He had a flimsy motive and the evidence against him ranged from circumstantial to non-existent. We'll probably never know who the real killer was because the police blew the investigation right out of the water.
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Oh I doubt that. Maybe he resented him for getting the part, maybe he never particularly liked him, but those are hardly motives for killing someone. If they were I don't know anyone who'd live to see their next birthdays! As for the funeral, I don't think he went to any of the other cast members funerals either.
shareFrom everything I've read over the years there was no love lost between Crane and Dawson (or Dawson and just about anybody else, for that matter... he alienated a whole lot of people). Still, I can't see him as the killer either; I'm firmly in the Carpenter-did-it camp. (Dawson remained friends with Carpenter after the fact, and supported him during the trial, which turned my stomach.) Depressing that Crane and Dawson are both buried in the same cemetery... and Crane is also stuck right next to his harpy of a second wife that he was in the process of divorcing when he was murdered, and who went on to make a buck or two selling his icky "home movies" on the Net. If you haven't read Bob Jr.'s book, I'd recommend it... a one-sided account, of course, but very interesting.
shareYeah, i can see Dawson doing it. All the married women he slurped on that gawdoffal game show, how was that not sexually telling the world "Baby, kiss the puckered lips that are connected to the body that held the bowling ball that crushed Bob Crane's head in."
~ Native Angeleno
Bob Crane got revenge by not going to Richard Dawson's funeral, since Dawson didn't go to Crane's.
shareJerk didn't even go to the funeral.
The evidence against everyone is circumstantial.
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He was certainly the most likely suspect, but he denied it even on his deathbed so it makes you wonder.....
"the best that you can do is fall in love"
Read the book by Graysmith and am obsessed with the movie....I'm nearly certain Patti did it or arranged to have it done.
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I think it's pretty obvious Carpenter killed Bob Crane. There's just too many clues like he left town so suddenly, demanded his rental car get cleaned, calling Crane's son (as if "hey, I'm here in L.A., not Arizona"), visiting Richard Dawson(as if, "hey buddy, I killed your arch nemesis") and of course, the BLOOD and BRAIN MATTER in the rental car.
The D.A. didn't want to prosecute, that's all there is to it. Still, Bob Crane led a very high risk life style. It's not a shock that he got his head bashed in.
Yes, from the movie I really got the feeling that John felt abandoned by Bob. John was proud of his reputation for knowing new technology, and he knew that the technological world no longer really needed him.
With Bob telling him that he wanted to get out of swinging, there went John's ability to snag anymore chicks. John had a future that was going nowhere but now he didn't even have a present.
The truly ironic thing is that Bob was in the greatest danger when he decided to abandon his "hobby" and not when he was actually doing it.
The truly ironic thing is that Bob was in the greatest danger when he decided to abandon his "hobby" and not when he was actually doing it.
Oh, Carpenter did it alright, but I don't agree with this. Go to bed with a woman and videotape the whole thing without telling her, and she's gonna be pretty pissed. Do that to lots of women, like Crane did, and some of them might get extremely pissed.
I read the Graysmith book, on which this movie was based. It may not seem possible, but Crane was worse than the movie made him out to be.
I didn't say that Bob wasn't in great danger while engaging in his hobby, but that the greatest, most dangerous point was when he pissed off Carpenter.
I do wish Crane had taken up a better yet still exciting hobby like say auto-racing.
I didn't say that Bob wasn't in great danger while engaging in his hobby, but that the greatest, most dangerous point was when he pissed off Carpenter.
I'm aware of that. We'll just have to agree to disagree.
Ultimately the reason Carpenter did the murder was because he was kind of a cracked egg to begin with. But Crane also pissed off a lot of women along the way -- and by extension, those women's boyfriends, brothers, et cetera. Most of those, including the women he slept with, were people he barely knew at all. Had any of those been cracked in the same way Carpenter was, Crane might have been murdered sooner.
To my estimation, Crane was essentially playing Russian roulette all along, whether he viewed it that way or not. I'm not saying he had a death wish. Quite the opposite -- he was so arrogant that he thought that for him, the hammer would never land on the live round; it wouldn't dare, after all he was Bob Crane!
Well, of course it finally did land on the live round. And just as in Russian roulette, the last trigger pull is the one that kills the person, in Crane's case he was killed by the last person he pissed off.
Yea, that's true, I'm sure he pissed off a lot of people. If it wasn't Carpenter it probably would have been someone else sooner or later. You can only do dangerous behavior for so long before the odds catch up with you. You know I think it wasn't so much his promiscuity as his ugly attitude towards women in general that made people angry.
shareYou guys are not very bright. These women knew they were being filmed as there are many pictures of them posing and smiling. It's amazing how all these "experts" come up with their idiotic theories based on a BS book and BS crap movie. I will make it simple, so that even you boobs can understand it. Carpenter looked like and was a loser. Crane got him women. Carpenter liked it. When Crane cut him off he cut off the pussy willow train, so Carpenter cut him off. It's that simple, but I guess you are all too simple to understand it.
