20/20 - True Crime Vault: Robert Blake

Episode Date: June 14, 2025

The actor speaks out in a 20/20 interview 14 years after he was acquitted of murdering his wife, a case that remains unsolved. Originally broadcast January 11, 2019. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Whether it's a family member, friend or furry companion joining your summer road trip, enjoy the peace of mind that comes with Volvo's legendary safety. During Volvo Discover Days, enjoy limited time savings as you make plans to cruise through Muskoka or down Toronto's bustling streets. From now until June 30th, lease a 2025 Volvo XC60 from 1.74% and save up to $4,000. You can buy the Volvo XC60 from 1.74% and save up to $4,000. Condition supply. Visit your GTA Volvo retailer or go to volvocars.ca for full details. Welcome to the True Crime Vault, home to 2020's most chilling stories. Robert, are you innocent?

Of course I'm innocent. See you think I'm a monster too? Bipolar? I was tri-polar. I was quad-polar. Who the hell knows what kind of polar I was. I said, Chief, who was the shooter? And he said, without missing a beat, Robert Blake.

Would you welcome Robert Blake. Would you welcome Robert Blake. And the winner is Robert Blake Galletta. Let the good times roll. New wife, dare I say washed up movie star, carrying a gun on the same night. The wife is dead and he had a gun. He must have done it. Wife of actor Robert Blake.

Wife of actor Robert Blake, Bonnie Lee Bakley. She was a professional con artist. Basically robbing lonely men of their money with the promise of romance and sex. Brando allegedly said someone ought to put a bullet through that bitch's head. Many people think that he's still in jail, that he was convicted.

I'm still here, you bastards. There's a witness in this case who thinks he knows who the killer really is. Smoke that. Let me tell you about Hollywood. Let me tell you about Hollywood. When something bad has to happen, like a husband or a wife has to be eliminated, or an executive has to be eliminated,

and believe me, show business, there's a lot of strange things that happen. But the way they happen is, like, I would talk to my lawyer. Now, that's confidential. He talks to somebody else, who talks to somebody else, who talks to somebody else. And then the word comes back to me. Robert, get out of here with your family.

That's all you have to do. And somehow or other, something happens. And nobody can trace it back to anybody. That's what Hollywood is about. That's what high-end stuff is about. That's why millionaires never get arrested for anything. Millionaires don't commit crimes. Things happen. So it's Los Angeles, 2001. There's no Twitter, there's no Netflix, there's no Facebook,

there's no real internet for that matter. George W. Bush is the president. It's before 9-11. And it's a couple of years after the OJ trial. So things are kind of going along the culture rather quietly. And that's when the Robert Blake murder case happens. The wife of actor Robert Blake was killed Friday as she sat in the couple's car. The victim, Blake's wife of less than a year, Lee Bonnie Bakley, was killed by a gunshot wound to the head last Friday night.

After Robert Blake, star of the 1970s TV series, Beretta finds himself in the middle of a real life mystery. It was a big, big story in a very slow news month. Here we go. It's like, OJ. Echoing in every mind were two letters, O-J. It was huge, monumental. This was a true Hollywood story.

In Los Angeles today, police have acknowledged that the actor Robert Blake is considered a possible suspect in the murder of his wife. It sounds like a made-for-TV murder mystery, but this whodunit is all too real. Who was Robert Blake? Robert Blake was a star. He had been a child star.

He had had a successful series called Baretta. This is someone who had been famous for decades. So many generations of people knew him. The public found out almost immediately that Blake and his wife did not have an ordinary marriage and that she was a lifelong con artist. He was a figure that Hollywood was familiar with. She was like a figure out of a Raymond Chandler novel.

She was a woman with a past, like somebody out of a film noir from the 1930s or 40s. The circumstances surrounding the shooting of his wife were unusual. Mr. Blake and Ms. Bakley went to Mr. Blake's favorite restaurant for a meal. They were chatting, laughing, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. They had walked down the street, she had gotten in the car. Then Blake realized he'd forgotten something in the restaurant, his gun. So he left his wife in the car and went back to Vitello's to pick up his handgun. And he came back and Bonnie was dying. She had been shot.

Blake had run to a nearby house and asked a man to please call 911. Fire from XF-38, address emergency. My name is Sean Stanek. I heard a loud banging on the door. I open the door and I see him and I go, Robert, Blake? I was stunned. I had no idea what the hell was going on. And he was just yelling, you gotta help me, you gotta help me. He was manic.

