The Robert Blake Case

A Famous Actor. A victim with a sleazy past who makes it clear that even if she is murdered she will then be the celebrity she always wanted to be. This is a story about celebrity wanna be Bonny Lee Bakley and her famous husband Robert Blake. So do you think Robert Blake killed Bonnie Lee Bakley? You can decide for yourself after reading the following story. It is a case that showed the sorted side of celebrity and left a mystery in it's wake.

On a Friday evening in Studio City California, Actor Robert Blake and his wife of two months Bonny Bakley head out to his favorite neighborhood restaurant, Vitello's. Steve Restivo, former owner of the restaurant, says his customers were a lot of show business people. He says they had a special dinner on the menu just for Robert Blake called Fusilli Minestra alla Robert Blake. Blake parks a block and a half from the restaurant. He didn't have to park there but sometimes he did and sometimes he didn't, says Lisa Sweetingham, In Session Contributor. There was certainly nothing unusual about where he parked. So they stroll to Vitello's and go in and everyone knows him as he has been going there for twenty or thirty years. They go to their regular booth and he introduces his new wife to the staff. At around 9:30 PM they say goodnight. The next thing that anyone knows Movie Director Sean Stanek, who lives near the restaurant, hears a commotion with pounding on his door and the ringing of his doorbell.

He opens the door and finds Robert Blake standing there. Blake explains that his wife has been beaten and needs an ambulance. Sean says he was hysterical but the first thing he thinks is that since he knew Robert had a temper maybe he beat his wife up. In any event he calls the authorities. He says "Hello, my name is Sean Stanek" and "do you know who the Actor Robert Blake is?" After the dispatcher replies in the affirmative he says "He walked up here and he is screaming severely that his wife has been beaten". The dispatcher asks if she is conscience and Sean asks Robert "Is she conscience?' and Blake yells back "No" so Sean tells the dispatcher "she's not conscience". The dispatcher then asks if she is breathing. Blake hollers "Hurry up" and Stanek asks "Is she breathing?" and then tells Blake "Yeah, they're coming". Blake responds with "I can't tell". Blake pulls Stanek outside toward the car. Stanek looks at Bonnie and tries to rouse her by calling her name with no response.

In the meantime, Blake runs off and Stanek asks him where he is going and he replies he was going to get help. As it turns out Blake went back to the restaurant and Steve Restivo says he wants to know if there is a doctor there and says to call the police and an ambulance. Meanwhile Stanek tends to Blake's wounded wife. He says the back of her head was completely drenched in blood. He also says he tried to talk to her and get her to squeeze his hand but gets no response other than a gurgle and it looked like the life was draining from her. Then he says he sees a bullet hole in her right cheek. It is far worse than Stanek expected. He thinks to himself "Oh my God she has been murdered". He looks down and sees her purse so he doesn't think it is a robbery. As the paramedics arrive, the drama only intensifies. Robert Blake is sitting on the curb by now and Stanek goes over to him. Blake is freaking out and then he starts to throw up. Blake asks Stanek "What's going on, is she dead, is she dead?"

Stanek thinks that is an odd question. Several witnesses as well as Stanek would later say that while Blake was crying and yelling gutturally, they didn't see any tears and it looked performance driven to them. Studio City judges their Actors by their standards. And this was just the opening act. Author of "Hollywood Special", Miles Corwin says the when North Hollywood Detectives arrive on scene and realize that the murder victim is the wife of an Actor they immediately called Hollywood Special which is based in downtown Los Angeles and is part of Robbery/Homicide. The cameras are rolling as police question the frazzled Actor. Blake explains that Bonnie had a lot of enemies. Blake, who has a license to carry, says that he had taken his revolver out of his waistband during dinner and accidentally left it in the booth. So what happened was when they get to the car Bonnie gets in the passenger side and he then realizes he doesn't have his gun with him so he goes back to Vitello's to retrieve it.

