Pod Insights True Crime All The Time Bernard Finch and Carole Tregoff About this episode Bernard Finch was a wealthy doctor who worked in the San Gabriel Valley in Southern California. In 1958, he began having an affair with his married receptionist Carole Tregoff. When Dr. Finch’s wife was found dead, the two became the prime suspects.
Join Mike and Gibby as they discuss Bernard Finch and Carole Tregoff. Finch was the type of man used to getting his way. He also had a habit of divorcing wives when he fell in love with a younger woman. But Barbara Finch was in a position to divorce Bernard and take a great deal of his assets. This is something that Bernard couldn't have, and he made a plan to do something about it.
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1:47 Speaker 00 Hello everyone, and welcome to episode 423 of the True Crime All the Time Podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson and with me as always is my partner in true crime, Mike Gibson. Gibby, how are you?
1:57 Speaker 01 Hey, I'm doing good. How about you?
1:58 Speaker 00 I'm hanging in there. It's actually been a little bit of a rough week for me.
2:03 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:03 Speaker 00 My wife's been sick and then she got me sick, which, you know.
2:07 Speaker 01 Which means I'll be sick next week.
2:08 Speaker 00 Which means you'll be sick next week. I knew I was going to get sick. I mean, how can you, you know, lay two feet away from someone every night for seven, eight hours and eventually not get it?
2:22 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think you're probably laying a little closer than two feet.
2:24 Speaker 00 No, there's a, there's a divider.
2:26 Speaker 01 Oh, okay.
2:28 Speaker 00 No, but there might have to be one installed. Yeah. Some type of Plexiglas. Yeah. To keep us from breathing on each other. Let's go ahead and give our Patreon shout outs. We had Jennifer Lemus jump out at our highest level. What's going on Jennifer? Christie. Hey Christie. Robert McLeod. Ah Roberts. Joe Roscom. Hey Jill. Spiffy jumped out of our highest level. Good old Spiffy coming through. Claire.
2:50 Speaker 01 Hey Claire.
2:51 Speaker 00 Nikki Geddes Thompson. Well, thank you Geddy. Brandon Calow. What's going on Calow? Christina Sorn.
2:58 Speaker 01 Hey Christina.
2:59 Speaker 00 Kylie Jo. Well, I appreciate that Kylie. And last but not least, Victoria Summer.
3:04 Speaker 01 Hey Victoria.
3:05 Speaker 00 Yeah, so we appreciate the new support. And then if we go back into the vault.
3:11 Speaker 00 This week, we selected Taylor Alesworth. Thanks Taylor. Yeah, appreciate all the support that we get. Because we have an episode out right now on True Crime All The Time Unsolved, where we're talking about Darren Seals. He became a prominent activist in Ferguson, Missouri after the shooting of Michael Brown. But then he was murdered in September 2016. So, you know, in the episode, we really dive into kind of the, you know, rumors, speculation, theories around why he was killed. Was it because of his activism? So, check it out. Lot of discussion. Yeah, absolutely. All right, buddy. Are you ready to get into this episode of True Crime All The Time? I am so ready.
3:54 Speaker 00 We're talking about Bernard Finch and Carol Tregoff. Bernard Finch was a wealthy doctor who worked in the San Gabriel Valley in Southern California. In 1958, he began having an affair with his married receptionist, Carol Tregoff. When Dr. Finch's wife was found dead, the two became the prime suspects. And how could they not? I mean, just think about every murder movie you've ever seen where a wife is killed. Yeah. Or every case that we've ever done. You know, where that situation occurs, who is going to be the first person looked at?
4:36 Speaker 01 Well, that's true. It's going to be the husband or the partner.
4:39 Speaker 00 The partner, the spouse. And on top of that, you know, the revelation, you know, when it comes out that the husband is having an affair. Okay, ding ding ding, you're going up the ladder.
4:54 Speaker 01 With his secretary.
4:55 Speaker 00 With his secretary.
4:56 Speaker 01 Kind of cliche. Is that the right word?
4:58 Speaker 00 Yeah.
4:58 Speaker 01 The old having an affair with a secretary.
5:00 Speaker 00 Yeah, old movie trope, if you want to say that.
5:03 Speaker 01 Trop, I like that.
5:03 Speaker 00 You like that word?
5:04 Speaker 01 I do.
5:05 Speaker 00 Bernard Finch was born on January 7th, 1918 in Los Angeles, California. His family had lived in Southern California for generations. His father was a retired optometrist who owned a local jewelry store. So, okay, maybe he was born into a little bit of money.
5:24 Speaker 01 Maybe. You'd be fun at that. Fun at that. You would be, you would enjoy owning a, not a jewelry store, but a watch.
5:33 Speaker 00 A watch store. I thought you were going to say I would make a great optometrist. Which would be the strangest observation that you've ever made.
5:43 Speaker 01 You're no good with eyes.
5:43 Speaker 00 No, terrible.
5:44 Speaker 01 Yeah.
5:45 Speaker 00 In 1935, Bernard was accepted into Laverne College as a pre-med student. In 1943, he graduated from Loma Linda University with a medical degree.
5:58 Speaker 01 I didn't even know Laverne had a college. I mean, she did pretty good after
6:02 Speaker 00 Yeah.
6:02 Speaker 01 her Milwaukee brew house thing.
6:04 Speaker 00 I don't think Shirley had her own college.
6:06 Speaker 01 No.
6:06 Speaker 00 And I think I've talked about it before. I had designs on going into medicine. You know, my mom was a nurse. She was kind of guiding me in that direction. It wasn't until I actually got to college and figured out how long it actually takes to
6:27 Speaker 00 be a doctor, that I decided, no. I don't like school that much.
6:33 Speaker 01 It's just too much of a commitment.
6:35 Speaker 00 Yeah.
6:36 Speaker 01 Yeah. Not everybody can fast track it.
6:38 Speaker 00 No, if I could dookie it like you did and get done in, you know, a couple of years and still be 15 years old, okay, maybe I roll with it.
6:48 Speaker 01 First I thought you said dookie it. I'm like, hey, hey.
6:51 Speaker 00 Dookie it. I'm using that as a verb. Bernard served in World War II as an army surgeon stationed in North Carolina. After leaving the military, he returned to Southern California. He and his wife Frances had three children. And it was said that, you know, Dr. Finch was a prominent local figure. He participated in tennis tournaments, gave lectures about cancer at local churches, sponsored a girls softball team, and put his name on ads for Richard Nixon's congressional campaign.
7:25 Speaker 01 Pretty active, it sounds like.
7:26 Speaker 00 Yeah. So, you know, we're talking about the 1950s here. And, and even before that, this is obviously before Nixon, you know, became president.
7:39 Speaker 01 Yeah.
7:39 Speaker 00 He was from California, was a congressman in California. There was a scandal when Bernard divorced his first wife to marry 24 year old Barbara Doherty. He met her in 1947 when he delivered her daughter Patty. Barbara and her husband Lyle also lived next door to the Finches in Baldwin Park. Bernard hired Barbara to work in his medical office and they began an affair. Okay. So we got a lot to unpack here.
8:12 Speaker 01 Well, I'm first just thinking about how they met. The first time is when he was delivering their baby.
8:18 Speaker 00 Yeah. So you're seeing someone at their most vulnerable.
8:23 Speaker 01 Yeah.
8:24 Speaker 00 I'll, I'll leave it at that. You know, it's something that I have seen twice. Not something that I would really care to ever see again.
8:34 Speaker 01 Right.
8:34 Speaker 00 Now, you know, the miracle of childbirth is amazing.
8:38 Speaker 01 Beautiful, man.
8:39 Speaker 00 But what happens during it? Phew is a is a lot to take.
8:45 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's all your fault.
8:47 Speaker 00 But you know, he's a doctor. He's 29 years old. He and his wife have three children and he divorces her to marry his next door neighbor. After he delivers her baby.
