I'm Kate Winkler Dawson. I'm a journalist who's spent the last twenty five years writing about true crime.
And I'm Paul Hols, a retired cold case investigator who's worked some of America's most complicated cases and solve them.
Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most compelling.
True crimes, and I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring new insights to old mysteries.
Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime cases through a twenty first century lens.
Some are solved and some are cold, very cold.
This is buried Bones. Hey Kate, Hey Paul, you ready to go on Bob Crane.
Absolutely, I want to hear it.
I'm surprised you didn't text me in the middle of the week and say, okay, tell me a little bit more. I mean, it's a big one when somebody is not who you expect them to be, and now there's these suspects and people around in sort of a sleazy world in a way, so it's interesting.
Well, I think yeah. That was one of the takeaways from the first episode, is the victimology. Because all I knew about Bob Crane is the actor, and now you start to see, well, everybody has their thing, and it looks like he's got this whether he's making poorn, but he's doing something that seems a little shady and I'm interested to see how that world develops. Is that the
reason he ends up dead? Is it because of these affairs that he's having, these you know, sexual flings that he's having, and you got jealous men that are coming after him, you know, So there's a lot of stuff going on with him.
Absolutely, let me do a quick recap and you know, catch everybody up. So we're in nineteen seventy eight Scottsdale Hotter in Hell and it's June and Bob Crane is there. We don't know for how long, but it sounds like just for a few weeks, maybe a month, staying in a little apartment doing a dinner show, and he has a co star coming over. She discovers his body. The police then discover a large amount of photos of naked women on polaroids, as well as a lot of video.
He's got video equipment everywhere. He's been hit twice in the head and he has a cord ripped from a VCR around his neck, and you know, this is a very bloody scene. There's no signs at forced entry. But at the end of the last episode we talked about well, I mean a gun pointed at you would not indicate forced entry either, So we can't really rely on that.
But there are jealous boyfriends, and there's a wife who thought that she was going to be reconciling and now she finds out that it doesn't sound like he's gotten out of this sex addiction is what he claims it is at this point. So the police are investigating a good friend of his named John Carpenter, electronics salesman. We're assuming most of the electronics in this apartment and probably what he had in LA are sold to him or
given to him by John Carpenter. So one of the big questions will be for us, what does John Carpenter get out of all of this? The mystery will deepen once we find out a little bit more about their relationship. Did I get everything right or do you have any other questions or anything I haven't covered?
No, I think that you know from the investigative side, that pretty much sums it up. One of the questions that I have is what was the autopsy finding? You know, in terms of you said there was two blows. I mean I could see the two lacerations. Was there signs of strangulation?
Okay, there's a deputy medical examiner, a guy named Thomas Jarvis, this is from John Hook's book, who performed the autopsy. So he was almost fifty years old when he died. Type of death is listed as violent, no kidding, the manner by blunt instrument and chord. Here are the abnormal findings,
abundant dry blood on face, hair, and upper chest. The autopsy report also noted a flaky, white dry material on the pubic hair, right lower abdomen, and right anterior thigh, which they said was likely semen, but they never tested it. Police later theorized the killer may have masturbated over Crane's dead body after the killing, which John Hook says is a final fuck you quote unquote, But it was a theory and they never tested the semen and never came
to a conclusion about what it was. And that's all the information I have about what they found. Okay, what do you think about that? The way they described it, does that seem likely? If this is a man Is it a fuck you masturbating over somebody? Is that what that is? I always thought it was sort of a sexual.
Component, So that does happen? You know, you have these offenders that will masturbate after they've they've killed their victims. You know, Is it a form of denigration to the victim? Potentially, you know, but it's a it's a sexual act. It sounds like they didn't collect these items, these stings. You know, it's like, oh good god, we're talking about all the you know, these these photos of nude women and and and videos of women having sex his bedsheets. That's a
huge source of information. There's all sorts of DNA from these various sexual encounters, and most certainly there could be evidence from the offender and stains on that sheet for maybe a prior occasion, if there had been a relationship between the offender. Right now, I'm assuming the offender is male.
I don't know if Crane is having sex with men, but I wouldn't end up saying no, that's an impossible because all the subjects of his photos and videos, as far as what you've told me, are women, you know, but you know, is crying somebody that is you know, crossing into homosexual acts. That opens up a whole other suspect pool. And it's like, who has he had sex with? And you can answer that by swabbing his body, by collecting his bed sheets. You know, that is so huge.
There's limited number of reasons why people are killed in terms of primary motives, and one of the primary ones is it's who they're having sex with, whether it be a man or a woman. So you need to collect that evidence up front.
Okay, Well, let's talk about John Carpenter and his relationship with Bob Crane. And yes, we know they didn't collect anything another failing. They did some good things and some bad things here. I mean, I'm glad he had her answer the phone that one time, even though I know it contaminated even more of the crime scene. It was interesting that he called twice, you know, and what his reactions are in all of that. But at the same time,
forensically they're failing. Scott Stale police are not doing a great job right now.
