The Staff Report on Bob Crane’s death talks about Bob Crane’s habit of taping his numerous sexual exploits. So, what ever became of the tapes? Have they been packaged or released?
Still in a police evidence locker, maybe, or released to his family?
See the pretty-good recent movie Auto Focus, with Greg Kinnear and Willem Dafoe, for an interesting look at Crane’s skirt-chasing mania and his odd relationship with Carpenter.
I remember reading an interview with Crane’s youngest son – if memory serves he mentioned that he was trying to professionally release some of them. This was around the time of “Auto Focus.” Younger Crane didn’t like the movie very much or the fact that his older half-brother participated in its making.
Sir Rhosis
This article has a link to a website created by one of Crane’s sons which has some of what you’re asking about. I haven’t gone to the site myself.
Never mind, the main site has been taken down; all that’s left is a page with a bio of Crane’s wife, Patricia Crane (aka Sigrid Valdis).
Newspaper reports indicated that some, but not all, of the tapes found by police were returned to the family. Since the case is still technically open, I would speculate that the remaining tapes are still evidence, and there’s no statute of limitations on murder.
There were also many tapes in Crane’s Los Angeles home that were never seized in the first place, and those, too, remained with the family.
While there was some effort by one of Crane’s sons to make some commercial success out of the content, I’m not aware of any current source for viewing any of them.
The Internet Archive shows the stuff that was available on the site before it went down.
http://web.archive.org/web/20050403201128/http://bobcrane.com/
If you click the XXX button you’ll see a Free Tour which still works and shows shots from Bob Crane’s tapes. (Very tame by today’s standards but NSFW).
I went to bobcrane dot com back before it was just a Sigrid bio and yep, he truly was selling X rated videos and T-shirts of his dad. It was a very NSFW site where you were greeted with sexually graphic Crane and bimbo images with a black band blurring naughty bits that you were assured would come off if you bought a membership. I guess the market for seeing faded stars of yesteryear doing it and taping it just wasn’t enough to pay for the bandwidth.
There’s a good article on his death from one of my favorite celebrity websites- Find-a-Death. I can’t link directly to the story but you can find it on the directory. (Truly awesome site, incidentally- if I’m ever in L.A. I’m totally taking this guy’s tour and buying him lunch.)