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Speaker 2: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 2: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 2: written about them. Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK Every
Speaker 2: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 2: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your
Speaker 2: host journalist and author Dan Zufanski, Good Evening. The nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy eight murder of actor and American icon Bob Crane
Speaker 2: remains one of the most high profile unsolved celebrity murders
Speaker 2: of all time. Thirty eight years after his brutal murder
Speaker 2: in Scottsdale, Arizona, millions around the world still want answers
Speaker 2: was John Carpenter the killer or did police arrest an
Speaker 2: innocent man. For nearly forty years, police remained convinced of
Speaker 2: Carpenter's guilt. Early DNA testing decades ago was unable to
Speaker 2: positively link Carpenter to the crime. The two friends lived
Speaker 2: on the edge, sharing a dark obsession videotaping women during
Speaker 2: their sexual encounters. In an unprecedented investigation, reporter John Hook
Speaker 2: retests the original blood evidence using modern DNA science in
Speaker 2: a final search for answers. Scientists believe this is the
Speaker 2: last chance to test DNA from the crime scene. The
Speaker 2: final close up in identifying Bob Crane's killer, Hook has
Speaker 2: exhausted all remaining avenues to unearth answers in this intriguing
Speaker 2: and haunting cold case. Will he close the book on
Speaker 2: the Crane murder once and for all? Who Killed Bob
Speaker 2: Crane is Hook's first hand account of a two year
Speaker 2: investigation and search for the truth. It's seen through the
Speaker 2: eyes of the people who are there, witnesses, detectives, prosecutors, jurors,
Speaker 2: and family members. John Hooks takes readers on an incredible
Speaker 2: reporter's journey for inside look at the sensational physical evidence
Speaker 2: in a final attempt to learn the truth in Who
Speaker 2: Killed Bob Crane? The Final close Up with my special guest,
Speaker 2: journalist and author John Hook. Welcome to the program, and
Speaker 2: thank you very much for agreeing to this interview John Hook.
Speaker 3: Dan, it's an honor to be with you. You do
Speaker 3: great work. Hey, I really appreciate the opportunity.
Speaker 7: Well, thank you very much. This comes on kind of
Speaker 7: a great day for something like this. I guess on
Speaker 7: the eve of Valentine's Day. Kind of a twisted, twisted
Speaker 7: love story, I guess in some ways, maybe not anyway,
Speaker 7: congratulations on a great book. Tell us what your background is,
Speaker 7: how you came to be involved with this. I know
Speaker 7: you venture into it a little bit later in the book.
Speaker 7: Tell us how you came to be involved with this
Speaker 7: incredible case.
Speaker 3: Dan, I grew up with Bob Crane. He was part
Speaker 3: of my childhood watching him on Hogan's Heroes. He was
Speaker 3: I was a little young when it came on the air,
Speaker 3: but I certainly appreciated it. As time went on and
Speaker 3: I learned that this guy was a tremendous comedic genius.
Speaker 3: As I went along through life, I end up in Arizona.
Speaker 3: I was a California kid, grew up on Crane and
Speaker 3: Hogan's Heroes. But then when I came out to Arizona,
Speaker 3: I happened to come out here in the summer of
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy eight, two months after Bob Crane was murdered
Speaker 3: in Scottsdale, A mirror seven miles up the road from
Speaker 3: my dormitory. So this story and Bob Crane has been
Speaker 3: with me almost my whole life. I could have never
Speaker 3: imagined that I would end up in the middle of
Speaker 3: it by retesting the DNA evidence from the original crime.
Speaker 3: But once I was in journalism and started to work
Speaker 3: on stories and understand more about covering crime stories, this
Speaker 3: story intrigued me. And when I interviewed his son for
Speaker 3: a TV show back in March of twenty fifteen, Bob
Speaker 3: Crane Junior, who wrote the forward for the book Who
Speaker 3: Killed Bob Crane by the Way, which was a tremendous honor,
Speaker 3: I interviewed him and felt very strongly the pain of
Speaker 3: a son who had gone through this and lost his
Speaker 3: father and really didn't have any answers as to who
Speaker 3: killed his father. And it haunted me for days. I finally,
Speaker 3: and I can't tell you, Dan how it came to me,
Speaker 3: But a few days after the interview, it was sticking
Speaker 3: with me, sticking with me, and I thought, what happened
Speaker 3: to all that evidence? Was it around? Could it be
Speaker 3: retested if we found it? What could modern DNA science
Speaker 3: tell us that they couldn't get back In nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 3: when John Carpenter, chief suspect in the case, went on trial,
Speaker 3: and so he was the first phone call I made.
Speaker 3: I called him and said, if we find this, Bob,
Speaker 3: how would you feel about his retesting it? And there
Speaker 3: was silence on the phone, and I thought I had
Speaker 3: offended him. And he said, oh my god, do you
Speaker 3: think that's possible? And I said, Bob, I'm going to
Speaker 3: give it a shot. Are you okay with it? And
Speaker 3: he said yes? But that long silence. Dan was uncomfortable
Speaker 3: because I really thought I had offended him. But once
Speaker 3: he understood what I was doing and what I wanted
Speaker 3: to do, which was really end this for the family,
Speaker 3: and that's how I got involved.
Speaker 7: Now, before you endeavored to do this, did you have
Speaker 7: any idea about how easy or how difficult it was
Speaker 7: to get testing retested, evidence retested?
Speaker 3: I didn't. I didn't know a lot, frankly, about DNA,
Speaker 3: other than covering the oj Simpson murder trial, covering some
Speaker 3: cases here in Arizona that dealt with DNA. I would
Speaker 3: say I was really a novice DNA, so I didn't
Speaker 3: know first of all what we would need. I was
Speaker 3: thinking primarily. As we go through the story, you learn
Speaker 3: that when Crane was murdered, there was blood in John
Speaker 3: Carpenter's rental car. We can get into the relationship between
Speaker 3: Crane and Carpenter. But there was blood found in John
Speaker 3: Carpenter's rental car. The two were pealing around together, making
Speaker 3: X rated videos together, pornographic videos. He and Crane would
Speaker 3: travel on the road. Carpenter worked for a KI, he
Speaker 3: worked for ken Wood, he worked for Sony. He was
Speaker 3: a video whiz, and he was a very successful video
Speaker 3: salesman by the way, John Carpenter, and this was the
Speaker 3: glue that bound he and Crane together, the interest in
Speaker 3: betting women and videotaping it. And that's what John Carpenter
Speaker 3: introduced Bob Crane too. And so when blood was found
Speaker 3: on the door of John Carpenter's rental car here in Scottsdale,
Speaker 3: and then they tested that blood and it turned out
Speaker 3: to be type B blood, which happened to be Bob
Speaker 3: Crane's blood type, you can imagine what police instantly thought.
Speaker 3: So the blood we tested was what was on that
Speaker 3: door panel in John Carpenter's rental car, but first we
Speaker 3: had to find it.
Speaker 7: Now, let's go back, as you do and start at
Speaker 7: the beginning and talk about this icon. Robert Crane, Bob Crane,
Speaker 7: Hogan's hero star as you do in the book, tell
Speaker 7: us a little bit about the evolution of his career.
Speaker 7: He was a big radio guy on kN X Radio
Speaker 7: in Los Angeles. So tell us about Robert Crane's career
Speaker 7: and his ascension to fame and his success with Hogan's Heroes.
Speaker 7: Tell us about that Dan.
Speaker 3: I was a tremendous radio personality. It was probably his
Speaker 3: greatest skill, actually, And I think he was very wistful
Speaker 3: for radio when he got into television, because television, it
Speaker 3: can be very contrived and controlled. I've worked in both mediums,
Speaker 3: and I know this firsthand being an anchor on television
Speaker 3: here in Phoenix, but I started in radio. Radio is
Speaker 3: ultimate liberty and freedom really, and especially for a guy
Speaker 3: like Crane, who was a morning DJ. He did voice impersonations,
Speaker 3: he played the drums live on the air. He had
Speaker 3: scintillating guests. When he moved to Hollywood and got the
Speaker 3: job at CANX, he had started on the East Coast
Speaker 3: in Connecticut, New York. He had worked small markets and
Speaker 3: became so good on the East Coast that CBS took
Speaker 3: notice and said, this guy in Connecticut is siphoning our
Speaker 3: listeners from our mothership in New York. City. We got
Speaker 3: to get this guy out of here. So they moved
Speaker 3: him out to LA to CANX to be the morning guy.
Speaker 3: When I believe it's Jack Storer went to I think
Speaker 3: it was a sixty four thousand dollars pyramid or one
Speaker 3: of these shows. He was the original morning guy. They
Speaker 3: got Crane and tapped him to replace him, and so
Speaker 3: Crane became a huge, huge radio star. He was dubbed
Speaker 3: the King of the La Airwaves out in LA on
Speaker 3: can X, which is just a blow towards station. So
Speaker 3: when he's out there and he's doing this mad cap
Speaker 3: morning show, producers in Hollywood started to take notice of
Speaker 3: the comic genius of this guy. And Crane was also
Speaker 3: starting to reach out in television. He was getting guest
Speaker 3: shots on Donna Reed, on the Old Dick Van Dyke
Speaker 3: Show with Mary Tyler Moore who just passed away. He
Speaker 3: was starting to make some inroads Twilight Zone. He was
Speaker 3: getting guest shots. Then this script comes along for Hogan's
Speaker 3: Heroes and he reads it and he doesn't quite understand
Speaker 3: what they're trying to do, but he recognized the comedy
Speaker 3: of it, and it was a brilliant script, and he
Speaker 3: loved it.
Speaker 7: Now at the same time he's landed these acting roles.
Speaker 7: You go back to nineteen forty nine, He's married his
Speaker 7: high school sweetheart and Tersian and they had three children together.
Speaker 7: So tell us what he is like in terms of
Speaker 7: a family man and how he balances his movie career,
Speaker 7: radio career, this entertainment career with his family. How well
Speaker 7: does he do that? And there was difficult about his
Speaker 7: family life.