There's a struggle going on there. Yeah, things could have been done better.
Well, let's talk about the police interview. They are looking at Bob Crane's inner circle, as any police would, and they start talking to a lot of people. They're getting conflicting reports because they really are focusing on John Carpenter, for better or for worse. There were reports that they got along great, these two guys, and there are reports that they had been on the outs, and a few days before Bob's death they were in a heated argument.
We don't know about what. And Bob Crane Junior, who was close with his dad, gives police this quote, and I promise this is all going somewhere more than just they probably irritated each other every once in a while. There was an indication just in a passing conversation with my father that John Carpenter coming into town was getting to be a little bit of a pain in the ass. My dad expressed that he just didn't need Carpenter kind of hanging around him anymore. So let me explain what
the relationship was like. John had cultivated this transactional relationship between Bob and himself. So for Bob, John has this access to equipment that I'm sure Bob is clueless about. So he gets all of this great equipment for something that he's obviously preoccupied with. And that's a big part of Bob's life, and John gets the proximity to Bob, so he gets Hollywood fun, he gets women and sex.
And the men have even taped themselves. I'm assuming they've found these tapes in threesomes, so there is some kind of intimacy. I mean, the range of two men and a woman in a threesome could go, you know, many different directions, but there's certainly an intimacy and a comfort level there with the two men.
So it sounds like per Crane's son that Bob Crane was starting to say John Carpenter was more of a hanger on and not as desired at this point.
Yeah, in the relationship, and he and his wife were getting back together if we believe the wife, you know, he's in therapy, although I don't know if those tapes say that.
But yeah, and so now this this becomes interesting from potentially a motive, you know, was John Carpenter starting to sense that Bob Crane the celebrity, was pulling away from him and that his lifestyle was going to be changing. You no longer have access to the women, to the Hollywood you know, lifestyle, whatever that was with Bob Crane.
Did Crane tell him, you know, hey, stop coming around, you know, and now you could have somebody being very upset as a result of it's basically a breakup, you know. And so Carpenter most certainly is an interesting suspect, you know. And I'd say he's a suspect for sure, I just right now. You know. My fear is is that maybe law enforcement so focused in on him that they didn't pursue other leads as rigorously as they possibly should have.
Yeah, I mean it sounds like it. Let me give you a little tiny bit more insight. I mean, this is such a gross quote, but the Phoenix New Times back in nineteen seventy eight said women were drawn to the still popular crane like fish to a worm, and
Carpenter didn't seem to mind dallying with the leftovers. Gross And so, you know, the theory for the police, which they thought was the strongest of any of these suspects and any other theory they had, was that John was motivated, just like you said, to kill Bob because Bob was stepping back from their friendship. Bob apparently had been saying he was going to try to get back together with
his wife. John says none of that is true. He said, I came to Arizona on June twenty fifth, and all of this happened on the twenty ninth, so it sounds like he had been there for three or four days. And he says, look, I was there to do some business and to hang out with Bob. They said, what did you guys do together? He said, we tried to pick up women. So much for therapy and getting back together with your wife. So this is a funny line from Marin. And then I want to hear from you.
She said that they tried to pick up women and then Bob was successful. John was not. And the last night that John was in town, he brought a woman back to the hotel and put the moves on her, and at three am, the woman asked to be taken home, so he dropped her off. And he's unaccounted for from three am until eight am when he checks out the hotel and he goes to the airport. So there's this five hour window, according to John, where he could have absolutely carried out.
This murder for sure. This also goes to where we know John Carpenter changed the time that he said that he left Bob Crane from one am to two forty five am, and I mentioned what sounds like he's concerned about witness possibly seeing him later than what he stated
he was there. And now there's this woman and I don't know if she has ever identified, but his from his perspective, he's seeing an homicide investigation unfold and he's going, oh, they are tracking people down, and they're going to find out about this woman. And she's going to say I was with him several hours past the time that he
said that he had actually left Bob Crane. One of the thoughts that I have though, is if John Carpenter is truly enjoying the lifestyle with Bob Crane and Bob Crane is starting to pull away, well, killing Bob Crane basically completely ends that lifestyle, you know, so there is there's an argument to be made that Carpenter would be more motivated to have Crane alive than dead if he wants to have any potential future relationship with Crane and
all the various advantages that gives Carpenter in his life. You know, that's you could most certainly see where in a fit of rage, you have a homicide occur because of this. Let's say a breakup between Bob Crane and John Carpenter, and possibly if a tripod was used as a bludgeoning device. This doesn't sound like it's pre planned homicide. He's not coming in with a weapon. He's utilizing something that is found within the apartment. The electrical cord is
something that is coming off of a VCR. And I think it's significant that. I mean, I've seen offenders pull electrical cords out of various devices and use them as binding and or ligature material, but it's significant that he's choosing an electronic device. The offender's choosing an electronic device versus maybe drapery cord or something like that. So would that kind of suggest you know, Carpenter is familiar with
these electronicquipment. He knew that possibly this VCR has a power cord and that would be very easy to be able to yank out of it, just the way it's attached internally. However, the victimology also just keeps the door open to the possibility that you have the jealous male coming in and taking Bob Crane out.
