Bob Crane, Hogan’s Heroes, and a Murder That Never Went Away
- Daniel Holland
- 2 days ago
- 8 min read
On the morning of 29th of June 1978, Scottsdale, Arizona was already sinking into the familiar heaviness of summer. The city, part of what locals call the Valley of the Sun, was quiet by late morning. Temperatures climbed quickly, nudging past 38 degrees Celsius, and most residents stayed indoors behind drawn curtains and humming air conditioning units. Scottsdale was affluent, orderly, and predictable. That sense of calm did not last.
Shortly before midday, police were called to an apartment at the Winfield Apartments, a modest complex used by performers working at the nearby Windmill Dinner Theatre. Inside a dimly lit first floor unit, officers found a scene that seemed violently out of place. A man lay dead on the bed. He was shirtless, physically fit, and had salt and pepper hair. His skull had been badly fractured with two deep wounds above his left ear. An electrical cord was tied around his neck. Blood had soaked the bedding and spattered across the walls and ceiling. His pillow was saturated red.
The man was Bob Crane, aged 49. To television audiences, he was Colonel Robert Hogan, the wisecracking hero of Hogan’s Heroes, one of the most successful sitcoms of the 1960s. To detectives standing in that apartment, he was the victim of an unusually brutal killing. What followed would become one of Hollywood’s most enduring unsolved murders.
Before television fame
Bob Crane didn't begin his career in front of a camera. Born in Waterbury, Connecticut, he found early success in radio. By the late 1950s, he was a popular host on CBS station KNX in Los Angeles, known for his relaxed interviewing style and quick wit. His programme featured guests such as Marilyn Monroe, Bob Hope, and Charlton Heston.
It was radio that brought Crane to the attention of television writers. After appearing on his show, Carl Reiner arranged for Crane to guest star on The Dick Van Dyke Show. That appearance led to a steady stream of television work, including a recurring role as a cheerful dentist on The Donna Reed Show. Crane was dependable, personable, and professional. These qualities made him an appealing leading man when CBS began casting a new wartime comedy.
Hogan’s Heroes and an unlikely hit
When Hogan’s Heroes premiered in the autumn of 1965, it took an unusual risk. Set in a German prisoner of war camp during the Second World War, the series presented Nazis as buffoons and Allied prisoners as clever tricksters. The premise was controversial. The war had ended only twenty years earlier, and the Holocaust remained a raw and recent trauma.
The irony ran deeper. Several cast members had lived through Nazi persecution. Werner Klemperer, John Banner, and Leon Askin, who played German officers, were Jewish refugees. Robert Clary, who portrayed Corporal LeBeau, had been imprisoned in Buchenwald and lost his parents at Auschwitz. Clary later explained his willingness to take part simply. The scripts were intelligent, the characters clearly satirical, and the Nazis were never glorified.
The show became an immediate success. It ran for six seasons, ending in 1971, and made Crane a household name. His Colonel Hogan was charming, confident, and perpetually surrounded by women. Off screen, Crane increasingly lived up to that image.
A private life documented in detail
Crane married his high school sweetheart, Anne Terzian, and they had three children. Despite this domestic life, he pursued numerous affairs. Over time, the behaviour became compulsive. According to his son Robert, Crane obsessively documented his sexual encounters, amassing Polaroid photographs, negatives, and films stored in dressing rooms and hotel suites.
Central to this private world was John Henry Carpenter, a Sony video equipment salesman who helped Crane acquire cameras and recording equipment at a time when personal video technology was still rare. Carpenter shared Crane’s interest in pornography and became his closest companion, accompanying him on nights out and assisting in the filming of encounters.
Crane was not discreet. While working on Disney’s Superdad, he reportedly showed explicit photographs to crew members. Stories circulated, eventually reaching studio executives and gossip publications. The wholesome image that had sustained his television career began to fracture.
Marriages, affairs, and resentment
During the early years of Hogan’s Heroes, Crane had an affair with Cynthia Lynn, who played Helga in the first season. When Lynn left the series, her replacement, Patricia Olson, took on the same role under the name Sigrid Valdis. Crane soon began a relationship with her as well.
He divorced his first wife and married Valdis in 1970. They had two children, Scott and AnaMarie. The marriage was strained almost from the beginning. Valdis resented Carpenter’s constant presence and the influence he exerted over her husband. This tension later informed the film Auto Focus, which depicted Crane as trapped in a destructive dynamic. Some close to Crane disputed that portrayal, arguing his compulsive recording extended to all aspects of his life, not only sex.
A fading career and the dinner theatre circuit
By the mid 1970s, Crane’s position in Hollywood had changed significantly. The end of Hogan’s Heroes coincided with a broader shift in American television. Leading men were getting younger, formats were narrowing, and networks were reluctant to build new shows around actors strongly associated with a single role. Crane remained recognisable, but recognition no longer brought opportunity.
He continued to work sporadically, taking guest roles on series such as The Love Boat and Fantasy Island. Film roles were scarce and minor. The stable, studio based career he had enjoyed in the 1960s was no longer available.
Dinner theatre provided a different kind of stability. These productions, staged in hotels and suburban venues, offered dependable work and appreciative audiences. Crane toured widely in romantic comedies and farces, often playing variations on the persona audiences already knew.
One venue where he worked frequently was the Windmill Dinner Theatre in Scottsdale. He rented a nearby apartment rather than staying in hotels, suggesting he expected to return regularly. Professionally, dinner theatre represented a step down. Practically, it offered reliable income.