Is she conscious, Robert? No.. He was manic. Is she conscious, Robert? No. She's not conscious. Is she breathing? Is she breathing? Yeah, they're coming, they're coming. Are the gentlemen still there to report it? It's Robert Blake's wife.

New wife, movie star, carrying a gun on the same night. You know, if you're a cop or a journalist, it stood to reason that both would try to figure out, did he have a motive, and was he involved in her death. Police were very suspicious. Who forgets a gun in a restaurant? Blake said Bonnie, his wife, was afraid she was being followed. Blake has a concealed weapons permit and was carrying a weapon because his wife feared for her life. But the explanation for his gun just raised more questions. If he was worried about his wife's safety,

why did he park blocking half away on a dark street? That was something that did raise a red flag. Police suspected Blake from the very beginning. We have not ruled anyone out as a suspect in this case. They thought it highly likely that he had either shot his wife himself or hired someone to shoot her. I was worth $40 million. I would hire somebody to shoot my wife in a car while I was out taking a pee or some

bullsh** thing like that. I've been in Hollywood all my life. This investigation lasted over a year. The police said it was the most extensive investigation in LAPD history. It seemed like he must have done it, right? The wife is dead and he had a gun. He must have done it. Well, it wasn't that gun.

The murder weapon was not the gun that Blake was carrying on the night of the killing, and they could not trace the gun that was used back to Blake. But two retired stuntmen had come forward and said that Blake had tried to hire them to kill his wife. The police thought this would be enough to nail Blake. So this is Robert Blake under arrest. This is a bodyguard of Robert Blake's now being arrested here in the Burbank area.

We're here today to announce that the Bonnie Lee Bakley case is solved. He was booked on two counts of soliciting murder and murder with special circumstances. In California, if you're charged with a homicide with special circumstances, potentially you're not going to get bail. I think the LIDA's office would prefer that a high-profile client be in custody than be out arguing, pleading his case in public. We return to the top story, the arrest of actor Robert Blake.

He'll be put in isolation and authorities say that's standard operating procedure for high-profile arrests. When we had celebrities in jail, we had to keep them out of the general population for their safety and for the safety of the other inmates. Everybody wants to be a star and all it would take is one inmate to think, hey if I beat that celebrity up I'll be in the National Enquirer or some other publication and we couldn't take that chance. Months went by. Blake is behind bars and he really wants to talk to the press. He's an actor. He figures he can sway public opinion, but his lawyers wouldn't let him do it.

If Robert's too volatile, he might have said something that could have hurt him or maybe misinterpreted. For some reason that I don't understand, he feels that he wants to talk to America. Blake kept trying to set up an interview while he was in jail awaiting trial. I ended my relationship when he made a deal behind my back to go on a television interview. I thought that was just a breach of

trust so I said you better get yourself another lawyer and you got a very good lawyer got Tom Ezra. I was against Mr. Blake giving any public interviews. This was the interview to get. Everyone wanted it. Barbara Walters landed the interview with Robert Blake. Of course. Robert? What did he have to say? And what would happen when a highly skilled interviewer would confront him, as so many people wanted him to be confronted on what this relationship was and where he was at the time of the killing? I'm glad to see you.

Hi. Whew. I'm okay. Good. What have you been doing today until I came? I used to do this for a living. I know you used to do this for a living. I'm going to sit here and you're going to sit there.

And we're going to have to put a microphone on you. Let's start, gentlemen. Oh, you're a boss. Chuck, give me an idea when you're ready to go. No question, you're the boss. Well... They're used to me by now. Robert, you've been in jail now for almost a year.

How are you doing? I'm a prisoner. I'm in a cement box in a jail. When you came back to the car and found your wife shot to death, what did you think? What did you feel? When we asked Robert Blake for an interview, he said no, but he invited us over to his home and said that we could interview his friend, and this is what happened. The way that Robert Blake came into this world is very unusual. He came into the world despite the odds against him. His parents wanted to abort him.

They didn't want him to be born because he was the result of an affair that the mother was having with his uncle. Am I getting this right? He's going to tell you if he's there. I know, he's gonna tell you. This is f***ing difficult. Just keep everything rolling. Okay.