Yeah, and I think that, like I said, they are really really focused on John Carpenter and just the squishiness of his timeline in general, I think is what gets them. So let's talk about evidence. That's what you and I care about. Also, police need to find the rental car that John Carpenter had used. He had been there four
or five days, he said, I rented a car. So a few days after Bob is found dead, they finally locate this car and it's having mechanical issues and was being sent to a repair shop, which I think probably would have been a nightmare. Of course, having other people in the car, because it's a rental car would have been bad too. But the police find it, they toe it, and they start looking at some things. So in a minute, I'll have you look at the car. Well, actually, go
ahead and look at the car. Now, it's not a Cadillac, but it's a Chrysler Cordoba. I don't know if that looks like a Cadillac, So look on your bump crane photos. Also, Paul, there's a doc I don't I guess I skipped over it. There's a little diagram in there from the police. I don't know if you're going to think that's helpful or not.
To be frank, this this crime scene sketch is quite artistic. This is unusual.
Looks like a like a pro create drawing to me, like a really high level drawing.
Well, this is you know, this is where Obviously the person who did this sketch for Scottsdale PD is a talented sketcher. But like if I were the mentor of this person, I'd be slapping him on the back of his head saying, you're taking too long because you're putting in detail that is not needed. He's got the you know, wrinkles in the sheet and shape to the pillow, and it's like, no, you know, this is we need to get moving on this, you know, collecting evidence. We can't
be sitting here trying to make a pretty sketch. So this tells me there's a level of inexperience. As good as this sketch appears visually, it's like, no, it's too much, it's overkilled. We have photographs to fill in those details. Okay, So I'm looking at a photograph. It's indicating that this is John Carpenter's Chrysler Cordoba. So this was a rental car and this is you know, your typical boat of
a car from the nineteen seventies. Yeah, yeah, it's you know, you got the massive trunk, you probably got a massive front bench seat. It appears to be a Tudor car. This photograph to show in the car from the rear, you know, so I'm seeing the tail lights. You know, it's a massive car. And I know we have this witness that sees what was described as a white Cadillac.
White Cadillac look like this back in the nineteen seventies, you know, so this is where Okay, this car, this Cordoba, is probably something that would easily be confused for a Cadillac from this this era. So I think you mentioned it when you're talking about the white Cadillac in the first episode that yeah, you could probably you know, throw a rock and hit one because they would be so popular. So it's not I can't put a lot of weight that carpenter has a vehicle that I would say matches
what that witness said about a white Cadillac. But it is important evidence in that. Okay, what is found inside here? Is there anything from the crime scene that could be you know, inside to this rental car. You know that today maybe with DNA we could tie back, you know, is there blood transfers or other aspects. Hopefully they did a thorough job processing this.
So let me look and go back and forth, so don't skip ahead. But we do have photos kind of everything. Every time I say something, we've got a photo. So first up is going to be in the backseat of the passenger side of what's confirmed to be John Carpenter's rental car, technicians find a small dry blood smear on the switch that rolls the window up and down. John hook says they weren't drops of blood. These were more
like streaks or smudges or smears. So that's what you see on page five of your doc.
It's important that they're finding blood because you have a homicide victim that is bleeding. So is it possible the offender walked out from that homicide with blood on his person, on his clothing, on an object, let's say the murder weapon that is transferred inside the rental car? For sure. However,
at this point it's a rental car. Who else has been inside this car and is bleeding until that blood is owned to be Bob Crane's blood with DNA, you know, for me, it's like, yeah, it's important, but you need to do DNA in order to interpret it as having any relevance to this crime.
Yeah, and there's a couple of other things. So there's a bunch of other stains. I guess if you kind of go through, you'll see there are a few other stains. Blood on a power window switch, you know, blood stains on the passenger door. There is a tissue speck on the door panel, and then there is going to be one more little bit down there that they believe is brain matter that was found in the car.
Wait a second, So okay, So this tissue spec on door panel believed to be from Bob Crane's skull lost or never collected.
So they took a photo of it but never collected it.
What the hell?
Well, we've established, Paul that Scottsdale pet is overmatched.
Here, So I mean, how can they even say anything about this? Let's see here, I do not know. So I'm zooming in and I see that. You know, there's a ruler that in you know inches American standard measurement ruler, and this red glob is about one sixteenth of an inch in diameter. It's got three dimensions to it. There's a closeup photo of this tissue spec on the next page. When it's initially photoed, you know the coloration, it's looking bright red, and then this close up photo it's looking brown.
