In 1966, Bobby Fuller was a rising rockstar. His eponymous band and their song "I Fought the Law" was climbing the charts when he suddenly died. As is the case with many rockstars, theories about his death abound. Was his death really an accident or suicide, or could it have been a hit from the LA mob…or even Charles Manson? Conspiracy Theories is on Instagram @theconspiracypod! Follow us to keep up with the show and get behind-the-scenes updates from Carter and the team. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What happened to Bobby Fuller?
Due to the nature of today's story, listener discretion is advised. This episode includes discussions of drug use, abortion, violence and suicide. Consider this when deciding how and when you'll listen. To get help on mental health and suicide, visit Spotify.com slash resources. The Bobby Fuller Four first launched onto the charts in March of 1966 with their hit song, I Fought the Law.
Chapter 2: Who was Bobby Fuller and what was his music career like?
Written by Sonny Curtis and filled with up-tempo melodic harmonies, their rendition became an instant rock and roll classic. Bobby Fuller looked like a Kennedy and performed like Elvis. He began calling himself the rock and roll king of the Southwest.
According to El Paso Times reporter Edna Gunderson, when the Bobby Fuller Four appeared at Dick Clark's World Teenage Fair at the Palladium in Hollywood, mobs of screaming girls lunged at Bobby and Randy, ripping their clothes and hair. Admirers were so hysterical that Gunderson wrote, "...one persistent fan escaped with Bobby's watch and cufflinks."
The day Bobby was found dead marked just nine months since the band released their first 12-track studio album, KRLA, King of the Wheels. And just five months since their follow-up record, I Fought the Law. In other words, just as 23-year-old Bobby Fuller stood on the precipice of superstardom, he vanished, only to reappear dead. Welcome to Conspiracy Theories, a Spotify podcast. I'm Carter Roy.
New episodes come out every Wednesday. You can listen to the audio everywhere and watch the video only on Spotify. And be sure to check us out on Instagram at The Conspiracy Pod. Stay with us. In 1966, Bobby Fuller's mother, Lorraine, was staying with her sons at their apartment in Hollywood, 1776 Sycamore Avenue, number 317.
Chapter 3: What were the events leading up to Bobby Fuller's death?
Bobby and his younger brother, Randy, were both members of the up-and-coming band, the Bobby Fuller Four. Bobby was two years Randy's senior. In the band, Randy played bass and sang backup to Bobby's guitar and lead vocals. The evening of July 17th was relatively uneventful. Randy had left to visit a friend.
The brother's road manager and close friend Rick Stone was hanging out and drinking beers at the Fuller home with Lorraine and Bobby. At some point, Bobby called his girlfriend, Nancy Norton, a flight attendant who lived in New York City. Over the course of the night, a handful of old friends from Texas stopped by the apartment to hang out.
In conversation, Bobby mentioned how excited he was about the Corvette he planned to buy the next day. To those around him, he seemed in good spirits. Around 1 a.m., Lorraine decided to turn in for the night. The place had cleared out. Rick was falling asleep on the couch with the television still on. Bobby was the only other person in the apartment.
Lorraine found him in a corner, picking at his guitar and listening to records. His favorite artists included Elvis Presley and Buddy Holly. The plane crash killed Holly seven years earlier on February 3rd, 1959. In his song, American Pie, Don McLean famously referred to the accident as the day the music died.
There was a time that Bobby only ever dreamed of having a career like his idol, Buddy Holly. He was a Texas boy, just like Holly. The Bobby Fuller Force hit, I Fought the Law, was actually a cover. The original was performed by Holly's four-man band, The Crickets. Lorraine wished Bobby goodnight, knowing that his dreams were coming true. He really was just like Buddy Holly.
After his mother fell asleep, Bobby allegedly took another phone call with a different girl, Melody. Rick claims that he and Bobby had tried to buy LSD from Melody a few days earlier, but no transaction happened. Bobby was spooked when they arrived at her place and saw another car in addition to her blue 1964 Cadillac Eldorado in the driveway. Bobby said they'd try again another time.
So around 1 a.m. on the morning Bobby disappeared, he told Rick that he was leaving to finally pick up the acid from Melody. Around 2.30 a.m., Rick woke up to what he assumed was the sound of Bobby either leaving or entering the apartment. He didn't see Bobby himself, but he did see the front door open. Rick didn't think much of the coming and going.
According to him, the sun often came up before anyone in apartment 317 threw in the towel and caught a few winks. He assumed Bobby left to grab a midnight snack or nightcap somewhere close by. And he wasn't wrong. Bobby didn't go very far, at least not at first. He stopped downstairs to visit his building manager, Lloyd Essinger, whom Bobby considered a friend.
And according to Essinger, he and Bobby did share a few beers together around 3 a.m. Nobody knows where Bobby went or who he saw after he left his landlord's apartment. It appears that Lloyd Essinger is the last person who admits to seeing the young musician alive. When Lorraine Fuller woke up on the morning of July 18th, 1966, she noticed that her family's blue Oldsmobile wasn't parked outside.
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Chapter 4: What did the autopsy reveal about Bobby's death?
Her parents had threatened Bobby with a statutory rape charge, so he paid for Mary to live in hiding in New Mexico before putting the child up for adoption and returning to Texas. But even that wasn't the extent of Bobby's secrets. On the early morning of his death, Bobby placed a phone call to Melody, the woman who allegedly sold him LSD.
