Bob Crane was on the verge of a reconciliation with his wife, at least on the surface, and of a dramatic television comeback. The star of television’s Hogan’s Heroes, the brash, wisecracking prisoner of war in Hitler’s Germany, had met with no success in seeking a new television show except for one which was cancelled after one season.
Crane also thought he was in a shaky financial position and this was the main reason he kept on working in dinner theatres across the country. In this way he could earn upwards of $200,000 per year for about 30 weeks a year.
The reconciliation with his wife, Patricia, and the new television show were not to be. And he was in a shaky financial condition—but not of his own doing. He did not live long enough to find out why. Before these things could be resolved or discovered, Crane was killed by two severe blows to the head, which caused massive skull fractures and brain damage. The blows were inflicted by a blunt instrument such as a tire iron, a lug wrench from an automobile, or a piece of iron pipe. For the coup de grace the killer tied a length of cord from a video camera in the room around Crane’s neck to make sure the actor was dead.
The Maricopa County Medical Examiner, Dr Heinz Karnitschnig, said Crane was struck on the left side of the head as he slept, “and never knew what hit him.” His death was placed “in the early morning” of 29 June 1978. It occurred in the Winfield Apartment-Hotel in an apartment leased by the Windmill Theatre (where Crane was appearing) for visiting performers. Karnitschnig said he felt, on a cursory examination, that it was a well-planned murder and not a crime of passion.
The Medical Examiner added later that the killer was “probably a man and not a woman.” A track of blood spots on the ceiling was missing. According to Karnitschnig, the killer’s first blow laid open Crane’s scalp, covering the weapon in blood. The second blow was delivered with a short arc, slinging only a couple of droplets onto the ceiling and table lamp near the bed.
Investigators theorized that if the killer had been a woman, she would have had to swing the heavy weapon with a wider arc, which would have thrown more blood onto the ceiling. The wounds, according to the ME, were deep, and the skull was crushed, indicating a very strong person. The killer, the police felt at the time, was probably a man who knew Crane, and he took his time. There were no signs of haste or frenzy. He even took the time to wipe the blood off his weapon on the bed sheet and take it with him. Apart from the cord around his neck—which did not kill Crane—the weapon was never found, in spite of an exhaustive search around the Winfield.
According to Bob Crane’s biography, published by CBS-TV while he was starring in Hogan’s Heroes, he was born in Waterbury, Connecticut, on 13 July 1937. While in high school, from which he dropped out, Crane’s ambition was to be a drummer in one of the big bands of the post-war era. Ultimately, he drummed his way to a seat with the Connecticut Symphony Orchestra.
A relic of this phase of Crane’s career always sat on or near the set of the World War II comedy at the Desilu Studios in Hollywood—a set of drums which he had owned since his high school days.
In 1959, Crane put aside the sticks because he married his high school sweetheart, Ann Terzian. When they had one child, with another on the way, Crane felt that life on the road was no life for a married man with children. Instead, he turned to radio announcing and became a popular disc jockey. He started on WLEA in Hornell, New York, then WBIS in Bristol, Connecticut. Crane’s big break came when he signed on with WICC in Bridgeport and remained there for six years. Word of his brashness, acumen with a mike and quick wit, reached the ears of the program director of KNX, the CBS Radio owned and operated station in Los Angeles. When the station was searching for a strong entry for the morning drive time show to combat the popularity of Dick Whittinghill on the Gene Autry-owned KMPC down the street on Sunset Bouleyard, it reached into Bridgeport and signed Crane. Word of mouth had reached Los Angeles about his popularity—just what KNX needed. After one year, the gamble paid off in the ratings for KNX and Crane soon became the number one disc jockey in Los Angeles in morning drive-time listening.
It was his fast wit and timing at the mike that led him into television acting. Many of Crane’s guests who were interviewed by him—which was a shrewd and calculated move on his part—were so delighted at his comedy talent they made him acting offers. In time he felt he was ready and accepted the role of Donna Reed’s next-door neighbor, Dr Dave Kelsey, on The Donna Reed Show. He managed, all the time he was appearing on the series, to continue his radio work on KNX from 5 a.m. to 9 a.m. five days a week. He was earning over $150,000 per year.
Guest appearances on The Tonight Show followed, as well as Your First Impression, The Dick Van Dyke Show and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. His motion picture credits included Return to Peyton Place and Man Trap, all bit parts, but good experience for the tyro. When he landed the starring role on Hogan’s Heroes, it finally forced him to leave KNX and devote full-time to his acting.
Crane and Ann, who eventually had three children together—Robert, Deborah, and Karen – were divorced in 1970. The pressures of his work and the hours just were not conducive to a happy marriage for a housewife used to the routine of suburban Connecticut.
Following the cancellation of Hogan’s Heroes after six years—and it is still being shown in over 75 countries—network officials wanted to cash in on Crane’s well-known face and TVQ rating—the scale which advertisers and networks use to judge the popularity and recognizability of television personalities, even though the networks deny using it as a criteria.