It's like this globular mass that to be frank. Just from its physical appearance, I couldn't draw any conclusion as to what it is. I have processed, you know, thousands of items for blood for tissue over the course of my career. I've seen them at a crime scenes, seen it on items of evidence within the lab, and this mass could be anything. I literally cannot conclude what it is. And I will tell you I've seen stains on physical evidence that I was like, that's blood, and then I
test it and it's not blood. And I've seen stuff, let's say, inside a car. I can think of one thing where I've got this reddish brown it looked like dried blood and tested it and it was not blood. And so that's where you know I have developed a level of cautiousness. I can look. I know what a crime scene looks like. I know what blood looks like, fresh looks like when it's coagulating as it's outside the body. I know what it looks like when it's dry, when
it's been subjected to environmental influences. But now there's a photo of this globular mass that they never collect, and they're saying it's coming from Bob Crane's skull.
They're not sure. I know, I know, you know.
I can't. I personally and I have a level of expertise, I cannot draw that conclusion. It seems like somebody's really reaching on this item of evidence. And there's these other bloodstains in the car. Did they collect those? And has DNA testing been done on those?
Let me get you jumping way ahead, buddy, so you just hang Remember this is a two part and we're not ten minutes. Let me tell you what they do. So thankfully, they do pull a sample of the blood. It is type B rare and Bob is a type B. John is not. Bob says, I have no idea how the blood got in there. I don't know what you're talking about. He volunteers to go back to Arizona. He does not get a lawyer. He says, I'll take a lie detector test, and I'll take truth serum sodium pentothl.
Yes, so pentothal sure, which just.
Sounds like an interesting way to die. Truth serum or even go under hypnosis, and he says, I don't have anything to hide. You know, the police are very frustrated. For years, they remain focused on John Carpenter. The tangible evidence against him is scant, so every so often there's a tip. There's a housekeeper at the Scottsdale Hotel where John stayed. She found a bloody pillowcase and a washcloth
in the room he had slept in. But these are thrown out, and you know, her dates are kind of off, so we don't even know if that's where John was. And then we get to the blood tissue stuff. So you know, you saw the photo and we talked a little bit about it. The reason this photo comes up is more than a decade later. So this is in
the early nineteen nineties. There's a detective named Jim Rains, and he looks at the case with fresh eyes and finds what Entertainment Weekly calls a previously unseen crime scene photo of the rental car. There's no sample, nobody acknowledges this brain tissue is what they're calling it. And this detective the decade or so later, finds this photo that nobody recognizes. He finds medical experts who say that the
photo there's no negatives. Pull He finds these experts who say the photo it shows what appears to be a small piece of human tissue stuck to the interior side of the passenger door. Their theory is is that John beat Bob Crane to death with this tripod, they're assuming, and then got in the car and carried all of this, you know, biological evidence with him. It might have bumped or rubbed against the car door, he tossed it in
the back, who knows. And that is when they end up arresting him with this little discovery right of this photograph that you say, we can't even tell whether this is brain tissue or not, but this to them a decade later is enough to arrest him. Just so you know, he had completed a short stint for molesting his girlfriend's ten year old daughter, so they knew.
Where he was. It sounds like at the very beginning of this case that they built against Carpenter. And what you were laying out is that they did ABO blood testing on the bloodstains and it came back type B and Bob Crane is type B. So I'm just having to go back to my ABO typing charts.
I was wondering you. I knew you were listening to me, but I was wondering what you were doing at the same time.
As an example, then there's a reason why we moved away from ABO typing, and it's because it's not very discriminating. Now Type B. You know, it's a smaller percentage of the population, so there's a little bit more weight that can be put on it. But I'm looking at I had to go. I have an old book, it's called The Source Book of Forensics Sorology, but on the fly, trying to find what I needed was going to be
too much, so I'm just going online. And this is pretty cool because I didn't have this back in the day.
But they've actually got the percentages of the blood types per ethnicity, if you will, across the world, and I'm looking at type B, and depending on where you're at, it's anywhere from nine percent of a population up to I'm seeing as high as thirty five percent, like one third of the population of certain ethnicities are type B. Basically, they cannot exclude this blood as being from Bob Crane, but I can't put depending on the ethnicity who knows
who's been bleeding inside this rental car. Depending on the ethnicity background, one third of the population of that person's ethnic background could be Type B. This is where hopefully they still have this evidence and we do modern DNA testing on it and then say yeah, this is Bob Crane's blood inside John Carpenter's rental car. Now I'm on board right now. It's just like, well, you can't exclude all it is is a weak inclusion from a physical evidence.
I'm just talking physical evidence by itself. That blood Type B inside the rental car is just like, well, I can't eliminate Carpenter on that.
