Paul Coates, April 12, 1961

April 12, 1961: The Mirror publishes a long, sensational first-person account by Carole Tregoff, who was convicted with her lover, Dr. R. Bernard Finch, of killing Finch’s wife: We drove aimlessly from Beverly Hills, through Hollywood, up one of the canyons and into the Hollywood Hills. There we parked, looking over the city beneath us... and there Dr. Finch kissed me for the first time. It was a kiss such as I had never experienced before ... a kiss of tenderness, a kiss of respect ... a kiss of love. I got home at 4:15 a.m. My husband was furious...   Paul Coates writes about a piece of “jail mail” he recently received from a man who’s overdue for parole because he hasn’t found a job.

Comments

[Pamela Porter]

Stories like the Carole Tregoff/Bernard Finch case, and the Perelson murder/suicide and attendant abandoned house make me wonder what ever became of these people? Carole Tregoff? The Perelson children? I'm torn between curiousity and the knowledge they most likely just want to be left alone.

Pamela

[maggie]

Well said, Pamela. I often wonder about the victims so fleetingly mentioned in news reports, even old ones like this. What becomes of the children of victims, or even killers? They are grown now, some with families or their own. Or, chillingly, they cannot shake the image of dead bodies from their minds. Perhaps, I sometimes think, these are the serial killers of tomorrow.

[jaded]

Carole Tregoff tells her "tragic" life story without a single word of remorse or regret for Barbara Finch, the woman who was ambushed in the garage of her own home by her philandering husband and his mistress; who had her skull fractured when he hit her; who was "accidentally" shot in the back as she fled, and who was left to die on the lawn.

Yes, county jail was so unfair.