It's unclear whether Bobby and Melody had any sort of physical relationship. That said, Melody is shrouded in mystery. Sources vary on her relationship to Bobby, her profession, even her name. Melody, or in some cases referred to as Melanie, may have been a bartender at PJ's, a Los Angeles club and a celebrity hotspot.
Bobby and friends frequented the club along with crooner Frank Sinatra and actress Mia Farrow. Whoever Melody was, in relation to Bobby's death, her name is sometimes referenced for her suspected connection to the mob.
The unknown car that Bobby saw in Melody's driveway a few days before he disappeared, some believe it belonged to her gangster boyfriend, which is why Bobby and Rick never went into the house to pick up the LSD. When Bobby returned to her house on the night he disappeared, Maybe Melody's alleged mobster companion saw Bobby and followed him home. The theory has some legs.
Throughout much of the 40s and 50s, Mickey Cohen viciously and successfully ruled the Los Angeles organized crime scene. Five years before Bobby's death, officials sent Cohen to Alcatraz for tax evasion, but crime families like Desimone and Bonanno filled the vacuum. So while the mob's hooks in Los Angeles retracted a bit, its presence in the 60s was still widely felt.
In fact, according to Randy's wife, Dale, the mob was said to have its hands in the music industry. from radio station owners to record label executives. Even PJs, where Melody possibly worked, had rumored ties to the Chicago mafia. Rick Stone claimed that a car followed him and almost ran him off the road in the Hollywood Hills, on the day Bobby died.
He also stated that two men with guns tried to break into members of the Bobby Fuller Four's homes. And Melody wasn't the only person suspected of underworld ties. The Bobby Fuller Four, through their label Delphi, had allegedly signed some sort of distribution and copyright deal with Roulette Records.
The, quote, godfather of the American music business and suspected kingpin, Morris Levy, owned Roulette Records. And as negotiation tactics go, Levy had a history of using brute force to get his way. In his 2010 book, Me, the Mob, and the Music, musician Tommy James claimed that Levy once threatened to disembowel him.
In a dispute with singer Little Richard, Levy threatened to rip the singer's face off. According to James, Levy has connections to a number of murders that remain unsolved to this day. But why would Levy need to resort to violence with Bobby? Well, Levy's alleged motivations center around a controversy that had nothing to do with Bobby's love life.
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Chapter 5: What were the conspiracy theories surrounding Bobby's death?
Chapter 6: How did Bobby's death affect his family and friends?
The, quote, godfather of the American music business and suspected kingpin, Morris Levy, owned Roulette Records. And as negotiation tactics go, Levy had a history of using brute force to get his way. In his 2010 book, Me, the Mob, and the Music, musician Tommy James claimed that Levy once threatened to disembowel him.
In a dispute with singer Little Richard, Levy threatened to rip the singer's face off. According to James, Levy has connections to a number of murders that remain unsolved to this day. But why would Levy need to resort to violence with Bobby? Well, Levy's alleged motivations center around a controversy that had nothing to do with Bobby's love life.
In the days and months leading up to Bobby's death, Bobby was considering going solo. By some accounts, the Bobby Fuller Four and Delphi label executives were supposed to discuss Bobby's desire to cancel the band's contract at the 9.30 a.m. meeting that Bobby never showed up to. If Bobby left, Morris Levy would have potentially lost out on a major investment.
And so would others at the band's record label, Delphi. The owner of Bobby's record label, Bob Keene, allegedly had a hefty life insurance policy taken out on the rock and roller. Maybe Keene and Levy saw that money as severance pay for Bobby leaving them in the dust. Maybe they hired someone to kill the singer and make it appear accidental so they could collect on their policy.
But there are some types of death that insurance companies don't cover, but they do cover accidents. And as it turns out, Keene supposedly hired a private investigator to ensure that Bobby's death was officially marked as accidental. But if Morris Levy had a hand in Bobby's murder, concrete evidence has been difficult to come by.
That said, Levy wouldn't be the only suspect on our list capable of plotting murder. Jim Reese, the leading guitarist of the Bobby Fuller Four, suspects that notorious cult leader Charles Manson might have been behind Bobby's death. He masterminded a string of brutal murders in the late 60s. And Jim's wife, Beth, claims that Manson had once wandered into PJ's nightclub asking for Bobby.
He wanted to take guitar lessons from the front man. Manson, at the time, was a wannabe singer-songwriter who spent his days in and out of jail. Manson wasn't successful in music by any stretch of the imagination, but he wasn't talentless. He penned the Beach Boys' 1968 song, Never Learn Not to Love.
Originally titled Cease to Exist, the Beach Boys changed a few words to the song and paid Manson out, so he was never credited. Perhaps Bobby rejected Manson's request for guitar lessons, and Manson, scorned again, had Bobby murdered. And there's another bizarre connection between Bobby and the cult leader.
In 1969, three years after Bobby's death, the Bobby Fuller Four's hairdresser, Jay Sebring, and Sebring's close friend, actress Sharon Tate, were killed by Manson family members. If it were murder, Bobby could have been one of Manson's earliest murder victims without anyone ever knowing about it.
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