Bob Crane

Robert Edward "Bob" Crane (July 13, 1928 – June 29, 1978) was an American actor, drummer, radio host, and disc jockey.

A drummer since eleven years of age, Crane began his career as a radio personality, first in New York and then Connecticut before moving to Los Angeles where he hosted the number-one rated morning show. In the early 1960s, he moved into acting. Crane is best known for his performance as Colonel Robert E. Hogan in the CBS sitcom "Hogan's Heroes". The series aired from 1965 to 1971, and Crane received two Primetime Emmy Award nominations for his work on the series.

After "Hogan's Heroes" ended, Crane's career declined. He became frustrated with the few roles he was being offered and began doing dinner theater. In 1975, he returned to television in the NBC series "The Bob Crane Show". The series received poor ratings and was cancelled after 13 weeks. Afterwards, Crane returned to performing in dinner theaters and also appeared in occasional guest spots on television.

While on tour for his play "Beginner's Luck" in June 1978, Crane was found bludgeoned to death in his Scottsdale apartment, a murder that remains officially unsolved.

Hogan's Heroes (1965–71)

In 1965, Crane was offered the starring role in a television situation comedy about a German P.O.W. camp. "Hogan's Heroes" became a hit and finished in the top ten in its first year on the air. The distinctive military-style snare drum rhythm that introduces the show's theme song was played by Crane himself. The series lasted six seasons, and Crane was nominated for an Emmy Award twice, in 1966 and 1967. In 1968 he became romantically involved with cast member Patricia Olson, who played Hilda under the stage name Sigrid Valdis. He divorced Anne in 1970, just prior to their 21st anniversary, and married Olson on the set of the show later that year. Their son, Scotty, was born June 4, 1971, and they later adopted a daughter, Ana Marie. The couple separated in 1977, but according to several family members, reconciled shortly before Crane's death.

In 1968, Crane and series costars Werner Klemperer, Leon Askin, and John Banner appeared with Elke Sommer in a feature film, "The Wicked Dreams of Paula Schultz", set in the divided city of Berlin during the Cold War. In 1969, Crane starred with Abby Dalton in a dinner theater production of "Cactus Flower".

Crane frequently videotaped and photographed his own sexual escapades. During the run of "Hogan's Heroes", Richard Dawson introduced Crane to John Henry Carpenter, a regional sales manager for Sony Electronics who often helped famous clients with their video equipment. The two men struck up a friendship and began going to bars together. Crane attracted women due to his celebrity status and introduced Carpenter as his manager. Later, they would videotape their sexual encounters. While Crane's son Robert later insisted that all of the women were aware of the videotaping and consented to it, some, according to one source, had no idea that they had been filmed until informed by Scottsdale police after Crane's murder. Carpenter later became national sales manager at Akai, and arranged his business trips to coincide with Crane's dinner theater touring schedule so that the two could continue seducing and videotaping women after Hogan's Heroes had run its course.

Post-Hogan's Heroes

Following the cancellation of "Hogan's Heroes", Crane appeared in two Disney films: "Superdad" (1973), in the title role, and "Gus" (1976). In 1973, he purchased the rights to a comedy play called "Beginner's Luck" and began touring it, as its star and director, at the "Showboat Dinner Theatre" in St. Petersburg, Florida, the "La Mirada Civic Theatre" in California, the "Windmill Dinner Theatre" in Scottsdale, Arizona, and other dinner theaters around the country.

Between theater engagements he guest-starred in a number of TV shows, including "Police Woman," "Gibbsville," "Quincy, M.E"., and "The Love Boat". In 1975 Crane returned to TV with his own series, "The Bob Crane Show" on NBC, which was canceled after 13 episodes.

In early 1978 Crane taped a travel documentary in Hawaii, and recorded an appearance on the Canadian cooking show "Celebrity Cooks". Neither aired in the U.S. following his death. His appearance on "Celebrity Cooks" did air in Canada in late 1978, and was recreated in the biopic film "Auto Focus".

Murder

In June 1978, Crane was living in the Winfield Place Apartments in Scottsdale during a run of "Beginner's Luck" at the Windmill Dinner Theatre. On the afternoon of June 29, Crane's co-star Victoria Ann Berry entered his apartment after he failed to show up for a lunch meeting and discovered his body. Crane had been bludgeoned to death with a weapon that was never identified, though investigators believed it to be a camera tripod. An electrical cord had been tied around his neck.

