Investigates the bizarre 1978 murder of the popular television star, the shocking orgies of his last days, and the 1992 arrest of John Carpenter. By the author of Zodiac. 30,000 first printing. $30,000 ad/promo. Tour.
| ||||||||||||||||||
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
After a successful radio career, Bob Crane starred in the popular comedy series Hogan's Heroes from 1965 to 1971. When he failed to launch another series, he toured in plays throughout the Southwest. Unknown to his fans, Crane, who had been raised a strict Catholic, became obsessed with sex when he gained TV stardom. That obsession, in the form of photos and videos, effectively wrecked both of his marriages, according to Graysmith ( Zodiac ). In June of 1978 Crane was bludgeoned to death in a motel room in Scottsdale, Arizona. His constant companion was one John Carpenter, a video salesman. Graysmith agrees with the Scottsdale police that Carpenter was the killer, perhaps with a homosexual motive. The authorities finally secured an indictment in 1992, and the trial is pending. A carefully done study.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
The 1978 Scottsdale, Arizona, murder of the star of the long- running TV sitcom Hogan's Heroes is reviewed in infinite detail here by Graysmith, who did the same job for a series of 70's and 80's rape-murders in San Francisco (The Sleeping Lady, 1990). In his opening chapters, leading up to Bob Crane's murder, Graysmith retells every date and sexual activity the star engaged in--whether or not they had anything to do with his death. Going by what we have here, much of Graysmith's superfine detail is superfluous as evidence, though it does render the victim's character. This density of fact, however, veils the weakness of the author's approach, which hangs upon circumstantial evidence and what after 14 years may become hard evidence by way of new forensic techniques in sampling DNA specimens and minute bits of blood and fatty brain tissue. Crane was living on reruns and a kind of supper-club-circuit play he was taking around the country when he befriended an overweight electronics salesman, John Carpenter, who consistently failed to score on double-dates with Crane even while Crane scored daily, if not twice daily, taking Polaroids and videos of his romps. Then the actor was found in bed with his head battered in by a blunt object. Scottsdale investigators finally linked Carpenter to the murder, but the state could find neither weapon, witness, nor motive and so failed to prosecute. But detectives refused to close the case, and Carpenter--who in the interim had entered a plea bargain in L.A. for molesting female minors--recently was arraigned for the killing. Gruesomely sexy but not a provocative read. (Eight pages of photos, 23 line drawings). -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
74 of 79 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
As lurid a true-crime book you would wish for,
By Author Bill Peschel "Writers Gone Wild" (Hershey, PA USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Murder of Bob Crane (Paperback)
Somewhere in the middle of "The Murder of Bob Crane," author Robert Graysmith recalls a quotation by Paul Theroux along the lines of how murder halts the victim's life in mid-stride, revealing more about that person than they would want revealed. When death is anticipated, there is time to put things away, make one's peace, and write your obituary. But the murdered person leaves their life open to examination by all. Not that Bob Crane was hiding all that much by the time he was found bludgeoned to death in a Scottsdale, Arizona, hotel room in 1978. His friends, co-workers and ex-wives knew of his passion for pornography, his relentless pursuit of women, and his interest in photography and videotape. He would brag of his conquests, and even casual visitors to his home may be shown his collection of Polaroid prints depicting he and sometimes his friends in numerous positions and acts. But it took the death of the former "Hogan's Heroes" for his hobby to become known to the public, and Robert Graysmith is unrelenting in his quest for details about the case. Unlike its more powerful brethren like "In Cold Blood" and "Fatal Vision," "The Murder of Bob Crane" will not become a classic. Graysmith's pursuit of detail is meticulous and overwhelming, and shows no sign of discrimination, down to informing us that the carpet at CBS's executive headquarters is blue. His prose is overwrought at times, as padded as a down jacket in others. He repeats facts, sometimes pages apart and usually using the same words, and the dialog has the scent of the make-believe. His characterizations are non-existent, leaving us to fill in the gaps. One gets the impression that large portions of the book were written by opening the notebook and dumping in its contents. After describing Crane's activities in Scottsdale the month before his murder -- he was appearing in a dinner theater play ironically titled "Beginner's Luck" -- and the opening phases of the murder investigation, Graysmith jumps into a biography of Crane and particularly the creation and production of "Hogan's Heroes." While this material has little to do with the murder case, the 70 pages fills the book to a publishable 289 pages. Fans of the show -- and those who wonder just how in the hell a sit-com set in a German POW camp during World War II could be a ratings hit on American television -- will be fascinated by the tale. "Hogan's Heroes" was the stepchild of "Sgt. Bilko," and the show's creator Bernard Fein, was trying to sell without success an offshoot set in a federal penitentiary. In fact, Fein had given up, and was at the airport about to leave Hollywood when he spied a fellow passenger reading "Von Ryan's Express," a novel in which POWs hijack a German train carrying stolen art. Inspiration