Criminology - Kristen Trickle

Episode Date: November 3, 2024

On Oct 30th, 2019, 26-year-old Kristen Trickle was preparing for the Halloween festivities. The next morning, Kristen's husband, Colby, woke up to a loud noise. He quickly realized that his wife was lying in bed dying from a gunshot wound. Colby called 911 to report that his wife had shot herself. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss the death of Kristen Trickle. Kristen's family and friends were shocked when the coroner pronounced her death a suicide. Kristen was afraid of guns, and everyone said she was in a good place. Suspicion began to fall onto her husband Colby after a series of revelations that suggested everything was not as it appeared. You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology   An Emash Digital production

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Tune into morbidology each week across all podcast platforms. Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised. Hello everyone and welcome to episode 332 of the criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. Mr. Morford. Morf, how you doing, buddy? Doing good. working out a few gremlins today, I think both of us, but here we are recording.

Yeah, we're having a little technology issues connecting and, you know, sometimes that's just how it goes. That's it. Let's go ahead and give our Patreon shoutouts and we had one this week. And it was Allison Clark. So that's great new support. We really appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you so much, Allison.

That really helps out. And anyone else that would like to support the show, please head over to Patreon. dot com slash criminology to get started. So more if we are heading into the holiday season, we're getting ready for it. And it's time to start thinking about giving gifts. What better gift for your true crime friend than an adventure at CrimeCon. Yeah, CrimeCon, 2025 is happening September 5th through the 7th. It's at the Gaylord, Rockies, Resort, Convention Center in Aurora, Colorado.

And it's going to feature all of your favorite people from the world of true crime. And if you want to go or give a CrimeCon pass as a gift, why not save some money in the process? Use our promo code criminology to save 10% off when you buy your standard badges at checkout when you visit CrimeCon.com. So we'll see you there. It should be a lot of fun. All right.

Let's dive right into this week's case. This episode is dropping just a couple of days after Halloween. It's hard to escape the excitement. of Halloween. The kids are happy and maybe for us adults. We're excited because it sort of signals the start of the whole holiday season with Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's right around the corner. Or maybe it's something about the crisp fall air and all of the horror movie marathons. For you more, if I know it's drinking pumpkin coffees, but it's probably different for each person. Yeah, I've got to have some pumpkin coffees around Halloween, extra cream,

five Splenda, perfect. Okay, five Splenda seems like a lot. I'm not going to lie, but you do your thing. I will say I have been on a horror movie marathon. I've been binging all the different series, uh, the conjuring series. That's one of my favorites. And there are a lot of movies in that Conjuring series. But I like horror movies around Halloween. I'm the same. And The Conjuring is one of my favorites too. But Halloween has a way of feeling special.

Even if you don't do much trick or treating, some people go all out, creating haunted houses for others in their neighborhood or others just leave a bowl of candy out so that no trick or treater is disappointed. Many people like to hand out candy just to see. all of the different costumes. And there are some people in my neighborhood morph who go all out. There's a guy behind me who has like a 12 foot tall grute from Guardians of the Galaxy. And, you know, he's got a skull that shows up on the side of his house, creaking music.

And there's some people go all out. Yeah, it's pretty cool. And I think it's not this fun for the kids, but it's fun for the adults, too. that want to, you know, feel like a kid reliving their Halloween days. 26-year-old Kristen Trickle of Hayes, Kansas was one of the people getting ready for Halloween on Wednesday, October 30th, 2019. Her plan was the next day on Thursday, Halloween, to work her shift in the gardening center at Walmart, and then come home to hand out candy along with her husband, Colby. The couple did their normal routine before heading to bed, and they discussed the fun they would have

the next day. The next morning on Halloween, Colby was woken up due to very loud noise. He noticed that his ears were ringing as he looked around the bedroom. In the bed next to him, he saw Kristen, and immediately he knew that she had shot herself, and that this was the loud sound that had woken him up. It was around 5.30 in the morning. He was confused and shocked by what he woke up to, but he immediately grabbed his cell phone and called 911. He explained to the dispatcher what was going on. As he looked at his wife, who was barely clinging to life in their bed, he thought about turning the gun on himself, but the dispatcher was promising them the help was on the way. There's a chance that Kristen would be okay. When first responders arrived, Kristen was still alive. There was a gun on

