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The Cake in the Ditch: How a Birthday Bait Unmasked a Killer · Relationship Cheating Stories

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: On the morning of May 14th, 2022, a man walking
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: his beagle along Sycamore Ridge Nature Path found a birthday
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: cake sitting in a drainage ditch. The cake was intact.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: The plastic clamshell was sealed. White frosting, blue letters. Happy birthday, sweetheart.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: And tucked inside, a handwritten card and block letters that read,
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: He never made it to his birthday. Ask Wayne. No body.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: No crime scene. No crime scene. No obvious evidence of
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: anything at all. Just a cake in a drainage ditch,
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: five days before Harold Finch was supposed to turn 75.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: What followed was an investigation that would reach back more
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: than a year, through a fabricated family photograph, a forged signature,
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: and a drug that Harold Finch had never been prescribed
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: in his life. The cake was not the beginning of
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: this story, but it was the moment someone decided the
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: truth needed to be found. Harold Finch spent 41 years
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: married to the same woman, in the same house on
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: Clover Hill Drive, In the north end of Dunbar, he
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: was a civil engineer. He had designed culverts and drainage
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: channels for a living, the kind of infrastructure no one
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: thinks about until it fails. He was precise, methodical, the
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: kind of man who kept his tools in labeled drawers
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: and arrived everywhere exactly on time. Barbara Finch died in
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: January of 2021, after 41 years of marriage, and then
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: Harold was alone in that house at 74 years old.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: for the first time in his adult life. His physician, Dr.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: Ellison of Dunbar Internal Medicine Group, documented Harold as alert
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: and oriented in all four spheres. That is clinical language
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: for a mind that is fully present. Harold knew who
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: he was, where he was, what day it was, and
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: what was happening around him. He was not confused. He
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: was grieving. The couple had two children. Renee Finch lived
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: in Columbus, close enough to call often, far enough that
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: visits required planning. Douglas Finch, Harold's son, had drifted away
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: years earlier over a dispute about Barbara's estate. The particulars
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: of that argument were private, but the result was not.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: Douglas was not part of Harold's daily life. So when
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: Dunbar's Arbor Care Solutions assigned a home health aide to
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: Harold in June of 2021, the arrangement made sense. The
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: aide's name was Nicole Dixon. Nicole was 38 years old,
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: born and raised in Dunbar. She bawled on Monday nights
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: at fairway lanes on Route 9, with a team called
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: the Spare Tires, averaging a 163. She was the kind
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: of person who knew her neighbor's dogs by name and
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: remembered which of her clients took their coffee black. She
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: visited Harold several times a week. By August of 2021,
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: they had settled into a rhythm. Harold would have coffee
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: ready when she arrived. He would tell her about whatever
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: engineering problem he had been reading about. Because Harold never
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: fully stopped thinking like an engineer. Nicole logged her observations
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: with the care of someone who understood that small changes
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: in a client's demeanor can matter. In late September of 2021,
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: her logs recorded something she found worth noting. Harold's effect
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: had noticeably improved. At first, that seemed straightforward. Grief softens
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: with time. People find their footing. But the timing of
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: that change aligned with something else entirely. something that did
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: not appear in Nicole's logs, because she did not yet
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: know it had happened, five weeks earlier. On a Tuesday
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: morning in the final week of September, a man had
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: knocked on Harold Finch's front door and identified himself as
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: an inspector from Dunbar Internal Partners. He stayed 11 minutes.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: He asked about the pipes, he looked at the meter,
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: and then he left. A neighbor's doorbell camera caught him arriving.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: It caught him leaving. Dunbar Internal Partners does not exist.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: The man with no real job and no real company
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: came back twice in October, not to knock on Harold's door,
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: just to walk the street. A neighbor's doorbell camera caught
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: him both times, hands in his pockets, moving slowly, the
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: way someone moves when they are memorizing a place rather
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: than passing through it. Then, in early November of 2021,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: he knocked again. This time, he brought a casserole dish, white,
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: with a blue rim. He told Harold his name was Wayne.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: He said he was Barbara's second cousin on her mother's side.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: He said the family had been thinking about Harold, that
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: losing Barbara the way they had, so suddenly, had hit
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: everyone hard. He said he hoped Harold didn't mind the intrusion.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: Harold let him in. The casserole dish itself was the
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: first thing that didn't fit, though no one looked at
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: it closely enough at the time. The base carried a
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: stamped seal, a crown above the letters, HBA. That mark
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: belonged to a commercial catering supply company. It was not
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: the kind of dish someone pulled from a family kitchen.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: It was the kind used in bulk food service, the
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: kind you buy by the case. Wayne told Harold to
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: keep it. He said he had more. By November, Wayne
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: was visiting on Sundays. Nicole's logs noted the change. Harold's
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: effect had been improving since late September. She had written that,
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: and by November, the pattern was unmistakable. Harold was animated.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: He was talking more. He was telling Nicole about Wayne's
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: visits the way someone talks about a friendship they had
