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TV cop arrested for murder
19/04/2002 07:19 - (SA)
Dan Whitcomb
Los Angeles - Actor Robert Blake, the tough cop on the hit TV show Baretta, was arrested on Thursday in the shooting death of his wife with local television networks breaking into regular programming as if to herald a new celebrity murder case in the land of OJ Simpson.
Blake, a former child star of the Our Gang comedies who gained fame as the gruff, gritty Tony Baretta in the 1970s detective series, was shown being led from a relative's home in suburban Hidden Hills to an unmarked police car in a white T-shirt, green cap and handcuffs for the long ride to downtown police headquarters.
Officers also arrested his bodyguard, Earl Caulfield, in connection with the May 4, 2001 murder of Blake's wife, 44-year-old Bonny Lee Bakley, as she sat in the 68-year-old actor's car on a dark street not far from his favourite restaurant.
Television helicopters followed a white, unmarked police car as it carried Blake along busy Los Angeles freeways, a scene that eerily recaptured the slow-speed chase and arrest of former football star Simpson on June 17, 1994, five days after his ex-wife and her friend were stabbed to death.
Simpson's was ultimately acquitted of the crimes by a Los Angeles jury, but a civil court panel found him liable for the deaths and ordered him to pay victim's family members $33.5 million in damages.
Blake's high-profile attorney, Harland Braun, has steadfastly maintained his client's innocence and portrayed the New Jersey-born, Arkansas-raised Bakley as a greedy lifelong grifter who preyed on men through lonely-hearts schemes and spent time in jail.
That defence infuriated her relatives, who accused Braun of trying to destroy Bakley's reputation and get his client acquitted by tainting the jury pool. The couple fought over custody of their three-year-old daughter, Rose.
Police move slowly
Blake, who in recent years has kept out of the limelight, dined with Bakley at his favourite restaurant, Vitello's, on the night of her death and has told police that he left her sitting in his sports car while he went back to the Italian eatery to retrieve something he had left at their table: his gun.
He said he returned to the car to find her dead in the passenger seat, apparently shot at close range by a gunman who fled into the night. Blake and Braun have insisted that Bakley may have been killed by a boyfriend or one of the many men they claimed she had bilked out of money in con schemes.
Police, who were criticised for failing to solve Bakley's murder sooner and were presumably still smarting from Simpson's acquittal, did not immediately reveal what evidence they had uncovered that led them, after almost a year, to arrest Blake.
Blake's home and the separate house on his property that his wife lived in have been extensively searched several times and he had been interviewed at length by detectives.
He has also submitted to tests for gunshot residue on his hands and clothing.
Blake, who appeared in 127 films, was acclaimed for his portrayal of killer Perry Smith in 1967's In Cold Blood, based on Truman Capote's book of the same name.
That film documented the murder of the Clutter family of Kansas. His most recent films include Money Train in 1995 and David Lynch's Lost Highway in 1997.
Since the murder, Blake put his Los Angeles home on the market for more than $1 million.
Braun said, "It's a house that no longer has great memories for him, and he wants to move out to the San Fernando Valley to be near his daughter."
- Reuters
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South Africa
