How a slasher movie spawned real-life horror

The brutal murder of Randi Trimble stunned the residents of her modest community just outside Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Chip Dougherty was the lead detective assigned to the case. In more than 30 years on the job, he said, this homicide stood out.

Harrisburg police detective Chip Dougherty: That was horrific. The victim’s car was in the garage.  She was face down on the floor, tremendous amount of blood. We later confirmed an extension cord appeared to be wrapped around her neck.

Dennis Murphy, Dateline correspondent: Later on, what would the medical examiner  would tell you as far as cause of death?

Det. Dougherty: The cause of death was multiple stab wounds. I believe it was 27, and secondary to massive strangulation.

And the rest of the crime scene was just as jarring. Cabinets were overturned, drawers were dumped, and mattresses were upended. To the lay person, it might have looked like a robbery turned deadly. But not to investigators.

Det. Dougherty: It screamed “staged.”

Murphy: Staged?

Det. Dougherty: This was almost like a TV set. Like I’d walked into a movie set.

Dougherty says most burglars break in and go straight for the jewels. 

This scene was too haphazard, as if made to look like a burglary.  But Dougherty says he kept an open mind... until he approached the grieving husband Brian Trimble.

Det. Dougherty: I would think someone in that kind of a situation having come home to see their wife brutally murdered in the garage and all this blood, you would think he’d have some blood on him.  I mean having cradled them or done something.  He didn’t.  He just… he cried but no tears.

A wife brutally murdered. Even an armchair detective could figure this one out—the husband did it.  

Murphy: Early order of business is to check out his alibi?

Det. Dougherty: Absolutely first thing we did.

And Brian Trimble told him this: He had been out to dinner with an old friend that evening at a TGI Fridays, roughly 40 minutes from home.

The next day, Dougherty followed up, talked with the friend, and waitresses at the restaurant. The story, as they say, checked out.

Det. Dougherty: The coroner placed time of death somewhere in the area of 7:30 and he was remarkably accurate.

Murphy: And Brian wasn’t anywhere near it?

Det. Dougherty:  Brian was nowhere around. He was at the Park City mall some 40 to 45 minutes away.

Murphy: So where did that leave you?

Det. Dougherty: Holding the bag.  I mean, really grasping.

Grasping, because the crime scene didn’t point to any other suspects. 

Det. Dougherty: We looked at everything— we had the state police in, crime scene units, and forensics in. We had everything we could possibly need to develop some sort of lead that would be some sort of evidentiary value. We pretty much came up empty.

Murphy: Nothing?

Det. Dougherty: Nothing there.

Murphy: Hairs, fibers, fingerprints?

Det. Dougherty: Yeah, a little unusual.

And if Dougherty was looking for another reason to check Trimble’s name off his suspect’s list, he had it: from Trimble’s own mother-in-law.

Nancy Chavez, Brian Trimble’s mother-in-law: Everyone else, including myself, knew that the marriage was great. Brian loved Randi and Randi loved Brian. It was perfect. There was no inkling at all of trouble.

Nancy Chavez says in the terrible days after her daughter’s murder, events passed in a blur.  Still a few moments come back vividly, if painfully: covering the body of her daughter with a blanket, worrying about her son-in-law who had multiple sclerosis, and embracing his friends as they came to pay their last respects.  Blaine Norris, Brian’s office buddy and wannabe movie director, was standing in that line.

Chavez: I hugged him with all of Brian’s friends and wanted them to take care of Brian, cause they worked with him.

Despite the unshakable alibi, the evidence nor motive that didn’t seem to exist, Chip Dougherty was convinced Brian Trimble was his man. As the detective and a team of investigators scoured the area for any and all leads, a young woman across town— a careful observer— was certain she had this case wrapped up.

Tracey Thompson, Norris and Trimble's officemate: When I got into the office everybody was already there.  And I walked in and said ‘Hey, did Brian kill his wife?”

Tracey Thompson remembers that Monday after the murder with crystal clarity. She says as soon as she heard the news reports, she believed Trimble killed his wife.

And here’s why: Tracey says her co-worker, the effusively happily-married Brian Trimble, had made a startling announcement before the holidays— he wanted a divorce.

Thompson: I was like, “Why is that?” and he’s like “Oh things aren’t the way they were.” And I’m was like “Okay, when are you gonna ask for a divorce?” He said, "Over Christmas."  I replied, “Oh, that’s a nice time to do it.”

Then just a few weeks later, Tracey says Trimble abruptly changed course. He said he and his wife Randi were working things out.

Thompson: They had a perfect relationship. “Now he wants a divorce. Now they’re okay. And now, she’s dead?” It was like something’s wrong. So then, that’s when I was like, “Brian had something to do with it.”

It was a suspicion she was all too willing to share when Det. Dougherty came to interview Trimble’s coworkers.

Thompson: "I think Brian did it." And then I said, “And you know what? No, I think Brian was too weak to do it but he had he hired someone to do it. I think Blaine did it.”

Blaine Norris, the office nerd, the wannabe horror film director— a hired hit man? The very idea would later seem preposterous to his friends, even to some working on the case. But Det. Dougherty thought Tracey Thompson was onto something. 

Det. Dougherty: I thought “Wow, powerful stuff.” And she stuck with that. So much so that we as the investigators knew that’s where it was going. But we didn’t want the rest of the world to know it.

Murphy: You had nothing you could give to a DA or take to a grand jury?

Det. Dougherty: Yeah, it was tough. 

Murphy: Just speculation? Innuendo?

Det. Dougherty: That’s all it was. And we all believed it.

It was becoming the ultimate horror plot with the geekiest of male leads: Blaine Norris and Brian Trimble. 

If Tracey Thompson and the police were right, these two were more than good friends. They were partners in an evil that could have sprung from the mind of Hitchcock or Quentin Tarantino. If it were true, had the pair scripted the perfect murder?

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