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What deathbed, you dope? He died of a heart attack in his home. There was no time to talk.
shareWho do you think murdered Bob Crane?
shareI wonder why the OP is so bent on defending this creep. Is it because he covered up the murder enough to get away with it? What a twit.
"Careful, man! There's a beverage, here."
Who knows? The murder will probably never be solved because the police:
-failed to bring in a homicide speciality team
-lost or mishandled the evidence and
-zeroed in on Carpenter right away, ignoring or at least downplaying leading about other suspects with stronger motives
Cranes family should hit them with a law suit.
The murder has been solved, it just has not been proven to the point that a stupid jury would convict.
shareIt would be a small list actually. First it would take someone who knew where he was at the night he was killed. Also there was no sign of forced entry to the motel so probably Crane let the killer in with no idea of what was going to happen. The reason the police strongly suspected Carpenter is he would have fit both of those facts.
shareRichard Dawson had zero motive for the murder. He and Crane had moved on, Dawson started Family Feud already.
Bob Crane's career had not tanked quite as badly as the movie appears, he made guest appearance on more than a few series, had his own short-lived series, and a second movie. None of it was anything like Hogan's Heroes fame, though.
Patty had little motive, as there was no money to be had.
Carpenter probably did kill him. He must have had a break with reality, in terror of losing his connection to women and the lifestyle, which seemed to be all he had going.
It depends on Patty though I know it was Carpenter. Patty as his wife would have had ownership of Hogan's Heroes due to Bob's death. That's if she knew, but it does not matter because Carpenter did it.
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Wow, 4 years and people are still commenting. Anyway, I watched Auto-Focus again over the weekend. The DVD's documentary made it clear that Carpenter did it, but because of the inexperience of the local police, the pre-DNA technology, the amount of time between the murder and the indictment, and the fact that Carpenter was careful not to get too much blood on himself, he got away with it. It was a pretty "clean" murder, since the victim was in bed and never moved. No struggle. Blood splatter on the wall and ceiling, and blood soaked sheets, but no blood pool on the floor to walk in. The killer deposited a few drops on the drapes (where he looked out on the parking lot), the doorknob, and in the rental car. Supposedly, some moving men in the apartment complex said they saw a woman enter and leave in hysterics, and another man emerged from the apartment later. They also found cigarettes and alcohol in the apartment, suggesting someone else was staying there or had dropped by to party.
Carpenter had motive: the end of the swinging lifestyle he and Bob had been addicted to. Bob was no A-lister -- not like hanging with Burt Reynolds, for example -- but he could still attract the chicks when he was pushing 50.
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And He has on His robe and on His thigh a name written:KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS.
It may or may not have been Carpenter- we may never know, but remember, they also taped many women who (at least at the time) did not know they were being taped. An angry husband/boyfriend is also a very plausible theory.
shareI don't think it is open-and-shut that Carpenter did it, but certainly the "preponderance of the evidence" points that way.
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4) You ever seen Superman $#$# his pants? Case closed.
They knew they were being taped idiot. Stop repeating Richard Dawson's son's BS reasons that it wasn't Carpenter.
shareIf there was blood and brain matter in the rental car, that's a slam dunk
But that's not exactly what the prosecution had. They still had some blood samples when they reopened the case, but the testing on them was for whatever reason inconclusive (the samples might have degraded over the years?)
As for the brain matter, the prosecution didn't have that. What they had was a photograph of a bit of tissue found inside the car, but that particular piece of tissue had been lost. The prosecution claimed that the photo itself showed that the tissue was brain matter.
FWIW, I think Carpenter did it. But I've also gotta say that I've seen that photograph and it doesn't look conclusive at all to me; as far as I can see the piece of gloop in the photo might have been a speck of brain, a booger, a bit of half-chewed ham, etc. Of course, I'm no physician or medical examiner.
EDIT -- I just watched a documentary on the Bob Crane murder, to refresh my memory. The prosecution's case was poorer than I remembered. One of the investigators had taken the photo and without any accompanying explanation, showed it to five different pathologists and asked, "what can you tell me about this." All five identified the tissue speck not as brain matter but as subcutaneous (just beneath the skin) tissue, and one noted that a hair was visible as well. So I guess the photo was pretty conclusive to people who knew what to look for, but it wasn't brain at all, it was a tiny piece of scalp.
Furthermore, the photo was all the prosecution had on that score. The original tissue sample had been lost. But even worse, the prosecution could not produce the person who had taken the photo, or for that matter anyone at all who had personally seen the tissue speck with his or her own eyes. All they had was a photo which some unknown person had taken, at some unknown time during the initial investigation, of a tissue speck that no known person had seen directly. Not great stuff for a conviction.
The evidence was badly mangled, but how can you absolve Carpenter based merely on that? Unfortunately, we'll probably never know who the killer was because because both are very likely dead now.
share"because both are very likely dead now." I hope that was a joke. If it wasn't then you are an idiot.
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