her stomach and she was lying in the bed wearing only her underwear. Officers could see that her jaw was moving and could feel that she still had a pulse. Sergeant Branden and Hopman moved the gun that was on her body and carried Kristen into the living room so that paramedics could assess and treat her. There was a visible entrance wound from a bullet under her chin. Sadly, despite their efforts, they couldn't save Kristen. Colby had been asked to wait outside. He was standing on the front porch when he was notified that Kristen had passed away. He broke down sobbing and asked, are you sure the night before he had gone to bed excited for Halloween to come. And then on Halloween morning, his wife of five years was dead. And this would be a

nightmarish scene for anyone. You know, you wake up to a loud noise. You're disoriented. You don't know what's going on. You look over and you see your spouse shot. And, you know, emergency personnel arrives. They do all they can, but they can't save Kristen. And here you have Colby, the grieving husband. You know, he's sobbing. He's breaking down as you would expect any spouse to do when, you know, they hear the news that their loved one has passed away. Yeah, this is a real tragedy that, you know, this was supposed to be a day of fun that Kristen was looking forward to. and here she's passing away from this gunshot to her head, and it was just the beginning of an ordeal for her family.

After three days, Kristen's death was ruled as suicide by coroner Lyle Nordhoek. There were no reports of domestic violence between Kristen and Colby and no signs of older or repeated abuse on her body. As far as the coroner knew, Colby was a shocked and grieving husband. The coroner told CBS News, I have to take the husband's statement at word value that he was there and the gun went off and she is dead. But the coroner wasn't just taking Colby's word. To him, Kristen's death also looked like a suicide.

The coroner said at the time that the gun was fired, it was being held close to the chin and parallel to the body, which is common in cases of suicide. So let's break this down, Morif. I mean, really, what does the coroner have to work with? He has the statements from Colby, but then he also has the evidence, right? He can tell how close the gun was when it was fired. You can tell the position of the gun when it was fired. But really, I mean, that's all that the coroner has to go on.

It's not a lot of information. It's not nothing. But is it enough to paint the, entire story. And I think in a lot of cases, I would say the answer is no. And this is a case with no other witness besides Colby. So since things look to the corner as he's said they've occurred, and since they have his report of what happened, I don't think there's any reason for them to doubt at that time that things happened the way he said they did. Well, at the very least, there's nothing glaring.

There's nothing contradicting his story at this point. But for many people who knew Kristen, they couldn't believe she would take her own life. She wasn't depressed as far as anyone knew. They couldn't help but ask, why would Kristen have wanted to take her own life? According to Colby, they hadn't been in any recent fights that he could think of, certainly nothing major. In looking back at Kristen's life, she didn't have a, a stable childhood. When she was just two years old, her mother left her father and abandoned her in the

process. When she was 17, she moved in with her aunt and uncle and her three cousins. And she began to do very well. Her uncle, Pastor Brandt Rice, told CBS that once Kristen moved in, she loved being with our family. She loved the peace in our home. The Rice family loved having Kristen there too. Her cousin Chloe called Kristen her older sister figure, saying to CBS, I really looked up to her. Colby and Kristen met when they were both 18 years old. They attended the same church. Kristen admired Colby's songwriting abilities. Kristen's aunt and uncle weren't big fans of Colby, though. They felt that he displayed some red flags like controlling behavior. Her uncle Brandt told CBS, it was like he wanted her at his beck and call. They noticed that if she didn't immediately respond to a

text or wasn't able to answer her phone, he would get very frustrated with her. When they voiced their concerns about Colby to Kristen, it upset her. Brant said, we know that she was not happy with us. After this, Kristen began to become distant toward them. Brant told CBS, I believe Colby convinced her that we were against her, adding that this is why she separated herself somewhat. And this controlling behavior morph, you know, it is such a red flag. It pops up in so many different cases that we cover.

And I think what you see here is that Kristen's aunt and uncle are noticing the signs. But like many examples that we talk about, the person who's being controlled doesn't always see it the same way, especially in the beginning. Yeah. And I think sometimes when a family member that's worried, says something about it, it can cause a little bit of a, you know, friction between that person that is in that relationship that you care about, but they sort of push back against you because they, you know, they are happy in this relationship. They don't always see the warning signs the way that people, you know, outside of the

relationship may see them. And they don't want to hear about them, right? because the relationship is new, it's fresh, it's exciting, they don't want to hear anything negative about this person that, you know, let's say they're falling in love with. I think that's very natural. Kristen and Colby married on April 25th, 2014. This was about three years after they first met.

