Gary,
I stumbled across you fantastic blog. Wow! I'm very impressed with all you information, pictures and facts concerning this case.
Dr. Finch was a lifelong friend of my family and delivered me at the Monrovia Hospital in 1950.
My Dad became very close to him when my Dad's first wife was dying of a brain tumor in about 1948.
Dr. Finch made daily house calls to see her until she died leaving a infant and my Dad. They lived in West Covina and my Dad was a pastor of a church there.
I remember when the news of his arrest was in the Life Magazine. My Dad corresponded with Dr Finch at that time and I remembered going to Chino Prison to visit him as a child.
He served his time and was trying to get released. My family lived in Springfield, MO, and my Dad started helping him get a plan together for his release. He needed to have a job lined up before they would let him out on parole. They got him a job at the El Dorado Springs Hospital as an X-ray technician. He bought a new house that the high school kids had built in a class on construction. He was paroled to my Dad, Burton W. Pierce. He continued to work at the hospital for several years and then took the medical state boards to regain his license. This was an amazing feat since he had not practiced medicine for years by this time. I worked with him for about 6 months during this time and found him quite interesting. We spent a great deal of time together as friends along with his soon to be wife Betty.
Betty had met him thru an internship she had done while completing her degree from the Meningers Clinic in social work when he was still incarcerated.
They ended up getting married and lived in Bolivar,MO for quite a few years. They then moved back to California and lived there until he died. I think this move had a lot to do with repairing the relationship with Ramie and his other children.
He was an accomplished tennis player until his death.
The last time I saw Betty was at Rancho Mirage where they had a condo on a golf course. Bernie had been dead for less then a year and she could not talk about him without breaking down in tears. Shortly after that my Dad got a call from her in Oklahoma and she was at a convenience store and lost. It wasn't much time later that she was under constant nursing care and died. It was like her mind snapped after Bernie was gone.
To sum this up my Dad felt he needed to repay Bernie for all his kindness during his wife's death process. My Dad spent a great deal of time paying back the debt that he felt he owned this man. My Dad died several years ago and I thought he had a lot of the documents from the time of Bernie 's trial and release but unfortunately I didn't find anything. He may have given everything to Betty Finch because I think she wanted to write a book about Bernie.
rpierce400@aol.com