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: stopped expecting to find. In December, Wayne brought a photograph,
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: four inches by six. He handed it to Harold and
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: said it was a picture from one of Barbara's family reunions,
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: people Harold might recognize. Harold held it and looked at
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: it for a long time. The photograph came from a
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: public Facebook profile belonging to a woman named Sandra Oberg,
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: who lived in Knoxville and had no connection to the
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: Finch family, to Wayne Allen Price. or to anything in Dunbar.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: She had posted it in 2014. Price had downloaded it,
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: printed it, and placed it in Harold's hands as evidence
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: of a family that did not exist. Harold's real family
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: had a different story. Barbara Finch's maiden name was Palk.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: There was no branch called Ostrander. There was no second
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: cousin named Wayne. But Harold had been a widower for
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: less than a year. He had no reason to doubt
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: a man who arrived with food, and the familiar name
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: and the particular warmth of someone who seemed genuinely glad
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: to see him. By January of 2022, Harold called his attorney,
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: Robert Haas, who practiced out of the Clement Building fourth floor.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: Harold had used him for years. The call was straightforward.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: Harold wanted to revise his will. Haas executed the new
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: document on the 9th of February, 2022. Under its terms,
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: 60% of Harold's estate, including his home on Clover Hill Drive,
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: valued at $ 380, 000, would pass to Wayne Allen Price. Harold was,
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: according to every medical record from that period, alert and
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: oriented in four spheres. His physician Dr. Ellison of Dunbar
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: Internal Medicine Group had documented this. Harold was not confused.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: He was not impaired. He was a 74-year-old man who
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: believed he was doing something kind for a relative who
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: had shown up when he needed someone. That is the
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: part that is hardest to hold in your mind. The
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: document was legal. The signature was Harold's. The decision, by
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: every formal measure, was his to make. Renee Finch learned
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: about the will revision in March of 2022, not from
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: a lawyer. From her father, in a phone call, mentioned
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: the way you might mention a small administrative task you
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: had finally gotten around to. Harold told her he had
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: updated some paperwork. He said a member of Barbara's family
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: had been spending time with him and that he wanted
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: to make sure the man was taken care of. Renee
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: called Nicole the next morning. Nicole listened, then she pulled
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: her own logs. The pattern she had been reading as recovery,
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: as a widower, finding his footing, looked different. Now that
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: she had the name Wayne attached to it, she called
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: Paul O'Reilly. Paul O'Reilly had left Arbor Care Solutions by then.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: She was working as a patient advocate at a regional hospital.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: She had seen financial exploitation before, the slow kind, the
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: kind that builds a story around a person, until the
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: person cannot see the edges of it. She started making calls.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: What she found, when she looked at the probate records
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: from Clarkston and Waverly, was not a first time. Price's
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: name appeared in connection with two other cases. Will's had
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: been revised. One revision had been partially undone through a
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: state litigation after the fact. Neither case had resulted in
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: criminal charges. There is something clarifying about a pattern. A
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: single case can be explained away. Two cases can be
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: called coincidence. Three cases with the same name attached, the
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: same approach, the same result. That is something else. Paula
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: compiled everything into a folder and carried it to the
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: Dunbar County Sheriff's Office in the third week of April
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: of 2022. She handed it to Detectives Holt and Devers.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: At that point, Harold Finch was still alive. The detectives
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: had a file but not yet a crime. The will
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: revision was legal. Harold was competent. The prior cases had
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: not produced charges. What they had was a pattern that
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: looked like exploitation, and a victim who did not yet
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: know he was one. Then, on the morning of May 14th,
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: a man named Philip Green was walking his beagle, Copper,
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: along the Sycamore Ridge nature path. Copper pulled toward a
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: drainage culvert and would not move on. Green looked. Inside
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: the culvert sat a plastic clamshell container. Inside the container
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: was a birthday cake, white frosting, blue letters. Happy birthday, sweetheart. Untouched,
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: the cake had been placed there the night before on
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: May 13th. A receipt found in a trash can three
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: blocks away confirmed the date and the store. Forensic analysis
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: of the frosting's consistency confirmed the timing. Tucked under the
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: lid was a card. written in block letters. He never
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: made it to his birthday. Ask Wayne. Harold Finch was
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: still alive that morning. He had five days left. The
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: detectives were at the culvert by noon. They recognized what
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: the cake was not. It was not evidence of a
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: crime already committed, but it told themselves something that changed
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: the pace of everything. Someone who knew what Wayne had
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: planned had decided to leave a record of it, that someone,
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: they would later learn, was Terry Boone. Terry Boone had
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: known Wayne Allen Price since their time in Clarkston. He
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: knew what Price did for money and who his targets were.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: In early May of 2022, Price had told Boone something specific,
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: that Harold Finch would not live to see his 75th birthday.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: The cake had been Price's. Boone took it from Price's
