It has been more than five years since the day that four Blackwater contractors brutally lost their lives in Fallujah, Iraq, but the incident has again taken center stage due to the case involving the alleged perpetrator of that heinous crime and the three Navy SEALs who finally managed to bring him in.

Scott Helvenston, Jerry Zovko, Mike Teague and Wesley Batalona suffered the most horrifying of deaths, there is no question about it. Their suffering is matched only perhaps by the anguish that their respective families must have felt after learning the fate that their loved ones met.

The mothers of Scott Helvenston and Jerry Zovko spoke to CNN on the fifth anniversary of their sons’ death in March this year. Even after all that time, there was still pain in the words of Donna Zovko and Katy Helvenston-Wettengel. Katy recounts how she did not immediately realize that her son was decapitated and mutilated, and how she needed to provide DNA samples from her grandchildren in order to identify Scott’s body.

“They cut his heart out,” Katy said of the condition of her son’s remains. “How can anybody be that hateful?”

“I miss my Jerry more today than yesterday,” Donna said during the interview. When the three Navy SEALs who finally caught the suspected perpetrator of her son’s death and gave her a shot at justice were slapped with assault charges, she was among those who lent support.

What the Blackwater contractors went through, and the pain that their families were subjected to, are an integral part of the public outcry that has ensued after Navy SEALs Matthew McCabe, Julio Huertas and Jonathan Keefe were accused of assault by Ahmed Hashim Abed. The sheer monstrosity of the crimes committed by the suspect makes the thought of him complaining about being punched in the stomach almost silly.