The mystery behind the death of musician Bobby Fuller has always interested me since I saw the segment about it on Unsolved Mysteries.
If you don't know who Bobby Fuller or his band [The Bobby Fuller Four] are, they are most well known for their cover of the Crickets song "I Fought The Law" but they have some other chart hits and some more unknown music that is very good if you like, I guess I'm gonna call it "Rock-a-Billy" type music. Maybe that's not the right term for it, his biggest inspiration was Buddy Holly and that is the type of music he made.
There is a pretty informative multi part article written by reporter Edna Gundersen in 1982 which I will link part two, which is about his death here: https://elpasotimes.typepad.com/morgue/2...uller.html this page also has links to parts 1 and 3, but I am linking part 2 because that is what I am using as a source for the witness accounts of what happened in the days and hours surrounding his death. The Wikipedia about Bobby Fuller is kind of a hot mess and has conflicting information to other sources. Honestly there seems to be some amount of conflicting information in any source you pick about this case and even just the history of Bobby Fuller and that is why I picked Edna's article and the Unsolved Mysteries article as sources because both give slightly different, or maybe more in depth information about what was going on that day.
And the write up on the Unsolved Mysteries site here: https://unsolved.com/gallery/bobby-fuller/
Mr. Fuller was born on Oct. 22, 1942 in Baytown, Texas. He was found dead in his car in the parking lot of his apartment building in Hollywood, California on July 18, 1966.
Before his very untimely death, he was something of a musical genius according to his brother Randy, with whom he played with in numerous bands, created a backyard recording studio and ultimately after moving from El Paso, Texas to LA formed the group "The Bobby Fuller Four" in 1964. The band was signed by a record label and had a few hit songs, even appearing in a movie starring Nancy Sinatra in 1966.
He was described in the Unsolved Mysteries episode as single minded in his pursuit of music, and basically on top of the world at the time of his death, so it was unbelievable to his family and friends when police initially said that he had committed suicide.
It seems like some of Bobby's musician friends and family from El Paso were in town visiting him the week of his death, describing him according to Edna's article as "cheerful and relaxed", excited about his plans to buy a Corvette on Monday. That would have been July 18th, the day he was found dead. Everyone is different and no one knows what's going on in someone else's mind. But being excited to buy a new car doesn't really jive with committing suicide or maybe it does. I don't know. A couple of days before his death he had taken a group of friends visiting from El Paso sightseeing around Hollywood. According to the article, a guitarist friend visiting from El Paso said he was in a great mood that day.
There was some tension with the band because he had decided that he wanted to go solo with a different group of backup musicians, but the article says that the group of musicians, including Bobby's brother Randy remained close despite arguing in recent months.
I don't know if breaking up the band and deciding to go solo would motivate someone to murder him or depress him enough to commit suicide? I don't think so, but you really never know. It seems like from the article that there had been some bad performances by the group preceding this decision by Bobby so maybe the animosity was more than what the players are making it seem after the fact. The other band and crew say that they were still close despite the break up so I will take their word for it, because there isn't any information showing anything different. It's just possibilities to think of in an unexplained death.
It seems that the one solid witness we have to Bobby Fuller's movements on the night before his death, July 17, 1966 is road manager Rick Stone. He is described as being one of Bobby's oldest friends, and it is said in the article that earlier that day he had been leaving the parking lot of Bobby's apartment in the band's van when Bobby ran up to the window of the van and told him “I don’t know what’s going to happen. Everything’s confused right now. But don’t worry. You’ve got a job with me if you want it.”
I don't know who this story comes from, or if the only source of this information is Rick Stone himself I am just telling you guys what it says in the article about Rick Stone's movements earlier in the day. He and two band members, guitarist Jim Reese and drummer Dalton Powell went on a drive through the San Fernando Valley, stopping at a model airplane exhibition. The other band member, Bobby's brother Randy was visiting another El Paso transplant named Boyd Elder.
