David Kimble showed up in Genoa City as the hot new assistant to Jill Abbott, who was in charge of the Men's Line at Jabot Cosmetics. David romanced Jill, knowing that she was connected to the Chancellor fortune, and hoping to get his hands on it. But Jill moved on to Attorney Michael Crawford, and fired David. Once David realized that Jill's daughter-in-law Nina Webster had just inherited a sizable fortune from her deceased husband, Phillip Chancellor III, he was intent on getting it instead.

Nina fell for David despite the warnings of her best friends Cricket Blair, Danny Romalotti, and Chase Benson who were suspicious of David's motives. David threatened Cricket that he would cut up her face and she would never model again if she didn't stay out of his business. Cricket told Nina, but Nina was so in love she didn't believe her. David and Nina shocked everyone by quickly eloping, and he signed a prenuptial agreement to prove his love.

Nina set up David in a company named David A. Kimble Investments, but he really had no clients, just sat at a desk in an office reading the paper, and faked business calls whenever Nina would drop by. It didn't take long before he began an affair with the mailroom attendant, Diane Westin.

David soon realized that all of Nina's inheritance was in a trust for her son Phillip IV, so the only way he could get his hands on the Chancellor fortune was to adopt her son. David pressured Nina to agree to the adoption, but Jill and Katherine Chancellor helped her resist.

David's lover Diane came across a New Jersey newspaper clipping about heiress Rebecca Harper who had been murdered by her husband, Tom. The photo of Tom and Rebecca showed a man who looked like David, and she was wearing a brooch like the one David had given to Diane to wrap as a present for Nina. David discovered that Rebecca's friend Vivian was in Genoa City intent on finding the brooch to prove that David murdered Rebecca, but it wasn't long before her body was discovered electrocuted in her bathtub.

While digging into David's background, Cricket also found the photo of Rebecca with David and recognized the brooch. Cricket broke the news about him to Nina, but she had already learned about it from Diane, and also that David was plotting to murder both Nina and Phillip.

While she was with Danny in New Jersey, Cricket found a jeweler who identified the brooch as belonging to Rebecca Harper. So David framed Danny for cocaine possession to get them off his tail, but all charges where eventually dropped. Soon after, Danny and Cricket married.

Feeling betrayed and infuriated, a crazed Nina welcomed David home by shooting him five times. David survived, but pretended to be paralyzed, and Nina was arrested for attempted murder. While on the witness stand, Nina testified that she shot David out of self-defense because she was convinced that he wanted to kill her and Phillip. Her emotional testimony moved the jury and she was found not guilty.

Meanwhile, David stole a body from the morgue, planted it in his hospital bed, and set it on fire to fake his own death. David coerced a plastic surgeon to make him look like David Hasselhoff. (Joke: A formerly Y&R actor.) Instead, the surgeon carved the word KILLER on his forehead and fled while David was under anesthetic.

David returned to Genoa City as "Jim Adams" with makeup on his forehead, hair dyed gray, a mustache and a southern accent. He romanced and married Nina's mother, Flo, and manipulated Nina into changing her will so that he and Flo would be co-beneficiaries in the event of Nina's death. Nina, Danny and Cricket attended a masquerade ball charity event, and David showed up dressed in the same costume as Danny (a wolf) intending to kill them all. But David's former mistress, Diane, learned of his plan and replaced the bullets in his gun with wax ones. When David cornered the trio in a maze outdoors, unbeknown to the audience, they were in on it, and convinced David, and us, that he had shot and killed all three. While David was being pursued by the police and Detective Paul Williams, he ducked into a garbage chute and was crushed to death by the trash compactor.