WHO KILLED BOB CRANE?-John Hook

can play for free, anytime, anywhere with daily bonuses. That's your brighten your day, Lowe actually a lot, so sign up now at Chumbuck Casino dot com. That's Chumbuck Casino dot com.

of all time. Thirty eight years after his brutal murder in Scottsdale, Arizona, millions around the world still want answers was John Carpenter the killer or did police arrest an innocent man. For nearly forty years, police remained convinced of Carpenter's guilt. Early DNA testing decades ago was unable to positively link Carpenter to the crime. The two friends lived on the edge, sharing a dark obsession videotaping women during

their sexual encounters. In an unprecedented investigation, reporter John Hook retests the original blood evidence using modern DNA science in a final search for answers. Scientists believe this is the last chance to test DNA from the crime scene. The final close up in identifying Bob Crane's killer, Hook has exhausted all remaining avenues to unearth answers in this intriguing and haunting cold case. Will he close the book on

the Crane murder once and for all? Who Killed Bob Crane is Hook's first hand account of a two year investigation and search for the truth. It's seen through the eyes of the people who are there, witnesses, detectives, prosecutors, jurors, and family members. John Hooks takes readers on an incredible reporter's journey for inside look at the sensational physical evidence in a final attempt to learn the truth in Who Killed Bob Crane? The Final close Up with my special guest,

journalist and author John Hook. Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for agreeing to this interview John Hook.

Hogan's Heroes. But then when I came out to Arizona, I happened to come out here in the summer of nineteen seventy eight, two months after Bob Crane was murdered in Scottsdale, A mirror seven miles up the road from my dormitory. So this story and Bob Crane has been with me almost my whole life. I could have never imagined that I would end up in the middle of it by retesting the DNA evidence from the original crime.

But once I was in journalism and started to work on stories and understand more about covering crime stories, this story intrigued me. And when I interviewed his son for a TV show back in March of twenty fifteen, Bob Crane Junior, who wrote the forward for the book Who Killed Bob Crane by the Way, which was a tremendous honor, I interviewed him and felt very strongly the pain of a son who had gone through this and lost his father and really didn't have any answers as to who

killed his father. And it haunted me for days. I finally, and I can't tell you, Dan how it came to me, But a few days after the interview, it was sticking with me, sticking with me, and I thought, what happened to all that evidence? Was it around? Could it be retested if we found it? What could modern DNA science tell us that they couldn't get back In nineteen ninety four, when John Carpenter, chief suspect in the case, went on trial, and so he was the first phone call I made.

I called him and said, if we find this, Bob, how would you feel about his retesting it? And there was silence on the phone, and I thought I had offended him. And he said, oh my god, do you think that's possible? And I said, Bob, I'm going to give it a shot. Are you okay with it? And he said yes? But that long silence. Dan was uncomfortable

because I really thought I had offended him. But once he understood what I was doing and what I wanted to do, which was really end this for the family, and that's how I got involved.

Carpenter's rental car. The two were pealing around together, making X rated videos together, pornographic videos. He and Crane would travel on the road. Carpenter worked for a KI, he worked for ken Wood, he worked for Sony. He was a video whiz, and he was a very successful video salesman by the way, John Carpenter, and this was the glue that bound he and Crane together, the interest in betting women and videotaping it. And that's what John Carpenter

introduced Bob Crane too. And so when blood was found on the door of John Carpenter's rental car here in Scottsdale, and then they tested that blood and it turned out to be type B blood, which happened to be Bob Crane's blood type, you can imagine what police instantly thought. So the blood we tested was what was on that door panel in John Carpenter's rental car, but first we had to find it.

he played the drums live on the air. He had scintillating guests. When he moved to Hollywood and got the job at CANX, he had started on the East Coast in Connecticut, New York. He had worked small markets and became so good on the East Coast that CBS took notice and said, this guy in Connecticut is siphoning our listeners from our mothership in New York. City. We got to get this guy out of here. So they moved him out to LA to CANX to be the morning guy.

When I believe it's Jack Storer went to I think it was a sixty four thousand dollars pyramid or one of these shows. He was the original morning guy. They got Crane and tapped him to replace him, and so Crane became a huge, huge radio star. He was dubbed the King of the La Airwaves out in LA on can X, which is just a blow towards station. So when he's out there and he's doing this mad cap morning show, producers in Hollywood started to take notice of

the comic genius of this guy. And Crane was also starting to reach out in television. He was getting guest shots on Donna Reed, on the Old Dick Van Dyke Show with Mary Tyler Moore who just passed away. He was starting to make some inroads Twilight Zone. He was getting guest shots. Then this script comes along for Hogan's Heroes and he reads it and he doesn't quite understand what they're trying to do, but he recognized the comedy of it, and it was a brilliant script, and he loved it.

class Connecticut. But when he gets out to Hollywood and he starts seeing California, and I mean all of California and not just the topography, if you know what I mean, his interest in women and pornography grew and it eventually consumed him and cost him that first marriage. There's no doubt about it. So as his celebrity grew, and his access to women grew, probably by the mid fifties, certainly by the late fifties, he was playing around and he

was taking polaroids and snapshots to some of this. So he was doing some of this early on, but it wasn't until he met Carpenter on the set of Hokin Zeros, when he met John Carpenter, that ignited the firestorm that consumed them. Because Carpenter introduced him to videotape, which at that time was only consumer consumers couldn't get their hands on it. It was only industrial type, you know, technology.