The article says that Sunday night the 17th, Bobby, his mother Loraine, and road manager Rick Stone were all present inside Bobby's apartment and that Bobby made two phone calls, one to his girlfriend Nancy who was a stewardess presumably based in New York and one to another woman supposedly named Melanie who supposedly worked at a bar nearby. It gives no source for this information so I do not know if this has been corroborated by phone records or by the people he called themselves or if these are just things said by the witnesses which would have been either his mom or the manager. Or both. It goes on to say that 3 girls visiting from El Paso came and hung out with Bobby for a couple hours.
Rick Stone fell asleep shortly after midnight in front of the TV and Loraine went to bed at about 1am. Another issue here with who is the source for this information, we do not know where these times come from but I trust these times more because it would be corroborated by his mother who presumably would have no motive whatsoever to lie, and would presumably have seen that Rick Stone was asleep in front of the TV if she went to bed after he fell asleep. I KNOW, I KNOW, here I am presuming things. But the police presumed he committed suicide based on seemingly no investigation whatsoever, so I think I can have a little leeway here to ask a couple questions.
His mother says that when she went to bed, Bobby was wide awake and she didn't think that was odd because he was known to stay up late. She told him good night and then later she heard him leave and thought he was going to get food because he often did that. Hear me out because I have a question about this too. If his mother was in bed when she heard him leave, which is what the article makes it sound like, where was the bed? How did she know it was him leaving? What did she hear? Frustratingly, I can't find this information so if anyone knows why his mother seemingly knew it was him leaving, let me know. I REALLY want to know.
Rick Stone says he "feels guilty" because he also heard Bobby leaving. He says it was about 2:30am when he heard a noise and woke up hot and thirsty and went to get a drink from the kitchen and noticed that the front door was open. He said he thought nothing of it because they were all night owls who rarely went to bed before dawn and that then he heard the door close and he knew it was Bobby leaving because Randy was still at Boyd Elder's house. The article quotes Rick Stone as saying that that is why he feels so guilty because "maybe I could have stopped him".
The last person who has admitted to seeing Bobby alive is friend and apartment manager Lloyd Esinger, who according to the autopsy report had some beers with Bobby at about 3am at his [Lloyd's] apartment. This is another piece of information that is not corroborated, it is in the autopsy report, but Mr. Esinger couldn't be found for comment at the time of the article. He said that Bobby was in good spirits at that time.
The next morning Bobby is still gone and Loraine and Rick both notice the Oldsmobile car is missing from the parking lot. Rick goes to a scheduled meeting at 8:30am with the band for a recording session and Bobby doesn't show. They all wait for Bobby to show up but he never does. At 2:30pm, they decide to quit waiting and leave. Jim Reese dropped Rick Stone off at a body shop to pick up his car.
At 5pm, two musician friends of Bobby's from El Paso show up at his apartment. They also notice that his car is not in the lot, they are positive about this but go on to ring the doorbell anyways, getting no answer because at the same time they were going up the staircase to Bobby's apartment, his mother was going down a back staircase to check the mail. When she reached the lot, she saw the friends' car with Texas plates and then saw the Oldsmobile. The friends say that they noticed that a car pulled in after them, but they didn't pay attention to it. Was this the Oldsmobile pulling in?
His mother ran up to the car, opening the door and being overpowered by the smell of gasoline. Bobby lay dead across the front seat, his hand on the keys in the ignition. His mother ran to call the police, passing the two friends who saw her hysterical state before seeing the scene of the Oldsmobile and Bobby's body which they say had a bloodstain on his shirt. One of the friends says that it was a traumatic moment and they went into shock and left and later heard on the news that he had killed himself.