Throughout this period, Carpenter remained closely involved. After leaving Sony to work for Akai, he deliberately scheduled business trips to coincide with Crane’s theatre engagements, allowing their partnership to continue even as Crane’s career contracted.
Marriage, image, and contradiction
In 1970, Crane married Sigrid Valdis on the Hogan’s Heroes set, with co star Richard Dawson serving as best man. Publicly, the wedding suggested stability and continuity within the cast.
Privately, Crane remained far from monogamous. His habit of collecting explicit Polaroids predated his use of video equipment, indicating Carpenter did not initiate the behaviour but expanded it.
In 1969, Crane recorded a private audiotape in which he joked uneasily about the risks of casual relationships, remarking that one might eventually discover a jealous husband “lurking out there”, even imagining waking up with a gun pointed at one’s head. In hindsight, the comment carries a troubling resonance.
Plans for change and a final conversation
Two days before his death, Crane spoke by telephone with his eldest son, Robert. The conversation was unusually reflective. Approaching his fiftieth birthday, Crane acknowledged that much of his life had stalled.
He told his son he intended to divorce Valdis and distance himself from Carpenter, whom he had begun to view as a hanger on rather than a friend. He spoke of wanting to start again professionally and personally. For those close to him, the call later appeared to mark an attempt to break from long established patterns.
The night of the murder
On the evening before his death, Crane was seen socialising in Scottsdale. Several witnesses later told police that he and Carpenter argued at a local nightclub. Accounts varied, but most described the exchange as tense.
Later that night, Crane returned to his apartment. There was no sign of forced entry. Investigators would later conclude that he either admitted his killer voluntarily or was already in the company of someone he knew.
The following morning, Crane’s co star in Beginner’s Luck, Victoria Ann Berry, arrived after receiving no response to repeated knocks. She had planned to record dialogue for the production. Entering the bedroom, she found Crane’s body on the bed. Berry later acknowledged that she and Crane had slept together on two occasions, though investigators found no evidence linking her to the killing.
When police arrived, the scene was already compromised. Friends and associates had been allowed into the apartment before forensic procedures were completed. In 1978, Scottsdale had no dedicated homicide division and was unprepared for a celebrity murder of national interest.
Crane had been struck repeatedly on the head with a blunt object, possibly while asleep, and then strangled with an electrical cord tied in a bow. Blood covered the walls and bedding. Nothing of obvious value appeared to be missing.
When police arrived, the scene was chaotic. Friends and associates were allowed into the apartment before forensic procedures were completed, a decision that would later attract heavy criticism. In 1978, Scottsdale had no dedicated homicide division. The city’s population was roughly a quarter of its current size, and the department was unprepared for a celebrity murder of national interest.
Crane had been struck repeatedly on the head with a blunt object, possibly while asleep, and then strangled with an electrical cord tied in a bow around his neck. Blood covered the walls and bedding. Nothing of obvious value appeared to be missing.
Evidence, suspicion, and prosecutorial hesitation
Investigators quickly focused on Carpenter. Witnesses placed him with Crane shortly before the murder, and blood consistent with Crane’s type was later found inside Carpenter’s rented Chrysler Cordoba. Blood was also detected on the car’s door and interior surfaces.
What investigators could not find was a murder weapon. A tripod, believed by some to have been capable of inflicting the head injuries, was never conclusively linked to the crime. Without a weapon and without definitive forensic proof tying Carpenter to the killing, prosecutors declined to bring charges at the time.
For the Crane family, this decision was devastating. For detectives, it reflected the limits of the evidence available. Suspicion alone was not sufficient to secure a conviction.
A delayed trial and acquittal
The case remained dormant until 1992, when previously overlooked crime scene photographs appeared to show a speck of brain tissue inside Carpenter’s car. Although the physical sample itself had long been lost, the image was ruled admissible, and Carpenter was charged with Crane’s murder.
The trial in 1994 centred as much on Crane’s private life as on the physical evidence. The defence argued that Crane’s sexual behaviour could have provoked jealousy from an unknown lover or spouse. Witnesses placed Crane and Carpenter together at dinner on the night before the murder, joined by acquaintances Carole Newell and Carol Baare. Accounts differed as to whether the two men appeared tense or amicable.
The defence also challenged the alleged brain tissue evidence and emphasised the absence of a murder weapon. After deliberation, the jury acquitted Carpenter. He died in 1998, maintaining his innocence.
Reinvestigation and lingering questions
In 2016, Phoenix television journalist John Hook persuaded the county attorney’s office to release preserved evidence for modern DNA testing. The results identified genetic material from an unknown male, while other samples were too degraded to yield conclusions. Whether the unidentified DNA belonged to Crane or another individual remains unresolved.
In later years, Robert Crane publicly suggested that his stepmother may have benefited financially from his father’s death. The county attorney stated unequivocally that she was never considered a suspect.
Crane’s final weeks remain filled with contradiction. He reportedly slept with multiple women in the last month of his life, yet told his son he intended to abandon that lifestyle. Witnesses described both warmth and tension between Crane and Carpenter in their final hours together. Other individuals had motives rooted in jealousy or resentment. A white Cadillac with California plates was reportedly seen near the apartment on the morning the body was discovered, adding another unresolved thread.
The missing photo album has never been recovered. For some, it represents the most tangible link to a killer who has never been identified. More than four decades later, the murder of Bob Crane remains unsolved, suspended between evidence, speculation, and the limits of what can now be known.
