The family of the John Henkel, the man G-Dep confessed to killing 17 years ago, would have rather him not confess and bring up old wounds.
The stepbrother of the man shot to death by former Bad Boy rapper G-Dep -- who inadvertently confessed to the crime 17 years later -- said the hapless hip-hop artist was foolish to cop to the cold case.
"I think he's an idiot," said Robert Henkel, 56, whose then-32-year-old stepbrother, John, was blasted in the chest with three bullets on Oct. 19, 1993.
"His mother told him, 'Don't turn yourself in,' " Henkel said, referring to The Post's exclusive jailhouse interview with the rapper.
"He has three kids and a wife. It was years and years and years ago. Finally, we're not always thinking about it . . . and now it has to be dug up all again."
"She was right . . . After all this time, yes, he just should have shut up."
Robert Henkel, who now lives in a rural upstate town, said the long-ago shooting was hard on his late stepmother -- though "she kept things to herself" -- and devastated his stepbrother Werner, who has psychological problems.
Both had remained in Ridgewood after the shooting.
"There was a lot of garbage going on -- race, drugs," the union carpenter said of the hard-scrabble neighborhood. "Today, you got to listen to bullets flying all day long. I'm glad I got my other brother up here with me."
Henkel said he wouldn't have known about G-Dep's confession if a Ridgewood neighbor hadn't gotten in touch with him and relayed the news.
Manhattan DA spokeswoman Erin Duggan said Coleman, 36, has now been charged with murder in the case. He faces life in prison.
It got so bad for him, he confessed despite the objections of loved ones.
"I told my mom and my girlfriend that I wanted to confess, and they both told me to leave it in the past," he said. "[My girlfriend] is pretty peeved."
Lyvonnia Copeland, 40, the mother of his three kids, declined to comment yesterday.
Coleman said he's been dogged by drug addiction, and that at the time of the shooting, "I didn't think about it."
"That's just the life I was living back then," he said. "I started to wonder if all the bad things that happened to me in my life were karma for what I did . . . you start to think 'My happiness is because of someone else's sadness.'
"I thought that if I turned myself in, it might give me closure."
NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly called Coleman's motivations "uncertain -- maybe he had a pang of conscience," but said: "We'll take it any way we can get it."
Coleman's criminal record includes nearly 30 arrests, a law-enforcement source said.
"This guy had particularly bad luck with getting caught," the source said, noting his most recent bust in November for trespassing with drugs on city-housing property.
"I haven't been living right," Coleman told The Post. "I always had people around me that were good people, but I was doing the wrong thing."
Though he said his confession confounds everyone -- "People in [jail] don't understand how you can confess," he said -- to Coleman, it makes perfect sense.
"I'm just trying to get right with God," he said.
According to the New York Post >>>
It took nearly two decades, but the guilt of murder finally became too much for Trevell Coleman.
Wednesday night, after years of living with the burden, Coleman, 36, walked into the 25th Precinct and shockingly confessed to the very cold case, the sources said.
The career criminal -- once signed to superstar rap mogul Shawn "Diddy" Combs' record label -- was just 18 when he fatally shot a Queens man outside an East Harlem housing project in 1993, police sources said.
"I shot and killed someone 17 years ago," Coleman told a cop in the station house.
As Coleman continued to reveal more details of the Oct. 19, 1993, murder of John Henkel outside the James Weldon Johnson Houses -- things only the killer would know -- the officer reached out to investigators at the 23rd Precinct, where the crime took place.
"It was just eating away at him," said a police source.
Coleman, who grew up in the projects, told cops he was riding a bike when he rolled up on Henkel, 32, on Park Avenue and East 114th Street and announced a robbery.
Coleman told Detective William Dunn that Henkel resisted and grabbed his .40-caliber gun.
He allegedly admitted that he pulled away and shot his victim three times in the chest.
Coleman said he fled and tossed the weapon into the East River.
Henkel was rushed to St. Luke's Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
When the detective reviewed the cold-case file, he was amazed to discover that Coleman's tale matched up.
Coleman, who has racked up more than 25 arrests since 2003 for drugs, burglary and grand larceny, was charged with murder, and is being held without bail.
"My client is presumed innocent, and the case is going to grand jury," said Coleman's lawyer, Michael Alperstein.
Coleman, who rapped under the name "G-Dep," was signed in 1998 to a $350,000, five-album deal with Combs' Bad Boy Records. His first album, "Child of the Ghetto," was released in 2001.
The song "Let's Get It" featured Coleman trading rhymes with Combs and fellow Bad Boy artist Black Rob.
Coleman no longer has ties to the label, a spokewoman said.
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