The question I ask myself about this story is, is there even a remote possibility these friends of Bobby could have somehow not noticed the car and his body there when they got there? The article quotes them as being positive his car wasn't there when they pulled in. So it would have had to have been put there in the presumably short time period between when they went upstairs to Bobby's apartment and came back down to their car. Is it possible that they just didn't notice it at the time and only really paid attention to their surroundings after seeing his mother hysterical? And then, with his body being in the driver's seat like that, someone would have probably had to have him in the passenger seat Weekend at Bernie's style and driven him there, then dragged his body into the driver's seat and staged the scene like that with the gasoline can on the passenger floorboard. That seems like something that is risky to do if you are in public in broad daylight in an apartment complex parking lot. And then made off on foot or in a getaway vehicle to have been able to get away in what I admit I am assuming would be a short time between the friends' coming and going. It also is unclear where the Oldsmobile was parked in proximity to the friends' car.
I am asking this question because another group of friends showed up two hours earlier, at 3pm and did see the Oldsmobile in the parking lot at that time. This is according to the article, and another piece of information that is uncorroborated. There is no information on whether these friends went up and tried and failed to see Bobby, or what the outcome was of this. What is not said is whether or not they would have noticed a body in the front, if the body was slumped over probably not. These are two conflicting timelines. If we believe the first timeline, the friends who came at 5pm and didn't see the car, we believe that the car was put there in a very short time period. If we believe this timeline, that the car was seen in the lot at 3pm, we have to believe that at minimum both his mother and manager Rick Stone just didn't notice the car at all.
Rick Stone described the scene when he arrived, saying there were cops everywhere and when he walked up to the car, he saw Bobby, clearly dead, holding a hose connected to a can of gas on the floorboard. He says Bobby's hair was really oily looking and that was odd, because it was usually very clean and neat. He said it looked like gas and that it appeared gas had been poured all over him.
The autopsy report lists "accident" but then has question marks next to accident and suicide. It was initially rumored that Bobby had committed suicide by drinking gasoline, but that was proven untrue in the autopsy report which said he had died from inhaling gasoline fumes. His stomach was "unremarkable" and contained no gasoline. The coroner could not determine a time of death because of decomposition in the sun and also possible chemical burns from the gasoline vapors. It was stated that his blood tested negative for drugs and alcohol and that his organs smelled strongly of gasoline.
The police had dropped the ball, failing to impound the vehicle or take any fingerprints.
There are discrepancies between descriptions of the scene from Loraine, Rick, the two friends who were there that afternoon and saw the body and the Coroner's report. The report describes the car doors as being shut but not locked and the keys not being in the ignition, however Loraine and Rick describe the keys being in the ignition. This could just be unreliable witness information which is unfortunately common or it could be that someone removed the keys from the ignition unbeknownst to the police or coroner writing the report. If they were not in the ignition it does beg the question, where were they? I can't find a source that says where these keys were if not in the ignition. Seems like this could be a significant piece of information. Were they in his lap? Were they in the car? Or were they in the ignition as described by Loraine and Rick?
The autopsy report notes no physical injuries on Bobby, but three of the witnesses to Bobby's body that day described seeing dried blood on the chest of Bobby's shirt. Rick and Loraine said they noticed abrasions on his elbow and face. These were later attempted to be explained away as being "chemical burn" from the gasoline or normal decomposition. Rick also said that the slippers he was wearing were badly torn up as if he had been walking through gravel and his pinkie finger looked broken.
The autopsy report also showed that Bobby's bladder was markedly distended, which may or may not suggest he was unconscious for a long time before dying.
The friends who visited at 5pm timed their walk from the lot up the stairs to Bobby's apartment and back to the lot. It took three minutes. So if we believe that the car wasn't there, this is a very very short amount of time for someone to set this scene. It would be much more believable if Bobby's body was not in the front seat of the car, maybe I am overestimating the difficulty of moving a car with a dead body in the front seat, or moving a dead body to the front seat of a car. I think it would take at least a couple minutes, but maybe not. Did this Oldsmobile have bench seats making this an easier proposition? I don't know. Maybe this was just wham bam. But this short timeline does make me question whether everyone was just overlooking this car being here the entire time [or most of the time].
