phone and fled.

Defence and prosecution psychiatrists agreed there was "overwhelming evidence" that Norman was "driven almost wholly by psychosis".

Judge Morris ordered Norman to be detained indefinitely under the Mental Health Act. He can only be released with the consent of the justice secretary.

Mrs Else said the sentence was "the best outcome." She added: "I have to be careful because he [Norman] has family himself. 

"I don't know him and I don't really want to, but I don't suppose it is easy for either family."

"I don't see how anybody could go out and do what he did.

"The sentence was the best outcome. At the end of the day Andrew is still not here and that can't change that."