Blake claims that by the time he got back to the car, Bonny had already been shot. Then the cop says "Wait a second, do you have that gun with you now?" Blake hands over the weapon, a Smith & Wesson 38 Special. Stanek is thinking that can't possibly be the murder weapon, Blake isn't that stupid. But from the start their seems to be only one suspect in their sights. Scott Ross, Lead Defense Investigator says that when a spouse is killed nine out of ten times the other spouse is responsible but police in general fail to recognize that their are other possibilities, especially in this case. Police fan out from the crime scene searching for evidence and canvass the neighborhood but from the start their seems to be only one suspect in their sights. Hours after after the murder of Robert Blake's wife Bonnie Lee Bakley, Detectives are still struggling to figure out what happened on that dark Studio City Street. They have a woman shot twice at close range and they have her husband and they have him carrying a gun.

Cary Goldstein, Bonny's Attorney says the story just reeked of craziness. Blake does have a history of domestic violence against his first wife and suspicion only mounts when gunshot residue is found all over his clothes. By the time of Bonnie's funeral a few weeks later public sentiment is clearly against the former child Star. Every leading news channel is covering the story. The fascination with Bonnie's murder was off the charts. Robert arranged for Bonny to be buried at Forest Lawn Cemetery. Robert invited her family to be there but they declined. Margery Bakley, Bonny's sister, thinks that it would have been wrong to be there and stand next to the man that she believed killed her sister. Blake attends the funeral holding his infant Daughter Rosie that he had with Bonny. He caused a media sensation by putting his hand on her coffin. But the question remained, why would Robert Blake want his wife dead?

While a search for hard evidence continues on the streets of Studio City, Detectives begin to look into the couples marriage. From what they were learning about the relationship, it appeared he had motive. Eric Dubin, Bakley family Attorney says It was a sham marriage. They didn't even sleep together and Blake was making fun of her to his friends all the time. They even had a confidential marriage certificate because Blake didn't want the existence of the relationship to be public. Questioning Blake and his associates, police learn that Bonny wanted to dive into the celebrity world and to be a part of Hollywood. She claimed to have known Dean Martin and Frankie Valli and even has claimed to have had a baby by Jerry Lee Lewis. Her goal was to land a famous man. And Robert Blake had been famous since he was six years old. Stephen Cannell, creator of Baretta says Robert Blake started his acting career back in the days of the Our Gang Comedy series. He was a Hollywood kid and was a little rascal.

He always said that he was physically abused by his Father, who used to lock him in a closet, and that his Mother didn't protect him. Over the next several decades developed into a serious actor. Steven Cannell said he ripped the cover off the ball when he played Baretta. He gave a truly inspired performance in Truman Capote's masterpiece "In Cold Blood". Being cast in that role, directed by the acclaimed Directer Richard Brookes and endorsed by Truman Capote himself, was the highpoint of his career and probably if his life. He is noted for saying "We all make choices and I make the right ones but I understand how someone could make the choice to kill". Natalie Wood and Robert Blake were friends since they had been child Actors together and she loyally invited him to parties when most others would not. The role that his was most famous for was Tony Baretta the cop who had a Cockatoo. The role sent him to new heights and earn him an Emmy.

Steven Cannell said he had written this character who was emotionally on edge and who was nothing like anything that was on television at that time. Like his character, Blake had a reputation for being unpredictable. However, Blake did not play the Hollywood iconoclastic game and that may have jinxed him somewhat in Hollywood after Baretta. Baretta's character was a really tough guy who you messed with at your own risk and Steven Cannell says he never really thought of Blake in that way. How ironic it was that Robert Blake would fall prey to a celebrity hunter like Bonny Blakley. The Mother of four was from Arkansas but she would regularly come to LA and take a room at the Holiday Inn near Universal Studios. Bonny Lee Bakley found her man in 1999 when she went to a birthday party for Chuck McCann, an Actor friend of Robert Blake's, at a jazz club. They seemed to have hit it off. Blake had sex with her that night in his car in the parking lot of the jazz club.