And you know, back then they said when they found it in the early nineties, they were saying the estimate was one in seven people had Type B. But right are they looking at the different ethnicities? And who knows? Their point is that it's rare enough for John Carpenter to still be in their crosshairs, that it was just too weird. You know.
Sure, well then they you know, I was listening, but they said, this is where the investigator found a previously unknown crime scene photo. So let me hear what you were talking about with that.
Well, that was the brain matter one that you looked at. So the point with that tissue I know I'm putting, I'm gonna put quotes brain matter. The point of that photo is that they didn't keep the evidence. There's no way of identifying what that actually is. But it was enough to arrest John Carpenter more than a decade after Bob Krane's death.
Again, just speaking from the physical evidence it's been presented. No, there isn't probable cause on that. Now, you know the investigative side, his movement patterns, statements he's making. You know that all has to factor in as to whether they've actually built sufficient probable cause to arrest. I'm not convinced that they have that with what you've told me.
I mean, I don't know what it was like in the seventies, but if you rented a car and then return the car, I would assume they would clean it and examine it in between each rental. I mean maybe not.
I'm kidding. You know, I travel a lot. I mean rental car companies today are very very good, but I have had some rentals that are dirty. They're you know, they smell like weed. You know, it's it's like really you're you're you're not even trying, you know, to clean the car. So no, I are the rental car technicians really paying that much attention to maybe there's a red stain on you know, the window, you'll ever, No, they're not,
you know. So that's just where we know that there's a transient population that has been in and out of this particular car. And so to put any weight on the blood and that globular mass as being related to the homicide with the testing that they've done, no, you can't draw that conclusion that is right now. I think that's on the level of almost absurdity. They need to find that evidence and do DNA testing to show it's from Bob Crane.
Okay, here we go. Let's talk about the trial, and we do talk about this quote unquote brain matter. So John Carpenter goes on trial in ninety four. Bob Crane was murreed in seventy eight, So this is what sixteen years later, and two pathologists testify for the prosecution. They say that a piece of human tissue would shrivel up after a few hours on a hot day and a car. But based on these photos you know that were taken, I guess as soon as they found the car, which
would have been a few days later. The sample appeared fresh more than a day after John turned in the car. So I think this was not good for the prosecution because they're saying, we didn't find this car on the day that his body was discovered. We found it four or five days later.
Right, And that was my observation. I talked about how bright red that initial photo was, and then when they had the close up photo, it's all shriveled up in like this brown globular It's almost looks like like these this little globular amber like substance. And you know, this is where you know, I have to be cautious. I can't say it's not tissue, but I'm looking at it, going that doesn't look like what I have personally witnessed in actual homicide cases where I can test it and
know what it is. You know, It's like I can't draw any conclusion as to what that mass is.
Yeah, well let me tell you. I mean the prosecution just gets shamed. I think through this whole trial, there are technicians they put on the stand who process the car as a crime scene, and they can't remember hardly anything about doing this in seventy eight, and they barely remember seeing any blood even let alone this tissue on the passenger door. So they're useless. So they're out the door.
The defense then says, you guys can't identify any of this stuff based on these photos, and they put a DPS Lieutenant colonel on the stand who is supposedly an expert, who says, according to the crime Laboratory, even under the best of circumstances, it's unlikely that stains or substances can be identified as blood, smears or tissue just by looking at photographs. Therefore, a confirmation of any stain as being
blood or tissue requires extensive laboratory testing. Therefore, it must be assumed that personal examination of the door panel did not reveal tissue, that no evidence was destroyed. So I don't know what that means, Like, what was that a kernel of popcorn? I mean, what is he saying?
No, well, I mean he's saying. What I'm saying is that you can't draw any conclusions from these photographs. You have to do testing. The undercurrent about that is for people like myself and like this Lieutenant colonel out of Arizona DPS lab. We've seen the spectrum, let's say, of bloodstains and various colors and forms it takes. And that's where you can't say, well, hold on, I've got this here, this mass as an example, and that looks like this,
so therefore it's got to be human tissue. And from Bob Crane's skulls, there's no way you can jump to that conclusion. We have also been fooled ourselves when we go, wow, that really looks like blood and then we test it and it turns out it's not blood, you know. So that's fundamentally what he's saying. Now that the last phrase that you read, I didn't understand the meaning of that. And what did he say at the end of.
Their So he says, you know, the confirmation of any stains as being blood or tissue requires extensive laboratory testing.
Which you said golden, yep.
Yes, he says, Therefore it must be assumed that the personal examination of the door panel did not reveal tissue, and that there was no evidence that was destroyed because it wasn't there to begin with, is what he's saying. And then let me tell you what another person says that gave me a little bit more perspective. Prosecutors can't explain why police reports in seventy eight didn't mention the tissue photo or the speck itself, or why there are
no negatives. A jury is going to be asked to believe that an untold number of investigators and prosecutors for whom a solution to the famed Crane murder would have been career crowning as an achievement, never noticed that stinkin photo. So I don't know where they think the photo came from, but it doesn't sound like it's even remotely a possibility that there was a brain spec found in the back of the car, because that guy would have been under arrest much sooner most likely.