They also moved to Kansas City, about 300 miles away from Hayes. This is when Colby enlisted in the, the Army Reserve. Kristen found work at a veterinary clinic and Colby did odd jobs here and there, but it was extremely difficult for the young couple to make ends meet in their new city. In early 2019, they decided to move back to Hayes, where they had friends and family. Kristen's aunt and uncle were both thrilled by the news of their move. They were extremely happy to be able to reconnect with Kristen. And for a while, things were back to. to normal. Her uncle Brandt remembers that it was just like it was when she lived with them.

She had even started going to church again. Kristen was working at Walmart, but she really loved working with animals like she did when they lived in Kansas City. She began to plan for a business of her own, where she could board animals. According to her aunt Delin in a CBS interview, Kristen had picked out a little house that's south of town and has a little barn behind it because she wanted to turn the little barn into the boarding area. Kristen's family members were all stunned by the news of her death. They had a hard time processing the news of her taking her own life because it was just something they would never associate with her.

Her aunt Delin told CBS, it's so out of character to Kristen and how she solves problems. And she added that Kristen wasn't a runner from Portland. problems. Brandt Rice agreed, saying, the last person that I would ever think would take their own life would be Kristen because of the joy she has. He felt that the entire idea was so foreign, but there were specific things that didn't sit quite right. One example of something that didn't sit right was Kristen's family remembering that she was afraid of guns. And then suddenly she had used one to take her own life. Colby even told the detectives that she slept with the revolver on her side of the bed. But this just seemed out of character to her family.

Another thing that didn't fit with Kristen was that she didn't get dressed before taking her own life. It might seem odd, but she would know that Colby would call 911 and a bunch of strangers would come to the house and see her body. Her Aunt Delin noted to CBS that Kristen was very private of her body, very modest. It was shocking. to her, that Kristen was found without most of her clothes on, is just something that the Kristen she knew would never have let happen. Finally, Kristen's dogs, Cooper and Roxy, were her world. According to her uncle, she would never take her life and not tie up loose ends with her family. Make sure her dogs had somewhere to go.

It's easy for some people to conclude that Kristen's family was just grieving and unable to accept the truth that Chris. had taken her own life, but they felt deep down, something was off. But Detective J.B. Burkholder was also feeling like things didn't perfectly add up. He had responded to more than one suicide in the past, and to several homicides, and he didn't think that this was an open and shut suicide case. First of all, he explained to CBS, that having a female with a gunshot wound, especially to the head, was unusual. The gun used seemed odd to Detective Burkholder, too. The detective explained that the full-sized 357 revolver, which is a large caliber weapon, can be hard to handle.

Because of this, it didn't seem very likely to him that a woman is small as Tristan would have been able to hold the gun at the right angle and pull the trigger. It was also aware that it was on Tristan's stomach when Colby claimed to have picked it up. So I think more if there's a couple of things to talk about here. You know, for me, I would think that most families would have a hard time, accepting the fact that their loved one had taken their own life, especially when the circumstances around that person's life don't seem to add up. I mean, we talked about some of it.

She didn't seem depressed. You know, she had moved back to Hayes, was interacting with friends and family. She had a job. I mean, there were things that she was looking forward to. And you have her aunt and uncle talking about her dogs. I think to them, things weren't lining up. But then you also have the detective

who's thinking that things aren't lining up as well. You know, a full size 357 is a pretty hefty gun. And it's a large caliber. It's not to say that she couldn't have used it, but would it make it a little tough? offer maybe to hold it at a certain angle that big of gun yeah maybe so and i think that's what the detective is saying and just because her family may not have been quick to accept that it was suicide and i think many families fall into that same category maybe after they lose a loved one

that doesn't mean that in this instance that they aren't onto something and you have this strange thing of Colby placing the gun back on her stomach after he said, you know, he thought about while he was on the phone with 911, that he might take his life too. You know, it just seems like an odd thing for somebody to do to lay a gun back on somebody's stomach like that. Another thing that stood out to Detective Burkeholder was that Kristen had set an alarm to get up, to get ready for work and had plans for that day. While officers were at the crime scene, her alarm went off multiple times. It was the alarm that was set so she would be up in time for work that day.