Crane turned down a score of offers. Sarcastically he told us, in an interview over brunch at the rooftop restaurant of The Holiday Inn in Brentwood, California, “one series was for me to be head of stewardess training for a swinging airline. I read the script and said, ‘This is Robert Cummings, circa 1953.’ ”
Another script he rejected was about a sheriff in a small country town. “Andy Griffith had already done it,” he told the producers through his agent. “Then,” he said, “there was one about a bachelor who runs a babysitting service. Who would believe a forty-year-old running a babysitting service? Bob Denver, maybe,” referring to the popular star of Gilligan’s Island.
Finally Crane accepted a series which would not last very long.
Actress Victoria Berry, who was appearing with Crane at The Windmill, wondered why the actor had not appeared for a cast luncheon for their farce, Beginner’s Luck. Berry also had an appointment with Crane at 2:30 p.m. that day to re-tape the soundtrack on a videotape of a scene from their play. Crane, she said, was helping her with the videotape so that her agent could submit it to casting directors to get her future work in Hollywood.
Berry entered the apartment through the unlocked door. This was strange to her, because she knew Crane always double-locked it when he was in the apartment alone or sleeping. She was also surprised to see that it was so dark inside. The curtains were drawn. She also noticed a half-empty bottle of Scotch and a bottle of vodka on a table. To Berry this was also strange. She knew Crane drank very little, and that when he did, he drank only one vodka and orange juice, generally in the evening.
When Berry entered the bedroom after receiving no answer to her calls to Crane, she saw the blood but didn’t recognize the figure hunched up on the bed because of the misshapen features. At first she thought it was a woman whose hair was standing on end. She again shouted Crane’s name, then she realized it was Crane; she recognized his wristwatch, and then screamed. This alerted neighbors, who called the authorities.
Though upset, Victoria Berry noticed other details. Crane, a methodical man accustomed to “living on the road,” had hung his trousers neatly over a chair in the living room and his shirt on a hanger. His keys and his billfold were on the kitchen table. The apartment key of bright blue metal was still on the key ring. Sometimes he would remove the key from the ring and give it to Berry so that she could use the swimming pool at the Winfield during the sweltering 115 degree heat of a Scottsdale summer.
Then there was the “Little Black Bag!” Berry described it as “an ‘equipment bag’ with several zippers.” When found, she said, it was almost empty and on the bed beside Crane. Police confirmed that it wasn’t completely empty but contained “miscellaneous personal effects” about which they would not be more specific.
Since Crane’s door key was on the key ring and he usually locked the door, police theorized that he knew his killer and let them in the apartment before he went to bed. But this theory didn’t hold water. Crane would hardly go to sleep with a guest in the house. The theory which holds the most water is that Crane DID have a visitor who eventually left. When leaving he or she could have made sure the door was unlocked and waited for Crane to go to sleep and re-entered; or else while they were in the apartment, they could have slipped a lock on a window—the apartment was on the ground floor—and then climbed back in and killed him as soon as he went to sleep.
One of the problems with the investigation, police said at the time—an investigation which was eventually called “very inept” by other law enforcement officials, and by the neighboring Phoenix Police Department—was the victim himself.
Bob Crane, they said, had “a great many girlfriends, or acquaintances, in and out of the apartment.” The police said there were literally close to fifty videotapes of a sexual nature with Crane in various sex acts with many different females.
In the bathroom, he had an elaborate photographic lab including an enlarger. Police said they found a strip of negatives in the enlarger showing a woman clothed, then nude. As the negatives were in the enlarger, it is possible the killer took some black and white prints from the area, overlooking the negatives.
However, Crane, friends said, never forced his photographic “interests” on his women friends. His models consented to be photographed in various stages of undress and in sexual activity.
Following his death, people who knew Bob Crane well talked a little about the strange offscreen life of the talented, witty actor. To the public at large, he was a funny, likable professional who performed brilliantly, whether in his long-running television series or on the stage at dinner theatres. He once told us that he could earn a great deal of money in these gigs—up to $250,000 a year—but got sick and tired of the travelling and living out of a suitcase.
Behind the scenes, they said, there was a complex, difficult to understand, and often bitter personality. The bitterness seemed to come through the several times we talked to and interviewed him over the years.
When his second wife, Patricia, filed her divorce action in West Los Angeles six months before his death, she alleged that:
Crane had harassed and slapped her, and had screamed obscenities at her;
He threw open the windows of their West Los Angeles home and yelled that she was “crazy”;
He refused to take their six-year-old son, Scott, to the hospital after Scott had broken his arm;
He often tried to show “adult” films to Scott, and she was sick of his pornographic collection.
A week before his death, however, Patricia Olson Crane visited him in Scottsdale so that Crane could visit with their young son before she left for Seattle to appear in a stage play. She was taking Scott with her for his summer vacation treat.
“They seemed amicable when they were together, and Bob was even talking about a reconciliation. But I doubt that would have happened,” one member of the cast told the media following Crane’s death.