No one said anything bad about Blake after the incident, after all it takes two to tango. Thomas A. Mesereau, Jr., Blake's Attorney, says that if you look at her track record of wanting to be with a celebrity one could assume that she got pregnant intentionally. Blake was incensed at the pregnancy. Bakley had told him she was on the pill. Around that time Bakley began secretly recording their phone conversations. When he found out about the pregnancy she is heard saying "I just wanted you, I didn't think there was anything wrong". To which he responds with "You swore to me on your life that no matter what, I didn't have to worry. That was a rotten, stinking, filthy lie. You were out here f__king me the exact day that you were supposed to. Not an accident, you deliberately got pregnant. Your period ended on August 20th, and you were out here f__king me the exact day.

Bonny responds with "Your wrong about that" to which Blake responds with "Not because you want to be with me. It has something to do with the crazy s__t that's going on, that you want Robert Blake's baby for whatever weird, twisted reason". He then says "And that's all on you baby. And you have to live with that. You schemed this whole thing". He tried to pay her off but Bonny would have none of it. When she gave birth back home in Arkansas, she identified Marlon Brando's son Christian, as the Father, who she had been dating when she met Blake. When Robert Blake saw the picture of Rosie, that's when everything changed in his mind. According to friends Blake's paternal instincts kicked in and he fell in love with the little girl. DNA tests proved that Blake was the Father but it wasn't clear who it was for a while because she was two timing both of them. Investigators learn that Blake was determined to save Rosy from a woman he thought was no good.

When Bakley was living in Little Rock Arkansas she was on probation. She had been picked up in the past on credit card fraud, social security card fraud, and social security card theft. Blake had Bonny fly to Los Angeles under the guise of a reconciliation. He convinced his personal assistant, Nurse Nancy, to watch Rosy while he and Bonny went to lunch. During the lunch a few of Blake's friend show up and tell Bonny that she has broken her probation and must leave and fly back to Arkansas immediately. The guise has worked but only briefly. The probation officer gave her permission officer gave her permission to go back and get the baby. Now Blake was facing kidnapping charges unless he agreed to marry Bonny. There was nothing he could do, he was trapped. So Robert Blake and Bonny Lee Bakley got married. However, she believed that she was being set up to be murdered and she believed that Robert Blake was the one who was going to do it.

She made it clear that even if she were murdered that she would then be the celebrity she had always wanted to be. She moved into Blake's guest house but according to friends and family, she didn't feel welcome there. The publicity was all over the news that he was the killer and she was the wife that he wanted to get rid of. But Blake's supporters claim that the police and the media have rushed to judgement. Everybody want Robert Blake to be guilty because it was shaping up as OJ II and everyone knew what that did to the media ratings. In fact, however, there was nothing there that Robert shot Bonny absolutely nothing. Three days after the murder, with the public ready to hang Robert Blake, police make a startling discovery. They have identified the gun that killed Bonny Bakley and it isn't Robert's. This murder case was turning out to be pretty good TV. Just when you thought you knew the real story, surprise, surprise a new twist came down the line.

One day after the murder of Bonny Bakley on a quiet Studio City street, investigators think they have found the murder weapon. The Detectives were sifting through a dumpster right next to where Blake's car was parked and at the bottom of it find a Walter 9mm semiautomatic pistol, the same caliber as the murder weapon. Whoever had fired the weapon had poured oil all over it such that fingerprints were impossible to lift. But something doesn't make sense. Why would the killer throw the gun away right there at the crime scene? Unless you wanted the police to find the murder weapon. They wanted it found for the simple fact that they knew it couldn't be traced. Thomas Mesereau says the did every forensic test possible to that gun to try to tie it to Robert Blake and they were unsuccessful. Police show up at Blake's house, search warrant in hand, and remove boxes of clothing and personal records. But strangely they don't take any of Bonny's things.

