Shaun Duffy (36) had been beaten, stabbed and shot with a crossbow in a brutal slaying that, to date, has yielded almost no sign of finding his killers.

And in the 12 months since his death, the murder victim's mother and family have had their troubles compounded by the fear that they may have accidentally impeded the investigation to find the perpetrators.

Kathleen Duffy-Ward will never forget 29 January 2005 . . . the day her 18-year-old son Kevin found Shaun dead at his late grandmother's house close by in Meenacross, near Dungloe, where the burly, sixfoot-tall ex-bouncer lived.

"It was around 2.30pm and I was at home. I heard Kevin's car doing terrible speed. I went outside to give out to him about the speed he was driving. He had gone up to Shaun's to get him to come over to my house and help with my invalid sister. I met Kevin outside and he started to cry. He said: 'Mammy, Shaun's dead.'" What happened afterwards has left Kathleen (57) concerned that she or others may have accidentally damaged the murder scene. "We went on up to the house.

Maybe it was a terrible mistake, walking and tramping over the place where Shaun was killed. I didn't think going up to the house that I was walking into somewhere that a murder was carried out, " she told the Sunday Tribune this weekend.

"We were in a terrible state and I have wondered since did we do something or move anything that would have damaged whatever evidence the killers left behind, " she said. "When the guards came on the scene, one of them ran us out and said we were doing terrible damage to the crime scene but we didn't think of it, we were in terrible shock."

Kathleen cannot forget what she saw at the house that day. "Shaun was lying on the floor in a sittingroom that was being used as a livingroom. His head was sideways against the couch and his body was twisted. There was blood everywhere between the kitchen and the room. You can't imagine what it's like having a picture of your child's murdered body in your mind. It's something so bad I can't really describe it."

Elements of the media reporting of Shaun Duffy's killing caused the family considerable trauma, according to his mother. "Some of them [newspapers] wrote every rumour they heard because they didn't have any facts, " she says.

"The crossbow used against Shaun was not something he owned himself. A newspaper wrote that he owned it and had it hanging over the fireplace and the rest of the newspapers must have just copied it. Shaun never owned a crossbow.

None of the family ever saw it in the house and the only thing over the mantle was a mirror."

She insists that the people who killed her son came armed with a weapon, indicating that they clearly intended to take his life that night.

"Whoever used that thing must have brought it there to use it against Shaun, " she says. "Other reports suggested that Shaun was drunk and staggering into his house.

But I know he had a kidney infection that weekend and only had a few brandies which was nothing for a big man like him. He wasn't drunk."

Nor, she says, was there a party that night in her house, as was reported.

"There was a handful of my son Kevin's young friends there. I said goodnight to them all and went up to bed.

Shaun cooked pizza and garlic bread for the young lads and was chatting to them in the sittingroom. I went down from my bedroom to tell them to stop talking loudly so I could sleep and Shaun was at the bottom of the stairs. He said, 'Goodnight mother, see you in the morning' and that's the last words I ever heard from him."

One of the most hurtful allegations, she says, was a report that it was rumoured locally that Shaun Duffy may have been homosexual and may have been killed in an anti-gay attack.

"Shaun never came across to me as being gay. He never took any men home with him.

He took women home alright.

He had a girlfriend at the time he was killed . . . it was a sort of a casual thing, I think, because the girl worked over in London. When it was written that he might have been gay, it made the younger ones in the family very angry. They found it hard to accept that someone would write that without some evidence, just because he wasn't around to defend his name." Similar reports openly repeated an unsupported local rumour that Duffy was a garda informer.

Despite the lack of developments in the murder investigation, Kathleen has no criticism of the garda handling of the case. "I think the guards are doing what they can. They don't have a definite line of inquiry. We were stunned when we sat down to watch the reconstruction of the attack on Crimeline on television. That was the first time we heard that Shaun was stabbed in the chest. It was a shock to hear it on television and nobody had said it to us before the whole country was told."

The garda investigation was headed by Superintindent Noel White from the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation (NBCI), who has since been placed in charge of the major taskforce to tackle organised crime gangs in Dublin.

Successive lines of inquiry are understood to have drawn a blank. A taxi which carried a number of local youths from the nearby area that night was taken away for forensic examination but yielded nothing. Shaun Duffy was known for having what one friend described as a "wicked temper". He was due to appear in court in the weeks after his death for assaulting a father and son at a local garage, during which he used a pipe to beat the men, although there is no connection between this and his murder.

Duffy travelled around the country regularly, attending horse fairs, car auctions and festivals. He was involved with Fianna Fail as a cumann delegate and was well-liked in his local community generally, regarded as a larger-thanlife gregarious character.

At the time of his death, sympathies to the family were expressed by Pat 'the Cope' Gallagher, the local Fianna Fail TD and minister for state at the Department of the Marine, as well as broadcaster Gay Byrne, who owns a house in Dungloe and knew Duffy as a child.

Local Fianna Fail councillor Enda Bonner remembers Shaun Duffy as a man who was known to have great time for helping elderly people and who was actively involved in the community. "Everyone knew Shaun as a lively and larger-than-life character.

There is still a sense of shock that he was killed. It's something that seems hard to believe."

In 2001, Duffy had given up his job to look after his ill maternal grandmother for over six months. "There's not many young lads who'd patiently sit and listen to an 81-year-old woman and help her around the house and lift her in the bed when it needed changing and the like, " Kathleen said.

This day fortnight, the family and friends of Shaun Duffy will attend a mass at St Patrick's church in Meenacross to mark the first anniversary of his death.

There is little expectation among the Duffy family that Shaun's killers will be brought to justice soon. Kathleen finds it disturbing to think that someone living locally may hold clues to the killing.

"Whoever got into the house had to know Shaun or know his movements well. They had to know that he kept a spare key over the door and maybe they were waiting for him in the house. Maybe he knew them and he let them in and they turned on him inside when they got a chance, " she says.

"Obviously someone out there knows something and they're not coming forward.

Someone went home with scratches and blood on them, and their partner or whoever was waiting for them at home is still covering for them now.

I want them to think what it's like for a mother to lose a child in such a way. It's not something I can even explain.

"I hope it never turns out to be someone local, " Kathleen says. "If it was, I don't think it would ever end with the younger ones in the family . . .

they'd be very angry if it turned out to be someone that they know. But I don't think anyone will ever be caught for killing Shaun."