Mysterious death of Bobby Fuller

El Paso rocker's death was rules a suicide, but evidence doesn't match up

Fifty-six years ago today (July 18, 1966) we lost BOBBY FULLER, the
King of El Paso Rock in an unsolved mystery. Here's an excerpt from All Over the Map: True Heroes of Texas Music (UNT Press):

It wasn’t like Bobby Fuller to blow off an important band meeting, but when the career-conscious singer-guitarist didn’t show up at the office of manager Bob Keane at 9:30 a.m. on July 18, 1966, the other three of the Bobby Fuller Four weren't too concerned. The meeting was early, and Fuller had been seen leaving the Hollywood apartment he’d shared with his mother and bassist brother Randy late the night before. After the Top Ten success of “I Fought the Law” in late 1965, the usually-mild-mannered Bobby started asserting himself more in musical direction discussions with Keane, had a physical altercation with Randy after a gig in San Francisco and talked about going solo. Missing a meeting didn’t set off any alarm.
The band was worried about other changes they’d seen in the former teen entrepreneur of El Paso. Bobby Fuller had started experimenting with drugs, according to road manager Rick Stone, and hanging out with a “bad” crowd. In the June 7, 1966 edition of Record Beat, Bobby Fuller said, “I think all the reporters should go on writing about LSD and its effects, and let people decide for themselves whether or not they should take it. One thing that I know is that you are completely aware of what you’re doing, but it’s intensified into unreality ... .” The “mind-expanding” drug didn’t become illegal until Oct. 6, 1966.

“Bobby had started growing his hair and was becoming more serious about his songwriting,” said his friend from El Paso, Boyd Elder. The sounds of early rock n’ roll, which the Fuller band had embraced, sounded dated compared to the music of L.A. bands the Byrds, the Doors and a great group Bobby had seen in San Francisco called the Golliwogs, which would soon change its name to Creedence Clearwater Revival.
A 23-year-old Robert Gaston Fuller was at a crossroads in his life, his career, and manager Keane, who also owned Del-Fi Records, was desperate to keep the band from disintegrating. The Bobby Fuller Four had found something with the Spectorized garage rock of “Let Her Dance” in May ’65, which set the stage for “I Fought the Law” five months later. But tensions in the band were high after the rest of the group were billed as Bobby Fuller’s sidemen, after one release as the Shindigs. “Is the primadonna here yet?” Keane asked when he showed up for the July 18 meeting, at the rescheduled time of 3:30 p.m.
By then, Randy Fuller, guitarist Jim Reese and drummer Dalton Powell knew something was wrong. So did mother Lorraine, who came downstairs from the apartment at 1776 Sycamore St. that afternoon to see if her ‘62 Oldsmobile, the car Bobby drove, was in the parking garage. She ran into Ty Grimes, one of Bobby’s old pals from El Paso, and they discovered the Olds in the basement parking lot. Inside, sprawled across the front seat, dead, was Bobby Fuller. Soaked with gasoline, he was clutching the spout from a gas can. His head was near the steering wheel and his legs were on the passenger side.
“There was blood on the seat and Bobby looked like he’d been beaten up and thrown in the car,” said Elder, who arrived on the scene soon after the cops. When the officers were told that the deceased was the up-and-coming rocker, who had made is name in L.A. at such hotspots as P.J.’s, It’s Boss and La Cave Pigalle, they quickly surmised that Fuller died from huffing gasoline to get high. One cop found a gas can in the back seat and threw it in a trash bin before it could be examined, according to published reports. The car was neither impounded nor dusted. There was virtually no search for witnesses and foul play was quickly ruled out in this death by “asphyxia-inhalation of gasoline.” Police officials called it a probable suicide without ever explaining the bruises and cuts on the body.
“I saw the body,” drummer Powell told El Sol magazine in June 1996. “Anybody who can write it off as a suicide is either totally incompetent or scared to death… Whoever did this had the connections (to have the case ignored).”

Who killed Bobby Fuller? Rumors and speculation abound. There were even murmurs that Frank Sinatra (who married a 21-year-old Mia Farrow the day Fuller died) had Bobby whacked because he’d been running around with daughter Nancy Sinatra. Or maybe it was that nut Phil Spector, who had a big smile on his face at Fuller’s funeral.
With the 50th anniversary of rock ’n’ roll’s greatest unsolved mystery passing in July 2016, we may never know what happened to Bobby Fuller, so we must settle for the truth found in the ringing guitar chords of “I Fought the Law,” one of the first rock rebellion songs. “Breakin’ rocks in the hot sun/I fought the law and the law won,'' is the classic opening of a song that has been covered, but never equaled. "Wait, didn't the Clash do 'I Fought the Law'?"
They tried.