Trinh Nguyen was called a loving, devoted mom in court. What made her kill her two sons?
Trinh Nguyen was a mom who spent all day on the beach building sand castles with her sons and watching them swim in the ocean.
She drove sons Nelson, 9, and Jeffery, 13, to school every day and shuttled them back and forth to school activities, music lessons, sports practices, and attended their games and award banquets.
Her soft spoken and demure personality appeared to fit with her petite, slender frame.
But Nguyen also appeared to transform into an irrational and violent woman following the 2021 split with husband Edward Tini. Her vitriol was mainly directed at him, his family and finally her two sons, whom she fatally shot as they slept in their beds.
Life sentence plus for mom Upper Makefield mom admits killing sons while they slept. What happens to her now.
“Many events prior to the shooting made me question Trinh’s sanity,” said Mark Melchiondo. “I felt something bad was going to happen. But never thought Trinh would turn to murder.”
A rough accounting of the 40-year-old Nguyen’s life, from growing up in Vietnam to the disintegration of her second marriage and the May 2, 2022 murders, and attempted murder of her ex-husband’s nephew was pieced together during her Dec. 20 sentencing hearing in Bucks County Court.
The newly revealed details suggest Nguyen had a tenuous grasp of reality, simmering resentments, bitter grudges and a desire to remove herself and her children from what she saw as the iron grip of her ex-husband.
“I’m still in this prison cell because of him,” Nguyen wrote in one of the letters found after the murder and read in court. “This is the only way I can free my children. This is the only way I can free myself. I am free, Jeffery is free, Nelson is free from you Ed.”
A forced, arranged marriage brings Trinh Nguyen to the U.S.
Nguyen was one of eight children born in Vietnam to a homemaker mother and a father who owned an appliance business, according to her public defender Deborah Weinman.
In her childhood home, her father ruled over the family. He was abusive to his wife and children including Nguyen, Weinman told the judge.
She came to the U.S. at 18 after her father forced her into a marriage to a man Nguyen did not know in a country whose language she did not speak. When she initially resisted his demand, her father beat her until she complied.
She moved into the Michigan home of her husband-to-be’s family, finishing high school and enrolling in a community college before dropping out to support her husband.
Their first son, Michael, was born in 2005. Four years later, as her first marriage was falling apart, Nguyen found herself pregnant with Jeffrey.
In a custody award, her ex-husband was awarded physical custody of Michael, who grew up on the West Coast. Nguyen got physical custody of Jeffrey.
But her former husband tried to keep Nguyen away from their son, frequently moving and not telling her where, a violation of the custody agreement, according to court documents.
Nguyen went to court and won physical custody of Michael when he was 14. But the brief reunion didn’t go well and custody returned to his father. It’s unknown if she maintained contact with her first born.
In a handwritten will found after the murders, Nguyen bequeathed her possessions to Michael, now 18.
Court documents show ex-husband's fears Ex feared mom accused of Upper Makefield shooting was 'classic parent kidnapper'; fought her trip out of US
A second chance takes a shocking turn in Upper Makefield
Nguyen met Edward Tini three years after her first divorce. Their son Nelson was born in 2012, the year they moved onto Timber Ridge Road adjoining the home owned by one of Tini’s sisters.
Shortly after the couple married in 2015, Nguyen fled to Texas with her sons. They later reconciled, but not before Tini obtained a custody order giving him shared custody of Nelson.
In 2021, Nguyen filed for divorce. Within months it was finalized, a new child custody battle began over Nelson.
Nguyen complained she didn’t get time with Nelson on weekends. She also wanted to take Nelson on a trip to Vietnam. The court modified the weekend visitation, but Tini objected to the overseas trip fearing Nguyen might not return.
Around this time, her former in-laws told the court that Nguyen’s behavior became increasingly unpredictable and unstable.
She destroyed the septic system and other property at the Upper Makefield home owned by Corinna Tini-Melchiondo. She left feces outside Tini-Melchiondo’s front door. She limited contact between Tini-Melchiondo and her sons.
Nguyen received a $220,000 divorce settlement and $3,600 a month in child support and alimony, but she refused to pay more than $11,000 in back rent owed to her former sister-in-law. It led to a near yearlong court battle, which Nguyen lost.
