Bob Crane, the star of Hogan's Heroes, was found murdered in June, 1978. His friend John Henry Carpenter was tried for the murder in 1994after detectives testified that blood found on Carpenter's car matched Crane's,but he was acquitted by a jury unable to positively conclude that the blood belonged to Crane (and swayed by defense attorneys who suggested that there were a number of women and their angry husbands who might have wanted to kill Crane, as he and Carpenter had photographed or videotaped their trysts with many different women over the years). Carpenter died in 1998.
Enter news anchor John Hook of Phoenix Fox 10. He had been fighting in court to get the blood evidence from Carpenter's car released so that he could have modern DNA testing - which wasn't available at the time of the trial - done on it and hopefully finally solve the mystery of who killed Bob Crane. He won the legal right to test the evidence earlier this year, and
revealed the results of the testing live on his news broadcast Monday night, with the original prosecutor, the jury foreman, Carpenter's defense attorney, and Crane's son Robert Crane, jr. present.The DNA testing revealed that
the blood on Carpenter's car did not belong to Crane at all, but to two unidentified individuals. Crane's son mouthed "wow" as the results were read, and later said "I'm shocked right now. There were two people in my mind [who might have killed him]:John Carpenter and my stepmother, for different reasons. But it was on John's car."
Before his death, Carpenter had maintained that Crane's second wife, his
Hogan's Heroes co-star Sigrid Valdis, was the likely culprit since she inherited his estate. Valdis died in 2007.
"This is wonderful news for his family," Carpenter's defense attorney Steve Avilla said Monday. "This is wonderful news for John who has passed away to know that he has finally been vindicated. Not only in a court of law, but in a court of public opinion."
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