The Death Of Bob Crane

 

Robert Edward “Bob" Crane (July 13, 1928 – June 29, 1978) was an American actor, drummer, radio personality, and disc jockey known for starring in the CBS situation comedy Hogan's Heroes.

Crane was a drummer from age 11, and he began his entertainment career as a radio personality, first in New York City and then in Connecticut. He then moved to Los Angeles, where he hosted the number-one rated morning radio show. In the early 1960s, Crane moved into acting, eventually landing the lead role of Colonel Robert Hogan in Hogan's Heroes. The series aired from 1965 to 1971, and Crane received two Emmy Award nominations.

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

The reason for this it is said is because Bob Crane had a long standing fetish of videotaping himself and his female sex partner (of which there were many over the years) in various stages of sexual acts. It was rumors of this kind of activity, as well as other penchants like playing drums at various topless bars in LA, that purportedly cost Crane many TV and movie acting gigs. Apparently, producers were fearful of having their screen product associated with such a two-sided man.

It was also interesting to note that bob crane while having trouble finding other roles and doing this back breaking dinner threatre work had he lived would have received a lot of money. According to Robert Graysmith Bob was paid different to his co-stars because while the others got paid for their roles Bob actually had a piece of the hogans heroes show and had he lived by 1990 he would have revived 25% of $90 million dollars which would have been equal to about $22.5 million in 1990’s money or $51 million in todays money.

Don Adams who played the lead role of Maxwell smart in get smart also talked about how he had the same type of offer. When Get Smart began, Adams passed up an offer of $12,500-a-week in favour of a percentage of the show's profits which in turn made him lots of money as get smart was an instant success just like hogans heroes. However these types of choices can be risky because if the shows sent a hit success you may not get paid much at all. Adams later said it was the smarted decision he’d ever made due to how much money he made although the show get smart had the caveat affect of type casting him in the role afterwards. Which made finding other work difficult.

Crane was found bludgeoned to death in his Scottsdale, Arizona, apartment while on tour in June 1978 for a dinner theater production of Beginner's Luck. The homicide remains officially unsolved. His previously uncontroversial public image suffered due to the suspicious nature of his death, and posthumous revelations about his personal life.

In 1950, Crane began his career in radio broadcasting at WLEA in Hornell, New York. He soon moved to Connecticut stations WBIS in Bristol and then WICC in Bridgeport, a 1,000-watt operation with a signal covering the northeastern portion of the New York metropolitan area. In 1956, Crane was hired by CBS Radio to host the morning show at its West Coast flagship KNX in Los Angeles, California, partly to re-energize that station's ratings and partly to halt his erosion of suburban ratings at WCBS in New York City. In California, Crane filled the broadcast with sly wit, drumming, and such guests as Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, and Bob Hope. His show quickly topped the morning ratings with adult listeners in the Los Angeles area, and Crane became "king of the Los Angeles airwaves".

Crane's acting ambitions led to guest-hosting for Johnny Carson on the daytime game show Who Do You Trust? and appearances on The Twilight Zone (uncredited), Channing, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and General Electric Theater. After Carl Reiner appeared on his radio show, Crane persuaded Reiner to book him for a guest appearance on The Dick Van Dyke Show.

Hogan's Heroes (1965–1971)

In 1965, Crane was offered the starring role in a television sitcom set in a World War II POW camp. Hogan's Heroes involved the sabotage and espionage missions of Allied soldiers, led by Hogan, from under the noses of the oblivious Germans guarding them. The show was a hit, finishing in the top 10 in its first year. The series lasted for six seasons, and Crane was nominated for an Emmy Award in 1966 and 1967.

After having an affair with costar Cynthia Lynn, the actress who played Helga, Crane became romantically involved with Lynn's replacement Patricia Olson in 1968, who played Hilda under the stage name Sigrid Valdis. Crane divorced Terzian in 1970, just before their 21st anniversary, and married Olson on the set of the show later that year, with Richard Dawson serving as best man. Their son, Scotty, was born in 1971, and they later adopted a daughter, Ana Marie. Crane and Olson separated in 1977, but according to several family members had reconciled shortly before Crane's death.

Another intriguing aspect about hogans heroes was there was some animosity between Richard Dawson who played Corporal Newkirk and Bob Crane who played colonel Robert E. Hogan because Dawson had auditioned for colonel hogan but still had an English accent and the producers wanted someone all American and Dawson was said to be bitter about that. Dawson also loved to play pranks on set but when it came down to actually working he acted very professionally and expected the same from everyone and Bob Crane was described as a little too laid back when it came to working.