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: car while Price was inside a gas station. He carried
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: it to Sycamore Ridge and left it in the culvert
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: with the card already written. When prosecutors asked him later
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: why he did it, Boone said he wanted there to
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: be something, a record, something that could not be argued
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: away after the fact. He could not have known that
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: Harold would die five days later. On the 19th of
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: May of 2022, Harold Finch was found unresponsive at his
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: home on Clover Hill Drive. Paramedics were called. He was
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: pronounced dead. The initial cause listed on the report was natural.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: Cardiac arrest. Harold was 74 years old. He had a heart.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: The explanation fit the facts as they appeared on the surface.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: But the cake was already in the detective's hands. and
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: the cake had a name on it. The toxicology order
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: came from that connection, not from anything irregular in Harold's
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: presentation at death. standard protocol would not have caught it.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: The order was specific because the investigators already knew to
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: be specific. Dr. Leonard Wick, a toxicologist, later testified about
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: what the analysis found. Harold Finch's blood contained digoxin at
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: a level incompatible with accidental exposure. Harold had never been
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: prescribed digoxin. He had no cardiac condition requiring it. There
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: was no legitimate pathway for that drug to reach his system. Digoxin,
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: in excess, causes cardiac arrest. Wayne Allen Price was arrested
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: on the 3rd of June, 2022. The charges were fraud,
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: undue influence over a vulnerable adult, and murder in the
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: first degree. Price's attorneys argued what the evidence invited them
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: to argue. Harold was elderly. He had a heart. The
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: will revision was executed by a competent man with legal counsel.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: The signatures on the revised document were Harold's. But Dr.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: Sylvia Braun, a forensic document examiner, testified about pressure inconsistencies
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: in those signatures. The lines were Harold's, but they carried
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: the particular quality of a hand signing under something other
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: than ordinary attention. The signatures were not forged. They were
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: signed by a man who had been carefully prepared to
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: sign them. Picture Wayne Allen Price sitting across from Harold
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: Finch in a house on Clover Hill Drive in the
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: months after Barbara died, building the version of himself that
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: Harold needed to believe in. Every Sunday visit, Every casserole,
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: every photograph of someone else's family reunion passed across a
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: table as proof of a bond that never existed. The
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: prosecution's strongest thread was not the toxicology. It was the pattern. Clarkston, Waverly, Dunbar.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: The same approach, the same document, the same transfer of
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: assets to a man who appeared out of nowhere and
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: vanished the moment the money moved. In Clarkston, records showed
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: Price had attached himself to an elderly widower in 2016.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: The will there was revised. The widower died. The estate
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: passed in Waverly, 2018. A similar sequence, a casserole, postal box,
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: and brief employment at a pest control company serving as
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: cover for his presence in the area. A will revised,
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: a death, though that estate had been partially clawed back
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: through civil litigation by surviving family. Harold had no surviving
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: family member in close enough contact to intervene in time.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: Douglas was estranged. Renee had not been to the house
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: since September of 2021. She called. She loved her father.
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: But she was not there, the casserole dish with the
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: catering supply mark, the photograph downloaded from a stranger's Facebook page,
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: the inspector who stayed 11 minutes for a utility company
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: that did not exist. Each piece had seemed, in isolation,
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: like something that could be explained. Together, they were the
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: architecture of a method practiced enough to have a pattern.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: The jury deliberated for two days. In August of 2024,
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: they returned a verdict of guilty on all counts. Four
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: months after a final denial of his appeal, Price submitted
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: a written statement to the court admitting he had administered
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: Digoxina to Harold Finch. He did not apologize. He named
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: no one by first or last name who supplied it,
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: only that a man connected to pharmaceutical distribution had provided
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: the drug. That man has not been charged. That thread
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: remains open. The statement did one thing the toxicology alone
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: could not. It confirmed, in Price's own words, that the
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: dioxin in Harold's blood was placed there deliberately, by someone
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: Harold had welcomed into his kitchen, someone who had carried
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: a casserole through that front door, and called Barbara's name
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: like he had said it a hundred times before. Harold
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: Finch never had a prescription for digoxin. Dr. Ellison of
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: Dunbar Internal Medicine Group had documented him as alert and
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: oriented across four spheres just months before he died. His
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: heart was not failing on its own. What Dr. Leonard
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: Wick found at toxicology was not a pharmaceutical error or
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: an environmental exposure. It was a dose administered with intent.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: Harold died on the 19th of May, 2022, three days
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: before his 75th birthday. The cake was found on Sycamore
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: Ridge Nature Path on the 14th of May, five days
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: before Harold died. The forensic analysis dated its placement to
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: the evening of the 13th. Terry Boone had lifted it
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: from Price's car while Price filled a tank at a
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: gas station. He had left it at the culvert and
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: said nothing. He cooperated with prosecutors after the arrest. The
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: card inside read, He never made it to his birthday.
