Denise Cosby, whose son Justin was murdered in 2009, began a blog, www.survivingmurder1.com, last month.

By David R. Smith

After the grief and the court dates and eventual trials, one thing above all remains fresh as ever for Denise Cosby, even after nearly five years.

“’The Call’; that’s what you never forget,” she said.

The voice on the other end of the line told her that her son, 21-year-old Justin, had died after being shot in the stomach in a robbery turned deadly at Harvard May 18 of 2009.

“The hurt and anger is something that’s hard to articulate,” she said. “The shock and sadness leaves people with a big gap that’s hard to fill.”

To help people like herself who have lost a loved one at another person’s hands, Cosby created a blog last month, www.survivingmurder1.com.

“Every one has a different experience trying to find their way,” she said. “My blog is where someone can come to share their experience and raise topics. I want my blog to be the thread that binds together families and friends whom have lost loved ones to murder by the hands of others.”

Jabrai Jordan Copney of New York was charged with Justin’s murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole. His accomplices, Blayn Jiggetts and Jason Aquino, were convicted on lesser charges, with Jiggetts sentenced to 9 to 12 years in prison and Aquin0 sentenced to 18 to 20 years.

Copney was staying with his girlfriend, then-Harvard student Brittany Smith, and she allowed Copney to use her Harvard ID to get into Kirkland House at Harvard, where the men met Justin and planned to rob him of the pot he was there to sell them.  Smith was sentenced in September 2011 to three years in prison.

Media coverage of the murder often had Justin described as a “Cambridge drug dealer,” and while Cosby said she knew her son smoked pot, his dealing of it was small scale, as she later learned, and essentially amounted to pocket money.

So as she dealt with the loss of her son, she also had to deal with the smearing of his character, turning him in death into something she knew he wasn’t in life.

“It left his character flawed,” she said. “It’s important people know who he was.”

To ensure people would know her son as she did, Cosby, a Somerville-based real estate agent and Cambridge resident, attended the court proceedings for all four defendants, noting that they had a chance to offer their side of the story, while her son, obviously, could not.

“I think it was important for me to be at each (court appearance) in person,” she said. “It was important that they knew someone who loved Jason was there.”

In addition to her recently launched blog, she has also written a book she plans to have published this spring on her experiences, addressing both losing a child to murder and what she has learned about the criminal justice system.

“This is something that needs to be spoken about,” she said.

Whatever she may write about online or share with others through interviews or one-on-one encounters in private, the focus will always be on the son she lost too soon.

“He can longer speak for himself,” she said. “I am his voice now.”

Suggestions for blog topics can be submitted to survivingmurder1@gmail.com.