Speaker 3: It was difficult. As Bob Crane's notoriety increased, his access
Speaker 3: to women increased. Of course, he married, as you said,
Speaker 3: his high school sweetheart Ann. They had three children. He
Speaker 3: was trying to play two roles at once. He was
Speaker 3: trying to get his career rolling. He was a family man,
Speaker 3: born and raised Catholic, an altar boy. Probably some repressed
Speaker 3: sexual things going on there with that upbringing, very middle
Speaker 3: class Connecticut. But when he gets out to Hollywood and
Speaker 3: he starts seeing California, and I mean all of California
Speaker 3: and not just the topography, if you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: his interest in women and pornography grew and it eventually
Speaker 3: consumed him and cost him that first marriage. There's no
Speaker 3: doubt about it. So as his celebrity grew, and his
Speaker 3: access to women grew, probably by the mid fifties, certainly
Speaker 3: by the late fifties, he was playing around and he
Speaker 3: was taking polaroids and snapshots to some of this. So
Speaker 3: he was doing some of this early on, but it
Speaker 3: wasn't until he met Carpenter on the set of Hokin Zeros,
Speaker 3: when he met John Carpenter, that ignited the firestorm that
Speaker 3: consumed them. Because Carpenter introduced him to videotape, which at
Speaker 3: that time was only consumer consumers couldn't get their hands
Speaker 3: on it. It was only industrial type, you know, technology.
Speaker 3: So Carpenter introduces Crane to this. And Carpenter had been
Speaker 3: introducing people like Red Skelton and Elvis and people like
Speaker 3: that to this technology and teaching him how to use it.
Speaker 3: The Smothers Brothers, among others. He was teaching kind of
Speaker 3: the mucky MUCKs in Hollywood how to use this new technology,
Speaker 3: and for Crane it became a vehicle for pornography.
Speaker 7: You also talk about Richard Dawson, one of the other
Speaker 7: stars of Hogan's Heroes, and he facilitated he first met Carpenter,
Speaker 7: and then Carpenter was introduced to Bob Crane via that
Speaker 7: and it be important later when we mentioned Richard Dawson
Speaker 7: as he comes up again in this story. You talk
Speaker 7: about this natural, this sex obsession that Bob Crane had
Speaker 7: and then matched with his need to photograph and chronicle
Speaker 7: and document his sexual encounters. So tell us what the
Speaker 7: relationship started with like with a Carpenter and really was
Speaker 7: what did this relationship entail? Well, they were pals and Carpenter,
Speaker 7: you know, has been portrayed as a hanger on and
Speaker 7: a loser, and some of this is true that he
Speaker 7: was a hanger on, but he wasn't a loser. He
Speaker 7: was one of the first national salespeople in the country
Speaker 7: for Sony Electronics. Carpenter was doing pretty well on his own.
Speaker 7: He had been raised hard scrabble in La born of
Speaker 7: Indian descent, a Native American descent and Spanish descent, so
Speaker 7: gave him a stark complexion and always referred to himself
Speaker 7: as an Indian. He and Crane strike up this friendship
Speaker 7: after being introduced by Dawson. They corrous around strip clubs
Speaker 7: in La because Crane loved to go into strip clubs
Speaker 7: and play the drums. Beyond all of the work he
Speaker 7: was doing, he still loved to be around women and
Speaker 7: his music, and he was a frustrated jazz musician. Buddy
Speaker 7: Rich was a big influence. These are people he idolized,
Speaker 7: but being in a strip club playing the drums was
Speaker 7: probably his nirvana. But he and Carpenter would palle around
Speaker 7: and then when they started picking up women, Carpenter showed
Speaker 7: him how to videotape this stuff and they would hit
Speaker 7: the road, and particularly once Crane was out doing the
Speaker 7: dinner theater circuit. Once Hogan's Heroes was canceled in nineteen
Speaker 7: seventy one, Crane was still doing TV spots, but he
Speaker 7: had to pay the bills and he ended up going
Speaker 7: out on the road doing dinner theater. That's what brought
Speaker 7: him to Scottsdale, Arizona Carpenter. As in the usual way
Speaker 7: they would operate, Carpenter would meet him on the road.
Speaker 7: Crane would have all of his video equipment in tow
Speaker 7: and it was very bulky and junkie back then, and
Speaker 7: he had it in his apartment in Scottsdale when the
Speaker 7: murder happened. Now, as far as the family goes, you
Speaker 7: talked to Bob Junior, how much did the family know
Speaker 7: about this? Obsession and what did they do as a
Speaker 7: result of that obsession. The two daughters were too young
Speaker 7: to really know. They have more of an idealized version
Speaker 7: and vision of their father than Bob Junior has. Bob,
Speaker 7: as he tells me in the book Who Killed Bob Crane,
Speaker 7: that his father's sex talk to him really revolved around
Speaker 7: showing him kind of X rated films. That was their
Speaker 7: Birds and the Bees talk. Bob Junior was certainly aware
Speaker 7: of his father's dark room in California and that this
Speaker 7: wasn't just a man cave, but it was a place
Speaker 7: where his pornography was really taking hold. And Bob Jor
Speaker 7: knew where the sash was, looked at it himself and
Speaker 7: was very familiar with what his dad was up to,
Speaker 7: and his dad, to some degree, didn't really hide it.
Speaker 7: His dad just kind of passed it off as I'm
Speaker 7: intrigued with beautiful women. Here's some if you want to
Speaker 7: look at it, and it was that kind of thing.
Speaker 7: He wasn't ashamed of it. However, as this obsession with
Speaker 7: pornography grew, it certainly harmed Crane's personal life, and it
Speaker 7: certainly harmed his career as well, because executives at Disney
Speaker 7: on down were starting to catch when that.
Speaker 3: This guy had this dark side, and for Disney particularly,
Speaker 3: that was not a good fit. That caused a lot
Speaker 3: of trouble, and they were worried about image at Disney,
Speaker 3: as they rightfully should be, and so it cost him
Speaker 3: some jobs. There's no doubt about it.
Speaker 7: Now the relationship between John Carpenter and Bob Crane may
Speaker 7: have changed. And you write that by the time nineteen
Speaker 7: seventy eight rolled around, Bob could certainly handle the videotaping
Speaker 7: himself and certainly wouldn't need anybody to consult them. Things
Speaker 7: had changed and he had learned quite a bit and
Speaker 7: there was other people that could help him if need be.
Speaker 7: Some of the evidence you have is that you had
Speaker 7: it was a conversation with Bob and his son, Bob Jr.
Speaker 7: About John Carpenter. What was said at that time and
Speaker 7: what you think the relationship was turning into or changing to.
Speaker 3: Well, I think according to Bob Junior, and he's the
Speaker 3: best source on this because he's the one who had
Speaker 3: his conversation with his father. He said his father, as
Speaker 3: he was approaching fifty, was starting to worry about what
Speaker 3: the next few years would bring. He wasn't the matinee
Speaker 3: Idol anymore. He wasn't the young Hogan in Hogan's Heroes.
Speaker 3: He was a middle aged guy approaching fifty and worried
Speaker 3: about could he continue to get work, would anybody want
Speaker 3: to see him perform? I even have the recount in
Speaker 3: the book of his last radio interview, which was at
Speaker 3: the station that I currently work. It was cool radio,
Speaker 3: and he was definitely looking ahead to fifty and worried
Speaker 3: about whether he would be viable in the entertainment business.
Speaker 3: It worried him. As time was going on, he relayed
Speaker 3: to his son that he felt Carpenter was becoming a nuisance.
Speaker 3: Carpenter had been meeting him out on the road for
Speaker 3: several years by this point, and they would go wherever
Speaker 3: Crane's dinner, theater engagements took him, whether it was Austin
Speaker 3: or Phoenix or some far flung city. Crane would have
Speaker 3: his video equipment. He'd be on stage for an hour
Speaker 3: and a half at night doing Beginner's Luck, and then
Speaker 3: he had to fill the time the other hours of
Speaker 3: the day, the other eighteen nineteen hours of the day.
Speaker 3: He wasn't a drinker. He wasn't a smoker. I didn't gamble.
Speaker 3: He was a womanizer.
Speaker 6: That was his.
Speaker 3: Crack cocaine, and he loved videotaping it. And for many
Speaker 3: years he needed Carpenter to help him with this expertise.
Speaker 3: But as the equipment got better and better and Bob
Speaker 3: Crane became more familiar with this equipment, he didn't need
Speaker 3: John Carpenter hanging around and showing up in every city.
Speaker 3: Crane by this point could do it on his own.
Speaker 3: He didn't need a sidekick, and Carpenter was becoming a
Speaker 3: little bit cree police theory. That's Bob Crane Junior's theory,
Speaker 3: and Bob Crane Junior felt as his father was hitting
Speaker 3: fifty he wanted to make changes in his life and
Speaker 3: shed some of these habits, some of the hanger ons,
Speaker 3: particularly Carpenter, and kind of start to reassess a little bit.
Speaker 3: His son believes he was in that process and it
Speaker 3: came to a head in Scottsdale in the summer of
Speaker 3: seventy eight.
Speaker 7: Do you think there is anything to the idea that
Speaker 7: if you look at the good looks and the charm
Speaker 7: and the star status that Bob Crane was still enjoying
Speaker 7: at that time, where John Carpenter was older and certainly
Speaker 7: didn't have any of those things to his advantage, and
Speaker 7: yet wanted to be included in three ways. Do you
Speaker 7: think this difficulty as Bob got a little bit older,
Speaker 7: as you write in the book, sometimes they would go
Speaker 7: out and they would strike out in terms of not
Speaker 7: getting lucky as opposed to Bob Crane probably having a
Speaker 7: better track record on his own. Do you think this
Speaker 7: pould have been part.
Speaker 3: Of Yeah, he definitely did. Dan. I mean, Bob Crane
Speaker 3: was still in nineteen seventy eight. There was still a
Speaker 3: cachet in being Colonel Hogan. This show was in heavy,
Speaker 3: heavy rerun around the country. I'm trying to liken it
Speaker 3: to someone currently, and it would be as if Ashton
Speaker 3: Coocher were murdered, or maybe Charlie Sheen murdered, a comedic
Speaker 3: actor on television primarily who would be savagely murdered and
Speaker 3: everybody would say, what in the world. Now with Charlie Sheen,
Speaker 3: you might understand it because it's a risky lifestyle. No
Speaker 3: one knew this about Bob Crane at the time, except
Speaker 3: the very intimates in his circle that he was obsessed
Speaker 3: with pornography, a lot of people didn't know this. So
Speaker 3: when he died here in Scottsdale, when he was murdered,
Speaker 3: it was a shock not only to us here but
Speaker 3: to the nation that this kind of belve guy on
Speaker 3: television that we'd grown up with would meet this kind
Speaker 3: of fate. Crane could still pick up women. He had
Speaker 3: a very good track record. Carpenter hanging around was something
Speaker 3: of a distraction. Perhaps was even maybe a bit of
Speaker 3: an albatross around Crane's neck when he'd go out, because
Speaker 3: he had to worry about what Carpenter was up to
Speaker 3: and what Carpenter was thinking and feeling. They were friends,
Speaker 3: but I think it became a bit of a burden
Speaker 3: to him, at least that's how his son felt about it.