9:01 Speaker 01 I think I want to get to know you better. I really like how you delivered that baby.
9:06 Speaker 00 This is is a strange way to meet.
9:08 Speaker 01 It is.
9:08 Speaker 00 They didn't meet that way, right? They were neighbors, but still it's a strange part of the thing.
9:14 Speaker 01 It's an icebreaker.
9:15 Speaker 00 It's it's a terrible icebreaker. The two married in 1951 and obviously they each had to divorce their respective spouses, but in a strange turn of events, their former spouses, Lyle and Francis, married each other.
9:33 Speaker 01 Whoa.
9:35 Speaker 00 This is like, I've never heard of that.
9:37 Speaker 01 Like a love quad.
9:40 Speaker 00 Yeah, it's so strange.
9:42 Speaker 01 We're show them, we're get married and we're do it better than they did.
9:47 Speaker 00 I mean, this is something you might see on, you know, a soap opera and you're like, oh, who wrote that?
9:53 Speaker 01 Right.
9:54 Speaker 00 Right. But this is real life. It happened.
9:56 Speaker 01 That's that's bizarre.
9:58 Speaker 00 The Finch's second child, Raymond Finch Jr. Was born in 1953. The family moved into a luxurious home in West Covina, which LA Magazine described as an affluent area in the 1950s.
10:13 Speaker 01 Just fun to say.
10:14 Speaker 00 West Covina?
10:15 Speaker 01 Yeah.
10:15 Speaker 00 Yeah. Now, you know, when you're talking about LA, I don't know exactly what West Covina is like today, but a lot of the areas that were affluent back then maybe aren't today and some that weren't back then now are. And we know how California real estate has gone over the years. It skyrockets, it plummets and but it's always high.
10:41 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's expensive to live there. Heck, it's expensive to rent there. My son lives out there, you know? His rent's crazy.
10:49 Speaker 00 It's probably expensive to visit there for you.
10:52 Speaker 01 That is very true.
10:53 Speaker 00 Time Magazine reported that the house, which had a four car garage and a pool, was valued at $50,000. Okay. You think about $50,000, California, that doesn't sound like much. And today you that you couldn't even dip a toe in the water for $50,000. But in in the 1950s, that's that's a good chunk of change.
11:17 Speaker 01 It is, or was.
11:19 Speaker 00 But Bernard Finch was a very wealthy man. He was a partial owner of a local clinic. Gibbs, he was earning about $200,000 a year. That is a boatload of money.
11:32 Speaker 01 Back then, yeah, but today it's good money.
11:35 Speaker 00 Oh, if you made, if you made that money today, you're living extremely well.
11:40 Speaker 01 You are.
11:41 Speaker 00 So I can only imagine that in the 1950s, that puts you in the upper, upper crust.
11:49 Speaker 01 Yes.
11:50 Speaker 00 In addition to his home, he owned a speedboat and three cars. His estate was worth around $750,000.
11:58 Speaker 01 You need three cars. You need one for you, one for her, and one for the weekend.
12:02 Speaker 00 Yeah. I mean, you know, this guy, he sounds a lot like you. Extremely wealthy.
12:09 Speaker 01 It's because I don't ever buy dinners.
12:11 Speaker 00 It's because you pay for nothing. This big estate, I know you have your own speedboat, which is strange because we're landlocked.
12:19 Speaker 01 But I just have it just so I can look at it.
12:24 Speaker 00 There were rumors that Finch transferred hospitals often because he had a drinking problem. And he was the defendant in an abnormally high amount of malpractice suits, according to the LA Times.
12:38 Speaker 01 Well, there was a lot of drinking back then, too. Think like mad men.
12:42 Speaker 00 Yeah, you mean drinking in situations that would not be okay today.
12:47 Speaker 01 Yeah, like.
12:48 Speaker 00 During work.
12:48 Speaker 01 Yeah.
12:49 Speaker 00 Yeah.
12:49 Speaker 01 I've got to go in and deliver this baby. Can you pour me a, a double, please?
12:54 Speaker 00 It was a different time. Now, I don't know how many doctors drank, you know, while they were working, but I wouldn't put it past them.
13:02 Speaker 01 I got you, doctor, doctor.
13:04 Speaker 00 But let's talk about malpractice suits, right? Malpractice insurance, extremely high for surgeons and people like that. When you look at someone who's involved in a very high amount of those, like abnormally high, okay, was it because of the drinking?
13:25 Speaker 01 Maybe.
13:26 Speaker 00 Or was it because he just wasn't a very good doctor? I don't, I don't know.
13:29 Speaker 01 Or a combination of both.
13:31 Speaker 00 One child died on his operating table and another child died after a procedure that he performed. He also had a reputation for ordering unnecessary surgeries.
13:42 Speaker 01 Maybe he needed to, uh, find a way to help pay for a lot of those luxury items he had.
13:48 Speaker 00 Well, that's what I was thinking. Maybe that's how he got to that, uh, $200,000 a year. Is it because he, you know, he was doing a, a bunch of procedures that weren't even necessary, right? Bernard seemed to think that he was above the law. He was once able to talk his way out of being arrested for drunk driving. He also didn't seem to care about negative publicity. For example, neighbors caught him having sex with a young woman in a vehicle.
14:15 Speaker 01 You know, sometimes when people make a lot of money, I'm talking a lot of money. They do feel untouchable.
14:21 Speaker 00 Yeah, above the law.
14:22 Speaker 01 Yeah.
14:23 Speaker 00 Like their money can get them out of whatever they get into, or hey, I'm a prominent figure. I know a lot of people, so I can get out of whatever jam.
14:33 Speaker 01 Yeah.
14:34 Speaker 00 You know, I find myself in. I also don't think that drunk driving in the 1950s was seen in anywhere near the same light as it is today.
14:46 Speaker 01 Oh, no way.
14:47 Speaker 00 Yeah. I think, I don't know if I've told this story, but I remember being a kid in like the late seventies, maybe even early eighties, taking rides with my friend's dad. You know, me and my friend were in the backseat, dad's driving and there was always a, a Tumblr.
15:08 Speaker 01 Yeah.
15:08 Speaker 00 Uh, you know, there was, there was something, there was a to go drink.
15:12 Speaker 01 Yeah.
15:12 Speaker 00 And it was being consumed while they were driving tots around.
15:16 Speaker 01 They always called those their travelers.
15:18 Speaker 00 Yeah, traveler.
15:19 Speaker 01 Yeah. I always thought was funny with the one, the one dad that always had his six pack, you know, but he had one, you know, one, he just tore off, tore, pulled the tab and was drinking it, was driving you around, knowing that I'm assuming he was going to drink all those before he got home.
15:33 Speaker 00 That's. Oh, man, I don't know. Around 1957, 41 year old Bernard began an affair with his receptionist, Carol Tregoff, who was just 22 at the time. So, you know, we're seeing a pattern here, right? He's married, he meets someone else. She's a little bit younger than him, not obviously the age difference that we're seeing here, but maybe he's viewing her as a better, younger version of what he's looking for. And so he divorces his first wife, marries her,
16:15 Speaker 00 and what do you think is going to happen when a person is like that?
16:21 Speaker 01 Most likely going to happen again.
16:22 Speaker 00 Do you not think that they're going to trade you in?
16:25 Speaker 01 Yeah.
16:26 Speaker 00 At some point?
16:27 Speaker 01 I mean, clearly he had a problem keeping his you-know-what in his pants.
16:30 Speaker 00 Mm hmm. Yeah. And by you-know-what, you mean his Hankerchief?
16:34 Speaker 01 Yeah, that thing.
16:35 Speaker 00 Oh, okay. Carol was married to a man named Jimmy Papa, whom she had known since she was 15. Jimmy joined the military while waiting for Carol to turn 18 so they could get married. After the wedding, they purchased the house in La Puente. Both of them had to work to pay the bills. Jimmy worked different jobs and in his spare time enjoyed bodybuilding and posing for muscle magazines. And there are some videos of him out on YouTube. He was a big guy.