So Blake's Attorney's lead investigator, Scott Ross, go in and collect her personal belongings. They take almost 20 boxes of contraband for a lack of a better word. Miles Corwin says she was a grifter, a con woman, and a scam artist. She had this amazing at home business that basically revolved around conning older men. The more investigators dug into her past the dirtier things got. She would put photos of her self in sexy clothes, or none at all, in sexy poses and put them in the backs of men's magazines and in the newspaper ads. Men would begin to write her letters and pretty soon she would be writing them back or making phone calls developing relationships and asking for money at first and later asking the men to put her in her will. For close to twenty years, Bonny had systematically bilked thousands of men out of cash and property, some for twenty dollars and some for hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and property. She had been married 16 times and never gotten a divorce.

She was a completely amoral person and there were some suspicious situations where some of the men she married had died under mysterious circumstances and she inherited all their money and property. While Detective's continue to build their case against Blake and the media tries him in the court of public opinion Blake's attorney's put the spotlight back on Bonny by releasing her criminal record to the press. Thomas Mesereau says if you knew the kind of life she led you had to assume she had enemies all over the place. They did, however take a lot of criticism for that, saying that her body wasn't even cold yet and they were out their trashing her. Among the hours of phone calls Bonny kept on file one message stood out to investigators. It was from Christian Brando who predicted that if she didn't change her ways someone, not him but someone, was going to put a bullet in her head. Christian Brando was a very handsome man who led a very troubled life.

He was in prison for a while for agreeing to plead to manslaughter for killing his sister's girlfriend. Many believe that during the final days of her life she believed that it was quite possible that one of these men was going to kill her. Blake claims that shortly after Bonny moved in a strange man began casing his property. He had nicknamed the man "Buzzcut" because of his short hair. On at least one occasion he tried to confront the man who was waiting in his car in front of Blake's house but when he went outside and shined the flashlight in the mans direction he sped away. Blake's private investigators go looking for Buzzcut, or any other suspect, but they come up short. Neither their investigation nor the LAPD's seems to be going anywhere. For nearly a year the case hung in limbo. But then, as in any good cop show, a surprise witness emerged from the shadows. A former stuntman who had known Robert Blake for 30+ years named Gary McLarty tells police that he can't keep quiet any longer.

He claims that Blake asked him to kill his wife. McLarty tells police that Blake took him to lunch then back to his house and shows him pictures of Bonnie and tells him that this is the woman who is scamming me, this is what she does and this is what is going to happen to my baby so this is what were going to do.. You are going to "pop" her. He used word like "snuff" and "whack" but McLarty said he knew what Blake meant. He told Blake that Bonny had never really did anything to me and they never really talked about it again. McLarty isn't the only stunt man with a story to tell. Another associate of Blake's, Ronald Duffy Hambleton, recounts a similar story. He said Blake took him to lunch and asked him to kill my wife to the point where Duffy was afraid that they were talking about it too loudly in the restaurant. He also tells Hambleton where he would park that night and that's when Hambleton could go up and shoot her.

He tells police that he agreed to go along with Blake's plan but realized that he couldn't go through with it. He also tells them about a prepaid calling card that Blake purchased. They went to 7/11 and bought what they thought would be an untraceable calling card. Police followup and go to the 7/11 and match receipts and are sure that Hambleton is telling the truth. Whenever you are dealing with a celebrity case all kinds of wackos ooze out of the woodwork and try to insert themselves into the storyline. But these stuntmen seemed like the real deal and everyone knew that their testimony would be the key to convicting Blake. Police check phone records on the calling card and find Robert has called both McLarty and Hambleton. The question then becomes why is Blake not calling on his regular phone and not calling on his cell phone but calling using his calling card. Could there be an innocent explanation?.. You decide for yourself. There were about 100 calls to Duffy and another 20 to McLarty.

The evidence is damning but investigators know they will need more to guarantee a conviction. Duffy offers up another tip. He said he told Robert Blake you should start taking out some money from the bank. Detective's follow up. The idea was to take small amounts, less than $5,000, out of various banks to pay for the hit. Detectives follow up. Blake had begun to take out $5,000 at a time from various banks in March 2001 and thereby triggering suspicious activity reports. So where was this money going? No one really knows. Investigators turn up one more detail that could be the final nail in Blake's coffin. Blake's first wife, Sandra Curr tells all sorts of stories about Blake shooting a gun at her and that he threatened to kill her if she didn't give him full custody of the children. There were a lot of similarities between her stories and what had happened to Bonny Lee Bakley. In April 2002, almost a year after her death, Robert Blake is arrested.

