As June of 1978 neared its end in Scottsdale, Arizona, a crime occurred which still holds a fascination for the public more than forty years later, not only because of the violence of the killing and the sordid details which emerged in its wake, but also because of the immensely famous victim.
Boyishly handsome actor Bob Crane was an instantly recognizable face across America, due in no small part to his iconic role as Colonel Hogan in the popular television series Hogan’s Heroes, which ran on CBS from 1965 to 1971.
After his signature show was cancelled, however, Bob Crane’s career began to stall, and the frustrated actor began working on the stage, generally on the low-profile dinner theater circuit around the country. In June of 1978, he was living in an apartment in Scottsdale while touring with a stage production of a play called Beginner’s Luck at the Windmill Dinner Theater.
On Thursday, June 29th, Bob was supposed to meet one of his co-stars, Victoria Ann Berry, for lunch, but didn’t show up. Victoria was concerned, and went to his residence at the Winfield Place Apartments to check on him. Upon entering through the unlocked front door, she was shocked to find that Bob Crane had been bludgeoned and strangled to death. She immediately contacted the authorities.
Forty-nine-year-old Bob Crane was discovered lying on his bed, an electrical cord still tied around his neck, his skull battered and broken. Police were unable to determine what the murder weapon had been, though later speculation suggested a heavy camera tripod. It appeared that the killer had attacked while the victim was sleeping. There was no sign of forced entry into the apartment, and nothing had been stolen.
As if the likable actor being found dead wasn’t bad enough, investigators also discovered a treasure trove of photos and videotapes that would shed quite a new light on the previously secret double life of Bob Crane.
Bob, it turned out, was an enthusiastic connoisseur of pornography—both watching it and making his own. Among his effects, officers recovered hours and hours of video portraying Bob having sex with numerous different women. Through their investigation into these videos, detectives were led to a close friend of Bob’s, John Henry Carpenter, who was also the cameraman responsible for filming many of the sexual encounters.
Carpenter had flown to Phoenix to visit Bob Crane only four days before the murder, and according to Bob’s son Robert, Bob Crane had grown tired of Carpenter and was seeking to end the friendship. Other witnesses, however, stated that Bob and John had been seen eating at a restaurant on the evening of June 28th, and that they appeared to be getting along just fine.
Authorities impounded Carpenter’s rental car and found a few smears of blood inside. This blood, significantly, matched Bob Crane’s blood type, but not Carpenter’s. However, this was the only solid piece of evidence hinting at Carpenter’s involvement, and when it was presented to the Maricopa County Attorney, he decided there was insufficient cause to file any charges.
As the years went by, many rumors and theories swirled about Bob Crane’s death, most of them revolving around John Carpenter and the pornography angle. In 1990, Detective Jim Raines was going through the cold case files and came across a crime scene photograph of Carpenter’s rental car which appeared to show a piece of brain tissue that had never been introduced as evidence. The brain tissue itself was never found, but a judge ruled that the photograph was enough to have the case reopened.
John Henry Carpenter was arrested for Bob Crane’s murder in 1992, and stood trial two years later. Though the prosecution leaned hard on the blood smears found in the car and the testimony of Bob Crane’s son as to the deteriorating relationship between the two men, the defense countered with other witness statements concerning Bob and John’s ongoing friendship.
Defense attorneys also pointed out that although received wisdom had it that Bob had been bludgeoned with a camera tripod—a fact that, if true, would seem to implicate Carpenter—the actual murder weapon had never been found, and could have been any one of a number of objects.
They further argued that Bob Crane’s involvement in illicit pornography and his seemingly insatiable sexual appetite could have gotten him into trouble with a vast array of shady characters, any one of whom might have had reason to kill him. In fact, Carpenter’s defense team presented evidence that an unnamed fellow actor had violently argued with Bob in Texas only a few months before the murder, and even Bob’s son Robert admitted that Bob’s second wife, Patricia Olson, was the only person to obtain any financial windfall from his father’s death, and hypothesized that she could have had a hand in engineering the crime.
It appeared that the defense’s arguments made an impression with the jury, because John Carpenter was acquitted of Bob Crane’s murder. He died only four years later, with many investigators and researchers still believing that he was the most likely culprit.
However, in 2016, a reporter named John Hook, who was working on a book about the case, had the original blood samples from Carpenter’s rental car retested using modern forensic techniques. Of the two samples recovered from the scene, one belonged to a male who was neither John Carpenter nor Bob Crane, while the other was too far degraded to produce a usable profile.
This rather shocking outcome seemed to point toward Carpenter’s innocence, though most detectives who have examined the case continue to suspect that he can’t be ruled out, as his name seems to be the only one that keeps consistently coming up in regards to the infamous murder.
In 2002, the case was the subject of a well-received film titled Auto Focus, directed by Paul Schrader and based on a book by Robert Graysmith (who also wrote two popular books about the Zodiac, which were made into a film in 2007). Despite all the interest and conjecture that still surrounds the murder, though, it remains unlikely at this stage that it will ever be fully resolved.
Crime Immemorial 