A suspect has been arrested in connection with the 1985 murder of Hollywood TV director and producer Barry Crane, who was found strangled and bludgeoned to death and wrapped in bedding on the floor if his townhouse’s underground garage in Studio City.
Edwin Jerry Hiatt II was arrested in North Carolina and is being held on $2 million bond. He will be extradited to Los Angeles this weekend.
Crane, who was 57 at the time of his death, was also a world-class bridge player, having earned numerous national and international titles and winning the game’s highest honor, the McKenny Trophy, six times.
He was a producer on TV’s “Mission: Impossible,” “Police Story,” “The Incredible Hulk” and “CHiPs.”
An Associated Press report from the time of the murder stated that Crane’s late-model white Cadillac was missing from the garage, though police said they were not certain whether it’d been stolen or was being serviced. No motive could be determined at the time, with no signs of forced entry and several valuable objects left in Crane’s home.
According to ABC7, retesting of evidence from the scene last year led police to Hiatt, who was interviewed in March 2019 and admitted to the murder. After he was arrested Thursday, he told a local news station he had no memory of the crime and he was “big into drugs” back then.
Asked if he committed the murder, he replied: “It’s possible. Anything’s possible.”