I'm just gonna jump in here. I didn't know that you were gonna start getting this heavy. But this is the bottom line truth. It's a picture of your plug. You hear the wire sticking out. Can I do that? I thought that was a part of my brain. There's about three quarters of my brain that I'd be happy to get rid of.

Okay, we good? Yeah. Okay. Not in New Jersey. My grandmother and grandfather had a bunch of kids. Tony was one of the brothers, and Jimmy was one of the brothers. And my mother married Jimmy, although she was in love with Tony, and started sneaking over to see Tony.

And she eventually got pregnant by him, and he left. She hated what was in her stomach because it belonged to Tony, and Tony had deserted her. And Jimmy hated what was in here because he knew it was Tony's. And I knew that both of them hated me. So you have this incredibly dysfunctional family, and what do they do? They go to Hollywood to try and make it in the movies. Hollywood, California became the movie capital of the world. Huge movie studios sprang up and began to turn out millions of feet of entertainment a year.

I was four and a half years old, and my lunatic father packed up the family with all the possessions and all that junk and we drove for eight days and eight nights across the country. And they start working as extras in the studios, most notably at MGM. And that's how Blake got discovered. He is really cute. He is really cute. He is really adorable. And he's good at what he does, because he does lots of little things,

and you just sense that he is doing exactly what they want him to do. Blake may have been unwanted in his own family, but the camera loved him, and he loved the camera. So very quickly, Blake starts getting speaking parts. That person's gonna make some dynamite. If you talked, everybody on the set paid attention to you, which I interpreted as love. At the studio, he was supporting his entire family.

At home, he says his father was beating him badly. I was his punching bag. I wish I could talk nicely about him. You know, be like me trying to talk nicely about the cops that put me in that cement box for a year. To this day, I hate him. I'm still here. You bastards. I'm still here. I didn't die in that box.

You got it? I'm still here. I'm 85 years old. I'm beat up, to hell and gone, but I'm still here. And you're still pounding a beat. Smoke that. So anyway, they were going to make me a star. Hello, everybody. MGM saw him as a new star, and proof of that is they changed his name from Mickey Gubitosi to Bobby Blake.

We honestly believe that Bobby Blake is as great a boy actor as Jackie Coogan in The Kid. They cast him in his first feature film in the title role as Moki. Good night, son. Now I've got an own mother. When Donna Reed hugged me, that was the first emotions that impressed the end of the story. So Blake leaves MGM and ends up going to make

kind of low-budget Westerns. He gets loaned out, though, to other studios where he does start to meet Hollywood legends. He worked with Humphrey Bogart in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Lottery, senor. Beat it, I ain't buying no lottery tickets. Go on, beat it.

4,000 pesos, the big price. Get away from me, you little beggar. And his mentor was John Garfield. Wouldn't you like to be a tight cop? When I played John Garfield as a boy in a picture called Humoresque, I had this scene where I had to start crying. Well, I was dry as the Mojave Desert. There was nothing. I just couldn't get going. But Garfield came around and he started talking about himself. And while he's talking, he starts crying. And I start crying.

And then he said the best line that I ever heard in my life about acting or art or music or anything. He said, life is a rehearsal. Your performance is real. He played cowboys. He played neurotic thugs in B-movies like The Purple Gang. Get out of here! You hear me? Leave me alone! I don't. Get away. Please leave me alone. In 1960, Robert and I played drug addicts in a play called The Connection. And Robert played a guy called Ernie who was angry about his life and what was going on.

His monologue was so real, you felt he was gonna crack at any moment. He married an actress, Sandra Kerr. They had two children, Noah and Delina. His big break is in 1967 when he plays Perry Smith in the film version of In Cold Blood. Blake reached down into himself and into his own experiences to create this character who was vulnerable and also murderous,

but who you as a viewer ended up having mixed feelings about. I guess the only thing I'm going to miss in this world is that poor old man and his hopeless dreams. His performance was acclaimed, and he was offered everything after that. You would have thought that on the basis of this, he'd be a star, because this is a star-making performance. But it doesn't seem to have happened that way.

He turned down the Wild Bunch. He turned down Midnight Cowboy, the same role that made a star out of Dustin Hoffman. What's amazing is how often he followed a big success with a string of failures, sometimes spending years before the next important project. Some of the movies that I've made have been what I consider just fun, a lark. Elliott Gould was a big star. He was a giant star. And I didn't have a job, and Elliott Gould was going to make this movie called Busting, about two cops.

