The Associated Press
PHOENIX Ä A pal of Bob Crane who shared willing young women with the "Hogan's Heroes" star was acquitted Monday of charges he bludgeoned the actor to death in 1978 for fear Crane was going to end the friendship.
"My life is back together again after 16 years," said John Henry Carpenter, a 66-year-old electronics equipment dealer. His wife, Diana, sobbed, "It's over, it's over" from the spectators' bench behind him.
The case turned on a photograph of a speck found on the door of Carpenter's rental car. Prosecutors said the speck, which was lost, was fat tissue from inside Crane's skull, but defense experts said that was impossible to prove.
"What was the speck?" asked the jury foreman, Marine Sgt. Michael Lake. "Nobody knows what it was, not even the doctors."
The jury deliberated nearly two and one-half days before finding Carpenter innocent of murder.
Crane, who played the wisecracking Col. Robert Hogan in the TV series about a Nazi POW camp, was 49 when he was found bludgeoned to death in bed in an apartment he was renting while performing in a dinner theater production.