Teresa Slane is haunted by the image of her children holding their father's limp hands as he lay dying after being shot by the UDA.
Clonard woman Teresa is still fighting for justice 17 years after her husband Gerard was gunned down in their West Belfast home. Teresa and other members of the campaign group An Fhirinne will travel to Brussels next month to lobby politicians at the European Parliament. Over the next five weeks the Andersonstown News will be talking to relatives of those killed through British state collusion with loyalist paramilitaries.
Teresa and Gerard had been married for nine years when the 26-year-old was shot dead by members of the UDA. The UDA wrongly claimed that the father-of-three from Waterville Street was a member of the IPLO.
The events of September 23 1988 are vividly etched on Teresa's mind. She describes her husband as a "gentleman" who would have helped anyone.
"About three weeks before Gerard was murdered shots had been fired from the other side of the peaceline at the bottom of our street," said Teresa. "The British army and the police came out shortly after and raided some houses on our side of the peaceline in our street, and our house was searched.
"To me that was them coming in to get a layout of the house. They weren't long in the house, but you could see that they were giving the house a good going over."
Just before Gerard was shot Teresa was woken from her sleep by noises from outside the house.
"On the actual morning of the murder there was a British army foot patrol outside the door at a quarter past four in the morning," Teresa recalls.
"I heard the voices and got up and looked out the window and they were radioing through the registration number of our car and I got back into bed and didn't think anything of it."
Within five minutes the front door was sledgehammered down and loyalist paramilitaries entered the house.
"Five of them came in, we heard the glass breaking and Gerard jumped out of bed and he went to go down the stairs. He came back up again and he shouted, 'Teresa it's the Orangemen'.
"The two youngest kids had woken up. They had been in the bed beside us and I threw myself over them and tried to protect them.
"I heard shots and I could see flashes and smell smoke and I looked and Gerard was lying on top of the landing and I knew he was dead because of the way his hand had fallen down on the ground, his hand had gone flat.
"I looked at him for a few seconds and the kids were holding his hands. I ran down the stairs and on to the street and screamed for the neighbours to come in and help me. My neighbours came in and my brother came up and they tried to resuscitate him but he was already dead. I think he had been shot eight times, a bullet had actually gone up through his nose and went into his brain."
Despite the fact that the RUC were called immediately after the shooting, they took half an hour to arrive at the Slane family home. Teresa said that she is angry that false claims were made about Gerard following the murder.
"The UDA claimed the murder and they said that Gerard was a leading member of the IPLO claiming that he had murdered a man called Billy Quee on the Shankill Road," said Teresa.
"The actual morning that Billy Quee was shot I have proof that my husband Gerard was at the doctor's surgery. Gerard was never a member of the IPLO or any organisation. I was really angry, I was the one who had been married to him. I knew him better than anyone, I would have known if he had been in any organisation.
"That's what was so hurtful that they said that Gerard had killed someone. He lived for me and his family. It was so hard to accept. One day he was there and the next day he was taken away from us, for no reason, and then there were all the lies told about him."
After Gerard's murder his photograph appeared in a UDA magazine claiming he was a member of the IPLO. The photograph had been taken five years previously at Castlereagh interrogation centre.
Gerard and Teresa had been arrested in 1983, after a gun was found outside their home. They were taken to Castlereagh and photographed and were later released without charge.
"We had come home one day and the gun was in our outside toilet. Gerard panicked and brought the gun into the house. It all happened so quick, the next thing was the police and the army had surrounded the house within a couple of minutes," said Teresa.
"The gun had to be planted when we were out but I don't know who planted it, whether it was the British army, the RUC or somebody else. We have never found that out.
"When we were photographed we were wearing boiler suits. Gerard's photograph appeared in a UDA magazine and he was wearing the boiler suit.
"Obviously this photograph had come from Castlereagh. The only way this photograph had been published was that it had been passed on to the loyalists," she said.
Teresa says that the hardest thing was watching her children grow up without their father.
"I have tried to explain to the kids about what happened but it is very hard to explain. They want to know why he was killed and why they picked their daddy and it's questions like that that I can't answer because I don't have the answers myself."
Gerard's case featured in the trial of double agent Brian Nelson. Nelson had provided the UDA with the detailed intelligence to enable the murder to take place.
In 1991 loyalists painted a door with the words 'Hallo Goodnight Gerard – UVF' along with the registration of the family car and put it on top of a bonfire in Cupar Street. The bonfire was visible from the then Slane family home in Bombay Street.
Teresa has been fighting for justice for her husband since his murder and she says that although campaigning for justice is difficult, she is determined that she will one day know the truth about his murder. "If I let it go, Gerard will just be another forgotten victim and we will never get justice for him. I know that I have to keep going, not just for myself but for the kids as well.
"We have been fighting the British government for so long and know that the British government aren't going to tell the truth, that is why we are going to Europe and hope that the politicians there will listen to us because we are not getting anywhere with the British," she added.