And Robert Blake, I felt, had a lot more experience than me, and I thought he would be a great partner for me. He was funny, and he loved to improvise. There was a scene where we both get beat up. And we're both sitting in that cop office. And then we say, I understand that vitamin E will clear this up almost overnight. Thank you. You're welcome.

That's funny. So by 1975, he's off Hollywood's radar. He's not being thought of for any kind of big roles. Then he was offered the role that fixed him forever in the public's imagination as a tough guy. that fixed him forever in the public's imagination as a tough guy. The image led to fame, fortune, and jail. Otsuko Okaotsuka and her new original hilarious stand-up special. Your daytime friends can't meet your nighttime friends because then they'll know you're a liar. Father is now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus.

I asked my husband the other day how to turn on the washing machine, and that's how he realized that he had been doing the laundry all these years. Otsuka, Otsuka, Father now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus. Newport Beach, California, sits just south of Los Angeles. Now streaming on Hulu and Hulurator, a mastermind of escape. He's a psychopath. Oh my God, they let Hannibal Lecter out? Devil in the Desert, coming June 17th. In the 1970s, the cop show was king. And every network had to have its own cop show or shows. You had Mannix, Starsky and Hutch, streets of San Francisco, Kodak.

And of course there was Beretta. Everybody my age, if you say the words Beretta, they break into song. In my age, if you say the words Beretta, they break into song. You'd watch those promos, Beretta, Thursdays at 9. Beretta does everything to save free runaways. So Beretta was one of those police shows where the cop breaks the rules to make sure the bad guys caught. Go ahead, move a little or I'll cut you a little. It was very much in time and feel of the 1970s, right?

This is the new kind of cop. It was a hit. And the winner is Robert Blake Beretta. The show earned Robert Blake an Emmy Award in 1975. Ah! Let the good times roll. I saw him in Beretta. I watched Beretta as a kid.

What I liked about Beretta is I liked his style. He was a fighter. Beretta had a lot of quirks. The man lived with a cockatoo. What was the deal with the cockatoo? I love you. He was brilliant. And he was called Lala.

There were five or six birds and all of them did something else. But Lala was the genius. And he also was a troubled animal because he was trapped in being a bird. He should have been a person. And if he got mad at you, you could see that he had that look in his eye and he would grab your finger and he'd look at you like, you want to argue with me? Say goodbye. Say goodbye, say goodbye.

Hello. So he was kind of nuts half of the time, but you could get him to do anything. He understood the camera. Baretta was tough and certainly not afraid to use his fists when required, but he had a good heart and he was always on the side of the weak and the vulnerable. I designed Baretta as my ideal self.

It was a lot of things that I wanted to be, but people thought that was me. And they expected to find that when they met me. It just, it wasn't true. In the hierarchy of Hollywood, movies are number one, TV's number two. Blake considered a TV series a big step down for him, but he poured his heart and soul into it. He would come in in the morning knowing his dialogue to a teen because he had rewritten it the night before and it would be better.

I never met a man that I didn't like. But I don't like you. He was a perfectionist. If he read a script and didn't like it, he would come into the office and throw it down on the table and say, who wrote this? Jimmy Garner, who was a dear friend, he said, Robert, you can't be a perfectionist on television. Stop trying to make it in cold blood, because you're not going to get that done.

But I wasn't built that way. And I drove myself crazy. Every script had to be better. Every direction had to be better. Every casting had to be better. I'd hire and fire people right on the spot in front of the camera. It was too much for Blake and he ended the show. Blake took several years off. He stayed in the public eye by appearing on The Tonight Show. He was on it a total of 150 times. Would you welcome Robert Blake?

Robert Blake. Mr. Robert Blake. Robert Blake on The Tonight Show was famous for shooting from the lip. There was nobody around to stop me. There wasn't nobody could have stopped me anyway. You killed him. I was going. I knew I wasn't going to hit him because I

was looking at his throat. And I was thinking, wouldn't it be nice if I had his Adam's apple in my hand? I said, say it, Jim. You can't talk no more. Hi. Look at him. Look at him.