Private life and murder

Crane frequently videotaped and photographed his own sexual escapades. During the run of Hogan's Heroes, Dawson introduced him 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 many women due to his celebrity status, and he introduced Carpenter to them as his manager. Crane and Carpenter videotaped their joint sexual encounters. Crane's son Robert later insisted that all of the women were aware of the videotaping and consented to it, but some said they had no idea that they had been recorded until they were informed by Scottsdale police after Crane's murder. Carpenter later became national sales manager at Akai, and he arranged his business trips to coincide with Crane's dinner-theater touring schedule so that the two could continue videotaping their sexual encounters.

On Wednesday, June 28, 1978, after completing an evening performance and signing autographs for fans in the lobby, Crane returned briefly to his Scottsdale, Arizona apartment with a longtime friend, Los Angeles video equipment salesclerk John Carpenter. Before Crane and Carpenter headed out on the town, Patricia called Bob, and according to Carpenter, the estranged couple argued loudly on the phone. Thereafter, Crane and Carpenter adjourned to a local bar, where they had drinks with two women whom they had arranged to meet. At about 2:00 A.M., the quartet went to the Safari coffee shop on Scottsdale Road. About half an hour later, John Carpenter left to pack for his return trip to Los Angeles the next morning. Back at his hotel room, he called Crane one final time. Crane was allegedly considering ending his lifestyle of heavy partying, and was therefore tired of hangers-on like Carpenter. During this last phone call, Bob reportedly told Carpenter that their friendship was over.

Crane's Beginner's Luck co-star, Victoria Berry, would knock on Bob Crane's door at the Winfield Place Apartments at around 2:00 pm on June 29. The front door to his apartment, 132-A was closed, but unlocked. Berry would enter the apartment and find the entire apartment dark. As she entered the bedroom she said: "... At first, I thought it was a girl with long dark hair, because all the blood had turned real dark. I thought, 'Oh, Bob's got a girl here. Now where's Bob?... ' I thought, 'Well, she's done something to herself. Bob has gone to get help.' At that time, I recognized blood... it was like a strange feeling.”

Upon closer examination and realizing what exactly she was seeing, Berry thought "the whole wall was covered from one end to the other with blood. And I just sort of stood there and I was numb. Bob was balled up into a fetal position, lying on his side. He had a cord around his neck which was tied in a bow.”

Which is an interesting thing to note because In a documentary about this case during the discussion about whether or not Patty Olson was involved in the murder, it was brought up about the electrical cord being tied “in a bow” like a woman would tie one, even though it’s not in a bow in any of the pictures. Victoria had mentioned it being tied in a bow when she found the body, but for some reason it’s un-bowed by the time the crime scene photos were taken.

Crane's body was found lying on its right side atop a queen-sized bed, clad only in boxer shorts and wearing a wrist watch

Two parallel gashes were above and behind the left side of his head that left a fan of blood across the ceiling, the wall behind the top of the bed and the nightstand lamp. Human tissue was on the wall; the bed sheet and pillowcase were soaked with blood.

There were no physical signs that a struggle had taken place, and the autopsy determined that Bob Crane was asleep when the deadly blow to the left side of his head was delivered. The subsequent police investigation had determined that Crane's head was struck by two separate parts of a camera tripod, inflicting two separate and deadly wounds. Paulette Kasieta, the first Scottsdale police officer to arrive on the scene, immediately secured the area with crime scene tape. At approximately 3:00 p.m., Scottsdale Police Lt. Ron Dean arrived at Crane's apartment and took over the investigation.

Initially, investigators surmised that the killer was someone Crane knew. Perhaps a person who left the apartment before the incident, and later returned through the unlocked front door or perhaps a window that had been purposefully left unlocked or open. The Maricopa County Medical Examiner was able to put together a partial chronology of events on that evening. Sometime during the early hours of Thursday, June 29, while Crane was sleeping on his right side, the murderer would strike a deadly blow to the left side of Crane's head with some type of heavy, blunt instrument. A second much lighter blow would crush in Bob Crane's skull, likely killing him immediately. For some unknown reason, the perpetrator likely then tied an electrical cord tightly around the actor's neck. But by that time, Crane was already dead. Before fleeing the scene, the killer would apparently wipe the blood from the murder weapon using the bed sheets, and then pull the sheet up over Crane's head. Money was found in Crane's wallet, which likely eliminates robbery as a motive.