Yeah, so I'm going back to these these photos. So one of the things that I'm looking for is definitely you know, in the lab, when we take photos of physical evidence, you know will use a scale so you have a sense for the size of the stain or whatever you're looking at. But oftentimes the scale will have the lab number or the case file number and the item number written on it, so the photograph shows it's
from this case and it's from this item. And so you know, with what I'm seeing of these photos, there's a there's a steel ruler that is being used to show size of various stains. But there's no markings anywhere in these photos within the photo itself to indicate what case it's associated with. And that's not to say it's these photos are from some other case. It's just that that would be something that I, as a reviewer of
the processing and of the documentation, would be noting. And I also think it's notable I mentioned it's a steel ruler. This steel ruler, and this is something you know, back in the day I'm guilty of, we had plastic ones, but this is a this is a ruler that is being used from case to case to case to case. It's a source of contamination, and this day and age, we would use something that's disposable so we don't track, let's say, DNA from a previous homicide into a current
homicide that we're working. But it looks like this this photo of the car door, the inside panel, you know, it's so cropped, but it doesn't look like that's currently attached to the car, So it's like it was removed and possibly the entire panel, if not, the entire door was collected. You know, so this is where Okay, they say they can't find this evidence, Well, is there a paper trail? You know, where did it go? If it went to the lab, did it go from the lab
back to property? Where in property was at place? You know? How rigorously have they looked for this evidence. I've got my own cases, you know, from back in the day, in which we can't find the evidence. And then you find it and it's been placed in the wrong box. You have to start rolling up your sleeves and start going through where it most likely is going to be. Have they done that? This is such a critical These
bloodstains inside Carpenter's rental car are so critical. They have to exhaust everything in terms of trying to find it because it could prove the case and show that yes, if Bob Crane's blood is inside Carpenter's rental car, I'm going, okay, yeah, he's the killer. But if it comes back and it's not even Bob Crane's blood, then it's just spurious and they got nothing on Carpenter to be frank.
Yeah, absolutely, And I think you hit the nail on the head because the prosecutor's case fell apart and annoinege On Carpenter is acquitted by the jury.
You know, and this is this is a problem.
And this is not the end. Poll hole, So don't you tell me your statement. But don't think this is the end. Don't say bye bye. I'm gonna go have a drink a bourbon now, because there's more of this.
No, but but this is where, you know, you take a weak case to court and you get an acquittal, you're done. Don't take a weak case like this to court because now, let's say they do test, they find those those bloodstains out of Carpenter's rental car, and it comes back to Bob Crane. They can't prosecute him. All they can say is, well, we now know who the right killer, the right guy is, but he's free and clear.
Well he was free and clear for four years and then he dies. So you know, after that, there are of course lots of people who say that John definitely was the one who killed Bob with a tripod and a VCR cord. And you know, he probably took the tripod and folded it up and put it in his case and took it back home to LA with them. And then there are other people who say, listen, the
police really dropped the ball here. I don't know if they should have called the state police or what, but that they dropped the ball and they didn't investigate enough. And then there are more developments. But what I can tell the way you sit up that usually I can When you sit up like that, that's how I usually can tell you've got something to say.
Well, I think you know. This is where agencies need to recognize what they're good at and what they might want to reach out for help, you know, and this case was not handled right based off of what you told me. But I'm not going to cast I'm not going to say bad things about Scottsdale PD from nineteen seventy eight, but I can guarantee that the agency right next to them, Phoenix PD, has very experienced investigators, very
experienced csis. This is where you have agreements when you're a smaller agency, recognize your weaknesses and get MOUs in place with the resources that you can pull in when
you have a case like this. And you know, this is something that I've seen over and over again, and notably, let's say John Bene Ramsay, where you have a smaller inexperienced agency who probably should have called in Denver homicide to be frank, you know, kind of a similar type of scenario where from the very beginning, it really underscores that you have to do it right from the very beginning, otherwise you can possibly just completely kill the case.
Well, let me tell you, you know, John Carpenter dies and this case goes very cold. So in the mid two thousand tons, the reporter I told you about, John Hook, who wrote the book, was given permission to submit the blood samples from John's car using you know more updated or using updated DNA processes in which were available during earlier phases, which were not available during earlier phases of the investigation. So according to Hook, this is what the
testing concluded, and this is from him. John Hook really did think that John Carpenter was responsible for this. The DNA found on the door of John Carpenter's mental car is not from Bob Crane. The test actually picked up two DNA profiles, a major contributors from a man we don't know who he is. The second is from a
partial profile too degraded to reach any conclusions. So what John hook says, is I still think he's the guy John Carpenter, But I mean the DNA detected and our test might be completely unconnected to the crime, might have been depositive before after you know, who knows. It's unlikely this has anything to do with the crime in general. But that was the conclusion. And just as a note, Paul,
they said that. And I don't know if you want to call somebody and double check that this is the truth or not, but they said that all of the samples in Bob's case are done and can't use him anymore. They've all been used up, so there's no further DNA testing possible.
