Twenty seven years after her sister and nieces’ deaths, Mary Jones still keeps photos of them locked away in a drawer. “I can’t have them on the wall,” she told WalesOnline through her tears from her home on the Gurnos estate, Merthyr Tydfil, a stone’s throw from where her sister was killed in a deliberate arson attack along with her baby daughters Shauna and Sarah Jane. “It brings back too many painful memories.
“I sat for years with my mum and dad with Diane and the babies’ faces pushed in front of us all the time on the news and in the papers. There was never any warning - it was just again and again almost every night. The impact on my father was immense. He killed himself over what happened to Diane and the babies.
“Diane was a daddy’s girl. She was the spitting image of him. She had his ways. Everyone loved dad like they loved Diane. We were all close as a family, but they were especially close. If the photos of Diane were on the wall it would just be like reliving the grief over and over. It’s too painful.”