Speaker 7: Now, as you write in the book, through your investigation,
Speaker 7: you find out the police ask eventually, So we'll just
Speaker 7: take it a little bit out of order. Tell us
Speaker 7: about this long weekend and in Scottsdale, and they were
Speaker 7: previously they'd been in Dallas, as your investigation shows, in
Speaker 7: an apartment there, and now he's in Scott's. They'll performing
Speaker 7: at this dinner theater. Tell us about what's different about
Speaker 7: this weekend and the relationship before we get into just
Speaker 7: previous to the day of the murder, and tell us
Speaker 7: about Carpenter and Bob Crane and their activities during that
Speaker 7: last day and that last weekend.
Speaker 3: Dan Usually the pathway was usually pretty clear. Carpenter would
Speaker 3: find out where Crane was on the road. They'd make
Speaker 3: arrangements to meet on the road. Carpenter would kind of
Speaker 3: cover this by saying it was business, but it wasn't business.
Speaker 3: It was all pleasure. He did very little business when
Speaker 3: he was here. He visited one shop that he did
Speaker 3: some video business one of his clients up in Phoenix,
Speaker 3: and that was the extent of it. It was an
Speaker 3: afternoon and a lunch and that was it. He came
Speaker 3: here to see Bob Crane and pick up women. That's
Speaker 3: why he would come out on the road. Usually they
Speaker 3: would stay together. Crane would have an apartment Tip, a
Speaker 3: two bedroom apartment when he was performing in Beginner's Luck,
Speaker 3: provided by the theater. The theater paid for it. Crane
Speaker 3: stayed in it, but it was two bedrooms, so he'd
Speaker 3: have Carpenter stay with him and they would cat around
Speaker 3: until all hours of the morning looking for women. Bars
Speaker 3: at that time in Phoenix closed at one o'clock, so
Speaker 3: it was a fairly early night by East Coast standards.
Speaker 3: But on this particular trip, Carpenter did not stay with
Speaker 3: Bob Crane. He stayed at a hotel down the street.
Speaker 3: And this was also a sign that Crane was trying
Speaker 3: to distance himself from Carpenter didn't want him staying with him,
Speaker 3: and this had actually started earlier in Dallas. Carpenter stayed
Speaker 3: a few nights in Dallas, the stop before the Beginner's
Speaker 3: Luck stop in Scottsdale, he also stayed in a hotel there.
Speaker 3: So for the last couple of trips they were not
Speaker 3: staying together. Crane was, in the view of investigators and
Speaker 3: his son emancipating from Carpenter, and Carpenter was not apparently
Speaker 3: taking a well, and people saw them have an argument.
Speaker 3: It wasn't openly hostile, but the waitresses and bartenders at
Speaker 3: this establishment in Phoenix saw them having this very intense
Speaker 3: discussion where the body language was such that Carpenter was
Speaker 3: very unhappy and put out by whatever was going on.
Speaker 7: Now, after this, after this event at the at an establishment,
Speaker 7: what does John Carpenter do and what does Bob Crane do?
Speaker 7: And who is Bob Crane with.
Speaker 3: We're fast forwarding now to the night of the murder.
Speaker 3: This argument happened a couple of days before the murder
Speaker 3: and they parted ways, but Carpenter was upset. Now they
Speaker 3: still hung out. Carpenter went to his performance on Wednesday
Speaker 3: night in Scottsdale, which was basically the night of the murder.
Speaker 3: It happened in the early morning hours of Thursday, June
Speaker 3: twenty ninth. Carpenter attends Bob Crane's performance of Beginner's Luck
Speaker 3: on Wednesday night, as he typically would. This would have
Speaker 3: been Carpenter's last night in Phoenix. In Scottsdale, he was
Speaker 3: supposed to leave the next morning on a flight to
Speaker 3: la and Crane was supposed to take him to the airport.
Speaker 3: That was the plan that never happened because Bob Crane
Speaker 3: was killed. They attended the performance of Beginner's Luck at
Speaker 3: the Scottsdale Windmill Dinner Theater. They get out to the
Speaker 3: parking lot and very interestingly, that night, the tire on
Speaker 3: Crane's vehicle, the right rear tire is flat. Now you
Speaker 3: can imagine when investigators look at this in hindsight, the
Speaker 3: right rear tire is flat. In a darkened parking lot
Speaker 3: at the end of the performance, and many people read
Speaker 3: that that that may have been could have been Carpenter
Speaker 3: that let the air out of the tire to leave
Speaker 3: by Crane vulnerable in that parking lot, trying to change
Speaker 3: a tire late at night, where that might have been
Speaker 3: the first attempt to kill him. That's what investigators thought.
Speaker 3: They were a little bit divided on that point. Some
Speaker 3: thought it was a coincidence. But what are the chances
Speaker 3: on the night you're murdered that you have a flat
Speaker 3: tire out in the parking lot. I suppose it could happen,
Speaker 3: but it certainly looked suspicious to investigators. Instead of fixing it,
Speaker 3: Crane says, let's get in the car and we'll drive
Speaker 3: down there. So they drive to the Arco station about
Speaker 3: three hundred yards away. They get the tire change, go
Speaker 3: back to Crane's apartment after the performance, and they had
Speaker 3: out and pick up women. They did their usual routine,
Speaker 3: only this night both of them struck out, and that's
Speaker 3: where we end up the night ending Carpenter going to
Speaker 3: his hotel, Crane going to his apartment, and the two
Speaker 3: of them having a telephone conversation very late or actually
Speaker 3: early early in the morning on Thursday.
Speaker 7: Now, the woman that was with Bob Crane says, witnesses
Speaker 7: something said from John Carpenter, but she's not sure it's
Speaker 7: either or tell us what she thought he either or
Speaker 7: said regarding them.
Speaker 3: They kind of met with two women at the cafe
Speaker 3: right at John Carpenter's hotel, which was literally, I've driven it.
Speaker 3: It's thirty seconds down the street from Bob Crane's apartment,
Speaker 3: that's how close this was. They go into the coffee shop,
Speaker 3: they meet these two women there. They had planned to
Speaker 3: meet them. One of them they drove with Carol Newle,
Speaker 3: who was a girl that they had met at a
Speaker 3: bar that night. She came to breakfast with them. Crane
Speaker 3: liked to eat breakfast after his show and after he'd
Speaker 3: been out at the bars. And then Carolyn Berat, who
Speaker 3: was Crane State, met them there. So there's the four
Speaker 3: of them at this cafe having breakfast and making small talk,
Speaker 3: talking mostly about taping shows. By the way, they end
Speaker 3: up out in the parking lot. Carpenter takes his date
Speaker 3: Newell home, and as he's walking out to his car,
Speaker 3: Crane is a little bit behind with Carolyn Barray, who
Speaker 3: was a local. They are saying their goodbyes and Carpenter
Speaker 3: says something to Crane. He seems upset, and Crane says,
Speaker 3: what's the matter with you? What's up? And Carpenter responds either,
Speaker 3: according to Brat, I'll see you later or I'll see
Speaker 3: you tomorrow. Because remember, the plan was for Bob Crane
Speaker 3: to take John Carpenter to the airport that next day
Speaker 3: when Carpenter was flying out, and so that's the last
Speaker 3: that anybody that we know of sees Bob Crane. That night.
Speaker 3: Crane says goodbye to Carolyn Bray. She resisted his advances.
Speaker 3: He wanted her to come to his apartment. She wouldn't.
Speaker 3: He offered to go to hers, she wouldn't let him. Carpenter,
Speaker 3: in the meantime, takes Newell, a young girl in her
Speaker 3: early twenties, maybe twenty, up to his hotel room. They kiss,
Speaker 3: They roll around on the bed a little bit. She
Speaker 3: wants to get out of there. He's quite a bit
Speaker 3: older than her, he's in his forties, late forties, and
Speaker 3: insists that he take her home. And he was a
Speaker 3: gentleman and did took her home just a few minutes away.
Speaker 3: And goes back, according to Carpenter, to his hotel room
Speaker 3: and calls Bob Crane. This is John Carpenter's account that
Speaker 3: he called Bob Crane and said what are you doing?
Speaker 3: And Crane says, I'm standing here in my apartment editing
Speaker 3: Saturday night fever in my boxer shorts. It's kind of
Speaker 3: an odd conversation half, but that's how Carpenter remembers it,
Speaker 3: and that's what he told police. So he says everything's fine,
Speaker 3: and that Bob Crane struck out and that he struck out,
Speaker 3: And Carpenter says that I know you're busy tomorrow, I'll
Speaker 3: drive myself to the airport. Now, the plan was for
Speaker 3: Crane to take Carpenter to the airport. It was noted
Speaker 3: in Crane's day planner that was by his bedside stained
Speaker 3: with his blood when they found him the next day.
Speaker 3: So Carpenter insists that he made this arrangement to cut
Speaker 3: off Crane taking him to the airport, that he drive himself.
Speaker 3: He hangs up, he packs for twenty more minutes, and
Speaker 3: then he says that he calls Crane again. Now, this
Speaker 3: to me is a little bit suspicious. If you've already
Speaker 3: had this conversation, why do you need to call the
Speaker 3: guy again? And this aroused my curiosity and investigators what's
Speaker 3: left to talk about? But Carpenter says he called them
Speaker 3: back a second time twenty minutes later. How are you doing?
Speaker 3: What are you doing? Well, I'm standing here, I'm editing
Speaker 3: Saturday night Fever and my boxer shorts and I'm going
Speaker 3: to go to bed. And Carpenter says, well, great, I'll
Speaker 3: call you when I'm back in California. That is a
Speaker 3: version from John Carpenter. Police believe otherwise. Police believe that
Speaker 3: he went to Crane's apartment that night after he had
Speaker 3: struck out. Crane opened the door let him into the
Speaker 3: apartment because he knew him. He may have been even
Speaker 3: perturbed that he was coming over that late, but it
Speaker 3: was two thirty in the morning, probably, but Crane's motto
Speaker 3: in life was don't make waves, and so he would
Speaker 3: have let him in. But he also Dan would have
Speaker 3: let in a woman. If a woman had come to
Speaker 3: his apartment late at night to play around, he would
Speaker 3: have let her in. So this is where police have
Speaker 3: to figure out who did Crane let into his apartment
Speaker 3: that night? Because there was no sign of forced entry
Speaker 3: into that apartment, and even someone with a key would
Speaker 3: have made a lot of noise opening up two locks
Speaker 3: on the front door. A Crane was a notoriously light sleeper.
