CAROLE TREGOFF TRIED TO HIRE A HIT MAN TO KILL DR. BERNARD FINCH'S WIFE BARBARA : TESTIMONY AT TRIAL

Excerpts Page 164-165-166-167 :  James Cody, sometimes known as Jack or John Cody, had been sentenced to an additional year of confinement after walking off the prison farm in Minnesota. In exchange for his testimony, he was granted immunity for any crimes connected with the death of Barbara Jean Finch... My notes in parenthesis. There is no doubt from this testimony at trial that Carole was a full participant in planning the murder of her rival, Mrs. Bernard Finch - Barbara.

... Cody: "She wanted me to kill Mrs. Finch."

... Cody: "I told her Dona (an intermediary) had explained everything and that I thought I should get $2000 for doing the job. She said she thought $1000 was more reasonable, and we dickered around, you know, back and forth for a little while. Anyway, with the expense money I told her I would need - to buy a weapon and a car - we finally agreed on $1400. She was going to give me $300 up front and the rest when the job was done."...

Cody: She drew out some maps on napkins. One was a map of the Finch house and the other was a map of how to get to an apartment in Hollywood that Mrs. Finch had. Carole told me, 'If Mrs. Finch is not at the West Covina residence, she would be at the Hollywood apartment.'  It was named the Hollywood Hills Motel or Hotel, or something.  Anyway, I had the address and a map of how to get there."

Cody: "She told me it should look like a robbery, and that I should take the woman's rings and jewelry. I told her I would do it in my own way. Then we decided to do it on the following weekend, the Fourth of July weekend. Carole said that Dr. Finch goes to a tennis tournament in San Diego every Fourth of July, and that he would have a good alibi.

***

My notes: Cody said that he knew he was not going to do it right away but agreed to do it for the money he needed.  He cooperatively flew to Phoenix on a plane with the plan to take a bus to LA from there and do the murder. The travel was to hide his location when the murder occurred.

Cody: "She said "I've made up my mind Jack. If you don't do it, Dr. Finch will, and if he doesn't,  I will.

Cody: "Then she gave me $330 that she had in an envelope.

My notes page 168 -169 - 170

That night Cody and Carole met again and he told her that he had done the job with a shotgun at the Hollywood apartment. She handed him the rest of the money.  As gasps were heard around the courtroom, Cody mentioned that after this Carole was happy. However, she soon questioned whether or not the man had actually murdered Barbara. He claimed Barbara's body was in the trunk of the car. When the truth - that Barbara was indeed alive - was presented to Cody, he claimed he must have killed the wrong woman, maybe a girlfriend of Barbara's. He agreed to go back and do the job right. Then Mr. Finch gave Cody more money for another gun and expenses. This implicated the doctor in full knowledge of the plan to murder. Cody claimed he admitted he had not followed through on the plan. In yet another meeting an angry Finch asked Cody again to do the deed but also said he would do it himself. Cody accepted more money again.

CODY WAS A LIAR, so how much truth could be in this testimony?

In the end both Carole Tregoff and Bernard Finch were convicted of murder. Carole would claim that she soon knew she was no longer in love with the man.

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CAROLE TREGOFF : MISTRESS OF SOCIETY SURGEON BERNARD FINCH and CO-CONSPIRATOR IN THE MURDER OF HIS WIFE BARBARA FINCH

The book is old and the last copy available at a major city library. I'll be using "A Murder in West Covina," as well as numerous news stories to reveal this story of love gone wrong. The murder made headlines for three years back in the day and attracted Hollywood actors claiming they were doing research for future roles.

Of course we know that not all "love triangles," which is how the murder was typified in the press at the time, end in murder or scandal. (Some people choose to be in a triad.) Because it's clear that wife Barbara Jean Finch was a victim of domestic violence at the hands of her husband the doctor, before he murdered her, it's difficult for me to think of this as a "love triangle."

As a side, I first learned about this murder when I was reading around the journalist Dorothy Kilgallen, who was featured here in April 2023, titled "Pulitzer-Prize Nominated Reporter Dorothy Kilgallen* and Pop Singer Johnnie Ray : A Flaunted Unconventional Romance In The 1950's Before She Died." Kilgallen, married with children, a popular panelist on a television game show named What's My Line, first made her name as a rare woman journalist back in the 1950's and 1960's and she was very good at that too. (Her own death was suspicious and in recent years there has been an attempt to reopen the case.) In 1960 Kilgallen covered this trial.