The detective found this odd because in his experience, when someone feels like taking their own life, and especially when they do, they're not setting alarms because it doesn't matter when they get up. There was candy set out for trick-or-treaters. Kristen had clearly been planning to say, celebrate Halloween night. Why would she wake up and take her own life seemingly out of nowhere?

And I do think this is the big question. Now, you could make the argument that someone wakes up and all of a sudden makes that decision. And that's why they had their alarm set. And that's why they had already gone through the process of getting the candy ready and all of that. but you can also see why some of these questions make sense. And I think it would have been easy for some people to ignore those gut feelings, those little things that didn't add up and just close the case out.

But that wasn't the case here. They seem to pay attention to those gut feelings they were having. In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder what's emergency. We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, blood and water. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts.

Sergeant Brandon Houtman was also suspicious from the moment he responded to the scene. He agreed that the gun seemed to live. little too large for Kristen to have used on herself, and something felt off about the whole thing. It's less common for women to take their own lives by doing anything that disfigures her faces, and not only did Kristen apparently choose to do so, she was only wearing her underwear, which is something else that was less common in his experience. Even in their final moments, many women who plan to take their own life seem to want to keep up appearances and also think about the state they will be found in. Despite the official ruling of a suicide,

based on their gut feelings. Investigators kept digging. At the police station, Colby talked with detectives about his service in the military. He told them about how he did intelligence work in different places around the world. According to CBS, he said, they sent me to the Middle East

and they sent me down into Central America. Police verified that this was all completely false. Colby had never been deployed overseas anywhere. He was a reserve officer and did not work in intelligence. This may seem inconsequential to some people who may say, well, so what? He wanted to make his job seem cooler when he was talking to detectives. But to detectives, the fact that Colby would lie to them about something like that on the heels of his wife's death, it just didn't sit right.

If he lied about that to them, what else might he be lying about? And that does seem so strange to me, Morve. I mean, you know, this is something that can be verified. And here you have Colby just coming out and lying about what he did in the military. For what reason? And how did he not know that they would be able to get his records? They would be able to find out that he was lying. Yeah, this clearly wasn't a case of him misspeaking or,

having a detail or two off, he completely lied to them about the, you know, his work history. And if he was willing to lie in this instance, what else might he have lied to them about? I think that really made them even more suspicious with him. But isn't it strange that this was the lie that he chose to tell? Because it didn't seem as though it had anything to do. with his wife's death, what he did in the military. It's just a strange, at least to me, thing to lie about. Looking at Colby's cell phone records, detectives learned that he had been hiding a few different things from them. First, he regularly exchanged flirtatious messages

on Snapchat with another woman. As far as Colby knew, Kristen had no idea about this woman, who we met online while playing video games. While the two had never met in person, He was texting her from the police station, just hours after he called 911, because he found his wife dying next to him. He would later say it's nothing serious, but he was clearly thinking of this woman at a very serious time when flirting in romance with someone other than his wife should have been the last thing on his mind. This may not exactly point to Colby wanting Kristen dead, and he wouldn't be the first husband

to push the boundaries online. But there was also his Google search history. one search from 10 days before Kristen died stood out to investigators. Colby had been looking up information about how much Kristen's life insurance policy would pay out in the event of her death. This was interesting to detectives because he had claimed to be completely unaware of any life insurance policy for Kristen, instead telling them that he had life insurance coverage from the military. but investigators discovered that there were actually two life insurance policies for Kristen. Walmart, her employer, offered a payout of $23,000.

And the United States military offered $100,000. Both of these began to pay out in the winter of 2020. So, you know, detectives start off with the gut feeling that, you know, something's just not right here. And then you have Colby lying about. about his military service, you have the discovery of these flirtatious messages back and forth with another woman and especially the ones where he's at the police station just after finding out that his wife died, add all of that to this life policy issue.