They think he's really like that. He's acting. His image as a troublemaker became cemented thanks to the Tonight Show. And I did Helltown. Helltown was about a priest who saved souls on the gritty urban streets of Los Angeles. Heavenly Father, let us go among them. I wrote it, I produced it, I directed it,

and I was responsible for the money and all kinds of things. And it was about a priest, and I thought I was doing God and I walked off the show. I was always at least 50% self-destructive, but when I wasn't working, I couldn't stand the way I felt. Bipolar, I was tripolar, I was quad-polar, who the hell knows what kind of polar I was. I had 35 different feelings in five minutes. I was nuts when I was away from the camera.

Blake went through a messy divorce, and he went back into therapy. Blake quit acting entirely for eight years and got into politics supporting Cesar Chavez and working against nuclear power. I didn't need a lot of money. I was already a millionaire, but I of money. I was already a millionaire. But I was lost.

I was lost in life. So by the late 90s, Blake is acting very, very rarely. He works out, he plays his guitar, he goes to jazz clubs, and he's a figure on the periphery of Hollywood, but he's not working at all. So one night he goes to a nightclub called Chadney's, and this blonde woman approaches him, and it turns out her name is Bonnie Lee Bakley.

It would have been a good night to have stayed home. Bonnie Lee Bakley, she was a professional con artist. She was involved in pornography. She had over 50 aliases. She had been married countless times. 10 times? 11 times? I believe it was eight or nine times.

I heard six, I heard 10. Bonnie wanted to be famous or be married to somebody who was famous. The word grifter was always attached to her. This con artist who just moves from place to place, basically robbing lonely men of their money with the promise of romance and sex. Bonnie and Lee Bakley always wanted to be in show business.

She tried to sing, she tried to dance. At one point she went into a studio and made a record. Hello, my name is Leigh Bonnie. I'd like to tell you my story. Unfortunately, Bonnie was not blessed with any noticeable talent. When Bonnie found that she was not succeeding in show business, she decided to put ads in swinger magazines. She would use different names in different professions and come up with a variety of reasons as to why she needed money. There was one ad that said my name is Julia and I'm a nursing student and I need money to pay

for tuition. She'd send them sexy pictures of herself and they would fall for the babe. How does a woman who comes from very meager beginnings manage to con so many men and so many well-known men? Bonnie grew up in rural New Jersey and actually her mother gave her to her grandmother to raise. her mother gave her to her grandmother to raise. My father was an alcoholic. My mother had given up other children for adoption. It just was not a good environment. She said that at just 10 years old, she was already having sexual experiences with men.

Growing up, Bonnie lived near a nudist colony, which one day a week, it was known in the neighborhood, had a day that you could swim with your clothes on. When she was 11, she and her sister Marjorie went there, only to find out that the day they'd gone was, in fact, the day they had to take their clothes off. Marjorie never went back, but Bonnie went back all the time after that. Bonnie was swimming there a lot,

and that's where Bonnie got her start in the taking of nude photos. She was underage. People were taking photos of her and selling them. At 21, Bonnie married her first cousin, a guy named Paul. And they had a daughter, Holly, and a son. Bonnie's children didn't mind what she did for a living. Her daughter Holly did an interview with Barbara Walters at one point,

and of course Barbara asked about it. Describe her as a mother. She was everything to me. She was my best friend. She supported me in anything I wanted to do. She allowed us to grow and learn any way we wanted to. Your mother was described in the press as a con woman. Yes. Help me with that. She did do things that most people wouldn't approve of but it wasn't all that she did. She was a shrewd businesswoman. She ran the business. What was the business? Well for the most part she sold pictures of naked women, a little bit of pornography, and she'd spend time on the phone asking for plane tickets or just whatever she wanted.

What'd you think of your mother? I thought she was great, I love her. I will tell you that her kids loved her. She was a hell of a mom. So as Bonnie gets older, her cons become more elaborate. She would lure lonely older men into a trap where they would put her on their will, where they would put her on life insurance policies. And once she had built them of whatever she could get from them, she would disappear.