In this article, only his brother Randy admits to the possibility Bobby may have killed himself, saying "I don't know if it was suicide, because he's my brother I'd love to say that it wasn't but I don't know",
Fellow band member Dalton Powell, however had something VERY interesting to say [interesting to ME at least], he says "Bobby wasn't capable of suicide. He may have been upset about things. It was a complicated matter. He was unhappy with his manager, but not to the point of doing himself in."
Unhappy with his manager? Would that be Manager Rick Stone? The same person who is giving us our timeline of the last hours of Bobby's life?
Stone also has some interesting hypotheses on what happened to Bobby:
“I think Bobby may have been murdered out of vengeance for something he was innocent of,” Rick said. “Maybe someone was going to set him on fire and chickened out. Or maybe they only meant to rough him up but the scare went too far. Maybe what started as a threat ended in a murder.”
Maybe, maybe, maybe.
Two private investigators that were hired to look into Bobby's death. ACCORDING TO RICK STONE one just abruptly quit investigating the case and the other quietly left town saying that he had been threatened. This is what the article says and again we have Rick Stone as our primary source of information here.
Also according to Mr. Stone, and this is just a wild story he tells I am just going to directly copy what the article says here also, again I don't know if this story is corroborated by anyone or in any other sources or coming from anyone but Rick Stone.
So I guess what we have here is a story of a man who should have been a mega star, extremely talented, having some personal problems but according to friends and family nothing major to the point it was really affecting his mood or making it seem like he was on the verge of committing suicide.
Of course that is a common scenario when people do commit suicide. Frequently no one even suspects they are down at all and no one can believe it, especially when it is a good friend or family member you think you know very well.
What we also have, is a story and a timeline of a man's last hours alive given to us mainly by Rick Stone. We learn a lot from Rick Stone, but what we never seem to find out is where he went that afternoon after he picked up his car from the body shop. Supposedly he was dropped off to pick his car up sometime after leaving the studio at 2:30pm. How long did it take to get there? What time did he leave with his car? Where did he go? Unanswered questions.
What do you guys think happened to Bobby Fuller? Did he decide to go to his car after drinking some beers at 3am with Lloyd Elsinger, grab a gas can, hook a hose up to it and end his life? THIS IS NOT AN OPTION IN MY MIND, because there was no alcohol in his system at the autopsy, if he had been drinking beer with LLoyd and shortly after committed suicide, there would still be alcohol in his system. Unless it was Non Alcoholic beer, but I doubt that and there is no information about that. Did he go somewhere else and meet up with someone else after leaving Lloyd's? I forgot to mention earlier that in the Unsolved Mysteries episode, it says that Bobby's body was in full rigor mortis when he was found. That suggests he died possibly several hours prior to being discovered. I wasn't able to find another source for that either.
If he met up with someone after leaving Lloyd's, why has that person never come forward?
Did he go back home after visiting Lloyd?
Where was he in between the last reported sighting at 3am, and the discovery of the car at 5pm if he and the car were not in the parking lot the entire time?
Was this some kind of accident? If so how? What happened? What was he trying to do????
There were a lot of rumors following Bobby's death as well, about how maybe he had angered the mob somehow by seeing the girlfriend of a mobster or was being extorted somehow. I think these are the least plausible explanations.
My personal opinion is that this whole thing is suspicious. As with many unexplained deaths, the reason this is unexplained is a lack of thorough investigation by the police. I know that perhaps to the family, finding only Bobby's fingerprints on the car, keys, gas can, etc and no one else's could be explained away by saying that the perpetrator wore gloves, but it would be nice if some more in depth investigative work was done, especially on the car in this case so we would have more information about the actual circumstances in which the car was discovered.
If you don't know who Bobby Fuller or his band [The Bobby Fuller Four] are, they are most well known for their cover of the Crickets song "I Fought The Law" but they have some other chart hits and some more unknown music that is very good if you like, I guess I'm gonna call it "Rock-a-Billy" type music. Maybe that's not the right term for it, his biggest inspiration was Buddy Holly and that is the type of music he made.