CAROLE ANN TREGOFF

(1937 - ?) 

After being freed from prison, in May 1969, Carole lived under an assumed name.

I was unable to find an obituary for her. 

Image from Newspapers.com

clipped by jamesdhug

Our Mistress of the Month for July 2025 here at Mistress Manifesto, is Carole Tregoff, who modeled briefly and became the Mistress of a "society surgeon" Doctor Raymond Bernard "Bernie" Finch, who murdered his wife, Barbara Jean Finch.  Finch was arrested and charged with First Degree murder. Carole was arrested and charged the same. How innocent was she?

The murder occurred on July 18, 1959 when Carole was 22 old. Barbara had been shot dead, once in the back. Carol hid in the bushes and later drove all the way to Vegas alone, perhaps in a state of shock. (Bernard was 41 and his wife, Barbara, was 36.)

Bernard and Barbara had been married six years and both had been married before. Barbara had brought one child into the marriage she'd had with her first husband, Lyle Daugherty, and had another child with the doctor. A young woman from Sweden served as the children's nanny and was important to the testimony in the case.

In an interesting twist, in 1951 there had been accusations of a "wife swap." Bernard's high school sweetheart, Frances Simpson and he had married. Next door lived Lyle Daughterly and his wife - Barbara Jean.  It was Doctor Bernard Finch who delivered Barbara, who he would eventually marry, by caesarian, of the daughter who he'd become step-father to. Eventually Frances married Lyle. The two had said they only got involved after divorces but there was publicity that turned it into a sordid "wife swapping" ordeal. 

Carole Tregoff had also been married before and was known in Vegas as Mrs. James Pappa. Oddly, in some news articles she is identified as the doctor's "assistant." The day after the murder, detectives found the red haired, light skinned beauty, living in Vegas and working at The Sands hotel and casino as a waitress. Yes really! So Vegas was home for her, not West Covina; this is not an easy commute by driving. Asked where the doctor was, she said he was at her apartment. Soon after, he was arrested. Carole lied to protect Bernard - and herself. She claimed that he had been with her in Vegas for a long weekend and gave a rather detailed account of their doings.

Carole was asked if Bernard supported her financially (i.e. if she was his Mistress) to which she answered that he had given her money but never supported her. She said that she and Bernard had intended to divorce their spouses and remarry to each other. The two had been living together in Vegas, then called "shacking up." 

In subsequent testimony, Carole's stories didn't match. She claimed that she had moved to Vegas to avoid being called into the divorce action between Bernard and Barbara that May.

It turned out she hired a hitman to murder Barbara. He took the money.  He didn't do the deed.

Soon the trial would make headlines.

C 2025 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot.  All rights including Internet and International Rights Reserved

* Re Dorothy Kilgallen : in 1960 she went to cover the trial of society surgeon Bernard Finch, accused of shooting his wife Barbara once in the back while his co-conspirator and mistress, Carole Tregoff cowered in a clump of bougainvillea. " The crime was s slapdash do-it- yourself job done after a hoodlum named Cody took payment for the hit from the lovers, lost his nerve, blew the money in Vegas and then lied to Finch about having done the murder.

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PULITZER-PRIZE NOMINATED REPORTER DOROTHY KILGALLEN and  POP SINGER JOHNNIE RAY : A FLAUNTED UNCONVENTIONAL ROMANCE IN THE 1950's BEFORE SHE DIED

February 2017

EVELYN NESBIT : TEENAGE MISTRESS OF ARCHITECT STANFORD WHITE  and  WIFE OF HARRY K. THAW - MURDER SCANDAL

NEON VEGAS

ANNA LACHAPELLE : HUGUETTE'S MOM : MISTRESS AND WIFE OF W.A. CLARK FOUNDER OF LAS VEGAS

ANNA EUGENIA LACHAPELLE  -  HUGUETTES'S MOM and MYSTERY WOMAN

Huguette's mystery is so vast that it cloaks the mystery of her mother.

Anna Eugenia LaChapelle Clark

 

March 10 1878 Calamut Michigan - October 11 1963 Manhattan New York

 

She had one blue eye and one brown and as a girl she had a "puckish" sense of humor.

 

You may have heard of the odd multi-millionairess Huguette Clark because her estate has this year been in the news with auctions of paintings and jewelry and other sell offs and deals.  Huguette was never a mistress.  She was married once and briefly and never much interested in marriage afterwards, perhaps being naturally asexual. But her mom, Anna Eugenia LaChapelle, was her father's mistress before she was his wife.  