Speaker 3: If the killer had come through the arcadia door, which
Speaker 3: looked out on the pool in the back of the apartment,
Speaker 3: the killer would have had to come through a tangle
Speaker 3: of video cables and TV sets and video equipment lined
Speaker 3: up along that arcadia door, and trying to enter in
Speaker 3: the dark would have been a nightmare and probably would
Speaker 3: have knocked something over and awoken Crane, and it also
Speaker 3: would have been a noisy entry. So police theorized that
Speaker 3: the killer was let into the apartment willingly by Bob Crane.
Speaker 3: No sign of a struggle in the apartment, no sign
Speaker 3: of forced entry.
Speaker 7: We're going to talk about John Carpenter and how he
Speaker 7: becomes a suspect so quickly and the call that Bob
Speaker 7: Junior gets. We're just going to stop for a second
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Speaker 7: When we last last off, John, we were just about
Speaker 7: to talk about what happens the discovery, and I wanted
Speaker 7: to take take you back to how he is discovered
Speaker 7: because it's interesting as well that one of the women
Speaker 7: that he was working with, supposedly Bob is supposed to
Speaker 7: meet him for some rehearsals supposed voiceovers at his apartment.
Speaker 7: Tell us about this Vicky pardon me that discovers Victoria
Speaker 7: pardon me actress Victoria Barry, how she discovers Bob and
Speaker 7: in what state.
Speaker 1: Dan.
Speaker 3: She went over to Crane's apartment the day he was murdered,
Speaker 3: at about two in the afternoon. They were planning to
Speaker 3: meet and overdub a scene from Beginner's Luck that, ironically
Speaker 3: John Carpenter had taped a few days before using video equipment.
Speaker 3: They had done it at the theater, but she wanted
Speaker 3: to overdubb her voice onto that scene. She was looking
Speaker 3: for TV work and other work outside of Beginner's Luck.
Speaker 3: She wanted to try to get into television. She was
Speaker 3: having a heck of a time. I think the biggest
Speaker 3: part she'd had was in Starsky and Hutch. She'd had
Speaker 3: a bit part in that she goes over to see
Speaker 3: Crane and have him help her do this overdub Now,
Speaker 3: who knows what else was on Crane's mind, even her mind.
Speaker 3: Because they had been in bed twice during the run
Speaker 3: of Beginner's Luck, they had had a sexual relationship. It
Speaker 3: was infrequent, but there was some attraction there, and they
Speaker 3: had gotten together before, so you can imagine she goes
Speaker 3: over there two in the afternoon. Who knows what would
Speaker 3: have happened. But she gets to the door. They are
Speaker 3: going to ostensibly do work theater work kind of in
Speaker 3: Crane's apartment using his video equipment. She knocks on the door.
Speaker 3: There's no answer. She knocks on the door and calls out, Bob, Bob.
Speaker 3: No answer. Now they have this meeting, and Crane is
Speaker 3: usually pretty good about keeping his appointments. She decides to
Speaker 3: just kind of open the door, thinking maybe he's out
Speaker 3: on the pool in the back, and to her surprise,
Speaker 3: the front door is open. He always locked his doors.
Speaker 3: Crane had become very careful about locking his doors, and
Speaker 3: this was known to anybody who was around him. So
Speaker 3: for the door to be open it kind of startled her,
Speaker 3: but she walked in and it was completely dark in
Speaker 3: the apartment. She heads out to that arcadia door. Picture
Speaker 3: in your mind, going through a door of an apartment
Speaker 3: and straight ahead is a window covered with drapes. It's
Speaker 3: completely dark, but the pool would be out that window,
Speaker 3: the arcadia door. She goes to that arcadia door and
Speaker 3: opens the drapes to see if Bob may be out
Speaker 3: by the pool. She's calling out his name in the
Speaker 3: apartment and there's no answer. The apartment is pitch dark.
Speaker 3: She's trying to adjust her eyes. No answer from Bob.
Speaker 3: He's not out by the pool. She ducks back into
Speaker 3: the apartment. Deep her into the apartment and takes a
Speaker 3: right hand turn which leads into Bob Crane's bedroom. She
Speaker 3: pushes open the door and Bob Crane is dead in
Speaker 3: that bed, though she doesn't realize it at first. She
Speaker 3: sees a form, a lifeless form in that bed with
Speaker 3: dark streaks and believes it's a woman with long, dark hair,
Speaker 3: and she's thinking the woman maybe shot herself or killed herself.
Speaker 3: She can see the blood now. Her eyes are adjusting,
Speaker 3: she thinks that one of Bob Crane's girlfriends has taken
Speaker 3: her life in his bed, because others had threatened that before,
Speaker 3: girlfriends of his, so it wasn't a completely novel concept.
Speaker 3: Upon closer looks, she thinks it might be the form
Speaker 3: of a man. But could it be John Carpenter his friend?
Speaker 3: Could it be Bob? She doesn't know. She runs out
Speaker 3: of the apartment screaming, runs into a woman in the
Speaker 3: apartment complex, screaming, tells her there's somebody dead in the apartment,
Speaker 3: and they call the police. Scottsdale Police. Scottsdale Police arrive
Speaker 3: about two twenty, just a few minutes after the discovery,
Speaker 3: and then we're off and running trying to figure out
Speaker 3: first who's dead in bed, and what the heck happened
Speaker 3: in that apartment and is it Bob Crane?
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Speaker 7: When the police finally get there, what's fascinating is that
Speaker 7: the phone rings. The police are there taking a statement
Speaker 7: from Victoria. The phone rings. The police asked Victoria to
Speaker 7: answer the phone, tell us about this and it's not
Speaker 7: just one phone call.
Speaker 3: Now on the other end of the phone, she picks
Speaker 3: up the phone. Hello, Hi, is Bob there. Who's this?
Speaker 3: It's John John Carpenter. It's Victoria Victoria Barry. Victoria Berry
Speaker 3: was giving a statement to police, as you mentioned, Dan,
Speaker 3: the phone rings. They're startled and Officer Dean tells her
Speaker 3: Lieutenant Dean, who Lieutenant Ron Deane, who investigated this case
Speaker 3: from the beginning. He says, pick up the phone, Go
Speaker 3: ahead and pick it up. She picks it up and
Speaker 3: it's John Carpenter on the phone calling Bob Crane's apartment.
Speaker 3: He wants to know where Bob is. She says he's
Speaker 3: not here right now, and then Lieutenant Dean grabs a
Speaker 3: phone from her. He says, this is Lieutenant Ron Dean
Speaker 3: from the Scottsdale Police Department. We have an incident here
Speaker 3: Carpenter says, well, this is John Carpenter on Bob's friend.
Speaker 3: I'm back in LA. I just wanted to tell Bob
Speaker 3: I'm here. Carpenter never asks what the problem is in
Speaker 3: the apartment. He never asked, and police say he never
Speaker 3: asked because he already knew the answer. But at this
Speaker 3: point they didn't really know who this John Carpenter was.
Speaker 3: But John Carpenter was trying to make it very clear
Speaker 3: to police that he was in La not in Scottsdale.
Speaker 3: He was back home and had been there for many hours,
Speaker 3: starting to as investigators would later believe, build an alibi.
Speaker 3: He was building a timeline and alibi to try to
Speaker 3: tell police, in so many words, don't look at me,
Speaker 3: I'm back in LA and I have nothing to do
Speaker 3: with this. He even said to Dean on the phone
Speaker 3: that he had talked to Bob late at night, that
Speaker 3: Bob was going to take him to the airport, but
Speaker 3: Carpenter said, I'll take myself, and I'm going to take
Speaker 3: myself and drive myself to the airport. And that's the
Speaker 3: last time they spoke was when Carpenter called him on
Speaker 3: the phone the night of the murder, just hours before
Speaker 3: twelve hours before. That's what Carpenter's story was, and he
Speaker 3: was sticking to it. So he calls once and then
Speaker 3: he calls the second time, but in between he calls
Speaker 3: the apartment twice. In between those two calls, he calls
Speaker 3: Bob Junior. He calls Bob Crane's son, a highly unusual move,
Speaker 3: according to Bob Crane's son. He told me in my
Speaker 3: book Who Killed Bob Crane that Carpenter would typically if
Speaker 3: he would call him at all, he would call him
Speaker 3: before a trip to see his father to get video equipment,
Speaker 3: to get a cable that his father might need, but
Speaker 3: never at the end of a trip. The trip's over,
Speaker 3: there's no reason to call. He calls Bob Crane Junior
Speaker 3: and says, hey, Hey, Bob, this is John, just wanted
Speaker 3: to check in. Lets you know, I'm back from my
Speaker 3: trip with your dad. Everything's fine. If you need anything,
Speaker 3: call me. And as Bob Crane tells me in the
Speaker 3: book Bob Crane Jr. He's so taken aback by the call.
Speaker 3: He said he literally held the phone at the end
Speaker 3: of the call and looked at the receiver and said,
Speaker 3: what was that all about? He was shocked and it
Speaker 3: instantly called it a sixth sense. He was instantly concerned,
Speaker 3: and after sitting on it for a few minutes, he
Speaker 3: called the apartment to find out, just to kind of
Speaker 3: check make sure everything's okay. And Victoria Barry answered the
Speaker 3: phone that time and she said, no, your dad's not here.
Speaker 3: He said, his dad there. No, it's Victoria. And Bob
Speaker 3: Crane Junior knew who she was. She said, no, your
Speaker 3: father's not here. She was a consummate actress. She never
Speaker 3: let on that anything was wrong. Here's Bob Crane dead
Speaker 3: just thirty feet away, and she's pretending that everything's fine.
Speaker 3: She doesn't want to alarm him. He says, Well, when
Speaker 3: he gets back, tell him that I called and thank
Speaker 3: him for the card because he had sent him a
Speaker 3: birthday card. Bob junior birthday was right around this time.
Speaker 3: And so sandwiched after that call is the second call
Speaker 3: from John Carpenter, highly suspicious, same thing where he's trying
Speaker 3: to discuss the timeline, and we can get into that
Speaker 3: if you wish, but investigators, at that point, we're very
Speaker 3: kind of wondering who this John Carpenter was who kept
Speaker 3: calling the apartment. Very odd.
Speaker 7: Well, you also have they do the canvas of the neighbors,
Speaker 7: and there's an interesting testimony from the neighbor upstairs in
Speaker 7: the unit above, and what does she say about a
Speaker 7: phone call again, a phone call she heard, and what
Speaker 7: that phone call sounded like to her.
