Gary James' asks Randy Fuller
Was Bobby Fuller Murdered?



Was Bobby Fuller Murdered? His Brother Talks!

The death of singer Bobby Fuller in 1966 remains the greatest unsolved mystery in all of Hollywood. The NBC-TV program Unsolved Mysteries devoted a segment to Bobby Fuller. For those who don't know, Bobby Fuller was the singer of "I Fought The Law". It was a big hit for Bobby and his group, The Bobby Fuller Four. Then, just months after coming off that chart hit, Bobby was found dead in his car, parked in front of the apartment building where he lived. The police immediately ruled it a suicide, but those closest to Bobby, including his fellow band mate and brother Randy, knew something was wrong. Bobby Fuller would never have taken his own life. Thirty years later, Randy Fuller was still trying to find out what happened to his brother. We questioned him about events before, during, and after Bobby's death.

Q - Did the Unsolved Mysteries segment bring any new information your way?

A - Well, there's no way I can check a lot of it out, you know? Without reopening the case and getting an attorney to pursue it, which I'm just not going to do. I got a couple of things. A call that said one guy either did it, or knew the guy that did it. He's the guy that called in and accidentally gave his name and didn't want to, and then gave the number of the guy he says who knows all about it. We got a few of those. Then Melody (the mysterious girlfriend of Bobby Fuller) called and said a lot of things that avoided out the things I was thinking. But of course, she could be lying too.

Q - You don't even know that the woman's name was really Melody, do you?

A - From the very beginning, yeah, you're right. I do believe that this was Melody that called Unsolved Mysteries.

Q - She left information for you to track her down?

A - Yeah, I have her number. I do have the number she gave Unsolved Mysteries. She claims there is no Mob involved at all, and that she had no dealings with the Mob. She did admit that she was a call girl. She said there was no party on the beach that night before he died (as dramatized on Unsolved Mysteries). I have come to the conclusion that that was gonna happen at one time, but it never did come to pass. It could've happened a week before. The night he died, that party never developed. But all this time, I thought it had.

Q - Was Melody with Bobby the night before he was found dead?

A - We'll never know that. She said there was never a party that night. She had called Bobby earlier that night, around 1 a.m. He got another call right after that, and it supposedly was Nancy Norton out of New York, that was gonna come down and see him. My mother told my wife a couple of times that she thought it was somebody else, maybe Melody called again. Bobby looked kind of worried to her. He left right after that.

Q - What time was that?

A - Probably between 1 and 2 a.m.

Q - So, we're talking the night of July 17, 1966, early morning of July 18, 1966.

A - Right.

Q - According to Rick Stone (Bobby Fuller Four's road manager), he was sleeping on the couch in your living room that night, he heard a door open and close in the middle of the night, but thought nothing of it, because it wasn't unusual for Bobby to come and go all night. True?

A - Yeah, that's true. We were night people. It wasn't that big of a deal. Melody said that Larry Noones (manager of Bobby Fuller Four) had hired a private detective.

Q - Wait a minute, I thought Bob Keane was your manager.

A - Bob Keane was the manager through the publishing, the record company, but Larry Noones was the partner who financed the whole thing. So, we really called him our manager. He was partners with Bob Keane. Anyway, he hired a private detective to investigate the case. Around the time Bobby went downstairs, people in the neighborhood say he supposedly stopped off at the landlord of the apartments and had a beer. But, who knows? I don't know about that. But he went on from there to the car, or wherever he was going. The private detective talked to the people around there and asked questions; if they'd heard anything. Some of the people, about four of 'em heard and saw a white car speed off into the night, and a lot of ruckus going on before that. I'm confused myself, because my mother always said she kept going down there and the car wasn't there. Then she went down there and it was there with his body in it. She found him. There's a lot of conflicting things about it. If the car sped off into the night, and that's where the actual thing happened, maybe they followed it back, and then took off. I don't know.

Q - Would I be correct in saying then that Bobby leaves the apartment between 1 and 2 a.m. and his body is not discovered until 5 p.m. the next day? That's according to "Unsolved Mysteries".

A - I can't remember. I thought it was before 5 p.m.

Q - How is it that nobody saw anything?

A - Well, they saw that white car speeding away. The car was parked in the underground parking section of the apartment building. I think that's where my mother was going down to check to see if he was there at night. I don't know. She's dead now. I can't ask her. But, somebody else would've spotted it. I'm sure Ricky (Rick Stone) would've.

Q - Rick Stone told me it wasn't at all unusual for Bobby to go out late at night to take care of business. You had a manager. Why did Bobby have to take care of business, and what business?

A - I don't know what Ricky meant by that. That's not at all what was going on. He would go out earlier in the night, but not after 1 or 2 a.m., with Bob Keane and Larry Noones. A lot of things Ricky thinks he knows, he don't know. Ricky has put himself on a high pedestal on a lot of this whole deal, keeping the Bobby Fuller thing alive, and sometimes I think he thinks he's him. (Laughs). Nobody knows what happened to Bobby that night. Ricky doesn't know what Bobby was doing half the time. Bobby didn't tell nobody what he did most of the time. He just went and did things when he was out at night doing things like that, he was either going to see a girlfriend or friends. The way I figure it, somebody called him and set him up. The reason I say this is the very next day, Jim Reese and Dalton Powell (Bobby Fuller Four members) who live down the street, had two guys come there and demand money from Jim Reese. They were gonna do 'em in, according to all the people who saw it going on. I still, to this day, don't understand that whole deal.