Approximately 50 pornographic videotapes were found at the Winfield apartment, as well as professional photography equipment in the bathroom for developing and enlarging still shots. A negative strip was found in the enlarger, revealing a woman in both clothed and nude poses.

What was most interesting though was that a hefty album of similar pornographic pictures was missing from the death scene. Several items that the police declined to identify were missing from Crane's "Little black bag", a small, multi-zippered carrier that he always carted around with him. (Victoria Berry had seen it when she first discovered the body, but it later disappeared and was never accounted for.)

During the investigation, John Carpenter told police during an interview that right before the murder, Crane showed him a book of Polaroid snapshots of naked women, including some he'd met at the dinner theater. Police were unable to find it in Crane's apartment. It was one of the only things missing — the other was a camera tripod — from the apartment, which showed no sign of forced entry. Now to police what caught their attention was how did he know it wasn’t there unless he had been there and seen it missing? This was never explained.

Another odd thing was He also made mention in the same interview about bob always urinating after he had had sex because in his mind he believed it lessened his chances of contracting Venerial diseases now to detectives this felt to them like it was almost him saying an admission that he knew there was semen on bob cranes leg otherwise why would carpenter think this would be important for the police detectives to know about this.

There was also the friend of bob crane's who claimed that she knew the exact time of death when crane died which people found strange because how is it that she knew such specific details about the crime? She subsequently left town apparently fearing for her life and completely vanished. She hasn’t been seen since. It was speculated that she knew who the murderer was and because of that, had been killed and her body disposed of but that was never proven.

At 8 a.m. on June 30th, deputy medical examiner Dr. Thomas Jarvis performed the autopsy on Bob Crane. Crane was just 49 years old. He would have turned 50 in two weeks. The type of death is listed as “violent.” The manner: “by blunt instrument and cord.” The abnormal findings: abundant dry blood on face, hair, upper chest.

The autopsy report also noted a flaky, white, dry material on the pubic hair, right lower abdomen and right anterior thigh (likely semen, though it was never tested). Police later theorized that the killer may have masturbated over Crane’s dead body after the killing — a final “fuck you” to the victim. It was just a theory, but the semen was never tested. According to former Scottsdale Police Officer, Dennis Borkenhagen, who was present for the autopsy along with Lieutenant Ron Dean, he asked for the semen to be collected. According to Borkenhagen, Jarvis dismissively said, “What’s that going to tell you? That he had a piece of ass before he was killed?” That was the end of that, and the semen was never collected.

Was it from Crane? Was it from the killer? We will never know for sure.

Almost from the time Crane's body was discovered in his bedroom of the Winfield Place apartments (now condominiums) in Scottsdale, authorities made critical mistakes that later undermined their case.

For starters, Scottsdale police failed to adequately secure the crime scene. They allowed his co-star, Victoria Berry, into the apartment to answer the phone several times, potentially contaminating the crime scene. In addition, the Maricopa County Medical Examiner climbed over Crane's body and shaved his head to examine the fatal wound.

Then, there’s the blood stains found on the front curtains, where it is theorized that the murderer stood and looked outside at some movers who had arrived at 4 a.m. to start a job, since that’s the only time in June in Arizona that it’s cool enough to do heavy moving. The killer allegedly waited, trapped inside, until he saw that the movers were busy and then slipped away.

There’s also a hearsay story that the movers said they saw a man walking away from Bob’s apartment and that the man looked like Carpenter, but there was no other mention of the story or of the movers.

There’s also a red herring presented about an alleged phone call from Victoria Berry at 2 a.m. reminding Bob of their appointment the next day. On Bob’s nightstand was the phone, his glasses, and his appointment book open to the next day, with a pen nearby. Victoria claimed she never called Bob but someone said they saw her on the phone at 2. Also in the appointment book it was written down that she had called.

The other missing piece of evidence was the Murder weapon which to this day has never been found although it was highly speculated and later circumstantially proven to be a camera tripod as a second one was missing from cranes apartment.

Only one tripod was found at the murder scene, and it was not the weapon used in the crime.

Bob cane's son stated that “The police investigators maintained that my dad had had two tripods set up in the apartment's living room for video, still, and, possibly, eight millimeter cameras, to photograph posing Playmate wannabes and close encounters of the cocktail waitress kind”.