There is a pretty informative multi part article written by reporter Edna Gundersen in 1982 which I will link part two, which is about his death here: https://elpasotimes.typepad.com/morgue/2...uller.html this page also has links to parts 1 and 3, but I am linking part 2 because that is what I am using as a source for the witness accounts of what happened in the days and hours surrounding his death. The Wikipedia about Bobby Fuller is kind of a hot mess and has conflicting information to other sources. Honestly there seems to be some amount of conflicting information in any source you pick about this case and even just the history of Bobby Fuller and that is why I picked Edna's article and the Unsolved Mysteries article as sources because both give slightly different, or maybe more in depth information about what was going on that day.
And the write up on the Unsolved Mysteries site here: https://unsolved.com/gallery/bobby-fuller/
Mr. Fuller was born on Oct. 22, 1942 in Baytown, Texas. He was found dead in his car in the parking lot of his apartment building in Hollywood, California on July 18, 1966.
Before his very untimely death, he was something of a musical genius according to his brother Randy, with whom he played with in numerous bands, created a backyard recording studio and ultimately after moving from El Paso, Texas to LA formed the group "The Bobby Fuller Four" in 1964. The band was signed by a record label and had a few hit songs, even appearing in a movie starring Nancy Sinatra in 1966.
He was described in the Unsolved Mysteries episode as single minded in his pursuit of music, and basically on top of the world at the time of his death, so it was unbelievable to his family and friends when police initially said that he had committed suicide.
It seems like some of Bobby's musician friends and family from El Paso were in town visiting him the week of his death, describing him according to Edna's article as "cheerful and relaxed", excited about his plans to buy a Corvette on Monday. That would have been July 18th, the day he was found dead. Everyone is different and no one knows what's going on in someone else's mind. But being excited to buy a new car doesn't really jive with committing suicide or maybe it does. I don't know. A couple of days before his death he had taken a group of friends visiting from El Paso sightseeing around Hollywood. According to the article, a guitarist friend visiting from El Paso said he was in a great mood that day.
There was some tension with the band because he had decided that he wanted to go solo with a different group of backup musicians, but the article says that the group of musicians, including Bobby's brother Randy remained close despite arguing in recent months.
I don't know if breaking up the band and deciding to go solo would motivate someone to murder him or depress him enough to commit suicide? I don't think so, but you really never know. It seems like from the article that there had been some bad performances by the group preceding this decision by Bobby so maybe the animosity was more than what the players are making it seem after the fact. The other band and crew say that they were still close despite the break up so I will take their word for it, because there isn't any information showing anything different. It's just possibilities to think of in an unexplained death.
It seems that the one solid witness we have to Bobby Fuller's movements on the night before his death, July 17, 1966 is road manager Rick Stone. He is described as being one of Bobby's oldest friends, and it is said in the article that earlier that day he had been leaving the parking lot of Bobby's apartment in the band's van when Bobby ran up to the window of the van and told him “I don’t know what’s going to happen. Everything’s confused right now. But don’t worry. You’ve got a job with me if you want it.”
I don't know who this story comes from, or if the only source of this information is Rick Stone himself I am just telling you guys what it says in the article about Rick Stone's movements earlier in the day. He and two band members, guitarist Jim Reese and drummer Dalton Powell went on a drive through the San Fernando Valley, stopping at a model airplane exhibition. The other band member, Bobby's brother Randy was visiting another El Paso transplant named Boyd Elder.
The article says that Sunday night the 17th, Bobby, his mother Loraine, and road manager Rick Stone were all present inside Bobby's apartment and that Bobby made two phone calls, one to his girlfriend Nancy who was a stewardess presumably based in New York and one to another woman supposedly named Melanie who supposedly worked at a bar nearby. It gives no source for this information so I do not know if this has been corroborated by phone records or by the people he called themselves or if these are just things said by the witnesses which would have been either his mom or the manager. Or both. It goes on to say that 3 girls visiting from El Paso came and hung out with Bobby for a couple hours.