Speaker 3: Carol Carr fled is her name. She lived directly upstairs
Speaker 3: from Bob Crane's apartment at the Winfield Place Apartments, which
Speaker 3: still exists by the way in Scottsdale. She overhears the
Speaker 3: phone conversation that Bob Crane made after he had Remember
Speaker 3: we'll go back to our timeline. Wednesday night, he performs
Speaker 3: Beginner's Luck. He and Carpenter go out to the car
Speaker 3: the flat tire on his car. They drive to the
Speaker 3: gas station, get it fixed, get it changed, and they
Speaker 3: drive back to Bob Crane's apartment. Bob Crane is late
Speaker 3: because he wants to call his wife, Patty. They're in
Speaker 3: the middle of a bitter divorce. They've got a son together, Scotty,
Speaker 3: who's six or seven years old. At this point, he
Speaker 3: was just about turning seven. They have a conversation that,
Speaker 3: as typical during this period, ended in a lot of
Speaker 3: shouting and yelling, and Carol Carflood upstairs heard this conversation.
Speaker 3: It was a one sided conversation, but she could hear
Speaker 3: Bob Crane screaming. She even remarked to her husband, who
Speaker 3: I've interviewed, that if he doesn't stop screaming, he's going
Speaker 3: to lose his voice and not be able to perform
Speaker 3: the next night. That's how loud it got. Even by
Speaker 3: John Carpenter's own testimony, he was so alarmed that the
Speaker 3: voice was so loud that he looked outside the window
Speaker 3: in Crane's apartment. He was there with him after the performance.
Speaker 3: He wanted to make sure nobody overheard all this because
Speaker 3: it was getting loud. They were arguing, and Crane slams
Speaker 3: down the receiver, so they had a big fight, big
Speaker 3: row on the phone. Crane slams down the receiver, storms
Speaker 3: out of the room the back bedroom, says to Carpenter
Speaker 3: that woman, that woman, let's go, let's go find some music.
Speaker 3: And they hit the road and went out looking for girls.
Speaker 3: Their typical strategy. But that fight was interesting because Bob
Speaker 3: Crane Junior thought all along that his mother in law,
Speaker 3: this is Bob Crane's second wife, now Fraulein Hilda on
Speaker 3: Hogan's Heroes. He married her, that's Patty. Bob cran Junior
Speaker 3: always felt that Patty would have been a very strong
Speaker 3: suspect in this murder because she had money to gain.
Speaker 3: If Bob Crane died while they were in the middle
Speaker 3: of this divorce, she would get it all, and that
Speaker 3: became a real source of suspicion for Bob Crane Jr.
Speaker 3: The only problem is is that the phone records are
Speaker 3: very clear and the flight records are very clear that
Speaker 3: Patty Crane was in Bainbridge, Washington, on an island with Scotty,
Speaker 3: their son, and it would have been impossible for her
Speaker 3: that phone call was made to Washington confirmed. There would
Speaker 3: have been no flights out of Washington State that could
Speaker 3: have possibly gotten down to Phoenix or Scottsdale that night.
Speaker 3: For her to kill him could not have happened. So investigators,
Speaker 3: when they dug into this, discounted that pretty early on.
Speaker 3: But they checked on it. They were also intrigued, but
Speaker 3: they do not believe that she was the guilty party.
Speaker 7: Now you document how Carpenter becomes more and more a
Speaker 7: suspect by his You talk about lies that he says
Speaker 7: or inconsistencies we'll put it that way, inconsistencies and also
Speaker 7: suspicious behavior. Like Carpenter also called the Windmill Theater, which
Speaker 7: seemed to be out of the norm for him as well,
Speaker 7: for no reason for him to call there as well.
Speaker 3: So tell us.
Speaker 7: About some of the things that police find from the
Speaker 7: phone call they get from him, and then once they
Speaker 7: get to finally get to talk to him, some of
Speaker 7: the things that he's either revised or changed or now
Speaker 7: has said. Tell us a little bit about his odd
Speaker 7: behavior and some of the things he says to police.
Speaker 3: Well, sandwiched in between and even before calling Crane's apartment
Speaker 3: the day of the murder, and when I say day
Speaker 3: of the murder, it occurred really early in the morning,
Speaker 3: probably three to three point thirty in the morning, is
Speaker 3: pretty much the timeline that police established time of death
Speaker 3: based on food contents in Bob Crane's stomach. Carpenter called
Speaker 3: the Windmill Dinner Theater that next day, didn't only call
Speaker 3: Crane's apartment, but called made two calls to the Windmill
Speaker 3: Dinner Theater. Now, Bob Crane was notorious for showing up
Speaker 3: very late to performances. He would cut it right to
Speaker 3: the edge when he would go to the dinner theater.
Speaker 3: He would show up just minutes before Curtin. He drove
Speaker 3: the stage hands crazy. So Carpenter knew if he's calling
Speaker 3: in the afternoon asking is Bob around? Is Bob there?
Speaker 3: He knew better than anyone that Bob Crane would not
Speaker 3: be at the Windmill Dinner Theater at two in the afternoon.
Speaker 3: It just wouldn't make sense. Bob Crane would show up
Speaker 3: when it was time for work and not a moment before.
Speaker 3: He called there twice asking fishing. Police felt he was
Speaker 3: fishing and eager to find out if anybody knew whether
Speaker 3: Bob Crane's body had been discovered, whether police were on
Speaker 3: the trail, how far along were they. They felt this
Speaker 3: was all about finding out information. It was highly suspicious.
Speaker 3: I'll give you that. His friends say it doesn't mean anything,
Speaker 3: but investigators thought it meant a lot.
Speaker 7: At that time. You talk about and this is the
Speaker 7: current theme in lots of the books that are over
Speaker 7: twenty or thirty years old. Some of these cases tell
Speaker 7: us our audience just for people that don't know what's
Speaker 7: the state of DNA testing in seventy eight, and then
Speaker 7: tell us how significant is this blood type B, which
Speaker 7: is you say it's only in the present in nine
Speaker 7: percent of the population, What do they do with that?
Speaker 7: And why is there no charges at that time? Will
Speaker 7: tell us about the struggle to get enough evidence and
Speaker 7: the tension between certain factions in.
Speaker 3: This when when Carpenter kind of rose to suspicion, was
Speaker 3: not only the phone calls, the strange relationship to two
Speaker 3: of them had But a day later, Scottsdale police were
Speaker 3: curious about John Carpenter's cummings and goings in Scottsdale. Bob
Speaker 3: Junior had told investigators that Carpenter would be somebody of
Speaker 3: interest that they better look at that concerned them. Then
Speaker 3: they looked for Carpenter's rental car that he had been driving.
Speaker 1: It.
Speaker 3: This is a car that became the lynchpin of the
Speaker 3: whole case. They tracked down a nineteen seventy eight Chrysler
Speaker 3: Cordoba that Carpenter had rented. Carpenter turned it in the
Speaker 3: day that he left for the airport and took a
Speaker 3: cab to Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix. He turned in
Speaker 3: the Cordoba at eight thirty in the morning. Going by
Speaker 3: the timeline, this would be about five hours after Bob
Speaker 3: Crane was murdered early in the morning. He's in a hurry.
Speaker 3: Everyone who interviewed him that day or talked to him
Speaker 3: that day. At anybody who spoke to him or had
Speaker 3: an encounter with him, he was rushed. A carpenter says
Speaker 3: it's because his flight was that he thought it was
Speaker 3: at eleven o'clock and then realized it was at ten o'clock,
Speaker 3: so he was suddenly in a hurry to get out
Speaker 3: of there. Nonetheless, he turns in the car, and before
Speaker 3: he turns it in at the hotel, at the Sunburst Hotel,
Speaker 3: he tells the woman at the desk, the car's got
Speaker 3: a problem. When I put on the brakes, the interior
Speaker 3: lights come on. You should really take this out of
Speaker 3: the queue and have it serviced and have this fixed.
Speaker 3: So the car ends up at a dealership, a Chrysler dealership,
Speaker 3: to be serviced. SCOTTSDALELD Police tracked the car down to
Speaker 3: that dealership the day after the murder. They finally track
Speaker 3: it down, so now it's been about twenty four hours.
Speaker 3: They find the car. They approached the car, they find
Speaker 3: out that it has not been re d out to anybody.
Speaker 3: That they are trying to fix it. They look inside
Speaker 3: the car and see a blood streak on the passenger door,
Speaker 3: and upon closer inspection, there's blood on the window power switch.
Speaker 3: There are some blood smears or smudges on the door.
Speaker 3: There's a felt portion of the door in the middle
Speaker 3: of the door that had blood on it, and Scottsdale
Speaker 3: Police immediately impounded the car. DPS or State Police Agency,
Speaker 3: did all the testing on the car, and at this
Speaker 3: time DAN there is no DNA in nineteen seventy eight.
Speaker 3: DNA in nineteen seventy eight is still twelve years away
Speaker 3: from being invented, at least in a criminal sense. Invented.
Speaker 3: It was there, we just didn't understand how to use it.
Speaker 3: So they find the blood and they test the blood.
Speaker 3: They take swabs of the blood, They cut off the
Speaker 3: entire part of the passenger door that's got the blood
Speaker 3: on it. They tested and they find out it's type
Speaker 3: B blood. Wouldn't you know, Type B blood found a
Speaker 3: nine percent of the population, and Bob Crane happens to
Speaker 3: be type B. So now investigators are really focusing on
Speaker 3: Carpenter because they've got what they think is the victim's
Speaker 3: blood in his rental car, and the working theory as
Speaker 3: time went on was that the blood was deposited by
Speaker 3: the murder weapon that was placed in the passenger's seat,
Speaker 3: rubbed against the door and left the blood. And that's
Speaker 3: what became the key part of the case against John Carpenter.
Speaker 7: Now you talk about the'll they proceed with this, but
Speaker 7: how does he perform under pressure in interviews with police?
Speaker 3: Once Scottsdale Police found the blood in the car, they said,
Speaker 3: we need to go out and visit Carpenter. By the way,
Speaker 3: and you alluded to it earlier. Carpenter had called Scottsdale
Speaker 3: Police that same day that they were looking at the car.
Speaker 3: He called Scottsdale Police that morning and revised his timeline
Speaker 3: from the day before. During the phone calls to Bob
Speaker 3: Crane's apartment, he had told investigator Dean that he had
Speaker 3: last talked to Bob Crane at one in the morning.