A Phoenix Police Department criminologist inspected a bedsheet from the crime scene and figured that a bloody mark on it had been made by a tripod, not a tire iron, golf club, or fireplace poker.

In the days following the killing, a thin, three-inch smear of blood was collected from the padding near the top of the passenger door of Carpenter's Chrysler Cordoba rental. A lab determined the blood sample was type B Crane’s blood type, which only one in seven people have.

Carpenter was not one of those seven. Police also determined that no one had bled in the car.

In addition, a one-sixteenth-inch speck of fatty tissue or brain matter was also visible on the same door panel near the blood sample.

The new theory held that the missing tripod was the blunt instrument used as the murder weapon, and that the blood in Carpenter's rental car had dripped from it when he leaned it against the car door. A key piece of evidence was a photograph of tissue, thought to be from Crane's skull, but the actual sample was never produced. It was said to have been lost over a period of time.

With today's forensics the case would likely have been solved in less than twenty-four hours, and it probably would have been 'Turn out the lights, the party's over' for John Henry Carpenter’.

The other very odd thing about the rental car John Carpenter had in his possession at the time of the murders was that when he returned it he made a huge fuss about wanting the car cleaned up and put in a complaint about the vehicles electrical systems which police found out about later when they went about tracking down the rental car which is suspicious in and of itself. My question is why was carpenter so insistent about the car being removed and cleaned unless he knew the police would be looking for it?

The police described the Scottsdale apartment as 'a very passionate murder scene', and not a Mafia hit. A blunt instrument had been wielded with enough anger to kill Crane with two blows.

Cops named Carpenter as the prime suspect who had the 'means, opportunity and the physical strength to have inflicted the fatal blows', but they couldn't come up with a motive.

However what was interesting to note was that the Cops suspected Carpenter was gay and had been spurned by his one-time close friend. Video tapes revealed Carpenter making love simultaneously to the same woman as Crane.

John Henry Carpenter

John Henry Carpenter (April 24, 1928 – September 4, 1998) was an American video equipment salesman, most widely known as the friend and accused murderer of actor Bob Crane in 1978.

Carpenter was of Native American and Spanish heritage. He was born on the Morongo Band of Mission Indians reservation where as a teenager he often earned money as a migrant worker harvesting apricots.

Carpenter served in the U.S. Army and was married twice. Following his retirement from the Army he took a job marketing video technology, achieving expertise in that field and becoming head of the video wing of a new Japanese electronics company debuting in the United States called Sonycom, later to be known simply as Sony. John had a child, John Michael Carpenter, from his first marriage who was adopted with the last name of Merrill. John Carpenter had three grandchildren from his first marriage and six great grandchildren.

Relationship with Bob Crane

During the run of Hogan's Heroes, Richard Dawson introduced Crane to Carpenter, a regional sales manager for Sony Electronics, who often helped famous clients with video and audio equipment. The two men struck up a friendship and began going to bars together. Crane attracted women due to his celebrity status as well as handsomeness 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 they had been recorded 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.

He became the primary suspect in the case of Bob Crane's death The night before Crane's murder, Carpenter was sitting with Victoria Berry at the Windmill Dinner Theatre. She would join him during her set breaks. Berry claims that after the show ended, she witnessed Crane and Carpenter exit the building together and proceed to Crane's car, where Crane would call out to her to not forget "their appointment" the next day.

As Berry was writing her official statement to the police in Crane's kitchen at around 3:15 p.m., the phone rang. Lt. Dean instructed her to answer the phone but to not mention anything about Bob Crane. It was John Carpenter calling from L.A.. The police lieutenant took the phone from Berry, properly identified himself, and instucted Carpenter that the police were in Crane's apartment investigating "an incident.”

During the phone call, Carpenter told Lt. Dean he had been out with Crane the previous evening until around 1:00 a.m. Carpenter would later change that time to 2:45 a.m. He then went on to say that he had driven by himself to the airport later that morning for his return flight to L.A.

Carpenter would call Crane's apartment again at 3:30 p.m. Lt. Dean mentioned in his report that he found it odd that Carpenter never asked anything more about the "incident and didn't ask him where Crane was.

