CIARAN Bishop doesn't think much about his daughter's killer. When he hears of a prison suicide he hopes it is Michael Dean McLaughlin, the man sentenced to life for her murder. When it isn't, he says "pity" and drops him from his mind.
A prison sentence, however lengthy, will not compensate Ciaran for the loss of his young daughter. He will never get over her brutal murder, he has merely learned to cope with the fact that it has happened.
Next month a support group is to be formed to help the families of murder victims. The "Jill project" is called after his daughter and Ciaran hopes it will spare others some of the hurt and stress his family has been through since her death four years ago.
Jill had returned from work in the RDS, Ballsbridge, Dublin, to her home in Bray early on Halloween night, 1991. Two of her best friends were going back to town, but Jill didn't like the Dublin scene. She decided instead to take her younger sister Karen to her first disco in the local Bray Head Hotel.
She discarded her glasses for the contact lenses she had bought a few weeks before, fixed her long dark curly hair of which she was so proud, borrowed her sister's jeans, a friend's top, her mother's best leather jacket and a tenner from her Dad. Before leaving the house she gave both her parents a hug.
It was the last time May Bishop saw her 18 year old daughter. Jill's naked and beaten body was found behind a house on the sea front the following day. A pound coin had been forced down her throat.
The hospital where she was taken would not allow her mother see her body. It was hospital policy not to allow relatives know the extent of the injuries, May was told. When she arrived at the morgue the coffin was closed.
I cannot really accept that she is dead. She left the house at nine o'clock in good form and she never returned. She was never late she would never stay at someone else's house. She wanted to be tucked in by me in her own bed, with a can of Diet Pepsi on the table waiting for her. I can't sleep at night now, I'm still waiting on her.
"If they had let me see her it might be easier to accept. They didn't have to let me see her whole body, I am her mother, I would know my own child's hand. But everyone tries to protect you.
The new support group will try to focus attention on how the health authorities should treat families in the hours and days following the murder of a loved one, and counsel families when those authorities have failed them.
Ciaran would also like to see greater support for families from Government agencies. "At the moment no one cares what happens to you. No social worker will come to your home to ask if you need help. If you need financial aid, no one tells you how to go about getting it. No one will ask your opinion when they decide to give the person responsible remission.
"I know what I want of the support group," says Ciaran. "I want to make sure that no one in this country suffers like we have.
"When someone wakes up on a cold morning and needs someone to talk to I want to make sure that they have someone to ring. It's not that in an expert, I'm just a listening post. I can tell them that they are not going mad and that there is no right to grieve.
"If you want to go to the grave 10 times a day, then go. If you cry at a drop of a hat it's all right. If you want to scream from the top of a mountain, it's your privilege. If you want to talk about the person you have lost at every opportunity, it is perfectly normal."
Every time Ciaran hears of another murder it brings back the events of Halloween night. "You feel so sorry for those families, because they do not really know what is ahead of them the rumours, the trial. When he gets out he will still be a young man. At the end of the day it is the family who serves the sentence.
"At first you are on a roller coaster, day runs into night, night into day. You are never alone. The house is always full of people. You are a sort of celebrity. Everyone wants to know you so that they can tell others they know you, so they can tell their friends they have the inside track.
"Then the rumour machine starts. Jill had met that character for the first time at the disco, but within hours of her body being found there were reports that she was engaged to the man and had broken off that engagement. In court he sullied her character. But it was really Jill's first intro to men. She hadn't gone out with anyone before. She used to hang around with five or six girl friends, they used to go out in packs. There was never any real romance in her life.
"You have the murder, then the burial. But you still can't settle because you have the trial to go through, you have the spectators, the couple who break out the sandwiches when there is a break for legal argument"
Jill had suffered from arthritis since a child. She was constantly in pain. But that night she pretended all was well. "She was utterly defenceless, you could blow her over she was so weak. It was a damp night and she had been pretty bad all week. She hadn't a hope in hell," says her mother.
Nothing could prepare the family for the horrific details of her death which emerged in court.
"There were boot marks on her tummy, there were gashes on her head ... The savagery of it all doesn't bear thinking about," her father explains.
"I would have been delighted if he had pleaded guilty, but he didn't. He wanted to get off on a technicality. He showed absolutely no remorse. All he wanted to do was save himself, he didn't give any consideration for the family. When they found him guilty of murder it was a victory for us, it showed that Jill was totally innocent."
"At least," says her father, "her farewell was the best we could get. She gave us a big kiss and hug, and told us she loved us. She was always doing that. If there was anything to learn from it all, it is that you should never leave things unsaid. Life is too short."