American homicide; devised a plot in which Tom Shay’s hated dad would be killed. Shay Sr. had won a $400,000 civil suit and the two thought that Tom would get a sizable inheritance. He had met 15-year-younger Tommy at the train depot in 1990, a boy whose dad was so severe an abusive husband and father that his wife had spent time in the hospital from his beatings, administered in front of the terrified kids. Young Tom had been a patient in mental health institutions ten times and much of his youth spent as a state ward in foster homes. Tommy was a damaged kid, deeply lonely, and Trenkler became his friend and lover.
Trenkler was an electrical engineer in Quincy and had a telecommunications business that was failing. He said that he’d been educated in expensive private schools but had himself been an abused child.
He build the bomb that was to get rid of Tom’s dad. They put the bomb under Shay’s car in the driveway of his Roslindale home on 10/27/1991 but Shay noticed the device the next morning and called the cops. When the officers were investigating, the bomb exploded and killed Officer Jeremiah Hurley and wounded Officer Foley, who lost an eye.
Tommy ran away to the San Francisco tenderloin district but was arrested there and returned to Massachusetts. Trenkler was close to his mom and step dad and they hired an attorney. He was indicted on 12/16/1992.
At the trial, Tommy was convicted of being an accomplice to attempted murder and given 16 years prison and Trenkler was convicted of murder on 11/29/1993.