Rick Stone fell asleep shortly after midnight in front of the TV and Loraine went to bed at about 1am. Another issue here with who is the source for this information, we do not know where these times come from but I trust these times more because it would be corroborated by his mother who presumably would have no motive whatsoever to lie, and would presumably have seen that Rick Stone was asleep in front of the TV if she went to bed after he fell asleep. I KNOW, I KNOW, here I am presuming things. But the police presumed he committed suicide based on seemingly no investigation whatsoever, so I think I can have a little leeway here to ask a couple questions.
His mother says that when she went to bed, Bobby was wide awake and she didn't think that was odd because he was known to stay up late. She told him good night and then later she heard him leave and thought he was going to get food because he often did that. Hear me out because I have a question about this too. If his mother was in bed when she heard him leave, which is what the article makes it sound like, where was the bed? How did she know it was him leaving? What did she hear? Frustratingly, I can't find this information so if anyone knows why his mother seemingly knew it was him leaving, let me know. I REALLY want to know.
Rick Stone says he "feels guilty" because he also heard Bobby leaving. He says it was about 2:30am when he heard a noise and woke up hot and thirsty and went to get a drink from the kitchen and noticed that the front door was open. He said he thought nothing of it because they were all night owls who rarely went to bed before dawn and that then he heard the door close and he knew it was Bobby leaving because Randy was still at Boyd Elder's house. The article quotes Rick Stone as saying that that is why he feels so guilty because "maybe I could have stopped him".
The last person who has admitted to seeing Bobby alive is friend and apartment manager Lloyd Esinger, who according to the autopsy report had some beers with Bobby at about 3am at his [Lloyd's] apartment. This is another piece of information that is not corroborated, it is in the autopsy report, but Mr. Esinger couldn't be found for comment at the time of the article. He said that Bobby was in good spirits at that time.
The next morning Bobby is still gone and Loraine and Rick both notice the Oldsmobile car is missing from the parking lot. Rick goes to a scheduled meeting at 8:30am with the band for a recording session and Bobby doesn't show. They all wait for Bobby to show up but he never does. At 2:30pm, they decide to quit waiting and leave. Jim Reese dropped Rick Stone off at a body shop to pick up his car.
At 5pm, two musician friends of Bobby's from El Paso show up at his apartment. They also notice that his car is not in the lot, they are positive about this but go on to ring the doorbell anyways, getting no answer because at the same time they were going up the staircase to Bobby's apartment, his mother was going down a back staircase to check the mail. When she reached the lot, she saw the friends' car with Texas plates and then saw the Oldsmobile. The friends say that they noticed that a car pulled in after them, but they didn't pay attention to it. Was this the Oldsmobile pulling in?
His mother ran up to the car, opening the door and being overpowered by the smell of gasoline. Bobby lay dead across the front seat, his hand on the keys in the ignition. His mother ran to call the police, passing the two friends who saw her hysterical state before seeing the scene of the Oldsmobile and Bobby's body which they say had a bloodstain on his shirt. One of the friends says that it was a traumatic moment and they went into shock and left and later heard on the news that he had killed himself.
The question I ask myself about this story is, is there even a remote possibility these friends of Bobby could have somehow not noticed the car and his body there when they got there? The article quotes them as being positive his car wasn't there when they pulled in. So it would have had to have been put there in the presumably short time period between when they went upstairs to Bobby's apartment and came back down to their car. Is it possible that they just didn't notice it at the time and only really paid attention to their surroundings after seeing his mother hysterical? And then, with his body being in the driver's seat like that, someone would have probably had to have him in the passenger seat Weekend at Bernie's style and driven him there, then dragged his body into the driver's seat and staged the scene like that with the gasoline can on the passenger floorboard. That seems like something that is risky to do if you are in public in broad daylight in an apartment complex parking lot. And then made off on foot or in a getaway vehicle to have been able to get away in what I admit I am assuming would be a short time between the friends' coming and going. It also is unclear where the Oldsmobile was parked in proximity to the friends' car.