“Patti had made some pretty hardhitting allegations in her divorce petition and Bob never really got over them,” said another.
Until just a few weeks before his death, Crane, who was very popular with millions of fans through Hogan’s Heroes, and who liked to visit and talk to fans in a coffee shop early each morning after his theatre performance, was a tormented man. He did his heartbreak with a smile—like all clowns—and Bob Crane was, in reality, a clown, always seeking a laugh with a wisecrack, a bon mot, a smile, a wink.
After the breakup of his marriage with Patti, who had appeared with him in Hogan’s Heroes as the Fräulein love interest, he was very morbid, according to Victoria Berry. His wife had actually kicked him out of the house and he had spent hours rationalizing about the breakup of his second go-round.
In the divorce petition, Patti also alleged that he owned a “large collection of pornographic films, including one with (Respondent) in it.”
The charge of negligence toward his son, Scott, hurt the most, according to those around him at The Windmill. In the days before his death, Crane was trying hard to be a better father. Said Faye Wilson of the Windmill Theatre staff: “He talked about how he had been seeing a psychiatrist because of his wife’s complaint that he wasn’t fit to be a father! He was seeing him so that he could be a better father.”
If Bob Crane was trying to learn how to be a better father, why did he insist on pursuing his “hobby” of taking porno videotapes and still pictures of himself engaged in sex acts with his multitude of women friends?
An album of what were supposed to be “pornographic” stills in an album could have led police to the killer—if it had been located. Detectives searched for the album, described by Victoria Berry as “very graphic,” for several months following Crane’s murder.
“Apparently, the album was taken from his apartment,” said Scottsdale Chief of Police Walter Nemetz. “The album was full of porno stills,” he said, according to witnesses who had been questioned, and by those who had seen it. Dozens of videotapes, however, were found in the apartment showing Crane with women in various stages of undress and in various sexual positions with and without Crane. All were explicit.
“There [were] lots of motives for the murder,” said Nemetz. “Mr Crane developed a lot of strange acquaintances because of his … er … er … hobby, or what appeared to be a hobby. His very peculiar activities off stage could lead to many motives among his friends and acquaintances.”
“These,” continued the chief, “could include cuckolded husbands who heard about them and, possibly, one of them went to the apartment in an attempt to retrieve a tape or tapes with [his] wife or [girlfriend] in starring roles.”
Crane’s lifelong friend from Connecticut, John Carpenter, who had since migrated to the West Coast, was out with Crane until about 2:30 a.m. the day of the murder.
Carpenter told the Scottsdale police that he last saw his friend outside a Scottsdale coffee shop. The Safari, part of the hotel of the same name on Scottsdale Road. Before leaving for the Safari, Crane had stopped by his apartment to drop off a few things from the theatre. While he and Carpenter were in the apartment, Crane received a telephone call from Patti from Seattle. According to Carpenter, this eventually developed into a shouting match between them. “The sweetness and light visit of a week or so before …” certainly had fallen apart by that time.
Instead, said Carpenter, Crane made the decision not to reconcile with Patti because of a newly formed relationship with a Phoenix woman described as young, blonde and pretty. Most of Crane’s friends tended to be a little wacky, according to Carpenter. “But this one is a little different,” Crane told him. “He said he had dated her three or four times and said he really liked her.”
When we last interviewed Crane about two years before his death, he was still downhearted over the failure of The Bob Crane Show—which had begun network life as Second Chance. Bob said he had held high hopes for the show when it began. “It was a fun show,” he said, “and I like the character I played. The idea was to present a nice, warm human comedy about a middle-aged guy who throws away a successful business career to go to medical school to become a doctor.
“But I was apprehensive about the changes they kept making in it, worrying because it then sounded too much like The Donna Reed Show all over again. But, there you are—that’s what the network wanted, and they were proven wrong. I did all I could to have the changes cancelled and if we had, I really believe we had a chance of making it a success. I was happy to
get the name changed to The Bob Crane Show. Second Chance worried me,” he said. “I wondered at the time if it wasn’t ‘The Last Chance!’
“So, we got bumped off the air. It was over, practically, before it had begun. I felt good doing it. I had recently had success with a Disney movie, A Son-in-Law For Charlie MacCready.10
“I felt good about it and getting back to a regular series. I thought at the time I could do both—make films and do TV, and everything seemed to be going along fine. Then, the balloon burst and it ended.’
“What,” he asked thoughtfully, “keeps us moving back? Is it habit or money or what? Well, for some of us it’s just that we get kinda homesick for the sets, the smell of the sound stages, the order to cut and for action by a director. Of course, the money is another reason. I’m not that rich, so I can do with whatever money I can get.”
Crane explained that “it” for him was a combination of being eager to keep working and being just as eager to make money at it. He said he was the type who has to keep doing “something!” When other actors rested up during a break, Crane said he couldn’t. “The first day I’m up pacing around the house. To be idle drives me up a wall!”
The Mammoth Book of Unsolved Crimes Page 26