Well, and I you know, when you start talking about DNA tech technology in the mid twenty ten range, we're talking modern DNA technology. This is where now you have the discriminating power. At least with the sample that they got results on, they've eliminated Bob Crane as being a contributor to that bloodstain. Just like what I say it was saying before, it's like it's somebody else's. It could
be somebody else's. It's a rental car. So you know, it's unfortunate if they've completely consumed the samples that they don't have results on. Because the technology from a sensitivity standpoint has greatly improved since the twenty ten timeframe, it's possible with the current law enforcement type of DNA testing that maybe they could get a result. I guess my question would be is why are they saying it's now consumed.
It's because they consumed the entire extract. Have they consumed, you know, the swab that they used to collect it. Do they still have let's say, the door panel. Can you go back and reswab that area? But absent being able to do that, I think that one test in and of itself pretty much in all likelihood. Okay, you've got a bleeder inside this rental car. That's and that
blood is not coming from Bob Crane. Well likely the other blood stains which have very similar color appearance, you know, they don't look like they you know from a temporal standpoint that some of these stains have been there much longer than other stains. Likely all those stains are from that same bleeder that's not Bob Crane, you know. So this is where the physical evidence against Carpenter, at least from that rental car is you know, you have to
throw all of that out. You can't rely upon that at all, you know, the circumstantial case he is, he's a suspect. I just don't think that they have enough to be confident he is one responsible. Do you know did they ever go out to LA and search Carpenter's residents? I have an issue maybe with Carpenter bringing a murder weapon back home with him flying it. You know, I would think he would have gotten rid of that somewhere in the you know, Scottsdale, Phoenix area.
Yeah, And I was thinking, Paul, what would make those stains in the car? Like I guess the theory is is that he uses a tripod he beats Bob Crane to death. It's not that he's using a knife and he's cut his hands. It's that the blood was transferred from the tripods somehow in the car. But do the patterns that you saw make sense for flinging a tripod into the back of a car. And would he do that? To begin with? Why would he do that? It's a rental car, you know.
You know you have one blood stain where obviously you have a finger that has blood on it that is being used to operate the window switch, right, that's obvious, you know. So I would say that chances are as those blood stains are being transferred because the person has blood on their hands, and not so much that it's because you've got a bloody tripod that's being flung back there.
It's not going to be touching that part. If it's a tripod that's leaving those linear those parallel linear stains on the bedsheet, that's a significant amount of blood on the legs of that tripod. And if that is not cleaned off and that's thrown in the trunk or that's you know, thrown into the back seat or something, you'd probably see some fairly significant transfers if those particular legs with blood on them are contacting surfaces within the car versus.
What I'm seeing in those photos is more consistent with somebody transferring blood from their fingers. And it may not be the person's own blood. It could be somebody else, you know, maybe this car was used in a different homicide, who knows, you.
Know, or someone with a bloody nose. My kid gets bloody noses a lot, so who knows, you know.
Sure you know they've got if they put a bloody nose and transfer that onto their fingers. But right now that blood is irrelevant. It's not related to the crime per modern DNA testing. So now it's okay, you think it's John Carpenter. How do you prove it's John Carpenter in this day and age, you know, are they going to get any further circumstantial evidence against him? You know it's going to be tough.
Yeah, and I don't see that. I'm assuming they did Search's apartment and didn't find anything. They never found the tripod which was Bob Crane's tripod, if that's what was used, and so you know, this just becomes a big mystery, and that's why it's an unsolved case. I guess the big movement would be if somebody like a Pole Hooles calls, you know, Scottsdale PD and says, do you guys still have any biological evidence anywhere, any kind of evidence at all from this Bob Crane case.
Well, and that's where I would be going back to the original. You have to go to the origin of the crime, which is Bob Crane's body, where Bob Crane is killed, and then an outer circle, if you will, is whatever they collected out of their apartment, how much Layton processing did they do? Do they have any latents
that are unidentified? Today we always get Layton's out of houses if we do a decent job, and we always find Layton's that we can never identify because you have so many people that flow in and out of that apartment. But we have technology today that if they have unidentified latents, they could identify that person and go that person was.