Speaker 3: He revised that timeline to a guy on the desk
Speaker 3: at Scottsdale PD and said, let those guys know that
Speaker 3: got kind of mixed up. It was actually more like
Speaker 3: three in the morning that I last talked to Bob
Speaker 3: Crane because we had breakfast out at the Safari, which
Speaker 3: was the coffee shop at the Sunburst Hotel where Carpenter
Speaker 3: was staying. We had breakfast that morning and we all
Speaker 3: got out of there at about two o'clock, So I
Speaker 3: think I talked to him last about two thirty or three,
Speaker 3: something like that. He was revising his timeline because there
Speaker 3: were witnesses who would have known. There were witnesses who
Speaker 3: they ate breakfast with, Carolyn Berat and Carol Newall who
Speaker 3: would have known that that timeline was not correct. Hedvized
Speaker 3: his timeline in that called the Scottsdale Police. Scott Stale
Speaker 3: Police were becoming increasingly focused on John Carpenter, and in
Speaker 3: fact flew out on the first of July to interview
Speaker 3: John Carpenter out in LA. They tracked him down at
Speaker 3: John Carpenter's girlfriend's house. John Carpenter had been married for
Speaker 3: fifteen some years, but lived with a girl named Rita
Speaker 3: Klocher in an apartment and Scottsdale police went to this address.
Speaker 3: Carpenter wasn't there. They talked to Rita. Rita said he's out,
Speaker 3: he's not around. Carpenter calls the apartment out of the blue.
Speaker 3: The cops tell him that they want to talk to him.
Speaker 3: He says, I'm at my mother's house seventy miles away.
Speaker 3: I'll drive over, but it's going to take me a while.
Speaker 3: It's going to take me over an hour, but I'm
Speaker 3: coming back and I'm be glad to talk to you guys.
Speaker 3: He was very cooperative. He wasn't at his mother's house.
Speaker 3: Carpenter was staying with Richard Dawson that weekend right after
Speaker 3: the murder. He stayed with Richard Dawson Peter Newkirk on
Speaker 3: the show Heroes, and there was tension and bad blood
Speaker 3: between Richard Dawson and Bob Crane in that show, by
Speaker 3: the way, But ironically, as we mentioned, it was Richard
Speaker 3: Dawson who introduced John Carpenter to Bob Crane on the
Speaker 3: set of Hogan's Heroes. So it's now kind of coming
Speaker 3: full circle. But where does Carpenter seek refuge after the murder.
Speaker 3: He goes to Richard Dawson's house, a high profile celebrity
Speaker 3: that investigators felt he did this to provide cover, provide
Speaker 3: cover from police, make it harder to find him, give
Speaker 3: him time to get his head together, whatever it may
Speaker 3: have been. That's what they thought.
Speaker 7: Now at the same time you juxtaposed. You have the
Speaker 7: autopsy with this doctor Thomas Jarvis, Deputy medical examiner, and
Speaker 7: you talk about the manner of death, but you also
Speaker 7: talk about some abundant dry blood on the face and
Speaker 7: also a flaky white dry material in the pubic hair.
Speaker 7: Tell us about what happens with this doctor Thomas Jarvis,
Speaker 7: especially with the questions that Dennis Borckenhagen has for him
Speaker 7: regarding that flaky white material.
Speaker 3: Well, at the autopsy there is clearly dried semen on
Speaker 3: Bob Crane's right thigh and lower right abdomen. It's curious
Speaker 3: because Crane was clad in boxer shorts when his body
Speaker 3: was discovered. Borkenhagen wanted the seamen tested. He wanted to
Speaker 3: know if it was Bob Crane's or possibly and it
Speaker 3: was just a theory. Did the killer masturbate over Crane's
Speaker 3: lifeless body. That was a theory. Nobody had any proof.
Speaker 3: They just wanted the seamen collected the dried semen, and
Speaker 3: Jarvis told Borkenhagen. Borgenhagen said, can let's scrape that off
Speaker 3: and collect it? And Jarvis gruffly said to him, what's
Speaker 3: that going to tell you? That he had a piece
Speaker 3: of ass before he died, and that was the end
Speaker 3: of that because in the medical Examiner's office, they're the boss,
Speaker 3: and Jarvis didn't want to collect it, didn't think it
Speaker 3: meant anything, and that was the end of that. It
Speaker 3: would have been interesting to know if it was Bob
Speaker 3: Crane's seamen or someone else's.
Speaker 7: So that stops that part of it. But what happens
Speaker 7: with any of the evidence that they do, what evidence
Speaker 7: do they have at that crime scene that they find
Speaker 7: is that they feel is useful and able to be
Speaker 7: used as they move forward.
Speaker 3: In Bob Crane's bedroom, Bob Crane is bloodied and on
Speaker 3: partially on a pillow on his bed, blood soaked, his
Speaker 3: left side of his head caved in from two vicious blows.
Speaker 3: There are two peculiar parallel marks on skull about two
Speaker 3: inches long. This becomes a search for the murder weapon
Speaker 3: that later much later, the theory becomes its camera tripod
Speaker 3: that killed him. They arrived at that theory because of
Speaker 3: these two parallel marks and also marks on Crane's bed.
Speaker 3: At the foot of the bed there was a V
Speaker 3: shaped stain and investigators kept kind of racking their brain.
Speaker 3: What could have caused that? Was that the murder weapon
Speaker 3: wiped down twice, but it was in a very symmetrical
Speaker 3: V shape on the sheets, and one of the investigators
Speaker 3: in Phoenix was a camera tripod, a bloodied tripod that
Speaker 3: was laid down at the foot of the bed. Crane
Speaker 3: was found with a video camera power cord wrapped around
Speaker 3: his neck when he was found dead. Victoria Berry saw it,
Speaker 3: the investigator saw it. Whoever the killer was bashed in,
Speaker 3: Crane said, and Crane still may have been making noise
Speaker 3: and the killer, either in a panic to silence him,
Speaker 3: or maybe as a final feu to the victim, cut
Speaker 3: the power cord from the video camera and tied it
Speaker 3: around Crane's neck right around the moment of death. It
Speaker 3: didn't cause death, but it was kind of an ancillary
Speaker 3: act by the killer, but the V shaped bloodstain led
Speaker 3: them to believe that it was a camera tripod, and
Speaker 3: it was only years later when they put John Carpenter
Speaker 3: on trial they started pouring through all of the pornographic
Speaker 3: tapes that were shot with Bob Crane. They noted that
Speaker 3: in the videos taken in Dallas to Stop before Phoenix Scottsdale,
Speaker 3: that Crane had two tripods in his possession two quick
Speaker 3: set junior tripods. He had him with him in Dallas.
Speaker 3: When cops entered the apartment in Scottsdale, he only had
Speaker 3: one that led them to believe years later, it took
Speaker 3: him years to figure this out that it was a
Speaker 3: missing camera tripod that the killer used on Crane and
Speaker 3: then took out of the apartment. That's how they arrived
Speaker 3: at that theory. This is all in my book. By
Speaker 3: the way, the pictures are in there and you can
Speaker 3: see that v shaped stained clearly in the book. We
Speaker 3: have a photograph of it.
Speaker 7: Yeah, you've included everything. I was going to mention that too.
Speaker 7: You've got some incredible photos and even have Wow, it's
Speaker 7: a crime scene photo of Bob Crain.
Speaker 3: Some of those, by the way, have never been seen before.
Speaker 7: Dan.
Speaker 3: So you know, when we got into this, we got
Speaker 3: into evidence that really no one has had access to.
Speaker 3: We were given carte blanche and it was an amazing
Speaker 3: experience to go through that evidence years later. It was
Speaker 3: like opening a time capsule.
Speaker 7: Now before we get to the journey that you go
Speaker 7: on to try to get this blood retested. And again,
Speaker 7: as you write in a book, you don't know whether
Speaker 7: there's enough of it, or whether DNA technology has advanced
Speaker 7: that much, or whether the evidence has even survived. So
Speaker 7: you've gone quite a bit of a journey. But before
Speaker 7: we do that, fast forward to how did police finally
Speaker 7: get and you also chronicle the battle between police where
Speaker 7: police think they have enough evidence, where the county attorney
Speaker 7: doesn't think there is enough at all. So tell us
Speaker 7: fast forward to how finally they get to the point
Speaker 7: where John Carpenter's charged. I'm going to go to trial.
Speaker 3: It took fourteen years, Dan, It took fourteen years to
Speaker 3: put John Carpenter on trial. Police felt they had motive.
Speaker 3: They felt that this soft breakup between Carpenter and Crane,
Speaker 3: that Carpenter wasn't taking it very well, that Crane wanted
Speaker 3: to jettison Carpenter didn't want him hanging around anymore, that
Speaker 3: that was the motive. The opportunity was clearly the Carpenter
Speaker 3: was in Scottsdale, thirty seconds down the street in a
Speaker 3: hotel right down the street from Crane's apartment. Carpenter leaves
Speaker 3: Scottsdale the day that Crane is murdered. He makes peculiar
Speaker 3: phone calls to not only Bob Crane's apartment, but to
Speaker 3: the Windmill Dinner Theater. All of this is adding up.
Speaker 3: They have by now confronted Carpenter in two police interviews
Speaker 3: that I lay out in the book Who Killed Bob Crane.
Speaker 3: They're verbatim, and a reader will be fascinated to read
Speaker 3: this if you think John Carpenter is a guilty party,
Speaker 3: to read how he handles this interrogation, which wasn't, by
Speaker 3: the way, handled very well by the investigators, but nonetheless
Speaker 3: it's in there and it's fascinating. And in the second
Speaker 3: interview with Carpenter, they confront him and say, you killed them.
Speaker 3: We know you're about to tell us why did you
Speaker 3: kill him? It's dramatic. And I've listened to the audio
Speaker 3: of that, by the way, Dan, because there's audio recordings
Speaker 3: of this that I listened to in evidence, and you know,
Speaker 3: the written transcript is one thing and the audio is another,
Speaker 3: because you really get the sense of the tension in
Speaker 3: the room. But prosecutors just weren't convinced. They said, look,
Speaker 3: you know, it's nice you've got blood of the same
Speaker 3: blood type of Bob Crane, but you still have ten
Speaker 3: percent of the population roughly that has type B blood.
Speaker 3: How do we know that blood in Carpenter's cars from
Speaker 3: Bob Crane. It looks peculiar, But we don't have a witness,
Speaker 3: We don't have a confession, we don't have a murder weapon.
Speaker 3: We don't have a murder weapon with prints on it.
Speaker 3: They wanted something much more ironclad. And because the investigation
Speaker 3: initially had been sloppy, people were trapsing through the crime scene.
Speaker 3: Victoria Berry was in Crane's apartment making her witness statement,
Speaker 3: so she contaminated the crime scene. The medical examiner had
Speaker 3: climbed up on the bed and shaved Crane's head in
Speaker 3: bed to get a closer look at the wounds on
Speaker 3: Crane's head. Highly unorthit docs that, yeah, I mean, they
Speaker 3: had problems with the case and they knew it. They
Speaker 3: wanted something ironclad. They wanted a confession. They didn't have it.
