Diane Piagentini's husband, Joseph, was just 27 years old the night he walked his final beat in Manhattan in 1971.

“I had two babies at the time, I was waiting for my husband to come home from his shift," Diane recalled. “His dinner was sitting on the stove and we were waiting for him and I got a knock at the door.”

Along with his partner Waverly Jones, the New York Police Department patrolman was gunned down by Herman Bell and Anthony Bottom.

"Waverly Jones and Joseph Piagentini were assassinated,” Diane said. “Shot in the back numerous times.”

Almost 50 years after her husband's death, Diane was flanked by fellow widows of fallen NYPD officers and hundreds of department members on Wednesday. They were all in Albany to protest the granting of parole to the accused.

While Bottoms remains incarcerated, Bell was released from prison last spring.

“It is an injustice what is going on here with the parole board," Diane said.

“We must not let the sacrifice of these families go unheard,” said New York City Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Lynch.

Organized by the PBA, the officers arrived with hundreds of boxes filled with more than 800,000 letters addressed to the New York State Board of Parole, protesting the release of numerous convicted cop killers.

PBA leaders say they remain angry the agency stopped accepting the letters via email from five years ago.

“If [they] don’t want to read these petitions, read their face, read their strength, read their courage,” Lynch said.

Thomas Mailey, the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision’s director of public information, said all of the letters will be reviewed. He added the agency's website and traditional mail have always allowed citizens to have their voices heard by the Board of Patrol.

“Everyone has always had the opportunity to put forth a letter of support or opposition to the board of parole, they have accepted them all along,” Mailey said.

Diane says she will remain devoted to ensuring her husband's other killer never walks free.

“He’s with me forever, forever,” Diane said. “You never get past it, the loss of your husband and the way he was killed.”