So Carpenter introduces Crane to this. And Carpenter had been introducing people like Red Skelton and Elvis and people like that to this technology and teaching him how to use it. The Smothers Brothers, among others. He was teaching kind of the mucky MUCKs in Hollywood how to use this new technology, and for Crane it became a vehicle for pornography.

and document his sexual encounters. So tell us what the relationship started with like with a Carpenter and really was what did this relationship entail? Well, they were pals and Carpenter, you know, has been portrayed as a hanger on and a loser, and some of this is true that he was a hanger on, but he wasn't a loser. He was one of the first national salespeople in the country for Sony Electronics. Carpenter was doing pretty well on his own.

He had been raised hard scrabble in La born of Indian descent, a Native American descent and Spanish descent, so gave him a stark complexion and always referred to himself as an Indian. He and Crane strike up this friendship after being introduced by Dawson. They corrous around strip clubs in La because Crane loved to go into strip clubs and play the drums. Beyond all of the work he was doing, he still loved to be around women and his music, and he was a frustrated jazz musician. Buddy

Rich was a big influence. These are people he idolized, but being in a strip club playing the drums was probably his nirvana. But he and Carpenter would palle around and then when they started picking up women, Carpenter showed him how to videotape this stuff and they would hit the road, and particularly once Crane was out doing the dinner theater circuit. Once Hogan's Heroes was canceled in nineteen seventy one, Crane was still doing TV spots, but he had to pay the bills and he ended up going

out on the road doing dinner theater. That's what brought him to Scottsdale, Arizona Carpenter. As in the usual way they would operate, Carpenter would meet him on the road. Crane would have all of his video equipment in tow and it was very bulky and junkie back then, and he had it in his apartment in Scottsdale when the murder happened. Now, as far as the family goes, you talked to Bob Junior, how much did the family know about this? Obsession and what did they do as a

result of that obsession. The two daughters were too young to really know. They have more of an idealized version and vision of their father than Bob Junior has. Bob, as he tells me in the book Who Killed Bob Crane, that his father's sex talk to him really revolved around showing him kind of X rated films. That was their Birds and the Bees talk. Bob Junior was certainly aware of his father's dark room in California and that this wasn't just a man cave, but it was a place

where his pornography was really taking hold. And Bob Jor knew where the sash was, looked at it himself and was very familiar with what his dad was up to, and his dad, to some degree, didn't really hide it. His dad just kind of passed it off as I'm intrigued with beautiful women. Here's some if you want to look at it, and it was that kind of thing.

He wasn't ashamed of it. However, as this obsession with pornography grew, it certainly harmed Crane's personal life, and it certainly harmed his career as well, because executives at Disney on down were starting to catch when that.

About John Carpenter. What was said at that time and what you think the relationship was turning into or changing to.

to see him perform? I even have the recount in the book of his last radio interview, which was at the station that I currently work. It was cool radio, and he was definitely looking ahead to fifty and worried about whether he would be viable in the entertainment business. It worried him. As time was going on, he relayed to his son that he felt Carpenter was becoming a nuisance.

Carpenter had been meeting him out on the road for several years by this point, and they would go wherever Crane's dinner, theater engagements took him, whether it was Austin or Phoenix or some far flung city. Crane would have his video equipment. He'd be on stage for an hour and a half at night doing Beginner's Luck, and then he had to fill the time the other hours of the day, the other eighteen nineteen hours of the day. He wasn't a drinker. He wasn't a smoker. I didn't gamble.

He was a womanizer.

little bit cree police theory. That's Bob Crane Junior's theory, and Bob Crane Junior felt as his father was hitting fifty he wanted to make changes in his life and shed some of these habits, some of the hanger ons, particularly Carpenter, and kind of start to reassess a little bit. His son believes he was in that process and it came to a head in Scottsdale in the summer of seventy eight.

yet wanted to be included in three ways. Do you think this difficulty as Bob got a little bit older, as you write in the book, sometimes they would go out and they would strike out in terms of not getting lucky as opposed to Bob Crane probably having a better track record on his own. Do you think this pould have been part.

you might understand it because it's a risky lifestyle. No one knew this about Bob Crane at the time, except the very intimates in his circle that he was obsessed with pornography, a lot of people didn't know this. So when he died here in Scottsdale, when he was murdered, it was a shock not only to us here but to the nation that this kind of belve guy on television that we'd grown up with would meet this kind of fate. Crane could still pick up women. He had

a very good track record. Carpenter hanging around was something of a distraction. Perhaps was even maybe a bit of an albatross around Crane's neck when he'd go out, because he had to worry about what Carpenter was up to and what Carpenter was thinking and feeling. They were friends, but I think it became a bit of a burden to him, at least that's how his son felt about it.

at this dinner theater. Tell us about what's different about this weekend and the relationship before we get into just previous to the day of the murder, and tell us about Carpenter and Bob Crane and their activities during that last day and that last weekend.

