Did A Member Of The Hogan’s Heroes Cast Commit Bob Crane’s Murder?
The grisly murder of Bob Crane remains one of the most mysterious unsolved celebrity murders of all time. The charming, all-American lead of the 1960s TV sitcom Hogan’s Heroes was found brutally slayed in his apartment 42 years ago, and despite multiple investigations, law enforcement authorities have never been able to identify his killer.
What Was Hogan’s Heroes star Bob Crane’s Cause of Death?
The horrifying nature of Bob Crane’s murder darkly contrasted the campy comedic role he played on Hogan’s Heroes for six seasons, as a wise cracking colonel who led a squad of World War II prisoners in outsmarting their inept German captors.
There was nothing funny about Bob Crane’s cause of death. He was found violently murdered in his Scottsdale apartment on June 29, 1978, when one of his costars came over to check up on him after he didn’t show up for an arranged meeting.
She found Crane’s lifeless body sprawled out on the bed with an electrical cord tied around his neck and half of his face bashed in by a blunt object with such force, that blood was splattered from the walls to the ceiling.
Police called in Ed Beck, the manager of the dinner theater he had been performing at, to determine if the brutally beaten body belonged to the actor. “There was no way I could identify him from one side,” Beck said. “The other side, yes.”
ogan’s Heroes Mystery: How Did Bob Crane Die?
Crane was at the point in his profession that he was doing dinner theater in Arizona, instead of taking on glamorous roles in Hollywood. In the seven years since Hogan’s Heroes ended its impressive 168 episode run on CBS, Crane’s star had fallen far from leading man to a sporadic guest star on television series like Quincy M.E. and The Love Boat.
The downturn in his career wasn’t due to aging or a lack of acting chops, Crane had an addiction that turned Hollywood producers against him. He wasn’t shooting up drugs or showing up to sets drunk, but Crane had a hobby that made him made him un-castable and may have even led to his death.
The married father of three loved the ladies and regularly stepped out on his high school sweetheart, Anne Terzian, by using his celebrity status to woo women. Not only was the leading Lothario a serial cheater, he also had a habit of documenting his sexual conquests with photos and videos.
When police found Crane’s body in 1978, his apartment was full of home video equipment that he regularly used to film amateur pornography, and the only thing missing was a camera tripod that police believe he was bludgeoned to death with.
“Eventually, you’ll find out there’s a husband of theirs that’s lurking out there,” Crane chillingly foreshadowed in a 1969 interview. “I think all single people should have a card verified by the pope that they’re single, so you don’t wake up someday and find a gun to your head because you didn’t hear footsteps.”
Hogan’s Heroes Star’s Sex Addiction
Bob Crane’s obsession with pornography and keeping photographic evidence of his conquests has been speculated to be the cause of his untimely demise, but it was definitely the reason behind his Hollywood downfall.
The Hogan’s Heroes’ actor had a penchant for porn and wasn’t afraid of showing it. His on-set dressing rooms were littered with visible erotica that he enjoyed sharing with the crew on his productions.
“He made some bad moves,” Robert Crane said about his father. “He collected photographs of women and put together these books — ‘Oh, here’s Sally from Jacksonville, Florida’ — and then he started showing them to people.”
Crane’s public image became tarnished when gossip rags like the National Enquirer published stories about his on-set show and tell, and film executives became leery of hiring him for roles after his major post-Heroes Disney starrer tanked at the box office.
The actor had been hired to portray an all-American father in Disney’s Superdad, where his character tries to protect his teenage daughter from running off with an unsavory type, but audiences balked at watching sex-crazed Crane flexing his moral compass and the movie did not manage to break $240,000 in ticket sales.
Who Killed Bob Crane, Was It A Hogan’s Heroes Cast Member?
Robert Clary, who played Corporal LeBeau on Hogan’s Heroes, didn’t mind the Crane indulged his sexual appetite while filming the show.
“Who cares? That’s his problem. Why waste my time saying, ‘How dare you like ladies?’ That is dumb, would not think about it,” he remarked. “All we thought was, your life is your life — as long as you’re doing your job properly.”
But Crane’s dark impulses impacted his castmates when he began having an affair with costar Cynthia Lynn, who played Colonel Klink’s hot secretary Helga in the first season of the show, while he was still married to Terzian.
When executives replaced Lynn in the second season, possibly to curb the tawdry on-set behavior, Crane moved right on to her replacement.
Patricia Olson, known by the stage name Sigrid Valdis, stepped into the role of Hilda the following year, and not only replaced Lynn, but also Crane’s wife Terzian, who he divorced in favor of his co-star.
Crane and Olson married in 1970, shortly after he ditched his first wife, and had two children, Scott and AnaMarie. But the actor’s obsession with extra-marital sex continued and his interest in pornography advanced from taking still photos to making full blown homemade videos which he starred in.
As Crane’s star continued to fade in Hollywood, the marriage became rocky and Olson did not join the actor when he moved to Scottsdale, Arizona to pursue a career in dinner theater.
Is Hilda From the Hogan’s Heroes Cast Behind Bob Crane’s Death?
Crane was two weeks shy of fifty when he was murdered, and according to his son, was ready to break it off with Olson. Two days before his death, he called his oldest son Robert and told him that he planned to divorce his second wife.