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: Ask Wayne. Written before Harold was dead, Price had already
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: decided the outcome. The cake was not a warning to
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: anyone who would listen. It was written to people who
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: would only understand it later, after there was nothing left
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: to stop. Nicole Dixon attended every day of the three-week trial.
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: She sat in the third row. She had logged his visits.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: She had noticed the mood shifts. She had flagged a
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: testamentary change to Renee Finch the morning after Renee called
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: her in March of 22. She had not been able
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: to stop it in time, but she had not looked away.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: Paula Riley carried the assembled file to Detectives Holt and
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: Devers in the third week of April of 22. By then,
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: Harold had roughly four weeks left to live. The investigation began.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: The arrest came on the 3rd of June. Not fast
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: enough to save Harold. Fast enough to stop whatever came next.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: Because there would have been a next. Clarkston in 2016.
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: Waverly in 2018. Dunbar in 22. Three locations, the same architecture,
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: a utility inspector who lingered 11 minutes, a casserole from
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: a catering supply company, a photograph of a stranger's family reunion,
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: a will, revised, a death, attributed to natural causes, an estate, transferred.
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: One of those estates was partially recovered through civil litigation.
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: One was not. Harold's was not. The house on Clover
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: Hill Drive, valued at $ 380, 000, was named in the revised
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: will that Robert Haas executed on the 9th of February, 22.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: That document listed Price as the recipient of 60% of
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: Harold's estate. Dr. Sylvia Braun's testimony on the pressure inconsistencies
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: in Harold's signatures stayed in the record. The will stood
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: as evidence of undue influence over a vulnerable adult. That charge, too,
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: came back guilty. There is something about the cake that
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: will not resolve cleanly. No matter how completely, the rest
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: of the case did. Someone bought it, boxed it in,
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: a plastic clamshell, pressed blue letters into white frosting, and
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: wrote a card in block print to people who had
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: not yet lost anyone. The card announced a death that
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: had not happened yet. It named the man responsible. And
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: then it ended up in a drainage culvert off a
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: nature path, found by a beagle named Copper and his
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: owner on a Saturday morning in May. It was not
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: evidence of remorse. It was not a confession left for investigators.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: The most credible reading, supported by Terry Boone's cooperation, is
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: that Price bought the cake as a prop, a thing
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: to carry to a door on a birthday he had
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: already decided Harold would not reach. Boone took it before
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: it could be used, and then left it, impulsively, somewhere
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: it would eventually be found. By whom, and to what end,
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: Boone never fully explained. That part has no clean answer
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: in the public record. What the record does show is this.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: Harold Finch spent 41 years married to a woman he loved.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: He buried her in January of 21. He was 74
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: years old, living alone on Clover Hill Drive, and a
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: man he had never met studied his obituary and walked
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: through his front door, eight months later, carrying a casserole
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: and someone else's family photograph. Harold was not confused. He
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: was not impaired. He was grieving and lonely. and generous
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: with people who seemed to care about him. That was enough.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: The question this case keeps circling is not whether Price
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: is guilty. The jury answered that in August of 24,
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: and Price answered it himself in a written statement he
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: submitted without an apology. The question that sits longer is
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: what made Harold reachable and whether the people around him,
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: including the people who loved him, could have seen it sooner.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: Renee Finch called. Nicole Dixon flagged it. Paul O'Reilly walked
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: the file to the sheriff's office. Each of them did
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: what they could when they finally had enough to act.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: None of them had been given the full picture until
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: it was almost too late. Harold Finch deserved more than
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: a birthday he never reached, and a cake left in
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: a ditch by someone who decided, months in advance, that
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: he would not be there to eat it. The case
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: is close. The appeals are exhausted. The man who administered
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: the digoxin is serving his sentence, and somewhere in a
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: pharmaceutical supply chain, one unnamed man has not been charged.
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: That thread is still open. This show is made by
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: Oboe Media.