For six seasons, handsome, affable actor Bob Crane played Colonel Robert Hogan, the leader of a group of World War II-era prisoners on the comedy Hogan’s Heroes. Led by his wise-cracking American serviceman, the show’s allied POWs carried out espionage and sabotage missions every episode under the clueless noses of their German captors.
Hogan’s Heroes was still in syndication when police responded to a call in Scottsdale, Arizona, in 1978. Bob, who had been appearing in a dinner theater production, had been battered to death in his bed as he slept. His eldest son Robert flew in and visited the crime scene with his father’s attorney and business manager. “We added our fingerprints, footprints, and hair samples to an already contaminated, lackadaisically investigated, casually considered murder scene,” he says.
As the story hit the press, new details about Bob’s private life emerged. The likeable actor appeared to suffer from what would be called sex addiction today. He cheated on both his wives with a menagerie of women — and he recorded and photographed many of these encounters with the help of his buddy John Henry Carpenter, a home video equipment expert.
Although his son describes Bob as “happy-go-lucky” not “dark,” his addiction caused some harm. Bob divorced Anne, Robert’s mother, after 21 years so he could marry Patricia, an actress who appeared on Hogan’s Heroes under the stage name Sigrid Valdis. She was one of several women Bob romanced on the set.
His career also suffered. Stories of the pornographic photos Bob showed crew members while filming the 1973 family movie Superdad (costarring a young Kurt Russell) reached the ears of executives at Walt Disney Productions, who were not amused. “People talk, and it started getting in publication like the National Enquirer,” says Robert.
Bob Crane’s Change of Heart
As Bob got closer to his 50th birthday, he talked about making some changes. He told his son he was divorcing Patricia and ending his friendship with Carpenter. “He wanted a clean slate,” he says. Unfortunately, Bob died two weeks before his milestone birthday.
In 1992, Carpenter went on trial for the actor’s murder. Prosecutors noted that there had been no forced entry to Bob’s apartment, indicating he may have known his killer. Carpenter, they reasoned, was unhappy that Bob was ending their friendship. He snapped, and bludgeoned Bob to death with a camera tripod. Traces of type B blood — Bob’s match — were also found on the door of Carpenter’s rental car.
The circumstantial evidence wasn’t enough and the jury voted to acquit Carpenter in 1996. “He did some really stupid things in his life,” Diana, his wife of 42 years, said, “but I don’t think killing Bob Crane was one of them. He was a nice guy, despite what everyone who never got to know him probably thinks.”
New tests were done on the samples of blood taken from the crime scene in 2016. They revealed the presence of another unidentified male, but didn’t lead to any new suspects. Bob’s killer still hasn’t been identified.
