(CNN) -- Donna Zovko will have to wait to travel to Falluja to see where her son died in one of the Iraq war's most infamous attacks.

Clockwise from upper left: Wesley Batalona, Mike Teague, Scott Helvenston, Jerry Zovko

"My dream was to go for the fifth anniversary, and that didn't come true," Zovko said this week while visiting friends in Boston, Massachusetts. "It's not that I'm afraid for me. But people with me on the trip would be in more danger."

Tuesday marks five years since her son Jerry Zovko and three other civilian employees of the Blackwater private security firm were ambushed in Falluja on March 31, 2004. Gunmen attacked vehicles holding Zovko, Mike Teague, Wesley Batalona and Scott Helvenston and set the vehicles on fire.

Shocking images beamed around the world showed Iraqis celebrating in front of charred bodies strung up on a bridge over the Euphrates River. The remains were dragged through the streets.  Donna Zovko honors her son »

"I didn't realize until way after the incident that he had been decapitated," said Helvenston's mother, Katy Helvenston-Wettengel, from her Florida home. "They cut his heart out. How can anybody be that hateful?"

To identify his body, she said, investigators had to gather DNA samples from her son's children.

A half-decade after the notorious attack, memories of the gruesome images have faded somewhat from the public eye, as the United States plans to reduce troop numbers in Iraq and a wrongful death suit brought by the four families heads to court-ordered arbitration.

The families accuse Blackwater of failing to prepare the men for their mission that day. A 2007 House oversight committee report concluded that Blackwater "ignored multiple warnings about the dangers" and failed to supply armored vehicles, machine guns, sufficient intelligence or even a map.

Blackwater responded by saying the experienced military veterans on the team "had all of the resources they needed" and were victims of a "well-planned ambush."

In the days after the attack, Blackwater was largely silent beyond a statement that said, "We grieve today for the loss of our colleagues and we pray for their families."

But the families said they ran into a stone wall trying to get details of what happened in Falluja.

"For the next three months, they never returned my calls," Helvenston's mother said. "Our families were destroyed. We will never be the same."

For Zovko, the suit is not about money or punishment.

"I want to hear the truth," she said. "I want to know what my Jerry was doing before the mission. Why they didn't they have the maps? I want to know who he spoke to last."

What makes this anniversary different from past years, she said, was an encounter this month in Boston with an Iraqi who claimed that he was at the scene of the attack shortly after the massacre. He offered Zovko new alleged details of the attack, which she says brought her comfort.

The Iraqi man, whom she wouldn't identify, told her that the attackers did not appear to be targeting the motorcade containing her son and his three comrades.

"We used to think maybe the attack was done on purpose," she said.

The news made her feel like "I was lifted into the air," she said. "For me, it was good. I miss my Jerry more today than yesterday."

The gruesome attack put the little-known North Carolina-based security company into the American lexicon and on the world stage. It also changed the course of the war. The House report called it a "turning point in public opinion about the war," which led to the first major U.S. offensive in Falluja. The fighting lasted three weeks, killing 36 U.S. service members, about 200 insurgents and an estimated 600 Iraqi civilians, according to the report.

In the ensuing years, Blackwater and other private security firms in Iraq received hundreds
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"My dream was to go for the fifth anniversary, and that didn't come true," private security firm "We grieve today for the loss of our colleagues and we pray for their families." five years Iraq Falluja
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