At the time in 1978, the Scottsdale Police Department did not have a homicide investigation unit, so Lt. Dean's chief case officer, Dennis Borkenhagen, began the death investigation himself at Crane's apartment, but later decided that no items of any value had been taken during the crime. He did observe some blood smears on the inside of the front door and entrance way, but decided there was no forced entry. The sliding glass door that led from Crane's apartment to the swimming pool area outside was discovered unlocked.

the police interviewed some of Crane's colleagues and friends, discovering that though Crane was personable, charming, and fun to be around, he had made enemies. There was also a fellow actor who had argued with Crane in Texas and later had sworn vengeance. And, inevitably and unsurprising, given Crane's reputation with the ladies, there were numerous angry husbands and boyfriends.

Still, Carpenter remained the prime suspect. Some who had been interviewed claimed that Crane's relationship to Carpenter had begun to show some strain, though actual evidence of any rift was not readily available. Any physical evidence that might have tied Carpenter to the crime was also scarce, as was the motive that would have compelled him to murder his best friend. But the possibility of a loan and one bit of compelling evidence, however slim, seemed to point to Carpenter.

Rumors flourished that Carpenter had borrowed $15,000 from Crane. Crane may have been demanding repayment. Perhaps even more compelling, the police discovered a small blood smear on the passenger side door of Carpenter's rented vehicle. Carpenter had complained about a problem with the electrical wiring with the car and it had been sent for repairs at the Phoenix dealership. Scottsdale Det. Darwin Barrie inspected the vehicle and claims to have noticed a small amount of dried blood in the interior. His commanding officer, Dean, ordered the car towed to the DPI compound in Phoenix. The car was examined and photographed by criminologist Bruce Bergstrom of the Arizona Department of Public Safety. Bergstrom's job was to find and process any blood or tissue evidence found in the car. And it was there that the investigation phase of the case began to fall apart even before it really got started

Lots of suspicion was cast on Carpenter due to his quick exit from Scottsdale, things he left behind in Bob’s apartment (like his swimming trunks), his desire to have his rental car (with the incriminating blood stains) “fixed”, and his phone calls back to Bob’s apartment the next afternoon where he didn’t seem concerned that police were answering the phone.

The blood that was found in John Carpenter's car was eventually tested and was determined to be Type B -- coincidentally, the same blood type as Bob Crane. Carpenter's blood was the more common Type A blood. Type B blood is only found in slightly more than 10 percent of the population. Though the presence pf the same blood type in Carpenter's car was suspicious, Blood type was not a good measure of positively identifying a victim. Remember, this was before DNA testing.

There was one other very inserting event happened that no one ever really got to the bottom of. Now according to Robert Graysmith on the night of Crane's last performance, a flat tire caused by a tampered valve stem is suspected to have been intended to strand Crane alone in the club's dark parking lot. Him and John carpenter are there and it was pitch black however crane rode on the flat tire to a gas station and when the attendant looked at the tire he realised it had been tampered with and took the tire to show somebody because he thought something was up and that this had been deliberately done which I agree with.

In 1992, determining that tissue collected in Carpenter’s rental car matched that found at the murder scene, investigators reopened the murder case. Additionally, investigators determined that Crane had been beaten with a second tripod that was not found at the murder scene but was featured in many of the videos.

The County attorney's office had determined there was enough evidence to try Carpenter for the death of Bob Crane so the case went to court in 1994. But, following a two month long trial, Carpenter was acquitted and would die four years later totally maintaining his innocence in the death of Bob Crane.

Trial

In 1994, Crane's murder case was re-opened and Carpenter was tried and eventually acquitted. As a result of the accusation, he was fired from work as National Service Manager at the electronics firm Kenwood USA. He always maintained his innocence, and later said he felt a huge relief after his name had been cleared. One jury member later said in an interview that the jury believed there was insufficient proof to determine Carpenter's guilt and that "you cannot prove someone guilty on speculation." Carpenter's acquittal was spearheaded by defense attorney Dan Roth. The Law Offices of Roth and Roth were located in Scottsdale, Arizona. Carpenter's acquittal subsequently propelled Roth's reputation as one of Arizona's most sought-after defense attorneys.

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 that 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. Robert testified that Crane had called Carpenter the night before the murder and ended their friendship.

Carpenter's attorneys attacked the prosecution's case as circumstantial and inconclusive. They presented evidence that Carpenter and Crane were still on good terms, including witnesses from the restaurant where the two men had dined the evening before the murder. They noted that the murder weapon had never been identified nor 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 sexual relations with numerous women, implying that any one of them might have been the killer. Other potential suspects proposed by defense attorneys included angry husbands and boyfriends of the women, and an actor who had sworn vengeance after a violent argument with Crane in Texas several months earlier.