You know, he's saying that he wasn't aware of any, but yet his Google searches tell a very different story. Yeah, and I think out of everything, the fact he's messaging this woman that that he's in this online relationship with just hours after his wife dies, to me, that's one of the most damning things that make him look like there's more to this story. of the METI. Colby had an answer for the Google search. According to him, it was Kristen using his phone to look up life insurance information about him. He told investigators, we always gave each other access to each other's phones and stuff. But surveillance footage from Walmart would show that Kristen was at work, not using a phone at the very moment while the search was being made, proving that it could not have been her looking up this information. Colby also lied about where they kept the gun that was used to kill Kristen.

He claimed that she slept with it on her side of the bed, but investigators found photos on his phone that were taken in the bedroom prior to Kristen's death that showed the revolver as well as other firearms on Colby's side. And it just seems to me like additional instances of the police catching Colby in lies. You know, I go back to him saying that Kristen slept with the gun right next her.

But yet you have her family being very adamant about the fact that Kristen was afraid of guns. They were skeptical about that claim from the very beginning. So, you know, there's just a lot of things that are not adding up. And even more so than that being proven to be incorrect. And I think that's the bigger thing. When Dr. Ashley Christensen interviewed Colby about Kristen's mental state leading up to her death, he suddenly did have an idea of what could have been weighing on her so heavily. Colby told Dr. Christensen that he believed Kristen had discovered his online relationship with another woman.

In fact, according to Dr. Christensen, he reported that they had last discussed that relationship the week of her death. this information completely opposes what he told detectives, which was that Kristen was completely unaware of his activities online. In an interview with CBS, assistant Ellis County attorney Aaron Cunningham called the situation very frustrating. He knew that this was a murder case and he knew that the main suspect, Colby Trickle, was lying. In fact, it was tough for him to see Colby as a free man enjoying his life.

There were even occasions that the two would cross paths in public. Cunningham told CBS, it made my skin crawl. In January 2021, County Attorney Robert Anderson took office. According to Anderson, Attorney Cunningham, and Detective Burkeholder basically cornered him and asked him to look into the trickle case. They said to him, this is something that's clearly a homicide. Help us to get the nails put in this coffin. And I think more of you hear information like that,

there's no doubt that some of these individuals involved in the case were adamant. They had come to the conclusion that this was not suicide, this was a murder, and Colby was at the heart of it. But having that feeling or even believing that that is what happened is not enough. we obviously know that, they have to have evidence to be able to take it further, to be able to charge him, take him to court. Yeah, I think especially in this case, they wanted to make sure all their eyes were dotted and their teeth were crossed because there's no real room to spare her. There's no witness. The original ruling was suicide.

There's no hard physical evidence that says Colby. committed a crime here. All they have are a lot of gut feelings. So I think they really wanted to get things right and squared away before they charged him and took him the court. Yeah. And that's the right approach to take. I mean, there's a lot of circumstantial evidence, right, that's building up against him. But there's not that one extremely incriminating thing yet that would just cement it in the minds of jurors. According to CBS, Dr. Ashley Christensen,

who was hired to gather as much information about Kristen's state of mind as is humanly possible, felt that right around the time of her death, there was a lot of data suggesting that she had a lot of hope and was at a very low risk for taking her own life. Colby's defense attorney disagrees

with the whole process of basically trying to psychoanalyzed Kristen without her actual participation. The defense attorney said, we can't know the mind of someone who's going to end their life. On July 14, 2021, Colby Trickle was charged with the murder of his wife, Kristen. At trial, it was revealed that Colby had spent basically all the life insurance money over $120,000. It was all gone.

It had been only eight months since the payout. The jury also learned about a $1942 payment to True Touch Dolls, which is a company that made and manufactures and distributes life-sized sex dolls. Kristen's uncle, Pastor Rice, told CBS he was just disgusted by this information. He didn't believe any of the excuses from Colby or his defense team. Defense attorney Ziegler explained that Colby was having trouble sleeping alone after the sudden and traumatic death of his wife, and also mentioned. that Colby discussed the purchase of the doll with his own mother. To Ziegler, this proves that the

purchase of a life-sized sex doll was purely for comfort and his mental health. He argued that a grown man's not going to talk to his mother about the sex doll he's going to buy. Colby's mom, Tina Krutzer, testified to her belief that the doll was indeed just to help his nightmares and not for sex. Kristen's uncle, Pastor Rice, doesn't buy it. He told CBS, if you need comfort and in warmth, we have electric blankets that we use for that. Her aunt Delenn told CBS she was appalled and felt that it was just like he bought a replacement of her with her money. The fact that he used the life insurance money for that just made it worse.