One of her involvements was with a retired lawman. He discovers that there's case after case, man after man, of people who've been fleeced and hoodwinked by her from all over the country. The cases fill 400 pages of a manuscript he puts together and that he entitles, Ubiquitous Bonnie, Mistress of Sham, of Lust, Greed,, and deceit. He told his niece that at some point, someone was going to pull a bullet in her head. To establish her different aliases, Bonnie starts stealing credit cards

and forging driver's license. This ends up in her getting charged with fraud in 1998 in Arkansas. One of Bonnie's stranger hobbies was that she would record her telephone conversations. If you talked to Bonnie, you were being recorded. It was an obsession. I don't exactly know why, but she always figured she could use them later. I got three years probation just for having different IDs, you know, and it

wasn't even like I was really used them for anything totally, you know, too too illegal either, you know. In the 1990s, Bonnie moved to Memphis because she wanted to be Jerry Lee Lewis's girlfriend. -♪ And the goodness raised his great balls of fire... -♪ Jerry Lewis recorded great balls of fire. He was the killer. He's one of the great rock and rollers of all time. Bonnie Lee was very, very determined. She just had her way of working her way in.

She was just everywhere. Bonnie Lee, as far as I know, never had a physical, intimate relationship with Jerry Lee Lewis. Bonnie wouldn't have been with him if they weren't sleeping together. Bonnie was going around saying she was pregnant with Jerry Lee Lewis, his love child as they called it. We all laughed because we knew better. It would have been a miracle to furl out his baby, trust me. He was sterile.

He couldn't have any children. A subsequent DNA test proved that he was not the father. But she told the world that Jerry Lee Lewis was the father of her baby. And in fact, named the child Jerry Lee. After Jerry Lee Lewis, Bonnie decides she wants to set her sights higher. So she decides to pick up stakes in Memphis and move to Hollywood. She started stalking Dean Martin. He's an older guy.

He's 78 years old. He ends up dying before she can actually get close to him. So Bonnie focused on someone she'd been pursuing for a while, Christian Brando, the troubled son of Marlon Brando. Bonnie had been interested in Christian Brando since 1991, when he'd been convicted of shooting his sister's boyfriend in the face. What she did was she sent nude photos to him,

FedExed him to him while he was in jail. And then they met when they got out, when he got out of jail. And that was it. That's all it took. So Christian Brandon was the only person that Bonnie has her sights on. She was about to meet Robert Blake. On that first night, Robert Blake had no idea who Bonnie really was. She will be famous, but not for the reasons that she ever, ever would have wanted.

The new BMO VI Porter MasterCard is your ticket to more. More perks, more points, more flights. More of all the things you want in a travel rewards card and then some. Get your ticket to more with the new BMO VI Porter MasterCard and get up to $2,400 in value in your first 13 months. Terms and conditions apply. Visit bmo.com slash the iPorter to learn More hello. It's Robin Roberts here. Hey guys, it's George Stephanopoulos here. Hey everybody. It's Michael Strahan here

Wake up with good morning America Robin George Michael gma America's favorite number one morning show The morning's first breaking news, exclusive interviews, what everyone will be talking about that day. Put some good in your morning and start your day with GMA. Good Morning America. Put the good in your morning. GMA 7A on ABC. You met Bonnie Lee Bakley in 1999. What was your life like when you met her? I had no real life going on. I was in some sort of a strange transition. My kids were grown and gone. I had plenty of dough to last me the rest of my life.

Okay, so in comes this woman, Bonnie Bakley, whom you met where? A jazz club. Describe her to me. She was pretty. What I used to do, it sounds pathetic. I used to go out at night to jazz clubs. Months in the wild, I was particularly lonely. I was still Italian.

I'd meet a woman, and we would have sex. And I probably never saw her again. Is this Bonnie? Yeah. I didn't know her name. I didn't know anything about her. While she was seeing Kristen Brando, she was also seeing Robert Blake. And she was using an ovulation prediction kit because she wanted to get pregnant. So of course, she did get pregnant. She wrote a letter to Robert Blake,

I hate to tell you this, but the pill did not work for me. Blake did not want her to have that child. I just have it and give temporary custody to my mother or something like that. Have the baby and give it to your mother? Temporarily, yeah. I'd rather you didn't have it. She frankly was telling both the men that it was their child. She can't decide whether or not she wants the baby to be Robert Blake's or Christian Brando.

Christian Brando is good looking and handsome, but Robert Blake has more money. Brando, of course, is also someone who went to prison for shooting someone in the face. I wanted to know if the baby was healthy and if the baby was mine. She said, the baby is healthy and you're the father. That's all there is to it.