Q - I've heard that the Manson Gang may have had something to do with Bobby's death. Do you know anything about that?

A - At that particular time, Manson was around. Nobody knew of him yet. Who knows? I've thought that myself. But, that's speculation. Who would know? Nobody knows what happened to Bobby. We do know that he left between 1 and 2 a.m., went downstairs, and more than likely got in my mother's car and left. That's why the car left and come back. He might have even drove it back, and started to get out, and somebody drove up in that white car and they beat him up and threw a gas can in there. (A gas can was found in the front seat of the car.) They did it right there and my mother never did check that one spot. Nobody looked in the car. That could've been exactly what happened. I don't know. I don't think Ricky Stone knows. I don't think Charlie Manson knows.

Q - The original investigators of this case, are they still alive?

A - I don't know. I don't even know who the coroner was back then. If it was Noguchi, you can bet your boots there was some fancy stuff going on, some shady stuff. Look at what Noguchi did later on with some of the cover-ups.

Q - What's holding up the re-opening of this case? Is it money?

A - Yeah, that's a lot of it. If you're gonna start investigating, I got a family to worry about. I've got three daughters and three grandboys and a wife. I don't really feel like jeopardizing their life. If I knew for a fact that I didn't have to deal with the Mob and I could deal with one idiotic fool that did this, it might be a different ball game. As far as financially, if somebody wanted to help me pursue it financially... I'd probably do it anyway, but, I'm not gonna go point fingers at people.

Q - Justice needs to be served in this case. Somebody got away with murder.

A - See, if somebody would've called in and said, "I did it," then we've got it solved. That's what I was hoping for. Somebody couldn't live with it anymore.

Q - In this recreation of The Bobby Fuller Four in the recording studio in 1966, in Unsolved Mysteries, someone asks Bobby, "Are there gonna be any drugs at this party?" Nobody talked like that then, did they?

A - That's all they talked about. It was just getting going. In 1966, the Hollywood Blvd. was nothing but long-haired hippies who smoked pot. It was incredible. It was just like locusts. (Laughs). They were everywhere. All the musicians back then, at one time or another, experimented with L.S.D.

Q - Rick Stone told me that you went to a 1989 Entertainment Tonight interview wearing a gun, because you were still afraid. What were you afraid of?

A - Rick Stone is mistaken about that too. (Laughs) I don't need a sidearm. If they're gonna shoot me, they're gonna shoot me if I've got one or not, right? I wouldn't even see it coming. If I'm driving home, they're gonna shoot me, and I'm not even gonna see where it's coming from. If they're gonna confront me fist to fist, I can still handle myself pretty good. If I did carry a gun, it would be a shotgun where everybody could see it. I'm really not afraid for myself like that. I kind of wish somebody would confront me about it.

Q - Where were you when Bobby disappeared?

A - Boyd Elder and I were together the night Bobby disappeared, died, and into the next day. You know who Boyd Elder is, I suppose.

Q - Actually, I don't.

A - He's an artist. He's from El Paso. We all knew him from El Paso. My brother helped him with art school and tried getting him album cover work. He did the Eagles album cover, "One of These Nights". I spent the night with him. I was over at his art studio on Sunset, going down towards East L.A. My mother called me the next day. Boyd answered the phone and said, "It's your mother." She said something like, "Bobby's dead." I said, "We better go over to the house right away," and we jumped in my white sports car, and drove as fast as I could back to the apartment house where I saw cops and an ambulance. Boyd and I watched as they took Bobby's body out of the car.

Q - I'm curious as to why no one ever went to the police and filed a missing persons report, when hours went by and no one saw or heard from Bobby.

A - Bobby was pretty much of a loner. He didn't talk a lot about what he was going to do. There was times he stayed out all night, at a girl's place and with Melody. They were together a few times like that. So, it wasn't unusual that Bobby went out. It wasn't unusual for me to go out and stay out into the next day. So, I didn't worry about it too much.

Q - But, after so much time passed...

A - I really don't know. See, Bobby was wanting to break away from Bob Keane anyway.

Q - And there was some kind of band meeting scheduled that morning, wasn't there?

A - I wasn't gonna go until they phoned me and told me he (Bobby) was there. I can't remember. You know, once you go through a traumatic thing like that, I don't know what I was thinking, to think back then. Where is Bobby? I kind of just draw a blank. It's almost like you just leave it for the stress.

Q - Do you think Bob Keane knows more than he's admitting?

A - I think Bob Keane is a greedy person. I really do. I think he's money-hungry, he likes power. I don't know about murder. I pissed him off quite a few times. (Laughs). He's scared of me too.

Q - Bobby was looking to break his contract with Bob Keane and Del-Fi Records?

A - That's true. But, if you've got a contract that's unbreakable, how are you gonna break it?