Detective Berkholder added to have him ordering this type of doll just months after his wife's death was concerning. That wasn't the only thing he bought though. he spent thousands of dollars on music equipment and video games as well as more responsible things like paying off some debt attorney cunningham told jurors of the money that colby wasted it all and i think we have to spend a minute talking about this life size sex doll not something that i talk about a lot because it doesn't come up a lot to make the argument that you spent $2,000 on a life-sized sex doll

because you needed warmth and comfort. To me is absolutely ridiculous. You know, more if you could go to Walmart and buy a body pillow for, I don't know, 10, 15, 20 bucks. You don't need a $2,000 sex doll to lay in the bed with you to help ease your nightmares. That's not what sex dolls are made for.

Yeah, and he could have spent a lot less money with some of those relaxing nighttime music that's supposed to calm you and help you go to sleep, or he could have even spent that money on counseling if he was really having that much of a issue following his wife's death. So, you know, at the end of the day, I think this is just his cover story for why he really purchased. it. Oh yeah, me too. I mean, there are a million different things that he could have used the money

for that would have helped him in the wake of his wife's death. But a life-sized sex doll, there really is no valid explanation for that. I just can't buy any of them. Colby's defense attorney brought up a good point in court. According to his CBS, Colby called 911 while Kristen was still showing signs of life, which is what you would do if you wanted to save her and not wanted her dead. If Colby was trying to kill Kristen, why did he immediately call for help? She didn't make it much longer after officers arrived, so it's not like there would be a huge gap between the shot and the 911 call. However, he may not have known that when he called. Was there a real call for help, or was he trying to keep suspicion off of him by making sure to

go through the same motions that would be expected from an innocent person. You would think that if he had wanted her dead, he would have waited to call. He could have claimed to try CPR first. Maybe he was expecting the shot to immediately kill her. And when it didn't, he knew he had to call 911, where he would become a suspect. Now, in my mind, more of, you know, this is most likely the actions of someone knowing what an innocent person should do. But also probably knowing that this shot was fatal, was going to be fatal no matter what, and that the timing of the call wasn't going to change the ultimate outcome.

Yeah, we talked about how strong a caliber of 357 is and the damage that it would do. So he probably would have thought even if she wasn't dead, there's no way she'd recover and be able to hell what actually happened. So I don't think there was any harm calling 911 immediately. Attorney Cunningham told the jury that this case is simple as ABC, explaining A, an affair, B, a breakdown of control,

and C, cold hard cash. His attorney, Cassie Ziegler, said that Colby's relationship with the woman online was not a long-term intimate affair. There was evidence that the relationship between Kristen and Colby was breaking down. On April 8th, 2019, six months before Kristen was killed, they texted and were clearly unhappy with each other. Colby felt like something was different between them and said that she had been being

pushy lately, but Kristen said she was just giving him a taste of his own medicine. In the text, she wrote, I'm just deciding to stick up for myself. Just like you, I'm taking control of the situation. And I read this and, you know, for me, it comes back to the controlling nature of someone. You know, if Colby, as suggested, was this very controlling person, then, you know, you can take this text to mean that Kristen was tired of it. And she was pushing back against that control. Well, more of what happens when the controller or the person who is doing all of the

controlling starts to lose that control. In most cases, that's when things can turn very, very badly. Yeah, I think at the very least, this text history shows that the marriage wasn't perfect by any stretch. And when you add it to everything else, the online affair with this woman or encounter, whatever you want to call it, the way he spent that money so quickly,

like you hit the lottery, bought a sex doll. I think when you start to add all these things together, along with the text history showing that things weren't perfect between them, it really helps to just paint a more complete picture of, their marriage and that it wasn't perfect. If it's true that Kristen had been going back to church, reconnecting with her closest family members,

looking for her home of her own and planning on a viable business that would help her support herself, then starting to push back against her husband and stand up for herself seems like another sign that she was possibly going to end up leaving him. She'd have the support of her aunt and uncle, who would have been happy to have her back with them, and she would have obviously taken her paycheck with her. We should point out that it seems like Colby had some money troubles and frivolous spending habits,

but no sources we relied on for this episode list any job for him at the time his wife died. So if Kristen walked out the door, so did all of her money, and the promise of those two life insurance pay out someday. As far as the life insurance, Google search, which Colby claims not to remember making, defense attorney Ziegler attributed it to a filling out routine paper. It was such mundane paperwork that he didn't even remember having to Google stuff. Kristen's death just days later was, according to Ziegler, unfortunately bad timing. Well, I mean, what else do you expect from a defense attorney?

