He was found by his mother. In the heat of July 1966, surrounded by the luxurious greenery of Los Angeles, Eva Loraine Fuller’s 23-year-old son, Bobby Fuller, lay motionless in the front seat of the family car in front of his apartment. Other than his maimed face — covered in odd heat spots, completely doused in gasoline (but not burned) — and dried blood stains crusting his shirt, Fuller had no other confirmed major injuries. The car had been there for less than an hour, but Fuller had been dead for over a day. No official cause of death was given, and the police didn’t seem eager to find one. The police chief had died of a heart attack two days prior, and cases like Fuller’s were shelved in the chaos. And just like that, Fuller quietly faded from public memory, and the man who was destined for stardom instead received an unceremonious burial in Hollywood Hills.
Only a few months prior, the El Paso native had scored a Top 10 hit with his group, The Bobby Fuller Four, titled “I Fought The Law.” An upbeat rockabilly tune bathed in tight harmonies that rise over Fuller’s passionate vocals, the song is also carried by the surf guitar that freely glides and bounces around the song like someone zipping around corners in a chase sequence. The drums even mimic bullet fire at one point. In the midst of it all, Fuller details a grim narrative: “I needed money cause / I had none / I fought the law / And the law won!”
The song was originally sung by The Crickets, a band led by Buddy Holly, who was Fuller’s biggest musical inspiration. In Fuller’s interpretation, you can hear the nasally, hiccup-y inflections inspired by Holly, a fellow Texan who was one of rock’s earliest stars. However, The Crickets didn’t write or record this song until after Holly died in a plane crash in his prime. At 22 years old, Holly’s career was cut short in a field in Iowa in 1959 — the day the music died — only two years after his first hit. Yet, as Fuller sings his cover, a song born in the embers of Holly’s charred ashes, his vocal optimism is unmistakable. It’s easy as a listener to really believe that he’ll be able to escape the clutches of the law, that one more slick riff will earn him the right to freedom.
Yet just like Holly, Fuller never lived to see his mid-twenties. But, unlike Holly, his death has become a footnote rather than a notable event in music history. Aside from The Clash scoring a hit with the same song in 1979, which functions as the primary way people in the modern day discover his existence, Fuller’s life is usually only indulged by baby boomers of the era or by music nerds that stumble upon his story. Although, perhaps, it’s more accurate to say that people stumble upon his end, not his career.
However brief his time in the spotlight was (about a year and a half) Fuller was a professional musician for closer to eight years, and the Bobby Fuller Four had been playing gigs since 1962, before the British Invasion had even taken hold. Their discography includes, admittedly, several other Buddy Holly covers, the best of which is the tongue-in-cheek “Love’s Made A Fool Of You,” but also plenty of solid tunes penned by Fuller himself, proving his potential as a songwriter. “Another Sad And Lonely Night” is a catchy heartache-driven romp not unlike a song you might hear on one of the Beatles’ earlier albums. “Take My Word” is exuberant in its sound but resigned in its words, warning the listener to not make the same mistakes in love as the singer has. In a mellow shift, “A New Shade Of Blue” contains heavy admissions of struggles with depression in the aftermath of a volatile breakup: “Now I know what it’s like to cry / what it’s like to want to die / Painted on my heart / is a new shade of blue.” Through it all remains Fuller’s undeniable vocal power and a consistent ability to create an entire atmosphere within a deceptively simple framework.
But it all ended on that summer afternoon. Between the sticky leather seats and among the nauseating fumes, the up-and-coming musician resigned to an indefinite coda. There was no warning before this conclusion, either. An El Paso Times article from 1982 details his final days, which he spent jovially driving around with friends, optimistic about a potential solo career and riding off of the wave of his last few hits.
Despite the tension that this desire to go solo caused within the group, there is no evidence of any major fallout from it. His last night was spent chatting and drinking beer in his apartment alongside his band manager, Rick Stone, and a few girls. Then, a little after 2:30 a.m., his mother, who was visiting, heard him leave. She would never hear him return. Only 12 hours later, she would discover his body.
“He was lying on the front seat,” she said to El Paso Times journalist Edna Gundersen. “The keys were in the ignition, and his hand was on the keys, as if he had tried to start the car. I thought he was asleep. I called his name. When I looked closer, I could see he wasn’t sleeping. He was dead.”
The unwillingness of local law enforcement to dedicate time to the investigation only muddied the circumstances surrounding what happened to Fuller. They couldn’t even be bothered to commit to a narrative; question marks are placed on his autopsy, next to both “suicide” and “accident.” But many, including Bobby Fuller’s closest family and confidantes, are convinced it was murder.
The most likely story is that it had something to do with the mafia, especially with the staged suicide, leaving his body by his house as a taunt of sorts and, of course, the cops being almost comically unwilling to dedicate even a sliver of time to the case, which has led some to suspect that they might have been bribed. There’s even rumors of a mysterious romantic liaison between Fuller and a mobster’s girlfriend, or that a disgruntled record executive hired the mob to silence Fuller and prevent him from switching labels.
Of all people, Frank Sinatra is also included in these debates, as his daughter, Nancy Sinatra, was both a fan and collaborator with the band. Some believe that Sinatra, who was known to have had power within the mob, ordered Fuller killed because of his proximity to Nancy. Regardless of the details, the remaining band members seemed uniformly convinced that someone ordered a hit on Fuller. The El Paso Times article describes alleged run-ins between the band members and mysterious figures, which concluded with Fuller’s brother Randy, who was also in the band, admitting, “I’m afraid to talk too much about it. I don’t want him to come for me next.”
Theories about the case have continued to blossom into their own worlds, including a particularly colorful but unsubstantiated, undetailed concept that the Manson Family was somehow involved, but that’s not what draws me to the Bobby Fuller case.
Regardless of the truth of what happened on July 18th, 1966, I am more concerned with the reality that, unlike other musicians who died at peak stardom, Fuller is not really remembered by the public at large, despite the intensely dramatic circumstances surrounding his passing, and there’s endless questions as to why.
Is it because he was too similar to Holly in sound and largely reliant on singing covers for his success, thereby preventing him from having an identity of his own? Was an all-American band old news by the time the Brits stole the charts? Was his squeaky-clean ’50s sound too plain in comparison to his contemporaries dipping their toes in psychedelia? Or was it a question of time — was Fuller not in the limelight long enough to “earn” public mourning?
If that’s the case, what does it say about how we view artists that are gone, that they must “earn” or “do enough” to warrant occupying even just a few minutes of our time? Is it not enough to have just been? I find it troubling to consider that someone has to be remarkable to be remembered, or even worse — even if someone is remarkable, they still may not be remembered because of circumstances beyond their control, like a limited audience, a shift in trends or just plain bad luck, all of which greeted Fuller as he met death’s door. But, regardless of how odd or overlooked Fuller’s place in history is, or how hard all of these questions are to answer, the truth stands alone: He was a talent who was just getting started, a well-intentioned youngster with perhaps too much naivety inside of him, a friend, a brother … a son. To forget any of that is to forget everything.
Loraine Fuller died in 1989, still distraught over the inconclusive nature of her son’s death. And before his own death in 2024, Randy Fuller was one of the few continuous vocal promoters of Bobby’s life and legacy. He appeared on a 1996 episode of “Unsolved Mysteries” with a plea: “My mother went to her grave with a broken heart. And I hurt every day over this. Somebody out there knows something. And I just wish I could know.”
The harsh truth is we probably never will. The truth is contained somewhere between the guitar and the grave. That, and only that, is certain.
Daily Arts Writer Isabella Casagranda can be reached at ijcasa@umich.edu.