Speaker 3: They didn't feel they had it, and they went through
Speaker 3: two prosecutors in Americopa County until they finally got Rick Romley,
Speaker 3: a tough marine who'd lost both of his legs in Vietnam,
Speaker 3: who was brought into office in nineteen ninety eight, and
Speaker 3: by nineteen ninety he was off and running and said
Speaker 3: let's pursue this thing. Let's try to let's try to
Speaker 3: figure out who killed this guy. It's time, it's too
Speaker 3: it's been too much time.
Speaker 7: Now. What new evidence did they have at that time?
Speaker 7: What did he think he was armed with other than
Speaker 7: his tough on crime stance that he was elected on.
Speaker 7: What if any new development did they have to their
Speaker 7: least so called advantage.
Speaker 3: It was called the tissue speck. When they reopened the
Speaker 3: case in nineteen ninety when Rick Romley said let's take
Speaker 3: a fresh look at it, they did not go into
Speaker 3: it with the predetermination that Carpenter was a guy. In fact,
Speaker 3: Romley said, let's revisit this from the beginning. They brought
Speaker 3: in a guy named Jim Rains, another former Phoenix PD
Speaker 3: guy who was very good. Barry Vassal, who had investigated
Speaker 3: the case with Scottsdale PD, was brought in full time
Speaker 3: to look at it. They started from scratch. As they
Speaker 3: went through the evidence, they said, there's only six pictures
Speaker 3: in this apartment. There's only six photographs of the car.
Speaker 3: They had plenty of the apartment, pardon me, I misspoke,
Speaker 3: but only six of the car that they could find.
Speaker 3: They said, there've got to be more pictures of the
Speaker 3: blood in the car. This is the most important thing
Speaker 3: we've got. They start searching for the photographs. Rains believes
Speaker 3: there's got to be more photographs than six. They finally
Speaker 3: find it a roll of twenty one photos, and on
Speaker 3: one of those photos which was discarded, was a photo
Speaker 3: of what they believed was a tissue speck, which pathologists
Speaker 3: looked at and said, that is subcutaneous tissue from the skull.
Speaker 7: That is.
Speaker 3: Matter that is not brain matter, but fat under the skull.
Speaker 3: A red speck on the car door along with the
Speaker 3: blood smears. And now they think they've got a smoking gun.
Speaker 3: Not only do we have the blood in the car,
Speaker 3: but if there's a speck of brain tissue in the car,
Speaker 3: it is game over in John Carpenter's rental car. He
Speaker 3: is the guy period. That photograph was great, but what
Speaker 3: they really needed was the speck itself, and it was
Speaker 3: either never collected or it was lost. I believe it
Speaker 3: was collected and misplaced. I think it's still maybe somewhere
Speaker 3: out there I don't know, or it got thrown out.
Speaker 3: I can't imagine how. But they could never produce a
Speaker 3: trial the actual tissue spec it was it was either
Speaker 3: lost or never collected, and that killed him because the
Speaker 3: jury wanted better proof that Carpenter was the guy, and
Speaker 3: they didn't have it. They didn't have DNA because DNA
Speaker 3: was primitive, and they didn't have that tissue spec and.
Speaker 7: They didn't have Carpenter. The defense didn't feel Carpenter should
Speaker 7: take the stand, and so he didn't.
Speaker 3: In his defense, you know, there was talk that John
Speaker 3: Carpenter wanted to take the stand and that his attorney
Speaker 3: talked him out of it. There's even discussions and there's
Speaker 3: some there's some reporting that that Carpenter actually kind of
Speaker 3: did a mock and got killed at a mock cross
Speaker 3: examination that they did, and so he realized I shouldn't
Speaker 3: take the stand. They didn't need him anyway. Now this
Speaker 3: is all presuming now that Carpenter was the guy. You know,
Speaker 3: there are a lot of people who say they chased
Speaker 3: the skuy around and they harangued him forever and he
Speaker 3: was not the guy. We'll get into that later, I know.
Speaker 3: But when Carpenter finally went on trial in nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 3: the jury wanted DNA, and by this point DNA had
Speaker 3: finally come around. Oh J Simpson was on trial that
Speaker 3: same year. DNA was in its infancy, but they had
Speaker 3: gone back and taken the blood stains from the car,
Speaker 3: the Chrysler Cordoba and tested them for DNA, but everything
Speaker 3: came back inconclusive. They tested it four times and every
Speaker 3: time they either got nothing or an inconclusive. They just
Speaker 3: could not tenant to Bob Crane's blood if it had
Speaker 3: absolutely been Bob Crane's blood. As the foreman of the
Speaker 3: jury told me in the book Who Killed Bob Crane,
Speaker 3: He said, if we knew for sure that that was
Speaker 3: Bob Crane's blood, not just type B, but Bob Crane's
Speaker 3: blood in John Carpenter's car, we would have convicted John Carpenter.
Speaker 3: But they didn't have it. The DNA was inconclusive. That's
Speaker 3: what led to my investigation. How many years later, almost
Speaker 3: twenty years.
Speaker 7: Later, you speak of the fallout from this for John Carpenter,
Speaker 7: his wife. After John Carpenter, you write that he only
Speaker 7: lasted four years, and this cloud hung over him constantly
Speaker 7: for that four years, and his wife even called the
Speaker 7: Maricopa County office when he died and said, are you
Speaker 7: happy you killed them? He's dead?
Speaker 3: That's exactly right. That was from Jim Raines, the investigator.
Speaker 3: There was some bad feeling about what had happened because
Speaker 3: the people who thought he was innocent, his wife among them,
Speaker 3: felt that they had chased this guy and tried to
Speaker 3: pin this murder on John Carpenter when he was not
Speaker 3: the killer. And as I'm sure you'll note in the book,
Speaker 3: when we get around to testing that blood, it does
Speaker 3: raise serious questions about whether John Carpenter was the guy.
Speaker 3: Now tell us just a little bit of this journey
Speaker 3: on the hurdles you had to get this test once
Speaker 3: you said, hey, I think, why don't we get this tested?
Speaker 3: And you surprisingly got the endorsement by Bob Crane Jr.
Speaker 3: His support your.
Speaker 7: Next move and what are some of the hurdles you
Speaker 7: had to overcome to be able to do this?
Speaker 3: Well, it's frankly unprecedented. According to sell Mark Body sell
Speaker 3: Mark Forensics that did the testing. They, by the way,
Speaker 3: did the testing on oj Simpson and on John Benny Ramsay.
Speaker 3: They're one of the best labs for DNA in the world.
Speaker 3: They told me they had never done this with a
Speaker 3: reporter before. They had never done it, so they didn't
Speaker 3: really know how to proceed. It's just usually police agencies
Speaker 3: that do this stuff. But before we got to that point,
Speaker 3: we had to find the evidence, and this took months.
Speaker 3: It took months for them to find it. The America
Speaker 3: A count attorney. They finally agreed that they would look
Speaker 3: for it. They I told them what I wanted to do.
Speaker 3: I said, I want to look through the evidence, but
Speaker 3: I'm particularly interested in retesting the DNA if it still exists,
Speaker 3: the samples from John Carpenter's rental car the DA's office.
Speaker 3: I give Bill Montgomery, the current DA, a tremendous amount
Speaker 3: of credit. I've had a long relationship with him. You know,
Speaker 3: I've been here in Phoenix for thirty years now. He
Speaker 3: felt comfortable that I would do it right, and he
Speaker 3: allowed me to do it. He said, if we get it,
Speaker 3: I'm okay with him testing it. If we think we
Speaker 3: can learn something more than we've known. He said, even
Speaker 3: if we learn the truth and it's not in a
Speaker 3: court of law, it may be very helpful to provide
Speaker 3: some closure for the family to finally know what the
Speaker 3: heck happened. So he was he was on board from
Speaker 3: that perspective. We had to find this evidence, and once
Speaker 3: we once we finally found it down there at the
Speaker 3: County Attorney's office. They had to go through eleven boxes
Speaker 3: of evidence and it took them months. And remember they
Speaker 3: had other cases flowing in every day, fresh cases that
Speaker 3: they had to worry about, so it took them a
Speaker 3: long time to find it. They were looking for snapcap
Speaker 3: files and tests that had been done at Cellmark years before,
Speaker 3: and they finally found it. And when I got that
Speaker 3: phone call from those guys, I can't tell you how
Speaker 3: exhilarating it was, because we had been told many times
Speaker 3: along the way, well, you know, we've got the evidence,
Speaker 3: but we don't think the blood's in there. It must
Speaker 3: have been thrown out, maybe it was a biohazard. We
Speaker 3: don't think we've got it. We're going to keep looking,
Speaker 3: but we don't think we have it. And in the
Speaker 3: book I described that phone call when and I think
Speaker 3: the chapter is called we found it, and it was
Speaker 3: just an exhilarating moment after more than a year of
Speaker 3: waiting to try to figure out could we even do this.
Speaker 3: It was unprecedented that we would be given this kind
Speaker 3: of access, and so that was it's a thrilling and
Speaker 3: frightening thing at the same time, Dan, It really was
Speaker 3: because you know, I really wanted to get to the
Speaker 3: end of this and see if if we could get
Speaker 3: an answer. And we got an answer, we just didn't
Speaker 3: get the answer that everyone expected. Why What were the
Speaker 3: issues that you didn't get the answer that you wanted?
Speaker 3: What was there DNA complications? Tell us about those complications
Speaker 3: that stood in your way? Well, the DNA was preserved
Speaker 3: in snapcap tubes in evidence in America BA County Attorney's office.
Speaker 3: They handled it all. We did not, I mean we
Speaker 3: were able to only touch it from the outside. Nothing.
Speaker 3: We had no direct contact with the evidence on the inside.
Speaker 3: No one did. It was bagged up and shipped off
Speaker 3: to sell Mark Forensics. Inside those tubes were cuttings from
Speaker 3: the final on John Carpenter's car door that had blood
Speaker 3: on them at one time. These are the same samples
Speaker 3: that have been tested four times previous. There were two
Speaker 3: that were particularly promising that we had that they had tested,
Speaker 3: that had the best blood markings on them. Those were
Speaker 3: the two that were sent to cell Mark. The others
Speaker 3: were not usable. We sent those to cell Mark. But
Speaker 3: you can imagine, having been tested four times, you start
Speaker 3: to especially with the early tests that were only looking
Speaker 3: for blood typing. They were swabbing these stains and just
Speaker 3: taking all the blood off them. The protocol would be
Speaker 3: completely different today, you'd only take a part of the
Speaker 3: blood because you only need a tiny pinprick to get
Speaker 3: you a sample. At that time, they're trying to swab
Speaker 3: the whole thing. And this happened three or four times
Speaker 3: now before we got ahold of it. So when cell
Speaker 3: Mark got it, they told me, they said, we don't
Speaker 3: see any visible blood left on these samples. We can't
Speaker 3: see it in the lab. We've looked at it. We
Speaker 3: can't see any blood. But that didn't mean that there
Speaker 3: wasn't still cellular material from the blood still on those samples,
Speaker 3: and that's what we tested. That's the DNA we got back.