here to see Bob Crane and pick up women. That's why he would come out on the road. Usually they would stay together. Crane would have an apartment Tip, a two bedroom apartment when he was performing in Beginner's Luck, provided by the theater. The theater paid for it. Crane stayed in it, but it was two bedrooms, so he'd have Carpenter stay with him and they would cat around

until all hours of the morning looking for women. Bars at that time in Phoenix closed at one o'clock, so it was a fairly early night by East Coast standards. But on this particular trip, Carpenter did not stay with Bob Crane. He stayed at a hotel down the street. And this was also a sign that Crane was trying to distance himself from Carpenter didn't want him staying with him,

and this had actually started earlier in Dallas. Carpenter stayed a few nights in Dallas, the stop before the Beginner's Luck stop in Scottsdale, he also stayed in a hotel there. So for the last couple of trips they were not staying together. Crane was, in the view of investigators and his son emancipating from Carpenter, and Carpenter was not apparently taking a well, and people saw them have an argument.

It wasn't openly hostile, but the waitresses and bartenders at this establishment in Phoenix saw them having this very intense discussion where the body language was such that Carpenter was very unhappy and put out by whatever was going on.

been Carpenter's last night in Phoenix. In Scottsdale, he was supposed to leave the next morning on a flight to la and Crane was supposed to take him to the airport. That was the plan that never happened because Bob Crane was killed. They attended the performance of Beginner's Luck at the Scottsdale Windmill Dinner Theater. They get out to the parking lot and very interestingly, that night, the tire on

Crane's vehicle, the right rear tire is flat. Now you can imagine when investigators look at this in hindsight, the right rear tire is flat. In a darkened parking lot at the end of the performance, and many people read that that that may have been could have been Carpenter that let the air out of the tire to leave by Crane vulnerable in that parking lot, trying to change a tire late at night, where that might have been the first attempt to kill him. That's what investigators thought.

They were a little bit divided on that point. Some thought it was a coincidence. But what are the chances on the night you're murdered that you have a flat tire out in the parking lot. I suppose it could happen, but it certainly looked suspicious to investigators. Instead of fixing it, Crane says, let's get in the car and we'll drive down there. So they drive to the Arco station about

three hundred yards away. They get the tire change, go back to Crane's apartment after the performance, and they had out and pick up women. They did their usual routine, only this night both of them struck out, and that's where we end up the night ending Carpenter going to his hotel, Crane going to his apartment, and the two of them having a telephone conversation very late or actually early early in the morning on Thursday.

been out at the bars. And then Carolyn Berat, who was Crane State, met them there. So there's the four of them at this cafe having breakfast and making small talk, talking mostly about taping shows. By the way, they end up out in the parking lot. Carpenter takes his date Newell home, and as he's walking out to his car, Crane is a little bit behind with Carolyn Barray, who was a local. They are saying their goodbyes and Carpenter says something to Crane. He seems upset, and Crane says,

what's the matter with you? What's up? And Carpenter responds either, according to Brat, I'll see you later or I'll see you tomorrow. Because remember, the plan was for Bob Crane to take John Carpenter to the airport that next day when Carpenter was flying out, and so that's the last that anybody that we know of sees Bob Crane. That night. Crane says goodbye to Carolyn Bray. She resisted his advances. He wanted her to come to his apartment. She wouldn't.

He offered to go to hers, she wouldn't let him. Carpenter, in the meantime, takes Newell, a young girl in her early twenties, maybe twenty, up to his hotel room. They kiss, They roll around on the bed a little bit. She wants to get out of there. He's quite a bit older than her, he's in his forties, late forties, and insists that he take her home. And he was a gentleman and did took her home just a few minutes away. And goes back, according to Carpenter, to his hotel room

and calls Bob Crane. This is John Carpenter's account that he called Bob Crane and said what are you doing? And Crane says, I'm standing here in my apartment editing Saturday night fever in my boxer shorts. It's kind of an odd conversation half, but that's how Carpenter remembers it, and that's what he told police. So he says everything's fine, and that Bob Crane struck out and that he struck out, And Carpenter says that I know you're busy tomorrow, I'll

drive myself to the airport. Now, the plan was for Crane to take Carpenter to the airport. It was noted in Crane's day planner that was by his bedside stained with his blood when they found him the next day. So Carpenter insists that he made this arrangement to cut off Crane taking him to the airport, that he drive himself. He hangs up, he packs for twenty more minutes, and then he says that he calls Crane again. Now, this

to me is a little bit suspicious. If you've already had this conversation, why do you need to call the guy again? And this aroused my curiosity and investigators what's left to talk about? But Carpenter says he called them back a second time twenty minutes later. How are you doing? What are you doing? Well, I'm standing here, I'm editing Saturday night Fever and my boxer shorts and I'm going to go to bed. And Carpenter says, well, great, I'll call you when I'm back in California. That is a

version from John Carpenter. Police believe otherwise. Police believe that he went to Crane's apartment that night after he had struck out. Crane opened the door let him into the apartment because he knew him. He may have been even perturbed that he was coming over that late, but it was two thirty in the morning, probably, but Crane's motto in life was don't make waves, and so he would have let him in. But he also Dan would have

let in a woman. If a woman had come to his apartment late at night to play around, he would have let her in. So this is where police have to figure out who did Crane let into his apartment that night? Because there was no sign of forced entry into that apartment, and even someone with a key would have made a lot of noise opening up two locks on the front door. A Crane was a notoriously light sleeper.

