For nearly two years, Skip Rich's parents have lived with suitcases packed in the family's Pittsfield home. They were home the day that three men - one of whom had lived with them while engaged to their granddaughter - staked out the house with plans to kill Rich and anyone who got in their way.

The final conspirator was sentenced last month, all three to be imprisoned for years. Standing recently in what had been his dream home, Rich said that since the betrayal of Oct. 19, 2007, nothing has been the same.

It's not that he believes Jerome Thompson, once a business partner and prospective son-in-law, will once again hide beside the driveway with a cache of guns, his friends standing watch in the woods.

"I'm not afraid of any of those three kids," said Rich, 47, who was born Edward but is known by the name sewn on his mechanic's shirt. But with three elderly people - his parents and mother-in-law - at home, as well as his wife and daughter, he said he rarely sleeps. A former police officer, Rich said he had not carried a firearm since leaving the Pittsfield force in the late 1990s. Now the property on Loudon Road has at least one armed protector at all times - if not Rich, a friend.

"It's like a vigil," he said of his guard over his family. "I live to protect them."

Rich first met Thompson years earlier, when the teenager arrived with tales of trouble at home and hopes of marrying Rich's daughter. Rich took Thompson into his home, where he lived for 4½ years, and into the family business repairing trucks and machinery.

The family was won over by Thompson's intelligence and manners, Rich said, as well as his mechanical skill. He soon made him a business partner. Rich sometimes looks back on photos of those happy days, the prom pictures of his daughter and Thompson standing beside Kyle Weeks, a co-conspirator who had been a family friend since infancy.

"You live with someone long enough, they become part of the family," Rich said. "I cared about him as much as the rest of my kids."

The couple eventually broke up, but Thompson stayed after Rich's daughter moved out. It was only after Rich confronted Thompson, accusing him of taking items from the garage to sell, that their relationship soured. In September 2007, Rich fired Thompson, a conversation that didn't go well, and one he said Thompson may have misunderstood.

"I made a comment once, if someone were to really do me wrong, I would haunt him to the afterlife," Rich said. "He took that to heart."

Plans made

Looking back, Rich says he believes Thompson, then 22, thought he would never be able to start his life over with Rich alive. Rich says he had no plans to blackball Thompson from the

mechanic's profession or even press charges. But sometime over the next few weeks, Thompson came together with Weeks and Jason Cheney, both of Pittsfield, to plot a murder.

On that day, Thompson led the two friends to the Rich family home, where he had lived with his new girlfriend and their baby until shortly before the incident. The three men planned to steal the family's cache of guns - a task they'd started the previous day - and take them to Rich's garage three miles away at the corner of Routes 28 and 107.

There, Weeks, then 21, was to stand watch while Thompson killed Rich. Jason Cheney, then 19, would shoot anyone who might interfere.

Single page