17:06 Speaker 01 Yeah.
17:07 Speaker 00 You know, you think about the 50s, you think about the California scene, Venice Beach. I don't know when all that got started. Obviously, Arnold came along and kind of really popularized it, but it started out in California way before then.
17:26 Speaker 01 Yeah, back then they had all those big muscle guys doing all those gymnastic moves, you know, like lifting each other's-
17:32 Speaker 00 Did you say gymnastic or chipnastic?
17:35 Speaker 01 No, gym.
17:36 Speaker 00 Okay, because that sounded strange.
17:39 Speaker 01 But lifting each other's body weight over their heads on the beach and doing those weird poses.
17:44 Speaker 00 And you're calling that gymnastics?
17:47 Speaker 01 I don't know, calisthenics. What do you want to call it?
17:50 Speaker 00 What do you want to call it is really the question.
17:53 Speaker 01 A little too close for comfort for me. I don't want you to stand on my shoulders with just a bikini brief bottom on.
18:02 Speaker 00 Well, that's where I was gonna go. You know, it it's not like you're wearing jogging shorts down to the knee. I mean, these are nut huggers extraordinaire that these guys were always wearing. And was that necessary?
18:17 Speaker 01 And there's a level of confidence that comes with that.
18:19 Speaker 00 I get it. When when you're on stage, you're trying to show off every muscle. So they just wear the little skimpy thing. But, you know, when you're at the Gold's Gym, or you're at Venice Beach, do you do you really need that?
18:31 Speaker 01 Yeah, can you wear something a little more?
18:34 Speaker 00 Or like that one time you and I went on vacation, we ended up going to the beach. I thought the Speedo was was just way too much.
18:42 Speaker 01 Hey, you know, I apologize for that so many times, you know, but.
18:46 Speaker 00 I don't say sorry to me. Say sorry to my kids who had to see that.
18:50 Speaker 01 Went in, went in, you know, like Rome, went in, went in, we're at the whatever that beach was. That's what you do. That's what I thought you did, you know. I'm sorry. Next time I will shave better.
19:00 Speaker 00 But Carol was described as a beautiful young woman. She did a few modeling gigs for a perfume line. And after graduating high school, she was hired as a receptionist at Bernard Finch's medical office. And I'm sure her looks, Gibbs, had nothing to do with her getting hired by Bernard Finch.
19:19 Speaker 01 No, I'm sure he went by skill set.
19:21 Speaker 00 Yes. This sounds like a guy who just totally looked past what someone looked like and hired solely based on, you know, their experience level. According to LA Magazine, Carol lived in a new neighborhood in La Puente, where residents had not yet put up high privacy fences. This allowed her neighbors to see Dr. Finch visiting her house. All right, that's usually not good. And it was said that Jimmy didn't suspect anything for months. He told LA Magazine in 2013, Dr. Finch had this beautiful Chrysler, and he let me drive it while he was banging my wife.
20:05 Speaker 01 Hey, why don't you take my car for a drive? Take your time.
20:08 Speaker 00 Yeah.
20:09 Speaker 01 You know, at least 10 minutes.
20:10 Speaker 00 10 minutes, 20 minutes.
20:12 Speaker 01 Yeah.
20:13 Speaker 00 Whatever. But you know, here again, I talked about this guy Jimmy. He was a big dude. And so, you know, you are messing with someone's wife, which you shouldn't do anyway.
20:28 Speaker 01 Exactly.
20:29 Speaker 00 But maybe even a little more dangerous to mess with someone's wife, who is a, a, a big ass bodybuilder.
20:38 Speaker 01 That could squash you?
20:39 Speaker 00 Like a bug. According to Jimmy, Barbara Finch called him in September 1958. He'd only spoken to her once before. Barbara informed him that Bernard and Carol were having an affair. However, Time Magazine reported in 1960 that it was Jimmy, who told Barbara about the affair after Carol left him that month.
21:01 Speaker 01 But either way, now they both know.
21:04 Speaker 00 And I would say that's correct. Right now, regardless of how it happened, who told who, they would both know because one of them knew to tell the other. And then obviously, once that is told, the other one knows. Jimmy told LA Magazine, I was shocked. I couldn't believe it. In those days, I thought I was really hot stuff. And Carol wouldn't go for an old man like that in his 40s. Okay.
21:30 Speaker 01 Well, sometimes maybe it's not the looks. It might be the wallet.
21:36 Speaker 00 Yeah, I would say, you know, there's looks.
21:39 Speaker 01 Yeah.
21:40 Speaker 00 There's personality.
21:41 Speaker 01 There is personality. Some people are more interesting than others.
21:44 Speaker 00 And then there's money.
21:46 Speaker 01 And there's always that money.
21:47 Speaker 00 And some people view a combination, each one of those things differently, a combination of those things differently. But it's just funny, you know, Jimmy saying, hey, I thought I was the shit. You know, here I am, I'm a good looking guy, got these big muscles. I've got this body. Never in a million years did I think that while I was out driving this guy's Chrysler, uh, you know, there was hanky panky involved.
22:16 Speaker 01 He was wooing my wife.
22:18 Speaker 00 Well, it sounds like the wooing had already concluded.
22:21 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah.
22:21 Speaker 00 And they were on to the coitus.
22:25 Speaker 01 Oh, the coitus.
22:26 Speaker 00 Things turned violent. When Carol came home that evening, Jimmy admitted to LA Magazine, she's lucky she stole a lot. I didn't hit her, but I had her on the couch and was choking her. I was really upset. She stayed there that night and the next day I went to work. When I came home, everything was gone. She moved everything out.
22:48 Speaker 01 I'm not surprised, right?
22:49 Speaker 00 No, I'm not surprised either. What I am surprised about is that he's being so candid in this interview.
22:55 Speaker 01 Yeah.
22:55 Speaker 00 He's saying, and now I didn't hit her, but I did choke her on the couch.
23:00 Speaker 01 I almost killed her, but I pulled back.
23:02 Speaker 00 He also said that he planned to kill Bernard Finch. He admitted that he and a friend waited outside his medical office, but Finch never came out.
23:12 Speaker 01 Well, Finch maybe saw him and his friend out there with a baseball bat walking around. Maybe he said, you know what? I think I'm gonna go out the back today.
23:20 Speaker 00 Well, you know, this was 53 years later, I guess, when he was giving this interview. So.
23:24 Speaker 01 Well, that's true.
23:25 Speaker 00 I guess he felt like he could be, you know, completely honest.
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25:58 Speaker 00 By January 1959, Carol had a divorce decree and planned to marry Bernard, who was still married. Barbara was aware the affair was ongoing and filed for divorce on May 20. So, you know, we said she was aware. Whether she told Jimmy or Jimmy told her, she obviously was aware of it. And it doesn't sound like, you know, Bernard Finch was going out of his way to hide it.
26:25 Speaker 01 Yeah, and I'm just wondering if Bernard's first wife was like, "There you go, Barbara. You get what you deserve because you did it to me. Now she's doing it to you."
26:33 Speaker 00 Maybe? That's quite possible. Just five weeks earlier, Barbara signed a will leaving the majority of her estate to her husband. Bernard moved out of the house and a judge granted Barbara control of almost all their assets. She had to approve every withdrawal Bernard wanted to make from their joint account. She was also going to be awarded the majority of the estate in the divorce settlement.
27:00 Speaker 01 It's pretty, pretty large.
27:02 Speaker 00 Well, we talked about, you know, how much money he was making, how much the estate was worth. Now you think about a guy like Bernard Finch, and I think you said it, right? This is a guy who, for the lack of a better term, thought he was the shit. He's making a bunch of money. You get to the point where a judge says, your wife, who, you know, you're going through these divorce proceedings with, has to approve every withdrawal you make.
27:32 Speaker 01 Yeah.