While he was acquitted of murder Carpenter did have a mark on his record. Around 1993 he pled no contest to the sexual fondling of a 10 year old girl, and it was indicated there was more than one. His plea agreement left him with no jail time and went down as a misdemeanor instead of a felony.

John Carpenter died September 4, 1998, always maintaining his innocence although the speculation had all but ruined his life.

After the trial, Robert speculated publicly that Olson, his father's widow, 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, with the entire estate left to Olson. He repeated his suspicions in the 2015 book Crane: Sex, Celebrity, and My Father's Unsolved Murder. Maricopa County District Attorney Rick Romley responded, "We never characterized Patty as a suspect," adding "I am convinced John Carpenter murdered Bob Crane." Officially, Crane's murder remains unsolved.

Later DNA testing

In November 2016, the Maricopa County Attorney's Office permitted Phoenix television reporter John Hook to submit the 1978 blood samples from Carpenter's rental car for retesting, using a more advanced DNA technique than the one used in 1990. Two sequences were identified, one from an unknown male, and the other too degraded to reach a conclusion. This testing consumed all of the remaining DNA from the rental car, making further tests impossible. Hook's investigation turned up two blood vials, samples from Crane and Carpenter, located in evidence storage at the Maricopa County Attorney's Office. Carpenter voluntarily gave a sample to Scottsdale Police when he was questioned in 1978. Crane's blood vial was recovered during his autopsy the day after the murder. Both were used as comparison samples for Hook's DNA tests on the blood stains found in Carpenter's rental car, performed by Bode/Cellmark Labs.

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, based on a book on Crane's murder written by Zodiac author Robert Graysmith, was described as "brilliant" by critic Roger Ebert. The film portrays Crane as a happily married, church-going family man who succumbs to Hollywood's celebrity lifestyle after becoming a television star. When he meets Carpenter, played by Willem Dafoe, and as a result of their friendship learns about then-new home video technology, he descends into a life of strip clubs, BDSM, and sex addiction.

Crane's son with Olson, Scotty, challenged the film's accuracy in an October 2002 review. "During the last twelve 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." His son further stated that Crane was a sex addict long before he became a star, and that he may have begun recording his sexual encounters as early as 1956. There was no evidence, he said, that Crane engaged in BDSM; there were no such scenes in any of his hundreds of home movies, and Schrader admitted that the film's BDSM scene was based on his own experience (while writing Hardcore). Before production on Auto Focus was announced, Scotty and Olson had shopped a rival script alternatively titled F-Stop or Take Off Your Clothes and Smile, but interest ceased after Auto Focus was announced.

In June 2001, Scotty 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 was renamed "Bob Crane: The Official Web Site", but is now abandoned. The "official" Bob Crane website was maintained by CMG Worldwide. The website no longer exists.

Crane's funeral was held on July 5, 1978, at St. Paul the Apostle Catholic Church in Westwood, Los Angeles. An estimated 200 family members and friends attended, including Patty Duke, John Astin, and Carroll O'Connor. Pallbearers included Hogan's Heroes producer Edward Feldman, co-stars Larry Hovis and Robert Clary, and Crane's son Robert. He was interred in Oakwood Memorial Park in Chatsworth, California. Patricia Olson later had his remains relocated to Westwood Village Memorial Park in Westwood, and she was buried beside him in 2007 under her stage name Sigrid Valdis.

Though the full truth of the unsolved murder will probably never be known, rumors abound that a boyfriend or husband of one of Crane's female co-stars is the culprit.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_Carpenter

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Crane#Hogan's_Heroes_(1965%E2%80%931971)

https://www.whokilledbobcrane.com/bob-crane-autopsy/

https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-best-reads/2018/06/29/hogans-heroes-star-bob-crane-scottsdale-murder-40-years-later/733260002/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3038975/An-electrical-cord-tied-neck-two-gashes-head-left-fan-blood-ceiling-bed-Son-Hogan-s-Heroes-TV-star-Bob-Crane-exposes-father-s-secret-kinky-life-led-grisly-murder.html

https://findadeath.com/bob-crane/

https://www.reelreviews.com/shorttakes-56/bob-crane/bob-crane-death

https://ew.com/tv/2019/08/26/bob-crane-hogans-heroes-unsolved-murder/

http://truecrimediscussions.blogspot.com/2012/05/bob-crane-murder.html