He broke in while she was sleeping alongside her two children.
He shot Kyle and Latish dead in front of her, then himself.
And as she woke in hospital, after her right leg was amputated, Ann O'Neill wasn't prepared for what was written about her and her estranged husband.
The crime victims supporter, who threw herself into study after the events of 1994, shared her experience at a Media Stand Up Against Violence towards Women and their Children event in Canberra on Tuesday.
In the years since she would quip: "There's only one thing worse than having your children murdered and that's being blamed for it."
The most common question she was asked was: "What were you doing?"
"What did you do that made him do that?"
Finally after about 10 years, in her "smart-arse" way, Dr O'Neill came up with an alternative response.
"Actually, what really pissed him off was I was breathing," she told the gathering at Parliament House.
Despite being outraged at domestic violence reporting for years, she is "filled with hope" to see things are changing and the media is standing up for victims.
"I don't want my story told, I want the reality shared."
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said the media had a powerful role in helping shape the language Australians use about women.
By giving a voice to victims, the media had shone a light on what previously happened behind closed doors and was considered a private problem.
The federal government has funded the development of principles to help the media report domestic violence, especially avoiding victim blaming and sensationalising incidents.
Mr Turnbull said new research about community attitudes, to be released on Wednesday, would show too many people excuse, diminish and blame the victim when it came to violence against women.
"Now that is utterly unacceptable. These attitudes have to change."
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten said we shouldn't always assume two sides are to every story.
"Women deserve something better than the lazy, moral relativism which says well there's his side and there's her side," he said.
* National domestic violence helpline: 1800 737 732 or 1800RESPECT. In an emergency call triple-zero.
