Cathy Kelly had good reason to worry about the safety of her daughter Susan.
Until the age of 24, Susan Kelly had been a bright, happy young woman from Litherland who dreamed of working with the disabled and held down jobs in a care home and behind the bar of a nightclub.
But in the mid 1980s she began to suffer from severe mental illness, and her life descended into chaos and drug addiction. Despite her daughter's challenges, Cathy, from Bootle, could never have imagined the events of September 4, 2000, when a dog walker made a disturbing discovery in an alley off Blessington Road, Anfield.
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The body of a young woman had been dumped with her throat cut and bearing the hallmarks of a brutal, sustained beating. According to reports from the time, the woman had suffered 29 injuries, including a broken nose and jaw and six broken ribs.
The body was later identified as Susan, then 38-years-old. Cathy, from Bootle, has told the ECHO about the moment her "world fell apart". She said: "I had been the shops, I came home and I was just tidying round. I made a cup of tea and I was deciding what to have for my tea.
"I put on the TV and the news came on, a girl was found murdered in Anfield, a young woman found with her throat cut and police were making enquiries. Well I just though 'God help her' and didn't really think too much of it...
"The next thing there was a knock on the door and it was our Bill (Susan's brother) and his wife. I said 'oh hello, it's not like you to call this late.' He said 'sit down Mum'. I knew right away there was something wrong. He said 'have you been watching the telly?' I said 'yeah?'
"He said 'have you seen the news?' and as soon as he mentioned the news I knew. I said 'no, it wasn't her' and he said it was. One of the police officers had gone to school with them and he recognised Susan. I said 'oh no, God' and I just lost it, I just went to pieces."
Since then, Cathy has waited in vain for Susan's killers to be caught - but the wait has turned from months, to years, to decades. There was a false dawn in 2003, when a man was charged with murder and went to trial at Liverpool Crown Court.
The evidence initially appeared strong. Detectives believed Susan's throat had been cut using a shard of broken pottery found at the scene, which was said to have matched a fragment found at the flat of the suspect.
The police also found a hair slide and some Irish coins at the flat, which the prosecution claimed belonged to Susan. However that trial dramatically collapsed when Judge Douglas Brown dismissed the charges.
According to ECHO reports from the time, an expert admitted in court he could not be 100% sure the fragment was from the same piece of pottery used to kill Susan, and bloody footprints found at the scene were "too small" for the defendant's feet.
Since then, there were new arrests in 2010 and 2012, but no charges followed. Cathy told the ECHO: "It's been a nightmare, it's been horrible. It's there all the time; it never goes away. If you were not here now I would probably be sitting here, watching the telly or staring outside at the trees, and all of a sudden I will see Susan's face.
"They say time is a healer but it never heals at all. You have to learn to live with it, because otherwise you would not be able to go on."
Cathy has spent years tormented by the identity of a young schoolboy who claimed to have heard women crying and a man's voice near the alley where Susan's body was found in the early hours of September 4, 2000.
She explained that Susan had engaged in sex work in the chaotic years before her death, and after the murder Cathy went down to the scene where she struck up a conversation with a group of working girls.
Cathy said one was heavily pregnant, and told her that her son, aged around 12, had heard something in the early hours of the morning, and told him to explain. Cathy said: "He heard a load of women arguing, and women crying on the entry. The next thing a fella said 'you have just f****** seen her haven't you? That's what will happen to you if you don't keep your mouth shut."
Cathy said the boy appeared terrified and would not speak directly to the police, but detectives were told what he had said and made efforts to try and trace the women. Despite a witness reporting seeing two women crying on a bus, they have never been found.
She said: "That boy would be a man now. I don't know where he is now but I hope he comes forward."
With the case seemingly cold, Cathy is left with endless questions as to what really happened. But the pensioner says she has questions about several people with links to Susan.
One, who knew Susan, had attacked her earlier on the day of her death according to a witness who later described the incident to Cathy. The violent, unpredictable drug addict was, however, given an alibi by a notorious gangster who said the pair had been carrying out a robbery together at the time.
That person was later jailed for attacking sex workers in a series of violent robberies over the summer of 2000.
Cathy says she still suffers knowing Susan's killer could still be walking the streets. She said: "With Susan, she was vulnerable. She was a person with a mental illness, she could not help herself. She didn't know what she was doing.
"I can still remember her playing in the street, skipping with her pigtails. But then you remember what happened, and I think; was she screaming for help? I'm getting to an age now where I wonder how long I have got left. If I go at the same age as my dad I have two years, and I don't think they will ever find him.
"I think; has he done it to someone else? Is he still doing that kind of thing? Is he sitting back laughing, ha ha ha? I go mad thinking about it."
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