I mean, they have to try to combat all of these different things that are not looking good when it comes to their client. I mean, it's kind of their job, right? to spin some of these things that make their client look bad, offer up alternative theories. You can't blame them, something they have to do. And I think some of that stuff they're tasked with doing is almost impossible. And it's hard to, for a jury to hear a lot of this stuff and not have it really affect their final decision. Well, and that's why we say all the time that, you know, the defense is fighting an uphill battle

because a lot of times they are, you know, as evidence mounts against their client, even if it's mostly circumstantial, it's still a lot of different things that have to be tackled. According to Cunningham, there was a divot on Kristen's chin that showed the angle that the gun was placed when it was fired, Cunningham believed that the placement of the sight mark indicates that it's much more likely that Colby would have grabbed the gun from his nightstand, rolled over in bed, and placed the gun just underneath her chin and pulled the trigger. There were no witnesses in the case and no hard physical evidence that Colby had killed his wife. It was unclear how the jury would react.

when they finally went in for deliberations. After just two hours of deliberation, a jury found Colby guilty of first-degree premeditated murder of his wife, Kristen Trickle, as well as two counts of obstruction of justice due to his false statements to investigators. According to JCPost.com, Colby claimed that he was being wrongfully persecuted

and continued to maintain his innocence. He admitted only that he was less than a perfect husband and son. He told the court, something that I cannot apologize for is harming Kristen that morning because I cannot apologize for what I didn't do. He did say accepted partial blame for what happened because he may have been partly responsible for her bad state of mind. He said, I always wonder if she would still be here had I been a better husband. On November 20th, 2003, just three days before he turned 30, Judge Glenn Braun sentenced Colby Trickle, to life in prison, with no possibility of parole for 50 years. Ellis County Attorney Anderson told hazepost.com, sadly, we will never be able to bring

Kristen trickle back. It is my hope, however, that this conviction brings some level of comfort and healing to those who knew and loved Kristen. The official manner of death listed on Kristen's death certificate has been changed to homicide. But at the time, the case went to trial. It still listed her death as a suicide. The coroner, Dr. Nordhoek, admits that having more information about Kristen and the circumstances of her death would have changed his ruling much sooner. Dr. Nordhoke was unaware of Colby's Google search regarding the insurance payout for Kristen's death, and he was also unaware of the secret online relationship he had with another woman. It also turns out that Kristen's death was ruled a suicide before the coroner had conducted

any interviews with people who knew her and before Dr. Nordhoek had seen the size of the weapon that was used to kill her. He told CBS, the police should have all that information, and it's usually correlated with the pathologist. But, it wasn't in this case. Even after Colby was convicted of Kristen's murder, his mother had possession of her ashes. The county attorney's office actually had to file a motion to try and force Colby and his family to return Kristen's ashes to her own family. The case ended up being taken to civil court, and County attorney Robert Anderson asked

that the ashes be given to the Hays Police Department for safekeeping until the conclusion of the trial. But Colby would not let them go. Judge Braun made it happen via court order, forcing Colby's mother to hand them over. In the end, we may never know all the reasons Colby did what he did, why he chose to murder his wife, Kristen, at that particular moment. Not unless Colby decides to stop maintaining his innocence, but no doubt there are a lot of questions in this case.

Why Halloween? If he was Googling the payouts over a week earlier, he clearly already had a plan. Was this the first morning everything came together perfectly and he felt that he could pull it off? Was there something in one of the insurance policies that would make it easier to claim for a death at the end of the month rather than the beginning? Maybe there was an upcoming debt and he realized he needed to get things moving if he was going to have the insurance payout on time or maybe he just felt brave enough that morning and there was no real pressing reason for or meaning behind killing Kristen on Halloween morning.

And we can speculate endlessly, but may never know why Kristen had to die when she did. And more if even when you, you know, know the resolution of a case, and this one, Colby was found guilty by a jury of his peers, it doesn't mean that all the questions get answered. We just went through a lot of the questions. Why Halloween morning? And, you know, let's face it, the bigger question is just exactly why did he feel as though he had to kill Kristen? Was it because of the fact that he thought he was losing his control over her?

