Murder Of Bob Crane, The : Who Killed the Star of Hogan's Heroes?

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book
Review: Book was a quick read, very well documented for a case that is over 20 years old Robert Graysmith thouroughly did his homework researching the death of Bob Crane. I would highly recommend.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book
Review: Book was a quick read, very well documented for a case that is over 20 years old Robert Graysmith thouroughly did his homework researching the death of Bob Crane. I would highly recommend.

Rating:
Summary: LIES!
Review: Graysmith iosn't someone you wanna listen to considering he finished his book on Bob before the trial was even finished! Leaving a ton of things out isn't the way to inform people of a murder. Auto-Focus, the movie, is filled with lies and the director has publicly admitted to putting them in to make the movie sell. The book is no different. If you wanna read the real story of Bob Crane, this isn't it. At all!

Rating:
Summary: As Sergeant Schultze used to say, "I know nothing"
Review: Reading this book you can almost inhale the mold spores from the airconditioner filters that run twenty four-seven in Scottsdale. I enjoyed the sleazy side of it very much. If you like motel rooms, 60's sitcoms, B&W reel to reel video recorders and all those nice ladies who wait at the bar, then this is is it.
By the end, I understood how hard it is to convict a suspect without a clear motive. ...

Rating:
Summary: As lurid a true-crime book you would wish for
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: LIES!
Review: The books nice because it deals with Bob Crane's death, but Graysmith makes too many assumptions. There's not too many books about Bob Crane out there, so I was excited when it came out. I'd read Graysmith's Zodiac book and thought it was pretty good at the time.

In this, Graysmith tries to convict John Carpenter who I, like the jury, believe was innocent. When the book is written as if Carpenter is the guilty party, you believe Carpenter did it. Why would Carpenter kill his best friend? Graysmith says Carpenter was mad that Crane was going to cut him out of his life. Sheesh, like that's going to get Carpenter to 86 his best friend. He's a video geek, not a Soprano.

My guess is Bob Crane was killed by an [angry] girl mad about the photos. On the movie I saw of Crane with a random girl, she didn't know the camera was on. But maybe it was a jealous husband or boyfriend, but my bet is Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. One of Crane's photo albums was missing and I'll bet that has the nekkid picture of the girl who wacked Crane. She's probably 40 or 50 now and maybe your neighbor.

Crane was bludgeoned while sleeping and had the cord of a video cam wrapped in a ribbon around his neck. That sure sounds like [an angry] girl or husband to me.

Another thing that bugs me, and this is in the movie Auto Focus, was that Bob Crane had a penis implant. He died before they were giving those out.

But anyway, I like that it's about Bob Crane but I think that Graysmith was off the mark. I read a newstory in 2003 about the Zodiac killing and the guy that Graysmith said had done it was not the guy according to the the DNA they traced. Interesting writer, but he pulls his facts out of his escape tunnel if you know what I mean.

Rating:
Summary: The not-so True Story of Bob Crane
Review: The books nice because it deals with Bob Crane's death, but Graysmith makes too many assumptions. There's not too many books about Bob Crane out there, so I was excited when it came out. I'd read Graysmith's Zodiac book and thought it was pretty good at the time.

In this, Graysmith tries to convict John Carpenter who I, like the jury, believe was innocent. When the book is written as if Carpenter is the guilty party, you believe Carpenter did it. Why would Carpenter kill his best friend? Graysmith says Carpenter was mad that Crane was going to cut him out of his life. Sheesh, like that's going to get Carpenter to 86 his best friend. He's a video geek, not a Soprano.

My guess is Bob Crane was killed by an [angry] girl mad about the photos. On the movie I saw of Crane with a random girl, she didn't know the camera was on. But maybe it was a jealous husband or boyfriend, but my bet is Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. One of Crane's photo albums was missing and I'll bet that has the nekkid picture of the girl who wacked Crane. She's probably 40 or 50 now and maybe your neighbor.

Crane was bludgeoned while sleeping and had the cord of a video cam wrapped in a ribbon around his neck. That sure sounds like [an angry] girl or husband to me.

Another thing that bugs me, and this is in the movie Auto Focus, was that Bob Crane had a penis implant. He died before they were giving those out.

But anyway, I like that it's about Bob Crane but I think that Graysmith was off the mark. I read a newstory in 2003 about the Zodiac killing and the guy that Graysmith said had done it was not the guy according to the the DNA they traced. Interesting writer, but he pulls his facts out of his escape tunnel if you know what I mean.

Rating:
Summary: Above average Hollywood crime story
Review: This is a book I came across after watching the movie "AutoFocus" which I liked very much. I read the book hoping to get into greater detail surrounding the investigation of Bob Crane's murder. The book covers Crane's social exploits in detail. This part of the book is effective and conveys the casualness of the swinger lifestyle and Crane's cavalier attitude towards women and sex. It is also a look into the celebrity worship that is deeply embedded in our culture. When Crane is murdered the police immediately suspect his friend John Carpenter who was in the vicinity the night before. Most of their evidence is circumstantial and they do not indict Carpenter until the mid-90's. This part of the book is very interesting as Graysmith does a very good job of juggling the evidence and the personalities involved in the delayed indictment.
If there is a flaw it is that Graysmith obviously has some affection for Crane as an actor and coupled with the fact that all of his information comes from police sources the book is pretty one sided. It is obvious that Graysmith wants a conclusion to the case and he, like the officers, are quick to jump on John Carpenter as that conclusion. In the end though the evidence is flimsy, and without a solid motive, circumstantial evidence doesn't go very far. This is not a heavy criticism of Graysmith, his book is still an excellent work up of the case, and Carpenter most likely was the killer. There was reasonable doubt there and it could have been explored deeper. I recommend this book to anyone who likes good true crime, mystery, or Hollywood scandals.