A Macon man convicted of murdering his wife nearly 20 years ago is up for parole, but the victim's family is fighting to keep him in custody.
On May 8, 1996, Lena Walden got a phone call from her daughter's husband, Merrell Moore.
"As soon as I put the phone to my ear, he said I just killed your daughter, and hung up," Walden said.
After that call, she says she drove to their home.
"At the door I saw his boots there, he had a shotgun that was laying there, and I thought surely he didn't," but Walden found that he had.
"He put a sheet over her head, and emptied that .22 in the top of her head."
Walden ran outside to see police searching the property for Moore and says they found him inside a child's pool washing blood off of his arm.
"He shot himself in the arm with his big toe. He pulled it as far away from his body, that's what was on the trigger of the gun, his toe print," Walden said.
After Moore's arrest, Walden's concern moved to her daughter's children. Kathy's son, Justin Moore was three-years-old, and daughter Jessica Moore was 8.
Now, nearly 20 years later, Merrell Moore is up for parole.
"I don't want him out, I don't care for a relationship at all," Justin said.
He says his mother's death troubled him throughout the years. He battles depression and suicidal thoughts, but says it affected his sister Jessica differently.
He says, "All I knew was I had lost something, she knew what she had lost, and that's what really hurt her more."
Their cousin, Brooke Hatfield says as the years went on, Jessica turned to drugs to escape.
"The older she got, she didn't want it to be her reality, she didn't want that," Hatfield said.
"What's really pissing me off is he gets to come back to the thing I'm not ever going to have, he gets to come back to his mother and his sister, I don't get that opportunity," Justin said.
Walden says her daughter would've been 54 this year, and says a crime like this cannot be wiped clean.
Walden says, "A murder does not come out in 19 years on what he did," and for the family and friends of Kathy Moore, they hope and pray he won't.
According to the state board of pardons and paroles, Moore has been in a work release program in Atlanta for about two years.
The state has yet to determine if parole will be granted in this case.