27:33 Speaker 00 I think for a guy like that, it's not going to go over well.
27:36 Speaker 01 Not at all.
27:37 Speaker 00 And then on top of that, the thought about losing the majority of your estate in a divorce, probably not going to sit well with a guy like that either.
27:47 Speaker 01 No, no. I'm guessing maybe his influence was not as good as he thought it was. Maybe this judge just didn't like him, or maybe this judge was like, hey, did you used to, uh, hang around my wife?
27:59 Speaker 00 Well, basically what it did is it put Bernard, you know, in a dire financial situation. He had just opened the West Covina Clinic and Hospital with a group of physicians and purchased land to build and rent out offices. The divorce settlement would jeopardize the loans he was trying to obtain.
28:18 Speaker 01 Pretty impactful.
28:19 Speaker 00 Yeah, in his life, right? This is really upsetting his apple cart. Bernard also worried that Barbara would name Carol in her suit. So he persuaded Carol to move to Las Vegas. She got an apartment there and worked as a cocktail waitress at the Sands Hotel.
28:36 Speaker 01 Hey, I want to be with you, but you got to move to Vegas.
28:38 Speaker 00 Bernard was unable to convince Barbara to give up control of their finances. In June 1959, Barbara secured a restraining order against Bernard. The following month, she served him with contempt of court papers for violating the order. And again, why would Barbara give up control of the finances? She's the, the jolted wife. She didn't do anything wrong.
29:04 Speaker 01 She had to be in. She had to be enjoying it too, right? That type of control?
29:09 Speaker 00 Oh, yeah. You did me this way? Okay. I'm going to get back at you. I'm certainly not going to give in. Bernard split his time between a motel in West Covina and Carol's apartment in Vegas. Together, they decided to get rid of Barbara. On the night of July 18th, 1959, Bernard and Carol drove Carol's car from Las Vegas to West Covina. They parked a block away from the Finch household at the South Hills Country Club. With them, they carried a case that contained a sedative, syringes, a carving knife and rope. All right.
29:49 Speaker 00 That scares me because when I was in the back of your crew cab truck the other day, I saw the exact same kit.
29:59 Speaker 01 Mm hmm. Exactly.
30:01 Speaker 00 What it's for, I have no idea.
30:03 Speaker 01 Can't talk about it.
30:04 Speaker 00 But obviously, Gibbs, they're going there with bad intentions. Barbara wasn't home when they arrived. She spent the day at the Los Angeles Tennis Club and went out to dinner with friends. Bernard and Carol chose not to enter the house because the children were inside with their governess, 19-year-old Marie Anne Lidholm. Marie Anne came to California from Sweden in the summer of 1958. She was excited to live in the U.S. for the next year, but she was distressed by the Finch's marital issues.
30:39 Speaker 01 A governess.
30:41 Speaker 00 Is that what Julie Andrews was in The Sound of Music? I think so.
30:46 Speaker 01 Just a fancy way of saying nanny, right?
30:49 Speaker 00 Yeah. Nanny or what's the French word?
30:52 Speaker 01 Oh, ah, up here.
30:56 Speaker 00 Au pair?
30:57 Speaker 01 Au pair.
30:58 Speaker 00 Did you say, oh Pierre?
31:00 Speaker 01 I don't know, I was reaching.
31:01 Speaker 00 But you were close, though.
31:03 Speaker 01 I was near.
31:03 Speaker 00 Closer than normal.
31:04 Speaker 01 Yeah.
31:05 Speaker 00 Marie Anne and the children were watching TV together. She put the kids to bed after their program ended and started putting rollers in her hair. And man, that was such a big thing back in the day.
31:17 Speaker 01 Rollers?
31:18 Speaker 00 Yeah, I remember, you know, my grandmothers would do the rollers up in their hair. And then they had like a, a wrap.
31:30 Speaker 01 Yeah.
31:30 Speaker 00 That went around the head to keep the rollers in place as they slept.
31:37 Speaker 01 Don't want them to move, you know, it's gonna mess up your dooley.
31:39 Speaker 00 And I thought, that can't be comfortable at all.
31:43 Speaker 01 No wonder they were grumpy in the morning. They didn't get a good night's sleep.
31:45 Speaker 00 But it wasn't about comf-
31:46 Speaker 01 No.
31:47 Speaker 00 But it wasn't about comfort, you know, it was about a good looking do.
31:52 Speaker 01 It's about having that hair looking perfect.
31:55 Speaker 00 Barbara returned home and Marie Anne heard her scream for help. Marie Anne ran outside to the garage when she turned on the light. She saw Barbara on the floor bleeding from a head wound. Bernard was also there. He had attacked Barbara pistol whipping her so hard, he fractured her skull. Bernard then attacked Marie Anne, hitting her head against the wall hard enough to dent the plaster. He ordered both women to get into Barbara's vehicle and he even fired a warning shot at Marie Anne. She got into the back and Barbara got into the front.
32:33 Speaker 01 He hit her head pretty hard pistol whipping and then the bounce your head, put a dent in plaster. I mean, that's more dense than drywall.
32:41 Speaker 00 Oh yeah, we're not talking about drywall that you could probably just put your hand through.
32:46 Speaker 01 Yeah.
32:46 Speaker 00 Plaster is a little bit different, but this is a really scary situation. Marie Anne felt certain she was going to die before Bernard could start the car. Barbara escaped. Marie Anne also seized the opportunity to run into the house and call the police. She soon heard another gunshot. All right, so this is a horrible scene, right, that Bernard is carrying out.
33:14 Speaker 00 He gets these two women in the car, but it's obviously not a secure situation. They're able to jump right out and take off. Barbara fled to her in-laws home next door. She almost made it into the house, but she was shot in the back near the stairs. The wound severed an artery and that's never good.
33:37 Speaker 01 No.
33:38 Speaker 00 Bernard's father Raymond Finch told the AP, she fell just a few feet from the front door. 10 more feet and she would have reached the safety of my house. My God, what a tragedy. My son is sick. He's been off the beam for the last three or four months. He believed Bernard was overworked, adding, you just can't work 12, 13, 14 hours a day at surgery without cracking up. So an interesting situation in that, you know, they live right next door to Bernard's parents. And that's where she tries to get to safety.
34:17 Speaker 01 10 feet away.
34:18 Speaker 00 And she makes it about 10 feet away. But these comments coming from his dad, right? My son is sick. He's not, he says he's been off the beam. I assume that means he's been off kilter. He's not been himself.
34:33 Speaker 01 Right.
34:33 Speaker 00 But it's almost like at the same time, he's, he's trying to set up a little bit of a reason why. No one can work that much without cracking up.
34:45 Speaker 01 Think he's trying to be somewhat nice about his son's behavior.
34:52 Speaker 00 Well, I took it as more of, he's trying to set up almost like a defense. My son's sick.
35:00 Speaker 01 Yes.
35:01 Speaker 00 The reason he did it is because he's overworked, you know?
35:04 Speaker 01 He's not himself.
35:05 Speaker 00 He's not himself. The police arrived at 11:45 PM. Bernard ran, leaving Carol hiding at the crime scene for several hours, but none of the investigators found her. Okay. I don't know what type of investigation you're doing. Around midnight Bernard stole his neighbor's station wagon, which had the keys inside and drove to La Puente, where he found another unlocked vehicle with the keys inside. He drove to Carol's apartment in Vegas and fell asleep.
35:35 Speaker 01 So just real quick, obviously, car theft was not a big issue back then.
35:38 Speaker 00 No, because everybody was leaving their doors unlocked and the keys inside. But let's talk about Bernard just leaving Carol there. I thought, okay, he's, he's gonna leave, he's gonna come back and get her. No, he drives to Vegas and goes to sleep.
35:55 Speaker 01 Every man for themselves, or a woman. Kind of tells you how shallow he was.
35:59 Speaker 00 Well, I, I think it does show that, you know, to him, he was the only important person and no one else really mattered.