If the killer had come through the arcadia door, which looked out on the pool in the back of the apartment, the killer would have had to come through a tangle of video cables and TV sets and video equipment lined up along that arcadia door, and trying to enter in the dark would have been a nightmare and probably would have knocked something over and awoken Crane, and it also would have been a noisy entry. So police theorized that the killer was let into the apartment willingly by Bob Crane.

No sign of a struggle in the apartment, no sign of forced entry.

Silence of the Lambs. You join by logging onto www dot hunt a killer dot com and applying for membership. They're growing so fast that they've limited their membership to two hundred and fifty members each week. If you're accepted, you'll receive an email with a private link to complete your registration. From there, a package arrives on your doorstep each month, filled with physical items and correspondence curated by their serial killer that have to be decoded, deciphered, and

investigated to unravel the cases. And there's forums, secret facep Facebook groups, podcasts, and live videos to help you through your sleuthing. They've been featured on BuzzFeed, Fast Company, Hell. The editors at bussel are writing weekly about their journey, and it's because Hunter Killer is building this cult like community of hunters around the interactive investigation Now. I can't recommend this membership enough And if investigating isn't your thing,

you probably know someone who would love this. As a gift, help support our show. They've offered a ten percent discount for our listeners, which is tracked to this message. Use the code murder and get ten percent off one word murder. So head on over to hunt killer dot com and register. Now tell them we sent you hunt to Killer dot com.

When we last last off, John, we were just about to talk about what happens the discovery, and I wanted to take take you back to how he is discovered because it's interesting as well that one of the women that he was working with, supposedly Bob is supposed to meet him for some rehearsals supposed voiceovers at his apartment. Tell us about this Vicky pardon me that discovers Victoria pardon me actress Victoria Barry, how she discovers Bob and in what state.

part she'd had was in Starsky and Hutch. She'd had a bit part in that she goes over to see Crane and have him help her do this overdub Now, who knows what else was on Crane's mind, even her mind. Because they had been in bed twice during the run of Beginner's Luck, they had had a sexual relationship. It was infrequent, but there was some attraction there, and they had gotten together before, so you can imagine she goes over there two in the afternoon. Who knows what would

have happened. But she gets to the door. They are going to ostensibly do work theater work kind of in Crane's apartment using his video equipment. She knocks on the door. There's no answer. She knocks on the door and calls out, Bob, Bob. No answer. Now they have this meeting, and Crane is usually pretty good about keeping his appointments. She decides to just kind of open the door, thinking maybe he's out on the pool in the back, and to her surprise,

the front door is open. He always locked his doors. Crane had become very careful about locking his doors, and this was known to anybody who was around him. So for the door to be open it kind of startled her, but she walked in and it was completely dark in the apartment. She heads out to that arcadia door. Picture in your mind, going through a door of an apartment and straight ahead is a window covered with drapes. It's completely dark, but the pool would be out that window,

the arcadia door. She goes to that arcadia door and opens the drapes to see if Bob may be out by the pool. She's calling out his name in the apartment and there's no answer. The apartment is pitch dark. She's trying to adjust her eyes. No answer from Bob. He's not out by the pool. She ducks back into the apartment. Deep her into the apartment and takes a right hand turn which leads into Bob Crane's bedroom. She pushes open the door and Bob Crane is dead in

that bed, though she doesn't realize it at first. She sees a form, a lifeless form in that bed with dark streaks and believes it's a woman with long, dark hair, and she's thinking the woman maybe shot herself or killed herself. She can see the blood now. Her eyes are adjusting, she thinks that one of Bob Crane's girlfriends has taken her life in his bed, because others had threatened that before, girlfriends of his, so it wasn't a completely novel concept.

Upon closer looks, she thinks it might be the form of a man. But could it be John Carpenter his friend? Could it be Bob? She doesn't know. She runs out of the apartment screaming, runs into a woman in the apartment complex, screaming, tells her there's somebody dead in the apartment,

and they call the police. Scottsdale Police. Scottsdale Police arrive about two twenty, just a few minutes after the discovery, and then we're off and running trying to figure out first who's dead in bed, and what the heck happened in that apartment and is it Bob Crane?

ahead and pick it up. She picks it up and it's John Carpenter on the phone calling Bob Crane's apartment. He wants to know where Bob is. She says he's not here right now, and then Lieutenant Dean grabs a phone from her. He says, this is Lieutenant Ron Dean from the Scottsdale Police Department. We have an incident here Carpenter says, well, this is John Carpenter on Bob's friend. I'm back in LA. I just wanted to tell Bob I'm here. Carpenter never asks what the problem is in

the apartment. He never asked, and police say he never asked because he already knew the answer. But at this point they didn't really know who this John Carpenter was. But John Carpenter was trying to make it very clear to police that he was in La not in Scottsdale. He was back home and had been there for many hours, starting to as investigators would later believe, build an alibi.

