Thread by @JasonLeopold

It's been 5 painful years. On July 25, 2016, my brother Eric died. He was brutally murdered on the pathway leading to the front door of his house. Every single day since then, I have struggled with my own grief.

I couldn't go to sleep at night without music or the television on or some sound playing in the background to distract me from the images of my brother being repeatedly stabbed whenever I closed my eyes.

So to alleviate my feelings of despair, I threw myself into my work. Reporting helped me forget how powerless I felt during the probe into my brother's murder and took my mind off of the trauma I had experienced.

While I was hunkered down working on investigative stories and filing FOIA requests,  I was also juggling a couple of personal projects on the side:

Locating and recovering the gifts my brother purchased for my parents 30 minutes before he was viciously attacked and trying to secure his personal belongings and his fleet of Harley Davidson motorcycles and his Camaro.

I told the story on my Instagram last year of how I tracked down the items my brother bought for my parents.

Eric's motorcycles and cars and his other personal items proved to be more difficult. He didn't leave a will and we weren't his next of kin.

My mother told me how she wished she could have Eric's clothes. My father hoped for the Harley Eric built, my brother's prized possession. They just needed something material of his that made them feel like a part of my brother was always with them.

A few days before the coronavirus outbreak was declared a pandemic, I called my parents with news. Eric's Camaro, his motorcycles (turns out he had 7 of them), clothes and everything else he left behind would soon be ours.

How that happened is a story too long for Twitter. But it took me nearly 4 years to finally get most of my brother's stuff back. We made arrangements to have it immediately picked up.

My parents' garage wasn't big enough to store everything so a few of the motorcycles were sent to my sister's house. She lived around the corner from Eric. It was her ex-boyfriend who murdered my brother. Eric had tried to protect her from the physical abuse she suffered.

My father was into Harleys when Eric and I were growing up. That's where Eric's obsession came from. He spent years painstakingly building and customizing his Harley. He finished it a year before he died.

Eric's ego grew larger when he found out his 2002 Wide Glide was going to be featured in a biker magazine. He got the recognition for his work that he craved. My brother had hoped to take a cross country motorcycle trip with my dad. My dad regrets never taking him up on it.

My dad can't ride anymore. He can barely walk. But my mom told me that he's often in the garage waxing Eric's motorcycles and she can hear him speaking to it as if it were my brother. It's heartbreaking.

Last month, I surprised my parents with an unannounced visit. I hadn't seen them in a couple of years. My mom answered the door and was so stunned to see me she ran into the bathroom and stayed there for about 10 minutes crying.

I eventually headed down to the garage. I've never seen the motorcycle my brother built & bragged about. I inspected every inch of the bike, studying the work my brother put into it. I sat on it for a while & gripped the handlebars tightly. I too ended up speaking to his bike.

I miss my brother everyday. I feel a profound sense of loss. I can't believe it's been 5 years.