How come she said later that it was Christian Brando? Because Bonnie said a lot of things at a lot of times. When the baby was born, Bonnie Lee Bakley named the baby Christian Shannon Brando. So Robert doesn't know if he in fact is the father of the child, so he convinces Bonnie to bring the baby to Los Angeles. And that's when he sees the baby for the first time. And that's when his heart basically opens up and he falls in love with his child. The first time I touched Rosie, she was my daughter.

And right then and there, I named her. I said, you're Rosie Lenore. You were 66 years old. This is a baby from a woman that you're not in love with. You had grown children. Why did you want this baby so badly? What does she mean to you? What did she mean to you? You're grown children. Why did you want this baby so badly? What does she mean to you? What did she mean to you?

You're not serious. Well, this is a baby that you were not sure was yours. No, this was my baby. You just knew that. This was my daughter. I knew, of course I knew that. Of course I knew that. See, you think I'm a monster too?

No, Robert, I wasn't so- That I can't pick up my own baby and know that she's mine? No, Robert. I knew the second I put my hands on her, and I asked God to take care of her right at that minute. Doesn't it matter whatever happened for the rest of my life, I'd never ask him for the time of day. She was my baby. She was my daughter.

The DNA test proved it was Blake's baby. Blake did not want Bonnie raising the baby. Who would trust Bonnie Bakley to be the mother of their child? Robert Blake didn't trust her at all. They both, like, were highly suspicious of each other. So at one point Bonnie taped Robert Blake in a telephone conversation where she tries to bait him into saying that he wanted to sell the baby for money. Why? So that perhaps you can use it later on to extort money out of him.

This following tape is just to prove that Robert Blake wants to sell my baby. I have no intentions of doing so. I'm just trying to prove it in case it's necessary. I don't know how to describe it. I mean, she just creates fiction out of whole cloth. You know, you told me about those people that wanted to buy the baby for a hundred thousand. What people? What baby? What are you talking about? So I'm just telling you, you know, what I know. And, you know, I was like thinking it over, and you know, like, but I didn't have time to think. I don't know what the f*** you're talking about.

Well, I was all stressed out and I didn't have time to think about it. I don't know what you're talking about. The baby! You said that the... I would never sell my child! What, are you crazy? What, are you a f***ing nut? Well, why'd you ask me then to do it? I never asked you jack***. What? Okay, never mind, forget it. Boy, you are really getting weird.

Anyone who knows Robert would know he would never do that. A little baby girl? He's going to sell his baby? Robert Grootza loved the baby very much. And he accepted the responsibility as a father. He married Bonnie. I think he was fearful of, you know, if he wasn't constantly in Rosie's life, what might happen to her? He was resigned to the fact that he had to live with her, but she was living in the back house,

so she wasn't really involved in his life, and he was just doing his own thing. Around this time, Blake starts noticing a black pickup truck parked on his block at odd times. Inside is a guy with a crew cut. Blake became concerned that this man was someone who had been victimized by Bonnie and was looking to cause harm to Bonnie. Bonnie was an agent of chaos. She left a trail of broken hearts and angry men. One of those men was

Christian Brando and she kept telling him the baby was his even though she knew it was Blake's. Eventually he found out. It's not my kid. You know that? No, I don't know that for a fact. No. So why don't you come out and f***ing say it? No, I don't know that for a fact. No. So why don't you come out and f***ing say it? No, I don't know that for a fact. Well, why does it wind up in the National Enquirer? You're making a bunch of b****** up and it winds up in the National Enquirer.

What the f*** is the deal with that? It really f***ing bugs me. I don't know. You have no idea what you do to people with this s***. No idea. You know what? you know what, it kinda, it kinda hurt. Think about it.

You're lucky somebody ain't out there to pull a bullet in your head. It sounds like a made-for-TV murder mystery, but this whodunit is all too real. You bastards. I'm still here. I didn't die in that box. You got it? I'm still here.

Robert Blake was a star. The wife of actor Robert Blake was killed Friday. She will be famous, but not for the reasons that she ever, ever would have wanted. Robert Blake and Bonnie Lee Bakley had been married for just five months. It would so appear that Bonnie had achieved her goal of marrying a celebrity, but this would not be a traditional marriage. They wouldn't live together. She married him because he was a celebrity, and he married her because she had his baby. He took her out to dinner at Vitello's, which was his favorite Italian restaurant.