He was building a timeline and alibi to try to tell police, in so many words, don't look at me, I'm back in LA and I have nothing to do with this. He even said to Dean on the phone that he had talked to Bob late at night, that Bob was going to take him to the airport, but Carpenter said, I'll take myself, and I'm going to take myself and drive myself to the airport. And that's the last time they spoke was when Carpenter called him on the phone the night of the murder, just hours before

twelve hours before. That's what Carpenter's story was, and he was sticking to it. So he calls once and then he calls the second time, but in between he calls the apartment twice. In between those two calls, he calls Bob Junior. He calls Bob Crane's son, a highly unusual move,

according to Bob Crane's son. He told me in my book Who Killed Bob Crane that Carpenter would typically if he would call him at all, he would call him before a trip to see his father to get video equipment, to get a cable that his father might need, but never at the end of a trip. The trip's over, there's no reason to call. He calls Bob Crane Junior and says, hey, Hey, Bob, this is John, just wanted to check in. Lets you know, I'm back from my

trip with your dad. Everything's fine. If you need anything, call me. And as Bob Crane tells me in the book Bob Crane Jr. He's so taken aback by the call. He said he literally held the phone at the end of the call and looked at the receiver and said, what was that all about? He was shocked and it instantly called it a sixth sense. He was instantly concerned, and after sitting on it for a few minutes, he called the apartment to find out, just to kind of

check make sure everything's okay. And Victoria Barry answered the phone that time and she said, no, your dad's not here. He said, his dad there. No, it's Victoria. And Bob Crane Junior knew who she was. She said, no, your father's not here. She was a consummate actress. She never let on that anything was wrong. Here's Bob Crane dead just thirty feet away, and she's pretending that everything's fine.

She doesn't want to alarm him. He says, Well, when he gets back, tell him that I called and thank him for the card because he had sent him a birthday card. Bob junior birthday was right around this time. And so sandwiched after that call is the second call from John Carpenter, highly suspicious, same thing where he's trying to discuss the timeline, and we can get into that if you wish, but investigators, at that point, we're very kind of wondering who this John Carpenter was who kept

calling the apartment. Very odd.

drive back to Bob Crane's apartment. Bob Crane is late because he wants to call his wife, Patty. They're in the middle of a bitter divorce. They've got a son together, Scotty, who's six or seven years old. At this point, he was just about turning seven. They have a conversation that, as typical during this period, ended in a lot of shouting and yelling, and Carol Carflood upstairs heard this conversation. It was a one sided conversation, but she could hear

Bob Crane screaming. She even remarked to her husband, who I've interviewed, that if he doesn't stop screaming, he's going to lose his voice and not be able to perform the next night. That's how loud it got. Even by John Carpenter's own testimony, he was so alarmed that the voice was so loud that he looked outside the window in Crane's apartment. He was there with him after the performance. He wanted to make sure nobody overheard all this because

it was getting loud. They were arguing, and Crane slams down the receiver, so they had a big fight, big row on the phone. Crane slams down the receiver, storms out of the room the back bedroom, says to Carpenter that woman, that woman, let's go, let's go find some music. And they hit the road and went out looking for girls.

Their typical strategy. But that fight was interesting because Bob Crane Junior thought all along that his mother in law, this is Bob Crane's second wife, now Fraulein Hilda on Hogan's Heroes. He married her, that's Patty. Bob cran Junior always felt that Patty would have been a very strong suspect in this murder because she had money to gain.

If Bob Crane died while they were in the middle of this divorce, she would get it all, and that became a real source of suspicion for Bob Crane Jr. The only problem is is that the phone records are very clear and the flight records are very clear that Patty Crane was in Bainbridge, Washington, on an island with Scotty, their son, and it would have been impossible for her

that phone call was made to Washington confirmed. There would have been no flights out of Washington State that could have possibly gotten down to Phoenix or Scottsdale that night. For her to kill him could not have happened. So investigators, when they dug into this, discounted that pretty early on. But they checked on it. They were also intrigued, but they do not believe that she was the guilty party.

Dinner Theater. Now, Bob Crane was notorious for showing up very late to performances. He would cut it right to the edge when he would go to the dinner theater. He would show up just minutes before Curtin. He drove the stage hands crazy. So Carpenter knew if he's calling in the afternoon asking is Bob around? Is Bob there? He knew better than anyone that Bob Crane would not be at the Windmill Dinner Theater at two in the afternoon.

It just wouldn't make sense. Bob Crane would show up when it was time for work and not a moment before. He called there twice asking fishing. Police felt he was fishing and eager to find out if anybody knew whether Bob Crane's body had been discovered, whether police were on the trail, how far along were they. They felt this was all about finding out information. It was highly suspicious. I'll give you that. His friends say it doesn't mean anything, but investigators thought it meant a lot.

And why is there no charges at that time? Will tell us about the struggle to get enough evidence and the tension between certain factions in.

that day. At anybody who spoke to him or had an encounter with him, he was rushed. A carpenter says it's because his flight was that he thought it was at eleven o'clock and then realized it was at ten o'clock, so he was suddenly in a hurry to get out of there. Nonetheless, he turns in the car, and before he turns it in at the hotel, at the Sunburst Hotel, he tells the woman at the desk, the car's got a problem. When I put on the brakes, the interior

lights come on. You should really take this out of the queue and have it serviced and have this fixed. So the car ends up at a dealership, a Chrysler dealership, to be serviced. SCOTTSDALELD Police tracked the car down to that dealership the day after the murder. They finally track it down, so now it's been about twenty four hours. They find the car. They approached the car, they find out that it has not been re d out to anybody.