I am asking this question because another group of friends showed up two hours earlier, at 3pm and did see the Oldsmobile in the parking lot at that time. This is according to the article, and another piece of information that is uncorroborated. There is no information on whether these friends went up and tried and failed to see Bobby, or what the outcome was of this. What is not said is whether or not they would have noticed a body in the front, if the body was slumped over probably not. These are two conflicting timelines. If we believe the first timeline, the friends who came at 5pm and didn't see the car, we believe that the car was put there in a very short time period. If we believe this timeline, that the car was seen in the lot at 3pm, we have to believe that at minimum both his mother and manager Rick Stone just didn't notice the car at all.
Rick Stone described the scene when he arrived, saying there were cops everywhere and when he walked up to the car, he saw Bobby, clearly dead, holding a hose connected to a can of gas on the floorboard. He says Bobby's hair was really oily looking and that was odd, because it was usually very clean and neat. He said it looked like gas and that it appeared gas had been poured all over him.
The autopsy report lists "accident" but then has question marks next to accident and suicide. It was initially rumored that Bobby had committed suicide by drinking gasoline, but that was proven untrue in the autopsy report which said he had died from inhaling gasoline fumes. His stomach was "unremarkable" and contained no gasoline. The coroner could not determine a time of death because of decomposition in the sun and also possible chemical burns from the gasoline vapors. It was stated that his blood tested negative for drugs and alcohol and that his organs smelled strongly of gasoline.
The police had dropped the ball, failing to impound the vehicle or take any fingerprints.
There are discrepancies between descriptions of the scene from Loraine, Rick, the two friends who were there that afternoon and saw the body and the Coroner's report. The report describes the car doors as being shut but not locked and the keys not being in the ignition, however Loraine and Rick describe the keys being in the ignition. This could just be unreliable witness information which is unfortunately common or it could be that someone removed the keys from the ignition unbeknownst to the police or coroner writing the report. If they were not in the ignition it does beg the question, where were they? I can't find a source that says where these keys were if not in the ignition. Seems like this could be a significant piece of information. Were they in his lap? Were they in the car? Or were they in the ignition as described by Loraine and Rick?
The autopsy report notes no physical injuries on Bobby, but three of the witnesses to Bobby's body that day described seeing dried blood on the chest of Bobby's shirt. Rick and Loraine said they noticed abrasions on his elbow and face. These were later attempted to be explained away as being "chemical burn" from the gasoline or normal decomposition. Rick also said that the slippers he was wearing were badly torn up as if he had been walking through gravel and his pinkie finger looked broken.
The autopsy report also showed that Bobby's bladder was markedly distended, which may or may not suggest he was unconscious for a long time before dying.
The friends who visited at 5pm timed their walk from the lot up the stairs to Bobby's apartment and back to the lot. It took three minutes. So if we believe that the car wasn't there, this is a very very short amount of time for someone to set this scene. It would be much more believable if Bobby's body was not in the front seat of the car, maybe I am overestimating the difficulty of moving a car with a dead body in the front seat, or moving a dead body to the front seat of a car. I think it would take at least a couple minutes, but maybe not. Did this Oldsmobile have bench seats making this an easier proposition? I don't know. Maybe this was just wham bam. But this short timeline does make me question whether everyone was just overlooking this car being here the entire time [or most of the time].
In this article, only his brother Randy admits to the possibility Bobby may have killed himself, saying "I don't know if it was suicide, because he's my brother I'd love to say that it wasn't but I don't know",
Fellow band member Dalton Powell, however had something VERY interesting to say [interesting to ME at least], he says "Bobby wasn't capable of suicide. He may have been upset about things. It was a complicated matter. He was unhappy with his manager, but not to the point of doing himself in."