Investigation

The Scottsdale Police Department, like most its size, had no homicide division, and was ill-equipped to handle a high-profile murder investigation. The crime scene yielded few clues; there was no evidence of forced entry, and nothing of financial value was missing. Detectives examined Crane's extensive videotape collection, which led them to Carpenter, who had flown to Phoenix on June 25 to spend a few days with Crane. Carpenter's rental car was impounded and searched. Several blood smears were found that matched Crane's blood type; no one else known to have been in the car, including Carpenter, tested for that type. (DNA testing was not yet available.) With no other significant material evidence, the Maricopa County Attorney declined to file charges.

In 1990, Scottsdale Detective Jim Raines (a former Phoenix homicide investigator) reexamined the evidence from 1978 and persuaded the County Attorney to reopen the case. Although DNA testing of the blood found in Carpenter's rental car was inconclusive, Raines discovered an evidence photograph of the car's interior that appeared to show a piece of brain tissue. The actual tissue samples recovered from the car had been lost, but an Arizona judge ruled that the new evidence was admissible. In June 1992 Carpenter was arrested and charged with Crane's murder

Trial

At the 1994 trial, Crane's son Robert testified that in the weeks before his father's death, Crane had repeatedly expressed a desire to sever his friendship with Carpenter. He said Carpenter had become "a hanger-on" and "a nuisance to the point of being obnoxious". "My dad expressed that he just didn't need Carpenter kind of hanging around him anymore," he said. He testified that Crane had called Carpenter the night before the murder and ended their relationship.

Carpenter's attorneys attacked the prosecution's case as circumstantial and inconclusive. They presented evidence, including witnesses from the restaurant where the two men had dined the evening prior to the murder, that Carpenter and Crane were still the best of friends. They noted that the murder weapon had never been identified or found; the prosecution's camera tripod theory was sheer speculation, they said, based solely on Carpenter's occupation. They disputed the claim that the newly discovered evidence photo showed brain tissue, and presented many examples of "sloppy work" by police, such as the mishandling and misplacing of evidence-including the crucial tissue sample itself. They pointed out that Crane had been videotaped and photographed in compromising sexual positions with numerous women, implying that any one of them, fearing blackmail, might have been the killer. Other potential suspects proposed by defense attorneys included angry husbands and boyfriends of the seduced women, and an actor who had sworn vengeance after a violent argument with Crane in Texas several months earlier.

Carpenter was acquitted. He continued to maintain his innocence until his death four years later, in 1998. After the trial, Robert Crane speculated publicly that Crane's widow, Patricia Olson, might have had a role in instigating the crime. "Nobody got a dime out of [the murder]," he said, "except for one person," alluding to Crane's will, which excluded him, his siblings, and his mother, and left the entire estate to Olson. He repeated his suspicions in a 2015 book. Maricopa County District Attorney Rick Romley, who prosecuted the case, responded, "We never characterized Patty as a suspect." He added, "I am convinced John Carpenter murdered Bob Crane." Officially, Crane's murder remains unsolved.

"Auto Focus"

Crane's life and murder were the subject of the 2002 film "Auto Focus", directed by Paul Schrader and starring Greg Kinnear as Crane. The film, described as "brilliant" by critic Roger Ebert, portrays Crane as a happily married, church-going family man and popular Los Angeles disc jockey who succumbs to Hollywood's celebrity lifestyle after becoming a television star, meets Carpenter, learns the wonders of home video, and descends into a life of strip clubs, BDSM, and sex addiction.

Scotty, Crane's son with Olson, challenged the film's accuracy in an October 2002 review. "During the last 12 years of his life," he wrote, "[Crane] went to church three times: when I was baptized, when his father died, and when he was buried." Crane was a sex addict long before he became a star, he said, and may have begun recording his sexual encounters as early as 1956. There was no evidence, he claimed, that Crane engaged in BDSM; none was portrayed in any of his hundreds of home movies, and Paul Schrader admitted that the film's BDSM scene was based on his own personal experience (while writing Hardcore). Scotty Crane and Olson had shopped a rival script alternately titled "F-Stop" and "Take Off Your Clothes and Smile", but interest ceased after "Auto Focus" was announced.

In June 2001, Scotty Crane launched the website bobcrane.com. It included a paid section featuring photographs, outtakes from his father's sex films, and Crane's autopsy report that proved, he said, that his father did not have a penile implant as stated in Auto Focus. The site has since been renamed "Bob Crane: The Official Web Site", and no longer includes a pay wall or controversial material.