Shamiela Williams had little idea, after police investigators found parts of her former husband's charred body in a burnt-out freezer in a field, how he died.
Then last week, about two years after his death, a neighbour handed her a copy of a Cape Times article describing the horrible way he was murdered.
"It was like getting his body back," Williams said.
Faizel Williams, 25, a former seaman and a police informer, was allegedly murdered by four men in a Newfields apartment on July 15 1998.
Chinese national Sheng Lige, Club Images owner Rashaad Abrahams, Martin Williams and Abrahams's bodyguard, Denver
Wannenberg, went on trial in the Cape High Court last week.
They pleaded not guilty to murdering Williams.
According to court papers, Faizel was beaten, stabbed and shot. His body was put in a chest freezer and taken to a field in Muizenberg, doused with petrol and set alight.
Part of his charred remains were found on January 22 last year.
Police investigators did not provide Ms Williams, 27, with full details of the murder, but promised to tell her the date on which the trial was to begin.
A year later, she was still in search of answers, and was shocked to read that the trial had begun.
She expressed outrage on Monday that police had kept her in the dark about the way Williams died.
"I still can't believe that Faizel is dead," she said.
"I still can't get his remains back to hold a proper burial."
Ms Williams said she and her former husband had been trying to get back together. He had not told her he was a police informer.
"When I read about him (last week) I was sad, but I was glad as well because for the first time I had something concrete and knew what happened to him.
"Police told me he had been stabbed and then burnt, but I never knew it was this gruesome," Ms Williams said.
"The last time I had contact with the investigating officer was when blood samples were taken from me, our five-year-old son, Yaaseen, and Faizel's mother last year to determine if the body was Faizel's."
The last time Ms Williams saw her former husband was when a group of men fetched him from their home.
"I did not think anything of it because I thought he was going to sea again."
What enraged her was that neither she nor Yaaseen could receive compensation from the police, even though he had died in the course of his duties as a police informer.
"I was told he had signed an indemnity document," Ms Williams said.
Her only wish is that those who murdered her former husband be put away for a long time.
"They did not have to kill him like that. My son has no father. It breaks my heart to see him when he talks about Faizel. He says 'Mummy, I don't want him to be dead'. How do you explain to a small child that he will never see his father again?
"Yaaseen knows what happened to his father and it is having an emotional effect on him. When they asked him in school the other day about his daddy, he started crying."
Ms Williams intends to attend the trial when it resumes.
"I want to see who the people are who are suspected of doing this to Faizel," she said.
"For Faizel's son and brother's sake, I would like justice to be done."
The trial resumes on Monday.