Mercedes Tripaldi never thought her brother was serious when he said he was going to kill his boyfriend to steal his money and his 2007 red Chevy Impala.
“I just said something like, ‘Yeah, whatever, no you’re not,’ ” said Mercedes Tripaldi, 20. “I don’t think anyone in their right mind would take somebody seriously in that moment, especially when he was so calm and clear about it.”
Weeks later, when Richard “Ricki” Tripaldi II came around driving a red Impala, Mercedes found out how serious her brother actually was. Mercedes said she felt torn between her loyalty to her brother and her moral obligation to go to the cops.
“I decided to tell the police what Ricki did,” said Mercedes, who has four children. “If my son was lying in the woods for six weeks, I would want somebody to say something.”
Last week, Tripaldi, 26, was sentenced to 42 years to life in state prison for James Brock’s murder. He admitted to shooting Brock with a 1960s or 1970s .22-caliber Buffalo Scout revolver and burying him underneath a campfire.
Authorities believe the 24-year-old was lying dead in the woods for about a month before his body was found.
Even though Mercedes knows she did the right thing turning in her brother, she’s angry about what happened. Ricki didn’t have a gun, she said. Her younger sister’s boyfriend sold it to her brother for $200, and she’s angry that sale ever happened. Whatever her brother was going through, he could have dealt with it differently if he’d never gotten his hands on that gun, she said.
“Everybody’s targeting me and my family like we did something wrong, and we didn’t,” she said. “We’re still trying to wrap our heads around it because we didn’t see this coming at all.”
Mercedes said she had been close with her brother when they were young, but that they drifted apart in recent years.
Ricki was a good uncle to her children, Mercedes said. She remembers him bringing her kids to the park, out to get ice cream and spending hours watching Dumbo and PAW Patrol.
But Ricki was never good at processing his feelings, Mercedes said.
“He was depressed for a long time,” she said. “He’d cut himself, or he’d drink or he’d smoke pot or he’d be defiant. He wasn’t one to talk about his problems at all.”
Their father, Richard Tripaldi I, is a registered sex offender in Massachusetts who was convicted of possessing and manufacturing child pornography as well as indecent assault and battery on a child under 14. He was arrested when Ricki was 8 and had recently come back into his life.
Mercedes said she told her brother it was a bad idea to talk to their father, but Ricki kept on visiting him in Massachusetts anyway.
“Then, the next thing we knew, he’s doing meth and he’s doing heroin, and it all led up to this,” Mercedes said.
Her brother hadn’t had many romantic relationships, Mercedes said. He had one serious partner for four years he was engaged to, but they broke it off.
At the beginning of last summer, Mercedes, her kids and her mother all moved to Georgia together. Ricki stayed behind in Manchester and started dating Brock, an openly gay man who had moved north from Mississippi in 2015 to find a more accepting community.
“(Brock) came up here with nothing but the clothes on his back, his computer and his camera,” said friend Frank Mengler. “He was very friendly, sweet kid, and he was trying to better himself.”
Brock lived with Mengler’s family for more than a year after moving to New Hampshire. Brock and Mengler’s son met through an online community of elevator enthusiasts – people who take photos and videos of elevators and upload them to the internet.
Mengler said Brock seemed to be doing well. He got a job at Dunkin’ Donuts and started taking classes to get his GED.
When Brock moved out on his own, Mengler said Brock kept in touch with his wife, texting that he and Tripaldi were going to California together and how Tripaldi wanted his car.
“My wife said to him, ‘James, you love that car. Your grandma got it for you. Why do you want to part with it?’ It didn’t make sense,” Mengler said.
Brock was open about being on the autism spectrum, and Mengler said he worried about people taking advantage of him.
“I don’t think he could sense danger,” he said. “I think he was gullible and believed whatever he was told.”
Ricki was driving Brock’s car in Manchester on Aug. 2 when he was pulled over and arrested.
“He thought he was getting pulled over for his inspection sticker or something so minor,” Mercedes said. “He had no idea that we even knew.”
Mercedes said Ricki was mad when he found out his family had been the ones to turn him in, but he seems to be better about it now.
Mercedes has found other people are less understanding.
“When I say something like ‘I love my brother’ or ‘I miss my brother’ they say, well, aren’t you the reason he’s behind bars?” Mercedes said. “I just say, ‘No, he put himself there. I didn’t do this to him. He did it.’ ”
Mercedes said the family is still processing Ricki’s sentence. She said she’s worried for Ricki’s mental health, which was already shaky, and tries to visit him as much as she can.
She said her family has also tried to reach out to Brock’s family to apologize. They know it won’t change anything, but they want his family to know they’re thinking of them.
It’s hard for her to imagine telling her children about their uncle one day, and accepting that he will no longer be part of their lives.
“People can say we can go and see him and we can write him, but honestly, going to visit him through a piece of glass is almost just as bad as going to visit him in a cemetery,” she said. “We lost somebody just as much as James’s family did.”
(Leah Willingham can be reached at 369-3322, lwillingham@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @LeahMWillingham.)