How a slasher movie spawned real-life horror

Garrotted with an extension cord, stabbed 27 times, Randi Trimble had been found dead in her garage.

In the weeks that followed her murder, police quickly focused the investigation on her husband, Brian Trimble. Randi’s mom Nancy Chavez remembers the moment Det. Dougherty alerted her of their suspicions.

Nancy Chavez, Brian Trimble’s mother-in-law: It was just as bad as when I learned when my daughter was dead when I heard Brian was a suspect.  It was unbelievable.

Dennis Murphy, Dateline correspondent: Your daughter was married to and sleeping with a total stranger, is what they were telling you.

Chavez: Absolutely. Someone that she didn’t know and I didn’t know.

But Det. Dougherty, for one, didn’t believe the passive, video-game playing computer tech had acted alone.

Chip Dougherty, police detective on the case: Brian couldn’t of done that. That wasn’t him. He couldn’t, muster the courage or to do anything like that.

Sure enough, police soon found an interesting tidbit on Trimble’s computer— a link to a grisly Web site that offered a stomach churning step-by-step manual for the would-be assassin. Trimble had sent the link to his good friend Blaine Norris just eight days before Randi Trimble’s murder.

Det. Dougherty: When you read the manual and it pretty much matched… there was a lot of similarities between what was in the manual and what you saw at the crime scene.

Office coworkers of the two, one in particular, had persuaded investigators that Trimble and Norris were the men they were after.  Still, Det. Dougherty and investigators needed proof. They needed a confession.

Det. Dougherty: We’re missing that that spike. We can’t get Brian— his alibi’s gonna hold up. Our own investigation proved that out.

And there was another problem: The murdered woman’s husband didn’t seem to have much of a motive. Or did he? 

Trimble had wanted to produce that movie with Norris, the one that had stalled because of money problems. Did coming up with newfound money have something to do with this crime? Days after his wife’s murder, investigators discovered that Trimble had transferred thousands of dollars from their savings account and he seemed eager to claim the benefits on his wife’s insurance policy—worth about $100,000.

Chavez: He was very busy. He knew where all the finances were and how to access them.

Detective Dougherty decided to rattle Trimble by playing head games with him. Weeks after the murder, the cop told his suspect that police needed to videotape another walk-through of the crime scene, presumably to help detectives.  Trimble tells one of the investigators about the moment he discovered his wife’s body...

Det. Dougherty: We’d probably interviewed three or four times, he never indicated before that he stepped into the garage and touched Randi. In fact he had indicated he didn’t do that.

Murphy: But it’s an emotional night. It’s his wife. Maybe he wasn’t sure what he told you. Maybe he remembered it better that time.

Det. Dougherty: It’s an emotional night and I see my wife like that I’m gonna remember going’ in the garage and touching her to see if she’s alive.  I’ll remember that.

But investigators didn’t challenge Trimble on that. They didn’t want to scare him into hiring a lawyer.  Instead, they made daily, friendly calls to him, peppering him with questions. They popped up at work and at home unannounced. During one of those sudden house calls, Dougherty remembers noticing a new, snazzy TV set Trimble had just purchased.

Det. Dougherty: And I said “Wow, that’s a fantastic TV.” And I looked at him I said, “Brian, you know, I wish I could have one of those. My wife would never let me.” He looked at me, he says “Yeah, my wife wouldn’t let me have it either.” Okay, thanks, appreciate that. Then I left.

Thompson, the co-worker, could see those friendly visits were beginning to rattle her coworker.

Thompson: Whenever they did that he wouldn’t come into work the next couple days.

Little inconsistencies in his story, drunken-sailor spending, dubious violent Web sites— it still wasn’t enough to take to the district attorney but it just might be enough ammunition to pressure Trimble into a confession.

The police strategy of needling Trimble, keeping him off-balance, seemed to be paying off. In May, roughly four months after the murder, investigators sensed their prime suspect was at the breaking point. They invited him in for a talk...

Det. Dougherty: I was summoned into the room and Brian was seated to my left as I walked in and Les was talking to him. And Les looked at him and said, “You didn’t kill your wife, did you?” And he just shook his head. He says “no.”

But you know who did, don’t ya? And he said “Yeah.” “Who was it?” “It was Blaine.”

Murphy: how often does that happen in a law enforcement career?

Det. Dougherty: Not often.

Trimble told them he was planning to pay his buddy Norris a fee for the murder, about $20,000, roughly the same amount Norris had racked up in debts shooting that little movie.  Was this a motive for murder?  Killing a woman—his best friend’s wife— just so they could get the insurance money to finish a film?

Police now went after Blaine Norris full-bore. The film-maker was unaware that his old pal Trimble had just dropped the dime on him.  Norris was busy at home, back at work finally editing his gruesome horror flick. Still, the cops held back from arresting him. Then district attorney Skip Ebert didn’t think they had made the case against Norris --  not yet. 

Skip Ebert, district attorney: I was still looking for every fact that I could get to support every word that Brian Trimble had told us. So everything he said, in other words, to use him, a corrupt source in a trial. I had to prove through other methods that, that’s what he told us. So low and behold, that’s what happened.

The DA wanted more evidence against Norris. The question was: could he get it before Norris caught wind of his old friend’s confession and then disappear before the law could tighten the noose around him?

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