Stanislava Gregurinčić Žilić was born in 1935 in Petrinja. She comes from a Partisan family. One of her aunts was captured on Sutjeska River and taken to Auschwitz. As a high school student she participated in youth work actions and as a medical student she joined the SKJ [League of Communists of Yugoslavia], driven by idealism. She was elected mayor of Petrinja on the SDP [Social Democratic Party] list and she held that position until the middle of 1991, when she resigned because she disagreed with people being fired on the basis of nationality and because of her objection to houses being mined. She lived in a mixed marriage. Her husband was a manager at the Sisak Oil Refinery. In 1991 her husband was subject to intimidation and he started receiving threats due to his nationality. In mid-September 1991, after a mine had been thrown at their house, they left for Zagreb. On November 22, 1991 her husband was taken from their apartment in Zagreb and was killed at the main Zagreb rubbish dump, in Jakuševac. His head was smashed with a metal bar, and his body thrown into the Sava River. Criminal proceedings against four members of the Croatian Army were initiated at the County Court in Sisak, but were later transferred to a military court. The accused admitted the crime, but in 1993 they were pardoned after the adoption of the ‘Law of Forgiveness’. Stanislava Gregurinčić Žilić reinitiated the prosecution of the crime, qualifying it as a war crime.