36:08 Speaker 01 Yeah.
36:09 Speaker 00 You know, I think guys like that, they use people for what they can get out of them. And, you know, if the you know what hits the fan, they're easily discarded.
36:20 Speaker 01 And they move on, or something better comes along, or what they think is better.
36:24 Speaker 00 Yeah.
36:24 Speaker 01 They'll trade you out.
36:26 Speaker 00 Or give you up.
36:27 Speaker 01 Or give you up.
36:28 Speaker 00 Carol eventually came out of her hiding spot in the bushes and returned to her car at the country club. She briefly returned to her Vegas apartment before heading to work at the Sands Hotel. So kind of amazing that she was able to kind of hide out at this crime scene, eventually leave, get to her car and make it back to Vegas and go into work.
36:52 Speaker 01 Yeah.
36:53 Speaker 00 When Bernard finally woke up, four officers were at his bedside. He was arrested and charged with murder. Now, I know you've woken up many times with a number of officers surrounding your, your bed.
37:08 Speaker 00 Some of those situations played out in your favor, some didn't. But I'm on a first name basis with him, so it's cool. Yeah. At first Bernard said he went to Vegas on the night of the murder and had been there the whole time. But Carol soon contradicted his story by saying she traveled with Bernard to West Covina on the night in question. He eventually admitted he was at the scene when Barbara was shot, but he denied killing her. He did admit to throwing the gun away. The murder weapon was never found. Okay, so first of all, if you're going to tell a story, it might be good for
37:49 Speaker 00 the two people involved to get their story straight. Although Carol's probably not real happy with him. Maybe she probably senses that she's kind of on her own anyway. Yeah. He left me. And then, you know, when he's caught in this lie, it's like, well, I was there, but I didn't kill her. But I did throw the gun away. Okay. Well, how did you get the gun? Why did you have the gun if you didn't do the shooting? Why did you feel like you needed to throw it away? He and Carol told the authorities, they visited Barbara to try to persuade her to move to Las Vegas for six weeks so they could qualify for divorce. Carol claimed Barbara pulled a gun
38:29 Speaker 00 on them during a fight with her husband and she fled. She heard a gunshot in the distance. Oh, it's my favorite. The stories that defendants come up with. Can't tell the truth. No. Cause the truth is going to land you in jail. But I'm smart enough, right? I can craft a story that the police are gonna buy hook, line and sinker. And eventually if it comes to it, a jury will believe it and I'll get off scot free. I'm just gonna say instead of him pulling the gun out, she pulled it out. And maybe they concocted that together. Maybe Carol did on her own. I don't know.
39:11 Speaker 00 The preliminary hearing started on July 27th. Carol testified about the affair and the events of July 18th. When she left the witness stand, the prosecutor ordered her arrest because of discrepancies between her testimony and her police statement. A key issue was the leather case found near the home, which prosecutors called a murder kit. Carol testified that she took the case from her car when Bernard asked her to get a flashlight. She claims some of the contents of the case were household goods Bernard purchased for her, and he always carried weapons when he had narcotics with him. Okay, so let's add that into the mix.
39:56 Speaker 00 We have to explain this murder kit. So let's say that Bernard's got some narcotics with him, which maybe he did. As a doctor. As a doctor. However, the prosecutor argued per the AP. She read in the newspapers about the murder kit and decided she had to account for it. In the previous questioning, the bag was never mentioned. It's quite apparent now, when you take the entire picture of evidence and the relationship between the pair, that her testimony shows an active participation in aiding and abetting in this murder. These changes in testimony in themselves show a concert of action between Ms. Tregoff and Dr. Finch.
40:42 Speaker 00 I am satisfied they conspired together in that she aided him in committing the crime. I believe their plan was to tie Mrs. Finch with rope, give her an injection of sedative, put her in her car, and push the car off the cliff in front of the Finch house. And pretty rough to get up there and testify and immediately be arrested and I think charged with murder because of what you said on the stand.
41:13 Speaker 01 But she got caught kinda in a lie.
41:16 Speaker 00 Yeah, I mean, that's what the prosecution thought. The murder trial started on January 4th, 1960. Bernard hired prominent attorney Grant Cooper. Carol's father spent his life savings to hire famed Hollywood attorney Jerry Geisler. They both expected to be acquitted and planned to get married afterwards.
41:38 Speaker 01 Don't worry, baby, we'll get through this and I'm gonna marry you and we're gonna have a wonderful life together.
41:44 Speaker 00 Well, it sounds like they both had top notch attorneys. Obviously Bernard had the money, right? To hire whoever he wanted. Carol's father spent his life savings.
41:55 Speaker 01 How sad is that?
41:56 Speaker 00 Well, it's extremely sad, but you know, what would you do for your kids?
42:02 Speaker 01 Oh, absolutely.
42:04 Speaker 00 Would you spend every last dime you had? If you thought they were innocent to keep them out of jail? A lot of parents would.
42:11 Speaker 01 I'd represent them myself.
42:13 Speaker 00 And that would be a huge mistake. But it was said that, you know, this entire trial was a media circus. And media circus in the 1950s. And we're not talking OJ, but maybe the equivalent of that in the 1950s, which obviously was far less.
42:33 Speaker 01 But it's still LA, right? It's gonna have a lot of.
42:36 Speaker 00 Yes. And you have this guy who's wealthy. You've got cheating scandal, a woman killed. As reported by LA Magazine, Bernie Finch didn't look like a man facing the gas chamber. He smiled and chatted in court with appreciative writers, allowing his photograph to be taken with cops who'd asked him to pose with them. Yet, most reporters were in love with Finch's co-star. To them, Carol Tregoff was a dreamy eyed romantic whose only crime, as her lawyer would tell the jury, was that she was a girl in love. So these reporters were smitten.
43:18 Speaker 01 Yeah.
43:19 Speaker 00 With Carol.
43:20 Speaker 01 She's just innocent, just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
43:24 Speaker 00 But can you imagine cops asking to pose for pictures with a murder defendant?
43:32 Speaker 01 No, not today I wouldn't, but who knows what happened back then?
43:36 Speaker 00 I just told you what happened back then.
43:39 Speaker 00 You said, who knows? We know.
43:41 Speaker 01 We know.
43:41 Speaker 00 Cause I just told you.
43:42 Speaker 01 We all know. And now they know now too.
43:47 Speaker 00 Deputy DA Fred Wiccello told the jury that Bernard didn't want to divorce Barbara because she stood to inherit most of the estate. He and Carol hired a man named John Patrick Cody to murder her. When he failed to act, they decided to do it themselves.
44:05 Speaker 01 A three name killer.
44:08 Speaker 00 John Patrick Cody?
44:09 Speaker 01 Yeah.
44:10 Speaker 00 You know, the man's a murderer, but he didn't, according to the DA, right? He didn't carry it out. But what I want to talk about here is the fact that Bernard would rather have Barbara dead than divorce her because for him, it would be much better financially. Now, this wasn't the first case. I'm sure where that happened, but how many current cases have we talked about that? Where the motive was pretty much exactly the same thing?
44:43 Speaker 01 Yeah. It's, I mean, it's about the money and she signed that life insurance not too long before she was murdered as well.
44:51 Speaker 00 Well, it's all about guys wanting to have their cake and eat it too, and just not really caring about anything other than what is best for them. Carol's initiative in the murder plot and her insistence on visiting Barbara as soon as possible caused Wiccello to characterize her as a Latter Day Lady Macbeth, the real aggressor and instigator in this crime.
45:19 Speaker 01 Lady Macbeth. Wow. Pulling in some Shakespeare there.
45:23 Speaker 00 Yeah. It's also interesting that she goes from not being charged with murder to being charged, but also now being called the, the instigator of the whole thing.
45:35 Speaker 01 Yeah. I personally probably would use a, like a Milton or a Homer reference instead of a Shakespearean reference, but you know, to each their own.
