June 27, 1968
Elvis Presley tapes his
famous TV "comeback special"
Much of the credit for the Comeback Special goes to
the young director NBC turned to on the project. Only 26 years old but with a
strong background in televised music, Steve Binder had the skills and
creativity to put together a more interesting program than the one originally
planned, but he'd also had the youthful confidence to tell Elvis that a
successful show was an absolute necessity if he wanted to regain his relevance.
"Basically, I told him I thought his career was in the toilet,"
Binder recalled in an interview almost four decades later. From the beginning,
Elvis embraced almost every suggestion Binder made, including what would turn
out to be the best one, which came after Binder watched Elvis jamming with his
friends and fellow musicians in his dressing room one night after rehearsals.
"Wait a minute, this is history," Binder recalls thinking. "I
want to film this." Binder sold Elvis on the idea that would become the
most memorable segment of the show: an informal, "unplugged" session
before a live audience.
Elvis went to Hawaii with his wife,
Priscilla, and their infant daughter, Lisa Marie, in the weeks leading up to
the taping, and when he returned, he was tanned, rested and thinner than he'd
been at any time since leaving the Army. "He was totally keyed up now, on
edge in a way he had rarely been since abandoning live performing a decade
before," writes Peter Guralnick in Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis
Presley, the second volume of his Elvis biography. "His
professionalism continued to be noted by the entire crew...but there was
something else now, too. For the first time in a long time he didn't bother to
hide the fact that he really cared."
When Elvis took to the stage on this night in 1968 to record the "jam session" portion of the Comeback Special, he did so only after Binder talked him out of a last-minute case of stage fright. After a nervous start, Elvis Presley gave the legendary performance that would reinvigorate his flagging career.
Bob Crane was found bludgeoned to death.
On the afternoon of June 29 Crane's co-star Victoria Ann Berry found his body in his apartment after he failed to show up for a lunch meeting. Crane had been bludgeoned to death with a weapon that was never found, though investigators believed it to be a camera tripod. An electrical cord had been tied around his neck.
Crane's funeral was held on July 5 at St. Paul the
Apostle Catholic Church in Westwood. An estimated 200 family members and friends
attended, including Patty Duke, John Astin, and Carroll O'Connor. Pallbearers included Hogan's Heroes producer
Edward Feldman, co-stars Larry Hovis and Robert Clary, and Crane's eldest son, Robert. Crane was interred
in Oakwood Memorial Park in Chatsworth,
California.
More than 20 years after his death, Crane's widow,
Sigrid Valdis, had his remains exhumed and transported approximately 25 miles
southeast to Westwood Village Memorial Park in Westwood. After her death from lung cancer in 2007, Valdis was buried next to him.
According to an episode of A&E's Cold Case
Files, police officers who
arrived at the scene of the crime noted that Carpenter called the apartment
several times and did not seem surprised that the police were there, which
raised suspicions. The car Carpenter had rented the previous day was impounded.
In it, several blood smears were found that matched Crane's blood type. DNA testing was not available at that time. Due to insufficient
evidence, Maricopa County Attorney Charles F. Hyder declined to file charges.
In 1990 the Maricopa County Attorney re-opened Crane's
murder case; investigators reexamined and retested the evidence found in June
1978. Although DNA testing of the blood found in Carpenter's rental car was
inconclusive, Detective Jim Raines discovered an evidence photograph of the
car's interior that appeared to show a piece of brain tissue. The blood and
tissue samples themselves, which had been found in Carpenter's car the day
after Crane's murder, had been lost; but an Arizona judge ruled that the new
evidence was admissible. In June 1992
Carpenter was arrested and charged with Crane's murder.
At Carpenter's 1994 trial Crane's son Robert testified
that in the weeks before his father's death, Crane had repeatedly expressed a
desire to sever his friendship with Carpenter. Carpenter had become, "a
hanger-on," he said, and "a nuisance to the point of being
obnoxious". The night before his death, Crane reportedly called Carpenter
and ended their friendship.
Defense attorneys attacked the prosecution's case as
circumstantial and inconclusive. They denied the claim that Carpenter and Crane
were on bad terms just before the slaying, and they labeled the determination
that a camera tripod was the murder weapon as sheer speculation, based on
Carpenter's occupation. They also disputed the claim that the rediscovered
photo showed brain tissue, noting that authorities did not have the tissue
itself. The defense pointed out that Crane had been videotaped and photographed
in compromising sexual positions with numerous women, implying that a jealous
person or someone fearing blackmail might have been the killer.
Carpenter was found not guilty. He maintained his
innocence until his death on September 4, 1998. Crane's murder remains
officially unsolved.
In solidarity
Tony Figueroa
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