Beatrice Worton says her son never stood a chance. He was one of 12 workers on a minibus stopped by masked gunmen at Kingsmill, south Armagh, in January 1976.
They were ordered off the vehicle and questioned. A Catholic man was set free. But Kenneth Worton (23) and the others were not so lucky. Their names and religion sealed their fate.
"The gunmen lined them up on the road and shot them one by one," recalls Mrs Worton. "Alan Black was shot first and the others just fell on top of him. They lay in a pile on the road like dogs."
Ten Protestant workers, including Kenneth, were killed.
"He left behind two wee daughters," she says. "His wife had his dinner waiting on the table. We buried a box. They wouldn't let us open the coffin because his head had been blown off.
"The police visited the daughter-in-law a few days later. They gave her his empty flask and hairbrush. He had lovely curly hair. He was always brushing it."
The Kingsmill massacre was admitted by a previously unknown group, the Republican Action Force, but the IRA was widely believed to be responsible. No one was charged with the murders.
Mrs Worton is opposed to the early release of prisoners under the Belfast Agreement.
"I don't believe they should be kept in jail forever but they should serve their full sentences. I'm not against rehabilitation and I don't think they are a danger to society. Some prisoners come out good citizens, especially the ones who have found God. But they should serve the sentence the judge gave them."
Yet Mrs Worton doesn't believe the issue of prisoner releases should be allowed to jeopardise the peace process.
"I voted against the agreement and I have my doubts. But I'm 70 and my husband is 75. Our days are at an end. If there is any chance of a better future for the young people, I'll live with prisoner releases."
However, she is angry at the money spent rehabilitating prisoners. "My daughter-in-law got £5,000, and the girls £1,000 each, for Kenneth. That bought their school uniforms and other wee things. The prisoners, who have killed people, seem to be treated better than the families of those they killed."
Trevor "Dandy" Close (33), a milkman, was making a delivery to a shop a few yards from his home on the Cliftonville Road in north Belfast in 1983 when he was shot 17 times by the UVF. He was a republican but not a member of any paramilitary group, his family say. His wife Marie was left to raise their four children on her own. Two men were jailed in connection with the killing but Mrs Close can't remember the length of their sentences.
"I have no problem with prisoner releases," she says. "I never lie awake at night hating Dandy's killers. That would harm me, not them. It is the luck of the draw where you are born. If I had been brought up on the Shankill, I might have been a loyalist and my husband killed by the IRA. I never got any satisfaction that people went to jail for what happened my husband. What good did it do me? "And it's not the prisoners, it's their wives and kids who suffer, traipsing up and down to Long Kesh."
In a review of the criminal injuries compensation system those who feel they have been treated unfairly have been invited to air their complaints. Ms Close received £10,000 for her husband's life but isn't interested in more compensation: "It wouldn't bring him back."
William Frazer from Newtownhamilton in south Armagh has lost five members of his family in the Troubles. His father, Bertie, a UDR man, was killed by republicans in 1975. His uncle, Johnny Bell, also in the UDR, was killed two months later. Another uncle, Clifford Lundy, a former UDR man, was shot dead in 1980. A cousin, Trevor Elliot, an RUC officer, died in an IRA landmine in 1984. Another cousin, Alan Johnston, a UDR member, was killed in 1988.
Mr Frazer is vehemently opposed to the early release of prisoners and is a member of the new pressure group Families Acting for Innocent Relatives (FAIR).
"Society has lost all sense of right and wrong," he says. "South Armagh is a small community. I know the names of those who killed all my relatives. The vast majority were never charged. Those convicted of terrorist offences received very light sentences.
"Now it's getting even worse and they are letting them all out. My four-year-old son came in with a toy gun and said he would shoot the bad boys who killed his granda.
"How can I tell him it's wrong to kill when he sees the only way of getting anywhere in this country is to kill people? People who were involved in heinous acts are now in government at Stormont. It's pushing law-abiding citizens too far."
Mr Frazer says prisoner releases are increasing community tensions. "There is more hatred now between republicans and Protestants than ever before."
The level of compensation for the bereaved has been disgraceful, he says. "Republican farmers have got millions from the government in fraudulent claims over the years - yet the widows of Protestant victims have received a pittance.
"Before, many of us refused money from the government because we didn't want to bankrupt it. Our home was wrecked by bombs five times and my mother didn't take a penny. Back then, we suffered because we thought justice would be upheld.
"But the government has betrayed us by letting the prisoners out. The least it can do is ensure the relatives of our dead receive enough to live in comfort."
Brendan Bradley from Ardoyne in north Belfast has also lost five relatives in the Troubles. His brother Francis (17) was blown up by a loyalist booby-trap bomb in 1975. His sister, Isabel Leyland, was caught up in an IRA ambush on the British army in 1992. Three months later his uncle, Frankie Burns, was killed in a loyalist attack on a betting shop. In 1994, his nephew, Martin Bradley, was shot dead by the UVF as he cradled his own baby nephew in his arms. Two years ago, another nephew of Mr Bradley's, Fra Shannon, was shot dead during the INLA feud.
But Mr Bradley fully supports prisoner releases and harbours no bitterness towards anyone involved in the attacks. Indeed, he has good relations with a senior Progressive Unionist figure whom, he believes, was closely involved with the UVF unit which killed his brother.
"It wasn't a case over the past 30 years that a small group of men committed certain deeds and the rest of us were lily-white. Most people turned a blind eye to what was going on," he says.
"There was no political progress and a space developed. The socalled law-abiding people of Ireland allowed the paramilitaries to fill that space. We have no right to now wash our hands of what happened."
He describes many prisoners, both republican and loyalist, as "the salt of the earth". He runs Survivors of Trauma, a self-help group in north Belfast for the bereaved.
Mr Bradley believes that while the views of all relatives should be heard, they can't be allowed to block the Belfast Agreement. "Seventy-two per cent of people voted `Yes' and everybody, including those who lost loved ones, has to accept that.
"Those who can't will always be victims. In our group, we were victims and then we became survivors. If we can move on to a new society, we will be victors."