Bob Crane’s Popularity Fades
After the popular show ended, Crane made a few guest appearances on television programs such as The Love Boat and Police Woman, but his career stalled. Crane’s off-camera life may have contributed to the slowdown.
He assembled a collection of explicit photographs of his numerous sexual encounters with women—including affairs while he was married to each of his two wives—and bragged about his exploits to co-workers.
"He made some bad moves," Crane’s son, Robert David Crane, told Entertainment Weekly. "He collected photographs of women and put together these books … and then he started showing them to people. He was doing a very bad Disney movie called Superdad, playing an all-American character … but at Disney studios, in Burbank, he's on the set showing photographs of women that he's been with to people on the crew.
“That hurt him because the executives found out. People talk, and it started getting in publications like the National Enquirer.”
John Carpenter, Bob Crane’s Wingman, Enters the Picture
Crane’s private life became even more colorful after Hogan’s Heroes costar Richard Dawson introduced him to John Carpenter, then a regional sales manager for Sony Electronics. Carpenter made a name for himself helping well-heeled Hollywood clients like Elvis Presley set up and use VCR equipment, an exciting new technology in the 1970s.
Crane and Carpenter struck up a friendship that largely revolved around womanizing. Unable to find work that equaled his starring role in Hogan’s Heroes, Crane eventually began touring the country in 1973 as a dinner theater actor in a play called Beginner’s Luck. But he still had enough star power to captivate women the two men would meet in bars and restaurants.
After Carpenter showed Crane the possibilities in videotapes, Crane discovered he was quite happy behind the camera, especially when there were women in front of it. Crane spent the 1970s living the life of a middle-aged playboy, carousing with Carpenter and meeting women who ended up in his videos, several of whom would later testify that they had no idea their sexual encounters with Crane were being recorded, though members of Crane’s family have disputed those assertions.
Carpenter would often fly around the country to meet Crane while the actor performed in dinner theaters. “Carpenter was described to me by several people who knew him and Bob Crane as a hanger-on,” Barry Vassal, former homicide investigator with the Scottsdale Police Department, said in A&E’s Cold Case Files. Gail Rogers, who briefly dated Crane shortly before his death, said in the show, “John Carpenter got his leftovers.”
Bob Crane Tries to Settle Down
Rogers described Crane, who was 49 years old when she knew him, as a man growing weary of his philandering lifestyle. “He wanted to change his relationship with John Carpenter,” she said. “He said that he wanted to meet someone and settle down.”
Carpenter, however, showed no sign of slowing down, and he managed to keep Crane out on the town while the actor was performing Beginner’s Luck at the Windmill Dinner Theatre in Scottsdale, Ariz. According to police reports, Crane had sex with at least eight different women during the last few weeks of his life.
However, he reportedly found his friendship with Carpenter tiring. “He was two weeks shy of 50," Robert told Entertainment Weekly. "He wanted to lose people like John Carpenter, who had become a pain in the butt. He wanted a clean slate."
On the night of June 28, 1978, Rogers was supposed to go out with Crane, but she canceled, so the actor instead met Carpenter for drinks at the Safari, a Scottsdale restaurant and nightclub. “They had a breakup of sorts," Robert said. "Carpenter lost it. He was being rejected, he was being spurned like a lover. There are eyewitnesses that night at a club in Scottsdale that said they had an argument." It would be the last time Crane was seen alive.
The Blood-Soaked Scene of Bob Crane’s Murder
The following afternoon, police were called to the apartment where Crane was staying. His body was found on the blood-soaked bed, where Crane’s head had been bludgeoned with a heavy object and an electrical cord tied around his neck.
Because there was no sign of forced entry, theft or a struggle, investigators believed Crane had been murdered in his sleep, most likely by someone who knew him. Police quickly focused their attention on Carpenter, whose rental car had several traces of blood inside.
Forensic DNA technology wasn’t available in the 1970s, but investigators were able to determine that the blood in Carpenter’s rental car was Crane’s rare blood type. “We found blood in [Carpenter's] rental car and on the passenger door,” Vassall said. “It was Crane's blood type. Nobody else who handled that car had the same blood type as Crane. It was type B blood, all of it."
John Carpenter Stands Trial 16 Years Later
Authorities at the county attorney’s office still didn’t have enough evidence to arrest Carpenter—no murder weapon was ever found, for example—so the case went unsolved. In 1990, however, Vassall and other investigators were able to reopen the cold case with new evidence, and in 1992, Carpenter was arrested and charged with Crane’s murder.
At the 1994 trial, however, prosecutors had little to show for their efforts: DNA testing of the blood found in Carpenter’s car was inconclusive, other evidence had been mishandled by police and defense attorneys’ presentation of Crane’s lifestyle showed how any number of jealous husbands or boyfriends could have reason to want Crane dead.
As a result, the jury found Carpenter not guilty of the murder, though some experts remain convinced that he was responsible. “Carpenter did this. He’s the guy,” Vassall told Fox 10 News. Former Maricopa County homicide investigator Jim Raines agrees, saying, “All roads lead to John Carpenter. No doubt.”
Carpenter died four years after the trial ended, and the case remains officially unsolved. Crane’s story was featured in the 2002 film Auto Focus, starring Greg Kinnear as Crane and Willem Dafoe as Carpenter.