struck, aided by the recent success of "Stalag 17," and the rest, as they say, is television history. Three of "Hogan's" cast members, all Jews, were affected by the war in ways that makes one wonder why they would involve themselves in such a project. Robert Cleary, who played the Frenchman, LeBeau, spent the war in a concentration camp and nearly died at Buchenwald; the family of Werner Kemperer (who played the German commandant, Klink) fled Germany before the war; and John Banner, who was the bumbling but good-hearted Sgt. Schultz, was an Austrian whose family was killed by the Nazis in 1938. That Banner and Kemperer had spent most of their careers portraying Nazis is ironic in the extreme, but as Banner simply commented, "Who can play Nazis better than us Jews?" The book follows "Hogan's Heroes" through its cancellation after six seasons, and picks up Bob Crane's story, his failed marriages, his sputtering film career (including two movies at Disney), a second sit-com that was canceled, and his stage work. As portrayed by Graysmith, Bob Crane was not a happy man. He was a genial comic and a thoroughly professional actor of limited talent., but whose private life was marked by an urgent need not only to copulate, but to record it. He seemed singularly incapable of relating to anyone out of bed or off the stage, and the vignettes of the lonely Crane sitting by himself in restaurants and bars, drinking grapefruit juice (he did not drink often and never used drugs), are affecting. One wonders while reading this what would have happened if he had diverted just a quarter of his energy from seeking sex to growing his career. Crane's life did not have a happy ending, and that curse was extended past his dying. The investigation into his murder was marred by conflicts among the investigating officers, the medical examiners, and the prosecutors, as well as the inexperience of the detectives (who, after all, worked in a city that averaged about one murder a year). It was 16 years before Crane's friend, John Henry Carpenter was arrested, tried and acquitted of the murder. Carpenter was with Crane in Scottsdale, a video expert who helped him set up his system (back when the top-of-the-line model video recorder was a black-and-white Betamax) and participated in Crane's nocturnal activities. Although found not guilty, examining the evidence (blood of the same type as Crane's was found in Carpenter's rental car, and Carpenter's behavior was suspicious the morning after the murder) leads one to think that a more honest verdict would have been, at least, not proven.' "The Murder of Bob Crane" is a luridly compelling read about a sad man whose compulsions ultimately and unwittingly led to his death.
19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A well written but flawed account of the Crane murder.,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Murder of Bob Crane (Paperback)
Graysmith weaves an intriguing narrative in this account of Hollywood's greatest unsolved mystery. The star of Hogan's Heroes is depicted as a an ensecure, nervous, washed-up womanizer depressed with life, his status as a has-been t.v. star and his failed marriage. Much time is spent on recounting Crane's month in Scottsdale leading up to his murder. Graysmith is obviously trying to raise the reader's suspicion of various suspects when he documents each of Crane's many sexual encounters with various women as well as Crane's obsession with pornography and videotaping his countless sexual trists. This is clearly not a book for the prudish. It sets a seedy, sinister and eerie tone. Yet, the author leaves the reader quite unsatisfied, ending the book just as the trial of Crane's accused killer, John Carpenter, is getting under way in 1993. There was much circumstantial evidence linking Carpenter to Crane on the night of the murder but yet Carpenter was acquited by the jury. We learn nothing about Carpenter's trial (an integral part of this entire story)because Graysmith and the publisher couldn't seem to wait until the trial was over, to send this book to the press.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Out of Focus,
By
This review is from: The Murder of Bob Crane (Paperback)
While the case of the murder of Bob Crane has faded from the public conscience, the plausible and implausible theories have continued to grow particularly in the advent of the internet. Robert Graysmith, best known for his books on the Zodiac killer, also has a theory on Bob Crane's murder which is included in "The Murder of Bob Crane" or the repackaged version "Auto-Focus". It is unlikely that anybody will be convicted of the murder of Bob Crane nearly 30 years after the event. So if nothing else, Graysmith has outlined a collection of the facts in this book with his theory.
It is apparent in the mind of the reader who the author suspects the killer to be in this book. In the first publication, he made his case before John Carpenter ever went to trial. At times, Graysmith becomes cumbersome in his redundant recitation of the facts. The portrayal of the character of Bob Crane is thorough. Graysmith does not shy away from Graysmith's sexually promiscuous lifestyle. The background of other characters seems less clear. Little of John Carpenter is noted aside from his relationship with Crane and fellow Hogan's Heros co-star Richard Dawson. At times, Graysmith seems to suggest that Dawson may have been involved in the murder. While this is an interesting read, the evidence is largely circumstantial and does not stack up. This may be why Graysmith chose to write such a thorough history of the show Hogan's Heros in the middle chapters. While I enjoyed Graysmith's work on "Zodiac", he seems to be writing this book with one intention. However, he failed to convict Carpenter in my mind.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Listmania!
So You'd Like to...
|
|
