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Blake murder trial even more bizarre than TV

Actor Robert Blake outside a restaurant near the courthouse in Van Nuys, California, during a lunch break in his murder trial in late January. During Blake's trial, the public has been privy to one bizarre scenario after another, grist for a true-life pulp novel. PHOTO: NY TIMES

During the murder trial of Robert Blake, the public has been privy to one bizarre scenario after another, grist for a true-life pulp novel.

Over the past two months, observers in Van Nuys Superior Court in Los Angeles have been fed a steady diet of comic-book-style characters, a tattooed mobster-turned preacher, two strung-out stunt doubles who say they had been solicited by Blake to double as hit men; accounts of space aliens, experiments with crack-smoking monkeys and salacious details of a love child.

These are the bits and pieces of the strange world of Blake, the former television detective "Baretta," who is accused of murdering his wife and soliciting the stuntmen to participate.

His wife, Bonny Lee Bakley, was a woman with a reputation as a grifter and gold digger, who the defense contends trapped Blake into an unloving marriage by becoming pregnant with his child.

Closing arguments ended Friday with a plea from Blake's lawyer, Gerald Schwartzbach. "End this nightmare for Mr. Blake," he said, "and you will give him back his life."

Soliciting hitmen

The jurors must decide if Blake pulled the trigger, which would put him in prison for the rest of his life, and if he solicited the two stuntmen, each count carrying a maximum penalty of nine years.

Blake, 71, it is not disputed, did not care for his wife. A man with a taste for Runyonesque language, he often called her "pig" but says he had nothing to do with her death.

Bakley, 44, who had been convicted of identity fraud, fished for rich and famous men by sending them nude photos of herself. Her dream, she told friends, was to marry a celebrity.

Blake's alibi

Blake has an alibi for the time of the killing, his lawyer reminded the jury. When Bakley was shot while she sat in his car on a dark street, he said, Blake had returned to the restaurant where they had eaten to retrieve a .38 revolver, which was not used in her killing.

The murder weapon, a Nazi-era pistol, was found in a nearby Dumpster, without fingerprints.

Schwartzbach asked the jurors to apply logic. "It makes no sense," he said. "Why wouldn't he take her out to the desert?"

Schwartzbach was asking jurors to accept the Los Angeles celebrity defense that has had some success: the real killer is still out there.

``Snuff'' or ``pop''

Prosecutors said Blake told at least four men of his desire to "whack" his wife.

The stuntmen, Gary McLarty and Ronald Hambleton, testified that he discussed scenarios with them on how to "snuff" or "pop" his wife.

"This is not a rush to judgment," said Shellie Samuels, the deputy district attorney prosecuting Blake.

"The asking is the crime," he said.

Samuels said Blake had a motive: He hated his wife but wanted the child; he had the method -- shooting her in the head on an ill-lighted street; he had the opportunity.

Physical evidence

Besides the pistol, one of the few other pieces of physical evidence was a phone card Blake bought ostensibly to contact Hambleton without being traced, according to Hambleton's testimony.

Schwartzbach reminded jurors that the stuntmen were unreliable. McLarty said in court that he was a longtime cocaine abuser. He had a mental breakdown, believed that the police were tunneling under his house and thought he was being monitored from outer space.

As for Hambleton, he admitted using methamphetamines and once called the police because he believed his house was surrounded by armed men. The police found no one.

Then there is Frank Minucci, a street-tough-turned actor-turned minister, who said he and Blake had had a longtime telephone relationship in which Blake told him how he wanted to "annihilate" his wife.

Telephone records show, however, that the men exchanged only a handful of short calls.

Outside the courtroom, at recess was John Solari, a former longtime pal of Blake's. The men had a falling out, and Solari said his presence was motivated by both curiosity and disdain. "If I was going to kill my wife," he said, "I wouldn't have done it that way."

Not 10 feet away stood Blake, alone. How are you feeling, he was asked.

"I'm on the right side of the dirt," he said wanly.
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