My true crime memoir, SATIN PUMPS: THE MOONLIT MURDER THAT MESMERIZED THE NATION, came about as a challenge to write something with a lot of commercial potential but still appealed to my sensibilities. The idea for the book had been germinating for several years, but it took writing the story for a television producer that began the process. I completed a treatment for a limited television series based on the case but as these things have a habit of doing in Hollywood, the producer’s own projects took precedent. Now what was I going to do? Why write the book, of course! But the book would go much deeper into the story and character motivations by looking into their backgrounds which led me into genealogical research.
My first book, WINDOW TO THE FUTURE: THE GOLDEN AGE OF TELEVISION MARKETING AND ADVERTISING, was published by Chronicle Books in 2005. It fondly looks back at the culture of marketing and advertising television sets during the golden age of American manufacturing in the 1950s and 60s.
I next put on my director’s hat to concentrate on my other love, film. I wrote, produced and directed my WINDOW TO THE FUTURE-related documentary, TV MAN: THE SEARCH FOR THE LAST INDEPENDENT DEALER about the last remaining mom-and-pop stores which sold and repaired television sets in the United States.
After taking care of elderly parents and their subsequent passing, in 2018 I decided to take my first trip to Europe to regroup. I traveled across the Continent by Eurail pass, starting in London and ending in Rome, with stops in Paris, Amsterdam, Vienna, Germany and Switzerland in between. I met extraordinary young people on the trains. Europe’s beauty and Old World charm was something I also photographed with multiple cameras during my trip. The only regret I have is that I didn’t have at least one of my two classic 1950s 3-D film cameras (a 35mm Kodak Stereo and a View Master Personal Camera) at the time to take photos.
Traveling across Europe by yourself with a lot of luggage is a comedy of errors and my journal of the trip is full of mishaps that in hindsight are now humorous, particularly the time my train took off in front of me in a small Austrian town. Very angry because I knew the engineer saw me on the platform trying to board and left anyway, in a rage, I threw an adult tantrum and gave new meaning to the term, “Ugly American.” Even through my anger I noticed the Austrians nearby laughing at the man cursing in English using words I never knew I had in my vocabulary. I threw my luggage into an empty shopping cart on the platform and pushed it through the town like the homeless American I was, looking for a place to eat among the myriad pastry shops and beer halls. (How do Austrians not have short life spans drinking and eating so many carbs?) Is there a travel book based on this trip in my future? Maybe.
As a student of film noir and historical American culture, I began to seriously think about getting down to business and write about my family’s doctor for that television producer. I would finally revisit one of Los Angeles’ most famous midcentury murder cases, that of Dr. Bernard Finch and his girlfriend and medical assistant, Carole Tregoff, who conspired to murder his wife. Dr. Finch was not only my family’s doctor, but he had also delivered me and the oldest of my three younger sisters. Although I was just a month shy of my eighth birthday when Finch killed his wife, my personal connections to some of the principles in the story, my family’s association, and the close physical proximity to events proved to be invaluable in building the story from my point of view as a child at the time and, later, as adult trying to solve some of the questions that still continue to plague the case today. Through my research and careful consideration based on known facts, I believe that I have come up with answers to some of those questions.
I hope you enjoy reading SATIN PUMPS as much as I did writing it.