That they are trying to fix it. They look inside the car and see a blood streak on the passenger door, and upon closer inspection, there's blood on the window power switch. There are some blood smears or smudges on the door. There's a felt portion of the door in the middle of the door that had blood on it, and Scottsdale Police immediately impounded the car. DPS or State Police Agency, did all the testing on the car, and at this time DAN there is no DNA in nineteen seventy eight.

DNA in nineteen seventy eight is still twelve years away from being invented, at least in a criminal sense. Invented. It was there, we just didn't understand how to use it. So they find the blood and they test the blood. They take swabs of the blood, They cut off the entire part of the passenger door that's got the blood on it. They tested and they find out it's type

B blood. Wouldn't you know, Type B blood found a nine percent of the population, and Bob Crane happens to be type B. So now investigators are really focusing on Carpenter because they've got what they think is the victim's blood in his rental car, and the working theory as time went on was that the blood was deposited by the murder weapon that was placed in the passenger's seat, rubbed against the door and left the blood. And that's what became the key part of the case against John Carpenter.

He revised that timeline to a guy on the desk at Scottsdale PD and said, let those guys know that got kind of mixed up. It was actually more like three in the morning that I last talked to Bob Crane because we had breakfast out at the Safari, which was the coffee shop at the Sunburst Hotel where Carpenter was staying. We had breakfast that morning and we all got out of there at about two o'clock, So I think I talked to him last about two thirty or three,

something like that. He was revising his timeline because there were witnesses who would have known. There were witnesses who they ate breakfast with, Carolyn Berat and Carol Newall who would have known that that timeline was not correct. Hedvized his timeline in that called the Scottsdale Police. Scott Stale Police were becoming increasingly focused on John Carpenter, and in fact flew out on the first of July to interview John Carpenter out in LA. They tracked him down at

John Carpenter's girlfriend's house. John Carpenter had been married for fifteen some years, but lived with a girl named Rita Klocher in an apartment and Scottsdale police went to this address. Carpenter wasn't there. They talked to Rita. Rita said he's out, he's not around. Carpenter calls the apartment out of the blue. The cops tell him that they want to talk to him. He says, I'm at my mother's house seventy miles away. I'll drive over, but it's going to take me a while.

It's going to take me over an hour, but I'm coming back and I'm be glad to talk to you guys. He was very cooperative. He wasn't at his mother's house. Carpenter was staying with Richard Dawson that weekend right after the murder. He stayed with Richard Dawson Peter Newkirk on the show Heroes, and there was tension and bad blood between Richard Dawson and Bob Crane in that show, by the way, But ironically, as we mentioned, it was Richard Dawson who introduced John Carpenter to Bob Crane on the

set of Hogan's Heroes. So it's now kind of coming full circle. But where does Carpenter seek refuge after the murder. He goes to Richard Dawson's house, a high profile celebrity that investigators felt he did this to provide cover, provide cover from police, make it harder to find him, give him time to get his head together, whatever it may have been. That's what they thought.

Jarvis told Borkenhagen. Borgenhagen said, can let's scrape that off and collect it? And Jarvis gruffly said to him, what's that going to tell you? That he had a piece of ass before he died, and that was the end of that because in the medical Examiner's office, they're the boss, and Jarvis didn't want to collect it, didn't think it meant anything, and that was the end of that. It would have been interesting to know if it was Bob Crane's seamen or someone else's.

At the foot of the bed there was a V shaped stain and investigators kept kind of racking their brain. What could have caused that? Was that the murder weapon wiped down twice, but it was in a very symmetrical V shape on the sheets, and one of the investigators in Phoenix was a camera tripod, a bloodied tripod that was laid down at the foot of the bed. Crane was found with a video camera power cord wrapped around his neck when he was found dead. Victoria Berry saw it,

the investigator saw it. Whoever the killer was bashed in, Crane said, and Crane still may have been making noise and the killer, either in a panic to silence him, or maybe as a final feu to the victim, cut the power cord from the video camera and tied it

around Crane's neck right around the moment of death. It didn't cause death, but it was kind of an ancillary act by the killer, but the V shaped bloodstain led them to believe that it was a camera tripod, and it was only years later when they put John Carpenter on trial they started pouring through all of the pornographic tapes that were shot with Bob Crane. They noted that in the videos taken in Dallas to Stop before Phoenix Scottsdale, that Crane had two tripods in his possession two quick

set junior tripods. He had him with him in Dallas. When cops entered the apartment in Scottsdale, he only had one that led them to believe years later, it took him years to figure this out that it was a missing camera tripod that the killer used on Crane and then took out of the apartment. That's how they arrived at that theory. This is all in my book. By the way, the pictures are in there and you can see that v shaped stained clearly in the book. We have a photograph of it.

doesn't think there is enough at all. So tell us fast forward to how finally they get to the point where John Carpenter's charged. I'm going to go to trial.

Scottsdale the day that Crane is murdered. He makes peculiar phone calls to not only Bob Crane's apartment, but to the Windmill Dinner Theater. All of this is adding up. They have by now confronted Carpenter in two police interviews that I lay out in the book Who Killed Bob Crane.