45:45 Speaker 00 Yeah.
45:48 Speaker 00 The fact that you got that out with a straight face before you started cracking up is amazing. The deputy DA suggested that Bernard and Carol originally wanted to make Barbara's murder appear like a robbery gone wrong. He noted that Barbara's purse was still missing. Bernard admitted he took it, but couldn't remember why or where he put it. Jimmy Papa briefly testified about his marriage with Carol. Former governess Marie Anne Lidholm testified about the Finch's marital problems. She said that Barbara claimed Bernard tried to kill her in May 1959.
46:29 Speaker 00 Marie Anne testified per the AP. She said he tried to put her clothes on and put her in the car and pushed the car over the cliff and that the car would explode. She was very upset. She cried. I never saw her cry before. And she had a bandage over her eyebrow. She showed me blood on the sheets in the master bedroom. She told me, "My husband tried to kill me last night." She said Dr. Finch took her to the medical center to sew the cut up.
46:59 Speaker 01 Wonder how that plays out, you know? Honey, I know I tried to kill you last night. It didn't pan out, but you have a cut above your eye. Let's go to the medical center and I'll go ahead and take care of it.
47:10 Speaker 00 And then we'll just go on as normal?
47:12 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah.
47:13 Speaker 00 Well, according to Marie Anne's testimony, Barbara said that if she contacted police, Dr. Finch said to her, "He had somebody in Las Vegas. He could hire and kill her and he would pay him." So that might explain why she didn't go to the police, although I'm sure she was terrified.
47:36 Speaker 01 I'm sure the fear was there.
47:37 Speaker 00 Marie Anne wrote a letter to her mother in May 1959, which was read in court. In the letter, she recounted Barbara's claim that Bernard had beaten her twice. Time Magazine published the following excerpt. "Mrs. Finch told me everything. He had hit her, tried to get her out in the car, which he threatened to drive over the ridge. He also told her that if she didn't take everything back about the divorce, he had a man in Las Vegas whom he would pay thousands of dollars to kill her." Marie Anne also testified about being attacked by Bernard Finch saying, "Then Dr. Finch came rushing up to me. He grabbed my head and pushed it against the
48:18 Speaker 00 wall several times as hard as he could." She described how she and Barbara escaped, and about hearing a gunshot after she called the police. And I would think gives the testimony by Marie Anne Lithome would be pretty compelling.
48:37 Speaker 01 I would think so too.
48:38 Speaker 00 First of all, she was attacked, so she has that firsthand knowledge that she can speak to. And then she also has, I guess what you would call hearsay testimony, you know, what she says that Barbara told her happened, but stuff that she wrote in a letter to her mom. And I wonder how much weight that carried. Like, she wasn't making it up on the stand.
49:05 Speaker 01 It was already written.
49:06 Speaker 00 It was written down and sent to her mom earlier. I don't even know if that testimony would make it in today. I think a defense attorney would say, you know, it's hearsay, and maybe the judge, you know, wouldn't allow it. The second star witness was John Patrick Cody, a 29-year-old with a criminal record. He testified that the two defendants paid him $1,400 to kill Barbara, but he never intended to do it. He only planned to run off with their money. The defense claimed Cody was hired to follow Barbara and collect incriminating information about her for the divorce trial, and seduce her if possible.
49:48 Speaker 01 Look, if you can seduce her, do it. Let's get some pictures, and then I can divorce her for being unfaithful.
49:54 Speaker 00 Yeah, infidelity. But Cody denied all of that and said he was only hired to kill her. He claimed that Bernard told him, as quoted by Time, "Before you kill her, tell her the bullet came from Bernie."
50:10 Speaker 01 Hey, this bullet is from Barney.
50:14 Speaker 00 It's like a bad line.
50:16 Speaker 01 It really is.
50:16 Speaker 00 In a B grade movie.
50:18 Speaker 01 Yeah.
50:19 Speaker 00 But that doesn't mean I don't believe it's true. You know, to me, Bernard Finch was such a narcissist. At the very least, I'm sure there are probably some other diagnoses that you could throw in there. It wouldn't surprise me that he would want her to know, hey, I'm not doing it myself, but you know it. This came from me.
50:44 Speaker 01 You can hear, I can hear him saying that.
50:45 Speaker 00 Yeah. Cody also testified that Bernard told him he would kill his wife if he had to, saying the job's got to be done. I'm going to do it. He claimed he met Finch on July 12th, 1959, at Carol's Las Vegas apartment and told a false story about a failed hit attempt. Bernard was angry and told him to go back and do it again. Cody said he needed money to buy another gun and secure transportation. So Finch gave him $102.
51:19 Speaker 01 Not 100, 102.
51:20 Speaker 00 Yeah, well, maybe the gun was 52 and the transportation was 50. I don't know. I just think it's kind of humorous to think about hiring a hitman who has no intention of killing the person. They're just going to get that money and take off.
51:38 Speaker 01 Yeah.
51:38 Speaker 00 Well, what are you going to do? Call the police and say, hey, I hired this guy to kill my wife and he ran off with my money.
51:45 Speaker 01 Well, there's been people who have done that and it has not turned out well for them.
51:48 Speaker 00 It kind of reminds me of Jamie Foxx's character in Horrible Bosses.
51:52 Speaker 01 Yeah.
51:54 Speaker 00 He played a great character with the name that I don't want to say on the podcast, but in their opening statement, Bernard's defense argued that Barbara's frigidity after the birth of their son drove him to have an affair. Okay, that's part of their defense. He wasn't getting any sex at home. So, you know, he started having an affair. I guess you have to explain it somehow.
52:21 Speaker 01 I guess.
52:23 Speaker 00 And it's not that that couldn't have been true. It still doesn't make it right.
52:28 Speaker 01 No.
52:29 Speaker 00 Both defendants claimed that Barbara pointed a gun at them. According to Bernard, the gun went off accidentally. While he struggled with Barbara. Prosecutors noted that the evidence showed Barbara was shot in the back from about four feet away.
52:45 Speaker 01 It makes it a little bit hard to align with his story.
52:49 Speaker 00 But obviously, the two defendants had gotten together on this part. Right? Barbara pointed the gun at us. There was a struggle. The gun went off. She was shot. Bernard got on the stand and went through each item. And the murder kit, he said the items were part of a medical bag. He created for surgical or poisoning emergencies. Prosecutors argued that the bag did not contain rubber tubing, normally associated with field treatment for poisoning. And it also contained 38 caliber bullets. Finch said the carving knife inside was a gift for Carol's apartment. And the rope was just a line for his new boat.
53:31 Speaker 00 So again, you know, we talk about these cases and the evidence against someone. Well, all of it has to try to be explained. But a lot of times the explanations are just ludicrous and humorous.
53:48 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's not, it's not lining up.
53:50 Speaker 00 No, I got this kit, but it's for medical emergencies. But then, you know, I had this carving knife for Carol, so I threw that in there. I also put some 38 caliber bullets in there for
54:02 Speaker 01 Whatever.
54:02 Speaker 00 For whenever. You never know when you're gonna need that. And I just had some rope for my boat, so I threw that in there as well.
54:09 Speaker 01 Just more convenient place to store it for now. Yeah.
54:12 Speaker 00 The prosecution argued that Finch prepared this kit so he would be prepared when the opportunity arose to kill Barbara. And that's what truly makes something a murder kit. You put it together so that you have it when the opportunity arises to commit whatever murder it is that you're looking to commit. Bernard testified about his affair with Carol. He admitted to renting apartments under an assumed name and said he lied to his wife to spare her pride. However, he also said they had an armistice agreement, allowing them to date other people.
54:53 Speaker 00 They decided to postpone their divorce and present a unified front so he could get the loans he needed. He gave her a new Cadillac to symbolize the bargain.
55:02 Speaker 01 How about that?
55:04 Speaker 00 I've never heard an open marriage described as an armistice agreement.
