7. Bob Crane
The story of Bob Crane starts off as a typical one. Born in Connecticut, Crane moved to New York City where became a well-known radio personality. In the 1950s he took that talent to the West Coast where he hosted an immensely popular morning radio show before he packed up his notoriety and moved into acting. By the time 1965 rolled around he was the Primetime Emmy Award-winning star of the CBS World War II comedy, Hogan’s Heroes. Unfortunately, that’s where the accolades come to an abrupt stop for ol’ Bob Crane. After six years, the series ended and Crane’s career went a similar way. He appeared in a couple of throwaway Disney movies before being forced to settle with traveling dinner theater. Tough break, right? Well, it gets tougher. In the summer of 1978, while living in Scottsdale, Arizona during the run of his dinner theater play, someone entered Crane’s apartment, tied an electrical cord around his neck, and bludgeoned his face in with an unknown object. Although local police pointed an accusatory finger at John Carpenter (no, not the vampire guy), a friend of Crane’s who was visiting at the time of the killing, the murder remains unsolved to this day, and the murder weapon was never found.
6. Jon-Erik Hexum
This bulking Hollywood hunk is a perfect example of how much it pays to be good looking, and how much it costs to be stupid. Hexum was a 23-year-old apartment cleaner in New York City when he was discovered by John Travolta’s manager, Bob LeMond, and convinced to take a stab at acting in Los Angeles. He quickly gained the attention of Hollywood big-wigs and was cast in the short-lived NBC sitcom, Voyagers! After the series was cancelled, Hexum took a few small roles before landing his dream gig as Mac Harper, a CIA Operative Undercover as a male model in the hilariously titled Fox series, Cover Up. This is where the stupidity part comes in, because during the filming of Cover Up‘s seventh episode, Hexum was fighting off boredom in between takes by goofing around with a prop .44 Magnum revolver (yeah, the same type of gun that killed Brandon Lee). Unbeknownst to Hexum, guns loaded with blanks still fire off a good hunk of powder that can do some real damage if they’re aimed at close range, so when he played an impromptu game of Russian roulette with himself, it goes without saying… he lost. The gun’s discharge was strong enough to shatter just enough pieces of skull into his brain to cause massive hemorrhaging. Despite the best efforts of doctors, Hexum was pronounced brain dead six days later, his organs were donated, and his ashes were scattered into the mighty Pacific.
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