Q - No matter what contract you have, there's always some loophole.

A - That's true too. I'm sure you could sue if you did break a contract and you had the jump on the guy. Bobby had an insurance policy out on him. Most artists did, from their major companies. I don't know about it now, but back then just about every artist from every record company, if they were making it, had a pretty big insurance policy. I think Bobby had one for damn near around a million dollars. So, that's what everybody thinks really happened, that since he was gonna break away from Del-Fi, that Del-Fi decided they'd collect the money that they felt Bobby owed them.

Q - Did Del-Fi have any tie-ins with the Mob that you know of?

A - Other than what everybody else has said, that the backers of Del-Fi might have been, I don't know. I don't know for a fact that they were. All I know is all the places we played, like P.J.'s, were supposedly connected. If I name names, that's pretty bad. So, I can't do that.

Q - At Bobby's wake, there were famous people in attendance. Sally Field. Barry White. Phil Spector.

A - Right.

Q - Anybody else we might have heard of?

A - I don't know. I was too emotionally drained. It was a horrible place, man.

Q - Rick Stone told me that Phil Spector was laughing as he approached Bobby's casket. What was so funny?

A - Well, Phil's a pretty weird guy. He's like Bob Dylan. He looks at death different from other people. He's kind of screwy anyway. Who knows why he was laughing? If I'd seen him laughing I probably would've boxed his ears, but, I didn't see it.

Q - Your parents supposedly hired two private investigators to look into the case. One of the investigators had shots fired at him and soon after dropped out of the case. Is that true?

A - I don't know. I haven't heard that. I know the guy they hired couldn't find anything, or was told by police if he knew what was good for him, he would keep out. But, when you start accusing the police of not doing their job, they're gonna tell you that. Who knows really what those little things were about, unless you talk to the guy himself.

Q - I did try to speak with the investigator and he would never return my phone calls.

A - Well, that's weird. He is scared. Is this Fred Oates?

Q - No.

A - This is a different guy?

Q - Yes.

A - I can't remember his name. Now Melody gave me the name Fred Oates, but she might be mistaken.

Q - When she called into Unsolved Mysteries and talked to you, did she give you any information at all?

A - She threw a couple of things in there to kind of discourage me into pursuing some things. Not that she admitted anything, but the people we were involved with, family and stuff, might be a little weird to deal with. Our manager is dead now, Larry Noones. He died quite awhile ago. But his wife is still alive. I was told not to pursue that at all with her. She didn't say why, but possibly because she's older and she doesn't believe any of the nonsense about anybody saying bad things about her husband. It could be something else too, but, I don't really want to get into that. I'm giving you a little flavor of it, but I'm not mentioning too much of it because she said it, unless I want to have a lot of lawsuits or whatever else on my hands. Until I know something for a fact, I just can't go after it.

Q - Melody would drive this red Cadillac of hers around Hollywood?

A - She told me it wasn't a red one. I think back now and it wasn't. It was a light blue one. That was another mistake. (on Unsolved Mysteries )

Q - Bobby Fuller and Janis Joplin were born thirty miles from each other and died four years apart, across the street from each other. Do you find that strange at all?

A - I don't think it's that strange. I think it's sort of coincidental. What can you say?

Q - What ever happened to this movie that was gonna be made on Bobby's life - I Fought The Law?

A - The guy didn't think there was a good enough ending. There was no conclusion. But he was just getting out of the movie industry with Lorimar. He was retiring. He didn't want to get nothing. So it was one of those bad timing deals. Bob's (Bob Keane) been wanting to do it, but he can't get anybody to go for it that I know of. It got tied up with too many people. I signed a couple of contracts, then I wanted to get out of the other one. I talked to Casey Kasem and he said, "Don't worry, it will be done." Time has to go around where that thing is popular again. Right now, I think it was a good time for Unsolved Mysteries to have done that story. Everything today sounds alike.

Q - You just have to wonder as the Twentieth Century draws to a close, just how many people will still be interested in Rock 'n' Roll, and Buddy Holly, and Elvis.

A - You'd be surprised. It all depends on how far they get into their damn computers. But, the music will always be there. Who would've thought we'd still be listening to Beethoven? So, that's kind of a hard question for me, but I think certain styles of music, you can just never erase.

Q - What do you do for a living these days?

A - I do a number of things. I still play music every once in awhile, but I'm not going out and gigging like I was when I was a young man. I own a few houses. I'm a landlord. I build 'em myself. I inherited a little from my folks and that helps. Plus, I've been working with old Bob Keane here and there. We just got through doing a CD of all Bobby's old songs. I still write. That's mainly what I'm doing, writing songs. I did a CD with Bob Keane a couple of years ago. I tried to promote that, get it going. I really didn't have much faith in it. You gotta have faith in something if you want it to go. I'm just kind of sitting back here, trying to figure it all out. (Laughs).

© Gary James. All rights reserved.

The views and opinions expressed by individuals interviewed for this web site are the sole responsibility of the individual making the comment and / or appearing in interviews and do not necessarily represent the opinions of anyone associated with the website ClassicBands.com.