Speaker 3: But with DNA, it's very tricky. If we would have
Speaker 3: had just the blood and been able to test that,
Speaker 3: we would have known that the DNA we're getting back
Speaker 3: is from the blood on the car. We got DNA back,
Speaker 3: but we just can't be sure that it's from the
Speaker 3: blood that was on the car. It could be from
Speaker 3: some other source. What I call in the book outlier DNA,
Speaker 3: which is becoming more and more prevalentis I'm sure you're aware.
Speaker 7: Tell us a little bit more about it. No, I'm
Speaker 7: not so aware about this outfier, So tell us a
Speaker 7: little bit more about this.
Speaker 3: Well, there were some famous cases where, particularly one out
Speaker 3: of San Jose, California, where a guy his DNA was
Speaker 3: found on a man who had been murdered in his mansion,
Speaker 3: a Silicon Valley magnate. This guy was a bum and
Speaker 3: a drunk in San Jose, and he got charged with murder.
Speaker 3: Turns out the paramedics had treated this guy earlier in
Speaker 3: the evening and transferred the DNA from a temperature device
Speaker 3: that they clip on your finger. His DNA was transferred
Speaker 3: on that device to this guy who had been murdered.
Speaker 3: When they treated that guy later, who had been murdered.
Speaker 3: When they went to the murder scene, they transferred the
Speaker 3: DNA from this guy onto the victim. This guy wasn't
Speaker 3: anywhere near the murder scene. He had an ironclad alibi.
Speaker 3: He got thrown in jail for many months because his
Speaker 3: DNA was found on this guy's fingers. DNA has become
Speaker 3: so sensitive dan that sometimes you bore in so far
Speaker 3: that take Carpenter's car door. The sample we got back,
Speaker 3: it is the DNA from the original blood that was there,
Speaker 3: or could it be from the guy who put the
Speaker 3: car door together. Could it be at the plant. Could
Speaker 3: it be from the cops who swabbed it. Did they
Speaker 3: deposit some DNA that we detected. Could it be a
Speaker 3: lab worker who inadvertently contaminated it. These are the things
Speaker 3: with DNA so sensitive now, sometimes you can get false
Speaker 3: positives that have nothing to do with the crime. And
Speaker 3: that is a very real possibility according to body cellmark forensics,
Speaker 3: that is very possible. But equally possible is that what
Speaker 3: we got off that car door in our sample was
Speaker 3: from Bob Crane. Pardon me, was not from Bob Crane
Speaker 3: that it just was not Bob Crane's blood in there
Speaker 3: to begin with. It was type B blood from someone else.
Speaker 3: That is possible.
Speaker 7: In your with this investigation and everything that you have
Speaker 7: found and discovered with this, despite the not so conclusive
Speaker 7: DNA tests, you still believe John Carpenter is guilty of.
Speaker 3: This DAN I don't know. It's one of those cases
Speaker 3: where everything leads to Carpenter until we get our test
Speaker 3: back and the test of the blood what was once
Speaker 3: blood in that rental car comes back, and not only
Speaker 3: is it a profile of an unknown male, but through
Speaker 3: all of this sensitive detection, we're not getting anything from
Speaker 3: Bob Crane. That's the part that bothers me the most.
Speaker 3: If that was once blood from Bob Crane on that
Speaker 3: door and the sample that we tested, wouldn't we get
Speaker 3: something from Bob Crane something right that has troubled me,
Speaker 3: that has troubled me, would be certainly the leading suspect.
Speaker 3: But this raises some serious doubt. And I will tell
Speaker 3: you this, had the prosecution had our results in nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety four, because remember everything then had come back in conclusive.
Speaker 3: If prosecutors had had this finding in nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 3: I do not believe they would have put John Carpenter
Speaker 3: on trial.
Speaker 7: Interesting throughout this you partnered, and we talked about it
Speaker 7: in the beginning about Bob Junior doing the introduction or
Speaker 7: the forward. Pardon me, so tell us about this sort
Speaker 7: of roller coaster for Bob Junior. While you're involved in
Speaker 7: this investigation, you kept in touch with him. That Barry Vassel,
Speaker 7: who this case had sort of consumed him, he had
Speaker 7: kept in touch with Bob Junior. So tell us what
Speaker 7: Bob Junior was feeling throughout this thing.
Speaker 3: I tried to keep Bob in the loop, but I
Speaker 3: also was very cognizant that we were having trouble finding
Speaker 3: all this stuff, and I was really worried that we
Speaker 3: wouldn't find the blood evidence. And I kept him in
Speaker 3: the loop, but kind of kept him a little bit
Speaker 3: on the outside, just because I didn't want to raise
Speaker 3: expectations any further than I might have already. I was
Speaker 3: concerned about letting him down. It remains my biggest regret
Speaker 3: to this day about this whole thing. I'll share with
Speaker 3: you something I've not shared with a lot of people,
Speaker 3: but I wanted you to know it. When I started this,
Speaker 3: I had no intentions of writing a book. It was
Speaker 3: to be a television story, and you know, you get
Speaker 3: into something like this and I just I remember turning
Speaker 3: into my photographer, Joe Tullman, and I said, you know,
Speaker 3: this really needs to be a book. I cannot possibly
Speaker 3: put all this in a television story. It's impossible. It's
Speaker 3: too rich. There's too much there. And the working title
Speaker 3: of the book as I was working on it was
Speaker 3: the Bob Crane Murder Case Closed. I believed that we
Speaker 3: would get those results back and it would shut the
Speaker 3: door once and for all that John Carpenter killed Bob Crane.
Speaker 3: It's just not what we got, and it was it
Speaker 3: was tough because I think we expected that's what was
Speaker 3: going to happen. Investigators thought that's what we'd get. I
Speaker 3: started to believe it. I think Bob Crane Junior believed it.
Speaker 3: You know, we wanted to finally end the speculation. This
Speaker 3: had become like the Kennedy assassination. I mean that sounds
Speaker 3: like hyperbole, but there are so many theories about who
Speaker 3: killed Bob Crane that I wanted to be, I guess
Speaker 3: selfishly the guy who ended all this crazy speculation about
Speaker 3: who killed this man. And I thought we could do it,
Speaker 3: and you know, it just it's one of those things
Speaker 3: where you start peeling the onion and sometimes it leads
Speaker 3: you down roads you never thought you'd get to. And
Speaker 3: that's that's where we a right now.
Speaker 7: Incredible after all is said and done, you've talked about
Speaker 7: I guess this question will be a little bit mood,
Speaker 7: but how affected were you by this entire investigation. You
Speaker 7: just mentioned that you know this couldn't be in a
Speaker 7: film you had to be a book, and I know
Speaker 7: what that means. When you it's a burning desire, it
Speaker 7: has to be done. It's in you. How much did
Speaker 7: this affect you? Again, you say it was a regret
Speaker 7: not being able to give more to Bob Junior, but
Speaker 7: the case in general, just the how much did this
Speaker 7: affect you as opposed to a lot of the other
Speaker 7: work you've done.
Speaker 3: Oh, you know, I've been living and breathing this thing
Speaker 3: for two years now, Dan, I mean, it becomes, as
Speaker 3: you know, I would call it an obsession. A lot
Speaker 3: of time was spent researching this, going through the evidence,
Speaker 3: which is chronicle in the book. The evidence is fascinating,
Speaker 3: absolutely fascinating. Yes, and you know, you start to kind
Speaker 3: of fall into the world of Bob Crane, his son,
Speaker 3: the people around him, that the investigators. You get immersed
Speaker 3: in it, and I don't think you can do a
Speaker 3: worthy job without getting to that place. You have to
Speaker 3: be all in. It's not easy on your family, it's
Speaker 3: not easy on the kids who want to know why
Speaker 3: Dad's riding on Saturday afternoon. But it's got to be
Speaker 3: done if you're going to tell the story right. And
Speaker 3: I'm and I believe in trying to get it right.
Speaker 3: I believe that's at the heart of everything we do
Speaker 3: with an open and honest heart. That's what I set
Speaker 3: out to do in this book. I wanted to try
Speaker 3: to put it out there in an earnest as earnest
Speaker 3: away possible as I could.
Speaker 7: And yes, and it was a noble and incredible effort
Speaker 7: here too. And you really do read take the reader
Speaker 7: on this journey with you and involve all of us
Speaker 7: as we all think we know who Bob Crane is
Speaker 7: because we've lived with Hogan's heroes and we've loved his
Speaker 7: on stage, on camera persona, and we feel that we
Speaker 7: know him to a certain degree. And it's interesting too
Speaker 7: that the family knew, the wives knew. People loved Bob
Speaker 7: Crane despite this, and if people think this is disgusting behavior,
Speaker 7: but people loved him despite this obsession that he had,
Speaker 7: and people do, like you say, are very very interesting
Speaker 7: to see what happened to Bob Crane, the beloved movie star.
Speaker 7: I want to thank you very much for coming on
Speaker 7: and talking about who killed Bob Crane? The final close
Speaker 7: up John for those of the people that might want
Speaker 7: to follow up, and do you have a Facebook page?
Speaker 7: For this website. How can people follow us up and
Speaker 7: see may contact you about.
Speaker 3: This, Dan, thank you and thank you for the time.
Speaker 3: You've been a great host, and I admire what you
Speaker 3: do and your passion for what you do and to
Speaker 3: your listeners. If you're interested, I would be so honored
Speaker 3: if you'd read the book. Go to Who Killedbobcrane dot com.
Speaker 3: That's the easiest way to order it, Whokilledbobcrane dot com.
Speaker 3: From there you can get links to Amazon, Barnes and Noble,
Speaker 3: all your fine booksellers. You can just click on it
Speaker 3: right there. It's easy, and we've got a very interesting
Speaker 3: page with evidence, photos, stories, blogs. I've talked a lot
Speaker 3: about this on that page and I think if you're
Speaker 3: interested in the crime, you'll find it interesting.
Speaker 7: Well, thank you very much for the kind words, and
Speaker 7: it's been a pleasure talking to you about your great book,
Speaker 7: Who Killed Bob Crane. Thank you very much for this time, John,
Speaker 7: It's been a pleasure. You have a great night, and
Speaker 7: hope to talk to you again in the near future.
Speaker 3: I hope so, Dan, thank you so much.
Speaker 7: Thank you, good night, Y