You know, like I had one case in GSK where we got super excited because in the bottom of the victim's phone there was an unidentified Layton, and one of the examiners identified, you know, forty some odd years later, and then investigation showed that turned out to be a telephone repairman. That's why his Layton is on that phone. It's not GSK. But you have to go through those motions. And so this is where if I were to look
at this case today, it's like I want everything. I need to see the entire case file, and I need to see the entire evidence list of what was collected back in the day, which should be in the case file. I would also need to go to property and start auditing the property room, like my old property room. For these old cases, they use three by five index cards really kind of a pretty pretty good file system for back in the day that wasn't computerized. Do you still
have those cards? And on the back of the card would be written information as to this evidence was destroyed on such and such a date whatever, you know, so you establish a paper trail. If you don't have the paper trail, that's like, well, where would this evidence normally be kept in the property room? And are there cases from this era that are in this area. Have you guys opened up the boxes to see is there bob crane evidence that got just put somewhere else where it
shouldn't be. You know, that's just the reality of what happens with these old cases. And so this is part of if I get involved in the case, that's all part of the step to compile the current state of the case at this point in time, in the current state of the evidence that exists, and then make decisions on how to proceed from there.
It's been a while since I think you've gotten this excited about a case, and I understand why. You know, I'm always trying to think about what the lesson is when we do these cases, things that I think about, you know, with historical cases, and sometimes I put them in a couple of different categories. There's one category where it's clear the police in the eighteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds, or even in the nineteen seventies want to do everything
they can. They know they don't have the technology to solve this. Now, they collect everything in the best way they know how. And then there are the investigators and the prosecutors who are doing things that where they should know better and they're not doing them. And we've talked about climbing over the body to shave it right then and there, you know, putting on a case that is clearly weak based on a photograph that's not going to lead you anywhere, and ruining any chance of being able
to prosecute this guy later on. So you know, there are these balances where I look at the investigators in the past and just go, man, I'm so sorry that you will that you had to attach a magnet to a fishing line to try to find a gun in a river. I mean that was fortitude. But then there are other times where I just think, yeah, you really didn't even think about what was going to happen. What consequences were of your decisions.
I don't want to just call out incompetence. I think oftentimes you have very well meaning individuals that are working a case, but they don't have the experience, they don't have the expertise. And that goes back to when you say the message, you know, this case here, if properly done. In nineteen seventy eight, sexual assault case were being done on victims' bodies, Fingernail scrapings were being collected, crusty material from pub care was being collected out of you know,
the agency I worked for in the Bay Area. If they didn't do that, this is where you go, Okay, they were in over their heads. And that's where agencies just need to know what they don't know and be prepared when they have to recognize I've got a case that my agency cannot fully handle. I need outside help in order to do this right from the very beginning.
So that's maybe a better takeaway. The better takeaway here is get over yourself about taking the lead on a case because it's your jurisdiction or it's your town, and call and help when you need it. Here, they call the Texas Rangers. Also, you know, I mean there are resources that everyone has certainly more than they used to have, I'm assuming. So okay, I like that too. So you know, as we move along in our seasons here, I want to definitely keep an eye on the really good performances
that we see, the impressive people. Sometimes you say, I didn't know that pathologist figure that out, And I've done that too, So I'm surprised sometimes and then sometimes I go, don't what is going on with these people? So it's good for you to tell me the difference between just people who are malicious or don't give a shit versus the people who just clearly are sort of drowning in a case that has you know, more to it than they can handle.
Yeah, no, that's for sure, you know. And and most certainly there are just negligent individuals and law enforcement that purposely are just lazy and they don't try, you know. But oftentimes what I see, you know that the general population is going to blame that. But oftentimes it's what I think is going on here is that you know,
it's an experience. Yeah, and maybe you know certain things like you know, evidence tracking within the evidence room, property room could have been more robust back in the day than what it sounds like they have, you know, but I'm not convinced just because I've seen it before. Where and it's it's because of experience? Is that? Nope, we can't find the evidence. So the case is done. And
I was like, did you really look, you know? Or is your property technician just telling you, hey, there's nothing on the shelf under that case file number. Then I'd go, well, you need to go back and you need to look. It didn't look well.
Next week? Can I guarantee you that we're not going to have lazy investigators?
No?
I can't. Will there be investigators, yes, that's about the only thing I can say that. We will have people looking into a crime. And that's it. But every week to week, I'm always interested in seeing how you rate these people, and you know, some of them I press for sure. So we'll see what happens next week.
All right. Again, I'm looking forward to it, and thank you again for bringing this case to me.
You got it. This has been an exactly right production for our sources and show notes go to exactly right dot com, slash Buried Bones sources. Our senior producer is Alexis Emirosi.
Research by Maren mcclashan, Ali Elkin and Kate Winkler Dawson.
Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.
Our theme song is by Tom Bryfogel.
Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.
Executive produced by Karen Kilgarriff, Georgia hard Stark and Danielle Kramer.
You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at Barry Bones Pod.
Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a Gilded Age story of murder and the race to decode the criminal mind, is available now, and
Paul's best selling memoir Unmasked, My life solving America's Cold Cases is also available now