They're verbatim, and a reader will be fascinated to read this if you think John Carpenter is a guilty party, to read how he handles this interrogation, which wasn't, by the way, handled very well by the investigators, but nonetheless it's in there and it's fascinating. And in the second interview with Carpenter, they confront him and say, you killed them. We know you're about to tell us why did you

kill him? It's dramatic. And I've listened to the audio of that, by the way, Dan, because there's audio recordings of this that I listened to in evidence, and you know, the written transcript is one thing and the audio is another, because you really get the sense of the tension in

the room. But prosecutors just weren't convinced. They said, look, you know, it's nice you've got blood of the same blood type of Bob Crane, but you still have ten percent of the population roughly that has type B blood. How do we know that blood in Carpenter's cars from Bob Crane. It looks peculiar, But we don't have a witness, We don't have a confession, we don't have a murder weapon. We don't have a murder weapon with prints on it.

They wanted something much more ironclad. And because the investigation initially had been sloppy, people were trapsing through the crime scene. Victoria Berry was in Crane's apartment making her witness statement, so she contaminated the crime scene. The medical examiner had climbed up on the bed and shaved Crane's head in bed to get a closer look at the wounds on Crane's head. Highly unorthit docs that, yeah, I mean, they had problems with the case and they knew it. They

wanted something ironclad. They wanted a confession. They didn't have it. They didn't feel they had it, and they went through two prosecutors in Americopa County until they finally got Rick Romley, a tough marine who'd lost both of his legs in Vietnam, who was brought into office in nineteen ninety eight, and by nineteen ninety he was off and running and said let's pursue this thing. Let's try to let's try to figure out who killed this guy. It's time, it's too it's been too much time.

to look at it. They started from scratch. As they went through the evidence, they said, there's only six pictures in this apartment. There's only six photographs of the car. They had plenty of the apartment, pardon me, I misspoke, but only six of the car that they could find. They said, there've got to be more pictures of the blood in the car. This is the most important thing we've got. They start searching for the photographs. Rains believes

there's got to be more photographs than six. They finally find it a roll of twenty one photos, and on one of those photos which was discarded, was a photo of what they believed was a tissue speck, which pathologists looked at and said, that is subcutaneous tissue from the skull.

was collected and misplaced. I think it's still maybe somewhere out there I don't know, or it got thrown out. I can't imagine how. But they could never produce a trial the actual tissue spec it was it was either lost or never collected, and that killed him because the jury wanted better proof that Carpenter was the guy, and they didn't have it. They didn't have DNA because DNA was primitive, and they didn't have that tissue spec and.

is all presuming now that Carpenter was the guy. You know, there are a lot of people who say they chased the skuy around and they harangued him forever and he was not the guy. We'll get into that later, I know. But when Carpenter finally went on trial in nineteen ninety four, the jury wanted DNA, and by this point DNA had finally come around. Oh J Simpson was on trial that

same year. DNA was in its infancy, but they had gone back and taken the blood stains from the car, the Chrysler Cordoba and tested them for DNA, but everything came back inconclusive. They tested it four times and every time they either got nothing or an inconclusive. They just could not tenant to Bob Crane's blood if it had

absolutely been Bob Crane's blood. As the foreman of the jury told me in the book Who Killed Bob Crane, He said, if we knew for sure that that was Bob Crane's blood, not just type B, but Bob Crane's blood in John Carpenter's car, we would have convicted John Carpenter. But they didn't have it. The DNA was inconclusive. That's what led to my investigation. How many years later, almost twenty years.

Now tell us just a little bit of this journey on the hurdles you had to get this test once you said, hey, I think, why don't we get this tested? And you surprisingly got the endorsement by Bob Crane Jr. His support your.

It took months for them to find it. The America A count attorney. They finally agreed that they would look for it. They I told them what I wanted to do. I said, I want to look through the evidence, but I'm particularly interested in retesting the DNA if it still exists, the samples from John Carpenter's rental car the DA's office. I give Bill Montgomery, the current DA, a tremendous amount of credit. I've had a long relationship with him. You know,

I've been here in Phoenix for thirty years now. He felt comfortable that I would do it right, and he allowed me to do it. He said, if we get it, I'm okay with him testing it. If we think we can learn something more than we've known. He said, even if we learn the truth and it's not in a court of law, it may be very helpful to provide some closure for the family to finally know what the heck happened. So he was he was on board from

that perspective. We had to find this evidence, and once we once we finally found it down there at the County Attorney's office. They had to go through eleven boxes of evidence and it took them months. And remember they had other cases flowing in every day, fresh cases that they had to worry about, so it took them a long time to find it. They were looking for snapcap files and tests that had been done at Cellmark years before,

and they finally found it. And when I got that phone call from those guys, I can't tell you how exhilarating it was, because we had been told many times along the way, well, you know, we've got the evidence, but we don't think the blood's in there. It must have been thrown out, maybe it was a biohazard. We don't think we've got it. We're going to keep looking,

but we don't think we have it. And in the book I described that phone call when and I think the chapter is called we found it, and it was just an exhilarating moment after more than a year of waiting to try to figure out could we even do this. It was unprecedented that we would be given this kind of access, and so that was it's a thrilling and frightening thing at the same time, Dan, It really was because you know, I really wanted to get to the end of this and see if if we could get

an answer. And we got an answer, we just didn't get the answer that everyone expected. Why What were the issues that you didn't get the answer that you wanted? What was there DNA complications? Tell us about those complications that stood in your way? Well, the DNA was preserved in snapcap tubes in evidence in America BA County Attorney's office. They handled it all. We did not, I mean we were able to only touch it from the outside. Nothing.