That same day the LAPD announced that they had solved the case. Thomas Mesereau, Blake's Attorney thought that was humorous. After nearly a year in jail the 69 year old Blake turned into an old man. His dyed black hair was gray, he had lost a considerable amount of weight, and he had lines in his face. In March the following year, Blake appears at a preliminary hearing. His Attorneys pull out all the stops. Thomas Mesereau says the prosecution chose to showcase their main witnesses which they normally don't do. His approach was to cross examine each of them as if they were at trial. The aggressive tactic works. Bail is set at $1,500,000 and Blake is released. Apparently being a celebrity in Los Angeles means you get to play with by different set of rules. More than three years after the murder, Robert Blake is going to trial. The prosecution knows they are facing an uphill battle. Not only is Blake a celebrity but his deep pockets have afforded him the very best defense team money can buy.

When you can afford high priced Attorneys and a team of investigators, normally the odds shift in your favor. The prosecutor comes out swinging but there are major holes in her case, like how Blake could have pulled off a murder and a cover up in a matter of ten minutes. He would have had to walk her to the car, killed her, drench the Walter P38 with motor oil to cover the fingerprints, throw the gun in the dumpster, washed his hands, and walk back to the restaurant, all without getting a drop of oil or her blood on his clothes. A good actor he might be, but Houdini he is not. The defense plays up Bonny's sordid past and also manages to discredit the States star witnesses. Duffy Hambleton and Gary McLarty had abused cocaine and methamphetamines. McLarty had even done some prison time. It also came out in testimony that McLarty believed that people were after him. With a background in gang cases, Prosecutor Shelly Samuels came to trial with a perfect record, 68 convictions in a row.

But her snarling demeanor seemed to tick the jurors off. Some of them were even seen making faces behind her back. The prosecutor's last hope is the gunshot residue found on Blake's clothes. But the defense is able to handle that without a problem. Thomas Mesereau say that the police should never do a gunshot residue test on someone who carries a gun because there clothes are always going to have residue on them. Blake owned something like 10 guns and kept them in the drawers where he kept his clothes so naturally they were going to have gunshot residue on them. In the end and without ever taking the stand, Robert Blake is found not guilty. After the verdict the triumphant Blake and his Attorney's hold an impromptu press conference where he cuts off his ankle bracelet and hold in victory for all to see. The next headline was that Bonny's Attorneys vow to wipe the smile off Blake's face. There was still one last battle to be fought.

Bonny's family announced that they were seeking a wrongful death suit against the actor. This trial was in many ways more interesting than the criminal trial. In civil court only 51% of the jurors have to find him responsible for the death. And unlike criminal trials, the defendant must take the stand. Eric Durban, Bonny's family attorney, was afraid the charming Robert Blake would show up, which he is so capable of doing. Instead, Blake totally loses control. He was angry, he would call the opposing Attorney's liars and made threats. When Eric asked him the million dollar question "Did you kill your wife?" he tried to get physical and come off the stand at Durbin and try to fight him. Blake's family is awarded $30,000,000. The chances of seeing that money is slim to none and in fact Blake has since filed bankruptcy but it was some measure of a victory for Bonny's family.

Most feel that it is ironic that Bonny achieved her dream of being a celebrity only through being murdered and that she knew it was coming and in some strange way welcomed it. As for Blake, he has traded in celebrity for obscurity. He says he is going to be a cowboy where "You just let the hair blow in your hair and you wind up in some little bar somewhere in Arizona and playing pool with some old lady who beats the hell out of you and the next day you wind up in a park somewhere playing chess with somebody". Steven Cannell has heard that Robert went off and became a ranch hand somewhere and that he is dead broke which one can understand considering all his legal bills. No one has heard from him since. But the question remains if Blake didn't kill Bonnie, which many feel he didn't, who did? It is another Hollywood Mystery, you be the judge.