55:12 Speaker 01 Well, it was the 50s.
55:14 Speaker 00 But here's my thing, right? We talked about how, you know, the divorce and all of that, him losing the finances was really going to mess up all this business stuff that he had going on. Why would Barbara, who is in complete control?
55:30 Speaker 01 Yeah.
55:31 Speaker 00 Of the finances, per the judge, and is going to win the majority of it in the divorce, come to this agreement? Yeah, I know you screwed me over. I know you're cheating on me, but you know what? I'll postpone the divorce so you can get these loans.
55:52 Speaker 01 It just seems to me like he's lying. I can't see why she would agree to this.
55:56 Speaker 00 No, I can't see where there would be anything in it for her, right? This only benefits him. And why would she want to do that? He's done nothing but hurt her. And apparently he already tried to kill her once. Why is she giving in to him? Also, she doesn't need to be given a new Cadillac. She has complete control of all the money. She can go out and buy her own damn Cadillac.
56:22 Speaker 01 And get the color she wants.
56:23 Speaker 00 Exactly. Bernard claimed that he hired John Patrick Cody to follow Barbara and get something on her for the divorce. And again, let's not forget, you know, sleep with her if you can, seduce her.
56:37 Speaker 01 That really helps me out.
56:40 Speaker 00 When he suspected Cody wasn't going to act, he and Carol decided to confront Barbara. He acknowledged that they had the, what he called emergency kit. Obviously, he can't call it a murder kit with them. When Barbara arrived and saw them waiting for her, and this is according to Bernard. She grabbed Bernard's gun, which she kept in her car. So apparently not only does she have all his money, she has his gun too.
57:06 Speaker 01 You never know when it could be handy, according to him.
57:10 Speaker 00 Carol ran off and hit while Finch wrestled for the gun. He testified that Barbara kneed him in the groin, stomped on his toes and bit his arm.
57:21 Speaker 01 Well, that might be true for her to get away from him. I'm sure he had the gun.
57:25 Speaker 00 Well, obviously he did at one point, even according to his testimony, because he said he hit her with the gun. When she cried out for help. He also admitted to assaulting Marie Anne because he thought she might have a gun too. He explained that he ordered the women to get into the vehicle because he wanted to drive them to a hospital.
57:45 Speaker 01 See, he is a nice guy, isn't he?
57:47 Speaker 00 Yeah.
57:47 Speaker 01 Yeah.
57:48 Speaker 00 We were wrong all along. Barbara escaped while he was looking for the keys, taking the gun with her. I mean, all right. I know we're kind of goofing around on Bernard, but let's face it. Very little of this makes sense, right? Now, I'm sure Barbara bit him, kicked him in the balls, stomped his toes, did whatever she could because she was in fear for her life. The part that really got me was that he thought that this young international nanny governess had a gun as well. Why in the hell is she packing a gun?
58:32 Speaker 00 So he has to assault her because, well, she's probably got a gun too.
58:37 Speaker 01 He's just trying to make it fit his narrative.
58:40 Speaker 00 Well, there has to be a reason, right? What's not in doubt or what's not up for debate is that Barbara was shot. Marie Anne was assaulted by Bernard. So everything has to fit the known facts. And then you have, you know, him ordering them in the vehicle because at this point, he's now turned into a good Samaritan and he's got to get them to the hospital as quickly as possible. Bernard said, he ran after Barbara, knocked the gun from her hand. He picked it up and it accidentally went off as he was trying to throw it away. How convenient for him to tell it that way.
59:24 Speaker 00 Now, gun accidents happen all the time, right? It's why you should never be, you know, playing around with a loaded gun. But this accidental discharge that Bernard is claiming just seems way too convenient, given the known facts. He was asked what happened to the gun as reported by Tom. He claimed he didn't know and said, I went over to the edge of the hill to look for Carol. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Barbara running down the steps. Finch said he saw her fall and then said, I went over and knelt down by her and said, what happened, Barb? She said, shot in the chest. I was amazed.
1:00:08 Speaker 00 I mean, people's BS meter has to be just going off as high as it'll go. Yeah, it's screaming. He said he was going to call an ambulance, but Barbara asked him to wait. And that makes a lot of sense too, because, you know, most people who are shot and feel as though they might be dying, they don't want the ambulance right away. No, wait a little bit. It's yeah, maybe this will pass. Yeah, let's, I mean, this is not indigestion. This woman is shot in the chest. She's not going to say, you know, let's hold off on that ambulance for a while. Finch told the court, I came back and knelt down by her head. She moved her arm.
1:00:51 Speaker 00 I took her hand and she sort of opened her mouth and then she spoke and her voice was very, very soft. She said, I'm sorry, I should have listened. Don't leave me. Take care of the kids. She was dead. I said, Barb, Barb, she wouldn't answer me. I have never heard a bigger load of horse shit in my entire life. This is literally making me sick to my stomach to, to read some of this stuff. He sure made that up. Carol also got on the stand. She cried throughout her testimony and denied the prosecution's accusation that she conspired to kill Barbara. After six days of deliberation, the jury announced
1:01:36 Speaker 00 they were deadlocked on March 12th, 1960. Two jurors voted to acquit Bernard and eight believed Carol was innocent.
1:01:45 Speaker 01 Wow.
1:01:46 Speaker 00 Wow. That's shocking. Jury selection for the retrial began on June 28th, 1960, and lasted several weeks after much of the same testimony. A second mistrial was declared on November 7th, 1960. The jury foreman said they believed one defendant was guilty, but they could not agree on the second. And I would have to assume that they believed Bernard was guilty, but they were not sure about Carol.
1:02:18 Speaker 01 Sure.
1:02:19 Speaker 00 The third murder trial opened on January 3rd, 1961. On March 7th of that year, Bernard Finch and Carol Tregoff were found guilty of first and second degree murder, respectively, and conspiracy to commit murder. So it took three different juries, hearing what was reported to be pretty much the same stuff to come back with guilty verdicts.
1:02:48 Speaker 01 But they eventually got there.
1:02:50 Speaker 00 On April 5th, 1961, the jury voted for life in prison with the possibility of parole after seven years.
1:02:59 Speaker 01 Put on the brakes there.
1:03:00 Speaker 00 Seven years.
1:03:01 Speaker 01 Seven years for that.
1:03:03 Speaker 00 And we mentioned the gas chamber. This was back when California was actually executing people. Carol lost her first bid for parole in 1968, but after eight years in prison, she was released on May 1st, 1969. After two denials, Bernard was up for parole again in August 1971. An anonymous source told the LA Times, he had strong chances of being released. Finch told the board, he wanted to return to medicine and had a job offer in the East. In the 1970s, you could be a doctor with felony murder on your record.
1:03:42 Speaker 01 And keep practicing.
1:03:43 Speaker 00 And keep practicing. He was granted parole that month and was released from prison in December. Bernard relocated to rural Missouri and obtained his state medical license in 1974.
1:03:56 Speaker 01 Wow.
1:03:57 Speaker 00 That's shocking.
1:03:57 Speaker 01 It is shocking.
1:03:59 Speaker 00 Maybe that could happen today, but I highly doubted. At one point, he was in trouble with state probation authorities for paying for his girlfriend's apartment.
1:04:09 Speaker 01 I guess back then you couldn't do that.
1:04:10 Speaker 00 I, yeah, I wasn't exactly sure what the problem with that was. Nine years after his release, California granted his request for reinstatement of his medical license. He practiced in Palm Springs for several years. He died on May 15th, 1995 at the age of 77. And I am shocked about a number of things in this case. Number one, that they got out as quickly as they did. But number two, that he was able to practice medicine in multiple states, especially eventually back in the state of California,
1:04:54 Speaker 00 where he was a convicted murderer. Carol Tregoff stayed in California and tried to have a normal life. She worked in the records department of Covina's Inner Community Hospital and got into a stable relationship with a woman. Carol was later promoted to head of her department. Carol used a different name that was not listed in sources. Over the years, she has declined to speak with authors and journalists who wrote about the case.
