Authorities said they linked the suspect's DNA to cigarette butts found at the crime scene.
A North Carolina man has been charged with the murder of a top Hollywood TV director in a case that baffled cops for 34 years.
Barry Crane produced and directed some of television’s most iconic shows, including “Dallas,” “Hawaii Five-O,” “Mission: Impossible” and “Wonder Woman.”
The 57-year-old director was found dead in his garage by a housekeeper at his townhouse in the Studio City neighborhood of Los Angeles in 1985. He was found naked and wrapped in bedsheets, and he had been bludgeoned.
Cops found cigarette butts believed to be left by the killer in Crane's white Cadillac El Dorado.
Now, more than three decades later, investigators say they have matched the DNA found on the cigarette butts to the DNA of Edwin Hiatt. Cops have not revealed a motive for the killing.
As he was being led off to jail, Hiatt spoke to WSOC, saying, “I'm doing the best I can, guys, just to get through this. I just don’t want to remember the past because God has taken it from me. Everything that I’m at today is a totally different lifestyle from where I was before.”
Hiatt, 52, claimed he could not have done the murder, adding to WSOC, “I don’t have any kind of memory at all, guys.”
Hiatt appeared in court Friday in a wheelchair. He runs an auto repair business near Charlotte, North Carolina, and lives in an RV.
He would have been 18 at the time of the murder.
“I don't remember the guy until they told me his name. Then, I didn’t remember his picture. I didn't even remember his face,” he said to WSOC.
On March 8, LAPD homicide detectives went to Hiatt’s North Carolina residence to interview him.
"During the interview, Hiatt admitted to killing Barry Crane," an LAPD statement said.
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