Posted by Cathy Gowdy on Thursday, March 08, 2007 at 05:45:54 :
Independent Journal
Monday, May 28, 1962
Page 6
Doctor In Tiburon Fetes Birthday, Takes His Life
A Tiburon doctor celebrated his 30th birthday Saturday, then killed himself with a razor.
An elderly couple living in the same house at 2210 Mar East, terrified by the doctor’s actions, remained in their rooms behind locked doors while Dr. Stirling Hoover Pierce slashed a large artery in his groin, then tried to call a doctor for something to ease the pain.
Two doctors arrived to find him dead, the telephone still off the hook, the razor atop a chest of drawers, and nearby and uncut birthday cake decorated with the words: “Happy Birthday, Buck.”
The home is that of George M. Cresswell Jr., who had been in a coma in University of California’s Moffett Hospital since he suffered a severe concussion in an automobile accident in the Funston tunnel six weeks ago.
Cresswell’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. George M. Cresswell Sr. of Harrisburg, Pa., have been occupying his downstairs portion of the house since their son’s injury. They were home Saturday, as was Pierce. A fourth occupant, Ernest W. Chamberlain, owner of Racoon Straits Yacht Sales in Tiburon, was away.
Katherine Kalafate of San Francisco, fiancé of Pierce - who is separated from his wife – called to visit. She was having car trouble, so Pierce offered to repair her car. While he did, she baked him a birthday cake.
During the evening, Miss Kalafate told Asst. Coroner William C. Bradley, Pierce suddenly told her: “Kate, get out of here! Kate, I’m a paranoid.”
Miss Kalafate protested her car was inoperative. “Take mine,” said Pierce.
She did, first warning the senior Cresswells to lock their door.
That was about 10:30 p.m.
At 1 a.m. yesterday, Chamberlain returned from visiting Cresswell in the hospital.
Pierce, seemingly in great agitation, asked to borrow chamberlain’s car, saying his estranged wife, Jacqueline, who lives in Menlo Park, had been injured in an auto accident in Palo Alto. “I must go to her,” he said.
Pierce then loaded an oxygen tank and welding equipment into Chamberlain’s car. When Chamberlain asked why, he said, “I need it for Jacqueline.”
As Pierce went upstairs, Chamberlain drove away- convinced the accident to Mrs. Pierce was a figment of Pierce’s imagination. That was at 1:45 a.m.
Twenty-two minutes later, a telephone operator heard Pierce gasp into the phone that he needed a doctor “for a cardiac case.” She called Dr. John J. Osborne of 38 Peninsula Road, Belvedere. He in turn called Dr. Donovan Cooke of 150 San Rafael Avenue, Belvedere.
Together they arrived at the home on Mar East a few minutes later - to find Pierce dead. The senior Cresswells, still locked in their rooms, were unaware what had happened.
Pierce, a research assistant at Presbyterian Medical Center in San Francisco, just was put under a year’s probation on March 22 for illegal use of narcotics. He and his wife separated about six months ago. Mrs. Pierce took their 3-year-old daughter with her.
Pierce had been under psychiatric treatment and last fall committed himself to a sanitarium in Belmont.
Chamberlain, apparently the last to see Pierce alive, told Assistant coroner Bradley he did not learn of the suicide until a friend told him at 10 a.m. yesterday at the Corinthian Yacht Club.
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CA Death Index: he was born May 26, 1932 in CA; mother’s maiden name was Hoover; he died May 27, 1962
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