A forcible eviction was set for May 3, 2022.
Former sister-in-law Doreen Deal testified that about a month before the murders, she ran into Nguyen at the supermarket.
“She looked broken and unstable like a ghost without a soul,” Deal said in court. “I am sorry for not reaching out to her that day.”
Why would a parent kill their child DA says Trinh Nguyen shot her sons. Why it can be hard to spot danger when parents kill
Did pending eviction fuel rampage? Family legal battle over $11k in unpaid rent preceded Upper Makefield shooting, documents show
Did her written words offer insight into Trinh Nguyen’s motives before murders?
The prosecution and defense read from letters Nguyen wrote shortly before her deadly rampage including a handwritten will instructing what to do with her and her sons’ ashes.
Weinman contended they show the deteriorating mindset of Nguyen who believed everyone was against her.
She wrote of her fear for Jeffrey, with his open heart and sensitive soul, would be bullied without her to protect him. She feared Nelson was showing bullying traits she said reminded her of her ex-husband.
“She became so depressed. She felt the only way to be free was to end her life and she believed the only way to save her kids was to take them with her,” Weinman said.
First Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Schorn, though, pointed to obscenity-filled letters where Nguyen ranted about perceived mistreatment by the courts and the Tini family and her attempts to justify her violent behavior.
“She wrote a manifesto laying out what she was going to do, and you could see throughout the hate she had for others and the people she blamed,” Schorn said.
In one letter, Nguyen raged about how much her ex-sister-in-law charged her for rent, and her demand that Nguyen sign a new lease after the divorce.
“I could have shot her in the face right then and there,” Nguyen wrote.
Home surveillance footage shows the violent side of Trinh Nguyen
Tini-Melchiondo was getting out of the shower around 7 a.m. when she heard her son, Gianni, outside screaming about a gun.
She ran to the front door thinking Gianni was trying to save Nguyen from hurting herself.
“It was not until moments later that I realized she had tried shooting him,” Tini-Melchiondo said.
The confrontation between Giannni Melchiondo and Nguyen, captured on the home surveillance camera, was played in court
Melchiondo walked to his car, and shortly after Nguyen approached him holding a plastic box in both hands. The box is filled with photos of Jeffrey and Nelson she wanted him to give to Edward Tini.
Seconds after Melchiondo took the box, Nguyen pointed a gun at his head. He drops the box scattering the photos on the driveway. He then lunged toward Nguyen grabbing her from behind.
“She has a gun,” he screamed.
The struggle moved out of camera view, but the device captured the sounds of the chaos.
“Trinh Drop it. Trinh. Drop it Trinh. Trinh. Drop it now.”
“Call 911 now,” a female voice yelled.
When Melchiondo and Nguyen reappear on camera, he threw a disarmed Nguyen to the ground.
She gets back on her feet and goes toe-to-toe with Melchiondo. Her arm outstretched as she repeatedly lunged at his hand holding the weapon.
She repeatedly screamed for him to give her back the gun and insisted it was not loaded.
“It’s loaded,” Melchiondo replied after checking the barrel. “Trinh, you pulled the trigger twice. I could have died.”
In court, it was revealed the .38-caliber revolver didn’t misfire.
After shooting her sons, Nguyen removed the spent bullet casings, leaving the chambers empty.
Had she pulled the trigger a third time, a bullet would have fired, authorities said.
The cryptic response Trinh Nguyen offered when police found her
With no gun to complete her plan Nguyen drove into nearby Trenton, New Jersey where she bought heroin she planned to use to fatally overdose.
But Nguyen didn’t know anything about illegal drugs, so she mixed the powder with water and drank it, Schorn said.
When police pulled Nguyen from the minivan parked outside an Upper Makefield church, she immediately vomited, expelling most of the drug she ingested, Schorn said.
When an officer asked Nguyen to identify herself, she offered a cryptic response, Schorn said.
“You know who I am and where I live.”
In the minivan, police found a handwritten note with the Timber Ridge Road address. It asked the finder to please call 911.
“My children are dead in their beds.”
More on the Trinh Nguyen case Mental competency case dropped for Upper Makefield murder suspect. What happens next?
This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: Was Trinh Nguyen mentally unstable or seeking revenge? What we know.