Anna LaChapelle was the very young mistress and then wife of W.A. Clark, for whom Clark County, Nevada, the home of Las Vegas, is named after.  She was born in Michigan to French immigrants who moved from Canada to America.  In youth she lived inhaling the smell of the smoke stacks and smelters in an industrial ghetto. W.C. Clark was about 40 years older than her and a widower.  After meeting Anna in America when she was about fifteen, he sent her to live in France and be educated there. She was described as his "ward" but there are no court papers to prove he took on guardianship. Anna was no orphan. Her parent's were alive. When W.A. wasn't busy with business he went to visit her in France. Much about their relationship is cloaked in mysteries.

Anna LaChapelle is the second known woman to be patronized, supported, or to become a protégé of W.A. Clark after he became a widower.  (The first of his protégé's, a woman who came from a boarding house in Butte, Montana, was Kathlyn Williams, who became a very successful silent screen star, appearing in 170 films.  He paid for her college education and to study opera singing but she openly referred to him but only as a benefactor.)  Both women were younger than his four previous children.

Speculation is that Anna and W.C. backdated their marriage to 1901 to accommodate an otherwise illegitimate birth of a daughter, Eugette's older sister, who then died in her teens. Anna's first child, a daughter, Andree, was born in 1902 in Spain and then Huguette was born in 1906 in Paris.  The family traveled to and lived in Paris quite a bit, going back and forth on the grand steamships of their era.  In 1904, while in the Senate, Clark announced that he had taken a second wife in France three years earlier, and that the couple already had a 2-year-old daughter. At the time of the supposed marriage, he was 62, and Anna was 23.

There is no documentation of the marriage other than William Andrew Clark's word.  The genealogists have failed to find a marriage certificate or church record.  He'd been born in a log cabin in Pennsylvania, went out west to pan for gold, sold eggs to miners, established a bank, became a very early (pre mob) investor in Las Vegas, and became known as "The "Copper Millionaire."    At one point his income from just one copper mine would be about 10 million a month today!  He even became a Senator from Montana.  Those were the days!

Never one to be especially interested in "society", but a lover of fine art and music, Anna was most known for playing the harp and giving small recitals for those closest to her, for keeping company with the business associates that her husband had trusted after his death, as well as their children.  Anna, not born to wealth any more than W.C. Clark had been, certainly acquired the taste of the very rich by living rich.  She was left $250 million when W.C. Clark died.  She was the person who had decorated the New York house and had Bellosguardo built and decorated after she was widowed.

Her daughter Huguette, as an adult, lived reclusively in a world of her own making in one of those old piles of a home in Millionaires Row New York's on Fifth Avenue in New York City that had been built in the Gilded Age and had been her parent's house where she grew up.  Then, for many more years, she lived in a drastically smaller hospital room with no view until she died at the age of 104 in 2011.  She hadn't always been so reclusive but, the theories go, first her sister died as a child and then her aged father and then her mother, Anna, leaving her isolated and unable to relate to most other people.  She got the genes for a long life from her parents.  She also inherited incredible wealth when Anna died, more than she could ever spend, even as she maintained her ultra-expensive hobbies such as Japanese doll collecting and custom designed doll houses.  From afar she oversaw the estate, including homes which were well maintained by staff, in case she ever showed up. But she didn't show up. She oversaw all this for many years, from that hospital room, fully capable but in no hurry to leave.  Her relatives thought she was still living in the house on Fifth Avenue!  After she died, a number of her younger relatives came together to fight her will for a share but it seems she knew what she was doing to the end.  She had remained unmarried and childless and had no heirs and had not well remembered them.  Huguette's legacy is thus Anna's.

Huguette inherited Anna's Bellosguardo, which will become a museum of art.  It had been built in French style, Anna designed the interiors as French as well, and Huguette wanted it preserved exactly like it had been when Anna died in 1963. That was about the last time she visited the estate.  It was maintained as if she might visit any time for the rest of her life.

 

A SELF PORTRAIT BY EUGETTE CLARK

She and her mother Anna were art patrons to individuals, artistic themselves. 

Anna played the harp and Eugette studied painting. I see the resemblance.

 

 

C 2014 Mistress Manifesto/ Missy Rapport All Rights Reserved including International and Internet Rights.  Pictures on this post from Google Images and remain the property of their original owners.

  

 

I read this book, which is heavily focused on Eugette Clark, Anna's only living daughter and heir, cover to cover. It is the primary reference for this month's posts.