We had no direct contact with the evidence on the inside. No one did. It was bagged up and shipped off to sell Mark Forensics. Inside those tubes were cuttings from the final on John Carpenter's car door that had blood on them at one time. These are the same samples that have been tested four times previous. There were two that were particularly promising that we had that they had tested, that had the best blood markings on them. Those were the two that were sent to cell Mark. The others

were not usable. We sent those to cell Mark. But you can imagine, having been tested four times, you start to especially with the early tests that were only looking for blood typing. They were swabbing these stains and just taking all the blood off them. The protocol would be completely different today, you'd only take a part of the blood because you only need a tiny pinprick to get you a sample. At that time, they're trying to swab the whole thing. And this happened three or four times

now before we got ahold of it. So when cell Mark got it, they told me, they said, we don't see any visible blood left on these samples. We can't see it in the lab. We've looked at it. We can't see any blood. But that didn't mean that there wasn't still cellular material from the blood still on those samples, and that's what we tested. That's the DNA we got back.

But with DNA, it's very tricky. If we would have had just the blood and been able to test that, we would have known that the DNA we're getting back is from the blood on the car. We got DNA back, but we just can't be sure that it's from the blood that was on the car. It could be from some other source. What I call in the book outlier DNA, which is becoming more and more prevalentis I'm sure you're aware.

When they treated that guy later, who had been murdered. When they went to the murder scene, they transferred the DNA from this guy onto the victim. This guy wasn't anywhere near the murder scene. He had an ironclad alibi. He got thrown in jail for many months because his DNA was found on this guy's fingers. DNA has become so sensitive dan that sometimes you bore in so far

that take Carpenter's car door. The sample we got back, it is the DNA from the original blood that was there, or could it be from the guy who put the car door together. Could it be at the plant. Could it be from the cops who swabbed it. Did they deposit some DNA that we detected. Could it be a lab worker who inadvertently contaminated it. These are the things with DNA so sensitive now, sometimes you can get false

positives that have nothing to do with the crime. And that is a very real possibility according to body cellmark forensics, that is very possible. But equally possible is that what we got off that car door in our sample was from Bob Crane. Pardon me, was not from Bob Crane that it just was not Bob Crane's blood in there to begin with. It was type B blood from someone else. That is possible.

If that was once blood from Bob Crane on that door and the sample that we tested, wouldn't we get something from Bob Crane something right that has troubled me, that has troubled me, would be certainly the leading suspect. But this raises some serious doubt. And I will tell you this, had the prosecution had our results in nineteen ninety four, because remember everything then had come back in conclusive.

If prosecutors had had this finding in nineteen ninety four, I do not believe they would have put John Carpenter on trial.

to this day about this whole thing. I'll share with you something I've not shared with a lot of people, but I wanted you to know it. When I started this, I had no intentions of writing a book. It was to be a television story, and you know, you get into something like this and I just I remember turning into my photographer, Joe Tullman, and I said, you know, this really needs to be a book. I cannot possibly put all this in a television story. It's impossible. It's

too rich. There's too much there. And the working title of the book as I was working on it was the Bob Crane Murder Case Closed. I believed that we would get those results back and it would shut the door once and for all that John Carpenter killed Bob Crane. It's just not what we got, and it was it was tough because I think we expected that's what was going to happen. Investigators thought that's what we'd get. I started to believe it. I think Bob Crane Junior believed it.

You know, we wanted to finally end the speculation. This had become like the Kennedy assassination. I mean that sounds like hyperbole, but there are so many theories about who killed Bob Crane that I wanted to be, I guess selfishly the guy who ended all this crazy speculation about who killed this man. And I thought we could do it, and you know, it just it's one of those things where you start peeling the onion and sometimes it leads

you down roads you never thought you'd get to. And that's that's where we a right now.

this affect you? Again, you say it was a regret not being able to give more to Bob Junior, but the case in general, just the how much did this affect you as opposed to a lot of the other work you've done.

worthy job without getting to that place. You have to be all in. It's not easy on your family, it's not easy on the kids who want to know why Dad's riding on Saturday afternoon. But it's got to be done if you're going to tell the story right. And I'm and I believe in trying to get it right. I believe that's at the heart of everything we do with an open and honest heart. That's what I set

out to do in this book. I wanted to try to put it out there in an earnest as earnest away possible as I could.

that the family knew, the wives knew. People loved Bob Crane despite this, and if people think this is disgusting behavior, but people loved him despite this obsession that he had, and people do, like you say, are very very interesting to see what happened to Bob Crane, the beloved movie star. I want to thank you very much for coming on and talking about who killed Bob Crane? The final close up John for those of the people that might want to follow up, and do you have a Facebook page?

For this website. How can people follow us up and see may contact you about.

page with evidence, photos, stories, blogs. I've talked a lot about this on that page and I think if you're interested in the crime, you'll find it interesting.