You know, we know very controlling people can be extremely dangerous. dangerous. When they feel as though they're losing that control that they've had over another person, you know, did it have something to do with this online relationship? Maybe he wanted to take that further and to do so needed Kristen out of the way. Or maybe this was just all about money. He wanted his hands on those life insurance payouts. He wanted. He wanted. He wanted. He wanted that $2,000 sex doll. I don't know the answer to any of these questions, but no matter what the answers are, Kristen's death is still going to be completely and utterly senseless. Yeah, and I think the frustrating part in cases like this, when the person who's found responsible

doesn't take responsibility and own up to what they did or talk about what they did, you don't always get answers. And that's frustrating for her loved ones that they may have the person that did this pine bars, but I'm sure they still want answers to and they may never get this. No, probably not. I don't think that Colby Trickle is a guy who is going to cop to what he did and why he did. I mean, this is a guy who lied about what he did in the military for no reason. There was no reason to tell a lie about that. It wasn't going to get him out of anything. It wasn't going to help him in really any way.

He just chose to lie. Why? Was it because he was this extremely controlling individual and he had to control every narrative? Maybe. This Halloween will be the fifth since Kristen was killed in Colby's second pine bars. he's currently housed at Ellsworth Correctional Facility in Ellsworth, Kansas. His custody level is listed as high medium.

There are no records of him participating in any programs there are so far that will improve his life or help to better himself ways behind bars. But why should he do that more? He doesn't cop to being guilty. So in his mind, does he feel as though he needs to improve himself, better himself? because he's not guilty. He didn't do it. And sometimes people will, after time, reflect on what they've done and eventually own up to it.

Sometimes they never do, but we'll have to wait and see what happens with Colby. Yeah, I got to be honest with you, I don't have high hopes for him. But you never know. He might finally decide that it's time to come clean as we wrap up this case. I just feel as though Colby Trickle was all about Colby Trickle. You know, the jury concluded that he killed his wife, Kristen. And then you look at what he did with the life insurance payouts. You know, we spent a lot of time talking about the sex doll because it seemed laughable.

His explanations for the purchase. but there was also the buying of video games. And, you know, I just got the sense that, you know, this man was acting like a child. Hey, I'm free. I can do what I want. I can buy whatever I want. I'm going to sit and play video games all day. I don't know.

That's just the picture that I have of him in my mind. But at the end of the day, but at the end of the day, he took Kristen's life. And there were many people who loved her. And I felt as though before her death, as we talked about, it seemed as though she was in a good place. She had plans for the future. And ultimately it could be that those plans were going to involve leaving

Colby behind. And maybe that was a reason for her murder. Yeah, this case was interesting to me for a couple reasons. One, because although Kristen's family had some off feelings about Colby, they got a bad impression from him, there was no real history of violence or physical abuse or arguing. There wasn't a pattern of stuff like that leading up to this murder, which, you know, I think in a lot of cases like this, there's a history like that. But here it seems like sort of out of the blue, he decided that he was going to kill her and get this life insurance money. That was one of the interesting things to it. And then

the other part that I found interesting was how they were able to convict him with as far as we can tell zero physical evidence. You know, this is all based on his, his lies, his checking on the insurance, things like that that aren't physical evidence that the jury found compelling enough to find him guilty on. So, you know, that's, I'm curious to see if he's going to ever appeal what his defense team will try and do. And if, if there's any chance at all that he could.

get off out of prison. Yeah, no doubt. I mean, this was a pretty circumstantial case, right, as far as evidence goes. But you talked about how it seemed as though there was little in the way of, you know, fighting and all this. And what I would say is that there was little in the way of it being documented. That doesn't mean it wasn't happening. But you didn't have, you know, this history of police being called out for domestic violence. But that's all we know. We don't really know what was going on behind closed doors. But that's it for our episode on Kristen Trickle. If you love the show, but haven't done so yet, take a minute, go out, give us a five-star rating, leave a review. Also, keep telling your friends that word of mouth about the

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But Morph and I will be back with all of you next week with a brand new episode. So until then for Mike and Morph. We'll talk to you next week. Take care, everyone.