1:05:23 Speaker 01 Well, I'm sure she wants it to remain buried. Why would she want it to have it out there?
1:05:29 Speaker 00 Yeah, I mean, what good is going to come from her speaking of it? And she's using a new name. I'm sure she doesn't want that to get out. In fact, we couldn't even really find it during the research. So I'm not even sure if she's died. Or, you know, she was alive as of the 2013 publication of the LA Magazine article.
1:05:52 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:05:53 Speaker 00 But because we don't know her new name, we can't even look that up. But as we wrap this one up, Gibbs, the murder of Barbara Finch was a high profile case that made national headlines, but in the decades since, it's been mostly forgotten outside Southern California. I mean, this is not a huge, you know, well-known case, but in the 50s, it did receive a ton of attention.
1:06:20 Speaker 01 And I can see why.
1:06:22 Speaker 00 There's a lot of facets of the case that would draw people in. Although it occurred many decades ago, it had all the elements that make a case infamous, even today, right? Money and affair. And, you know, you have the defendant's questionable versions of events. I keep going back to Bernard. I mean, obviously there's no way to say this was a good guy. First of all, he was a convicted murderer, so you have that. But even before that, he treated women horribly.
1:06:58 Speaker 01 He was a narcissist.
1:06:59 Speaker 00 Yes. He was also a philanderer.
1:07:03 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:07:04 Speaker 00 And to me, it seems like he was just, you know, constantly looking for what's the next best thing? And then, you know, I'm in love with this person. Oh, but now I see this person.
1:07:19 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:07:19 Speaker 00 And so I'm giving up my marriage. I don't know, you know, what happened to his children or his relationship with his children. But to me, those people are just all about what's going to be good for me or what's going to make me feel good? What do I want?
1:07:39 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:07:39 Speaker 00 And to hell with, you know, everybody else.
1:07:43 Speaker 01 Maybe his second opportunity at life, when he got out of prison, he did better.
1:07:49 Speaker 00 Yeah, there wasn't much about it, but that's the other thing that is really shocking to me about this case. I get it. You know, a lot of the cases that we've covered where the murders occurred in the 50s or so, you know, some of the sentences weren't as long, or people didn't spend as much time in jail. Right. Life with the possibility of parole. Okay, we hear that all the time today, but life with the possibility of parole after seven years? That was shocking to me.
1:08:24 Speaker 01 It was to me as well.
1:08:26 Speaker 00 And then the fact that, you know, he got out wasn't shocking because if you're up for parole in seven years, eventually you're going to get out. What was shocking to me is that he was able to to practice medicine in another state and then also in California.
1:08:43 Speaker 01 Get his license back there to practice. Yeah.
1:08:46 Speaker 00 I just would have never thought that was a possibility. And if it's a possibility today, I would be shocked.
1:08:54 Speaker 01 And it might be in certain states.
1:08:55 Speaker 00 It might be. I'm still going to be shocked. Again, even though it's an older case, the motives for why it happened aren't much different than many of the cases that we cover that are much more current.
1:09:12 Speaker 01 Oh, for sure.
1:09:13 Speaker 00 You have the guy who doesn't want to be married, but he also doesn't want to get divorced because that means giving up a big chunk of his money. So he wants to to move on with this much younger, very attractive woman with whom I assume he's in love, but he still wants all his money too. And to make sure that happens, he's willing to commit the ultimate sin.
1:09:43 Speaker 01 They can go back and see that same case even before this one.
1:09:47 Speaker 00 Oh.
1:09:48 Speaker 01 And for sure after.
1:09:49 Speaker 00 Throughout time.
1:09:50 Speaker 01 Sure, we'll do one years from now.
1:09:52 Speaker 00 It's never going to stop.
1:09:54 Speaker 01 No.
1:09:54 Speaker 00 When you talk about love, money, you know, greed, sex, all of those revenge, all of those motives will stand the test of time.
1:10:06 Speaker 01 Sure.
1:10:07 Speaker 00 They have and will. That's it for our case on Bernard Finch and Carol Tregoff. We've got some voicemails. You want to check those out?
1:10:14 Speaker 01 Let's hear them.
1:10:16 Speaker 02 Hola Mike and Gibby. This is Lyddie from Dallas. I was just listening to your episode on Stephen Wright's and it just really boggled my mind, everything related to this sleepwalking defense. I'm actually a neuroscientist. I work at a hospital and I do listen and hear about a lot of seminars, about epilepsy and even sleep-related studies. And so it's really interesting to me how they actually found multiple experts to talk about this. And if I was in the jury, I think I would pay a lot of attention to those findings. But at the same time, it got me thinking about, you know, this person does have a past and
1:10:58 Speaker 02 previous instances in which he's been violent. So ultimately, I don't know that I would have waited that much on the data and the science, but rather my worry that it will be a repeated offender and that he already may have caused the death of a woman. What about any other victims that he might have if he's outside? And so I don't know what I would have voted for, but I definitely loved this episode and how you guys discussed all of this evidence that was presented. I love you all. This is my absolute favorite podcast and I am Team Gibby because we're probably the same person, but I love both of you so much. So have a good one and keep your own time kicking. Bye.
1:11:40 Speaker 01 Well, we do have that similarity of neuroscience.
1:11:44 Speaker 00 You also being a neuroscientist.
1:11:47 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:11:48 Speaker 00 Slash astrophysicist.
1:11:49 Speaker 01 Slash.
1:11:50 Speaker 00 Slash world-class bullshitter.
1:11:53 Speaker 01 All the above, yeah. You know who's a lot of fun at a party? A neuroscientist.
1:11:58 Speaker 00 You can't even say the word scientist. How could you be a neuroscientist if you can't say the word scientist?
1:12:05 Speaker 01 It came out really fast. I couldn't stop it.
1:12:07 Speaker 00 But we love you.
1:12:09 Speaker 01 We do.
1:12:10 Speaker 00 And, and you know, the one thing that I'm pretty sure of is there are a lot of Gibbys. You know, we hear that time and time again. Gibby and I are so alike. And frankly, that scares me.
1:12:22 Speaker 01 I just saw that look on your eyes. It was like it really was a
1:12:26 Speaker 00 No, I'm just kidding.
1:12:27 Speaker 01 A sense of fright.
1:12:28 Speaker 00 I'm just messing. I know so many people relate to you because you're the, you're the every man, every person.
1:12:34 Speaker 01 Mensa 172.
1:12:37 Speaker 03 This is Lori from outside of Kansas City, Missouri. And I had to go back and start listening to TCAT from the beginning because you guys won't produce 24-hour day content. But it's just as good the second time around. And I have some advice for Gibby. If you can't say coincidence, you should say coinkydink. Got a certain cachet to it. Keep your own time ticking. Bye.
1:13:05 Speaker 00 I mean, you could write a whole dictionary about, you know, here's what the word really is.
1:13:11 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:13:11 Speaker 00 Here's what Gibby should say. That is easier to pronounce and will come out, you know, perfectly.
1:13:17 Speaker 01 Coincidence.
1:13:19 Speaker 00 Coinkydink.
1:13:20 Speaker 01 Quickie Dink.
1:13:20 Speaker 00 That's just kind of fun to say.
1:13:22 Speaker 01 I actually like.
1:13:22 Speaker 00 I've heard people say that before.
1:13:24 Speaker 01 It might be hard for me to say coinkydink.
1:13:26 Speaker 00 Since you just messed it up. What a coincidence that you can't say coinkydink.
1:13:31 Speaker 01 Chucker.
1:13:33 Speaker 00 Oh, all right. I had fun with you this episode. Uh, but that's it for another episode of True Crime All The Time. So for Mike.
1:13:41 Speaker 01 And Gibby.
1:13:42 Speaker 00 Stay safe and keep your own time ticking.
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