Unhappy with his manager? Would that be Manager Rick Stone? The same person who is giving us our timeline of the last hours of Bobby's life?
Stone also has some interesting hypotheses on what happened to Bobby:
“I think Bobby may have been murdered out of vengeance for something he was innocent of,” Rick said. “Maybe someone was going to set him on fire and chickened out. Or maybe they only meant to rough him up but the scare went too far. Maybe what started as a threat ended in a murder.”
Maybe, maybe, maybe.
Two private investigators that were hired to look into Bobby's death. ACCORDING TO RICK STONE one just abruptly quit investigating the case and the other quietly left town saying that he had been threatened. This is what the article says and again we have Rick Stone as our primary source of information here.
Also according to Mr. Stone, and this is just a wild story he tells I am just going to directly copy what the article says here also, again I don't know if this story is corroborated by anyone or in any other sources or coming from anyone but Rick Stone.
Quote:The night after Bobby’s death, Randy and Rick were standing outside Jim Reese’s apartment a few blocks from Sycamore Street. At about 8 p.m. they watched three men get out of a car parked across the street.
“They were tough-looking types,” Rick said. “They crossed the street and headed for the parking garage under Jim’s apartment. Randy knew something fishy was going on, so we ran to Jim’s place.
“These three guys just burst into Jim’s apartment, where Dalton and my sister (Sandy Stone) were. One of the guys had a g=big stick and the other was carrying a Coke bottle. They asked for Jim, and when they realized he wasn’t home, they left. We never could figure it out, Jim swore he didn’t know who they were. It made us all a little more nervous."
So I guess what we have here is a story of a man who should have been a mega star, extremely talented, having some personal problems but according to friends and family nothing major to the point it was really affecting his mood or making it seem like he was on the verge of committing suicide.
Of course that is a common scenario when people do commit suicide. Frequently no one even suspects they are down at all and no one can believe it, especially when it is a good friend or family member you think you know very well.
What we also have, is a story and a timeline of a man's last hours alive given to us mainly by Rick Stone. We learn a lot from Rick Stone, but what we never seem to find out is where he went that afternoon after he picked up his car from the body shop. Supposedly he was dropped off to pick his car up sometime after leaving the studio at 2:30pm. How long did it take to get there? What time did he leave with his car? Where did he go? Unanswered questions.
What do you guys think happened to Bobby Fuller? Did he decide to go to his car after drinking some beers at 3am with Lloyd Elsinger, grab a gas can, hook a hose up to it and end his life? THIS IS NOT AN OPTION IN MY MIND, because there was no alcohol in his system at the autopsy, if he had been drinking beer with LLoyd and shortly after committed suicide, there would still be alcohol in his system. Unless it was Non Alcoholic beer, but I doubt that and there is no information about that. Did he go somewhere else and meet up with someone else after leaving Lloyd's? I forgot to mention earlier that in the Unsolved Mysteries episode, it says that Bobby's body was in full rigor mortis when he was found. That suggests he died possibly several hours prior to being discovered. I wasn't able to find another source for that either.
If he met up with someone after leaving Lloyd's, why has that person never come forward?
Did he go back home after visiting Lloyd?
Where was he in between the last reported sighting at 3am, and the discovery of the car at 5pm if he and the car were not in the parking lot the entire time?
Was this some kind of accident? If so how? What happened? What was he trying to do????
There were a lot of rumors following Bobby's death as well, about how maybe he had angered the mob somehow by seeing the girlfriend of a mobster or was being extorted somehow. I think these are the least plausible explanations.
My personal opinion is that this whole thing is suspicious. As with many unexplained deaths, the reason this is unexplained is a lack of thorough investigation by the police. I know that perhaps to the family, finding only Bobby's fingerprints on the car, keys, gas can, etc and no one else's could be explained away by saying that the perpetrator wore gloves, but it would be nice if some more in depth investigative work was done, especially on the car in this case so we would have more information about the actual circumstances in which the car was discovered.