He goes there so often that there's even a dish on the menu named after him. They had a pleasant evening according to him. They pay for their meal and they walk out together. Blake would tell police that he would go back to Vitello's because he forgot something at the restroom. And he came back and Bonnie was dying. She had been shot. She was sitting in the passenger seat with blood on her head.

She was sitting in the passenger seat with blood on her head. On May 4th, 2001, 9th or 8th night, I heard a loud banging on the door. When I opened that door, I was just stunned to see Robert Blake. He starts going into a tirade of, you gotta help me, you gotta help me, you gotta get an ambulance, you gotta call 911. My name is Sean Stanek. Do you know who the actor Robert Blake is? Yes. He walked up here and he's screaming severely.

I know him from the neighborhood here. Okay. He was in my house and he was pacing back and forth and his eyes, they looked black and dilated. Get an ambulance. She's conscious. Is she conscious, Robert? No. She's not conscious. Is she breathing? Is she breathing? Yeah, they're coming, they're coming. dialated. I thought we're gonna go out together and try to help and he leaves

and I go where you going? He says he's gonna go get help. I open the door I sit in next to her and there's just massive amount of blood everywhere. It's probably about a minute or two minutes before he came back. When I saw Robert Blake had a gun, I thought to myself, we're in deep. Wife of actor Robert Blake. Wife of actor Robert Blake. Was killed Friday as she sat in the couple's car. Police had several suspects in the days following Bonnie's murder including Christian Brando, Marlon Brando's son, who was apparently irate that she had lied

to him about who Rosie's dad was. She'd also been scamming men for years so there were those possible suspects but they immediately zeroed in on Robert Blake. Over the following months, police eliminate Christian Brando as a suspect and focus the investigation on Robert Blake. And then suddenly, word spread that something was happening and he was going to be charged. And the police called a press conference. I was there.

This morning, detectives secured arrest warrants for Robert Blake. And I raised my hand and I said who was the shooter? And he said without missing a beat. Robert Blake shot Bonnie Bacley. They announced to the world they were going to Hidden Hills to arrest me and there were thousands of people around. You were looking at a live picture there. They were going to Hidden Hills to arrest me. And there were thousands of people around. You were looking at a live picture there. They were coming to arrest him. Reporters galore, cameras galore.

That would be Mr. Blake being loaded into the car right now. He was booked on two counts of soliciting murder and murder with special circumstances. The LAPD had been blamed by many people for the loss of the OJ case. They wanted to make up for the public perception that they had blown the OJ Simpson case. Over the strenuous objections of his lawyers, Blake decides to do that interview with Barbara Walters. Your hands are okay now.

There's nothing like a televised interview of someone who hasn't spoken before, accused of a crime, because it's as if the nation is now the jury. They can look at this guy and say, I believe him or I don't. And that's a thrilling television experience. You made almost a dozen movies in which you either played a murderer or somebody in jail. Why you give me my lawyer, you hear me? Do you think that today there are people who say he is that tough guy? No. The cops invented that person and shoved it down the press's throat and the press loved it.

They walked up and down the streets saying $15,000 for anything bad about Robert Blake. I think the police and the prosecutors were a mixing performance and theater and film with reality. No longer a big star, Robert Blake admits to Barbara Walters that he's effectively a pariah. I moved to Hidden Hills, a gated community where I had lived 20 years before and I had lots of friends. I went there and nobody would talk to me. People crossed the street when they saw me coming. The kids next door wouldn't play with Rosie. I would go to have coffee with her and people would get up from the seats they were sitting in and move someplace else.

While Blake is in jail, his older daughter, Delina, takes care of baby Rosie. Do you think of killing yourself? No. I think about dying. And I think, you know, it'd be better if I was gone. You know what scares me? If I walk out of here, Barbara, where do I go? Where do I go? I feel like the people that love me are better off without me.

You can see Rosie? Yeah, that would be good for me. I'm not sure it would be good for her. Here's a little girl that's got a good life now. And am I going to come in and confuse her? When I went to see him, he was quite distraught about being apart from the little girl who he had become very close to. Rosie had become his life. Robert, you did this interview because you wanted to talk to your daughter.

Yes. What do you most want her to know? Talk now to Rosie. There is something in me and something in every person, including you, Rosie, that's special, that's a gift from God. He does not look like someone who intentionally set out to kill his wife. Robert, are you innocent?

Of course, of course I'm innocent. Of course I'm innocent. What if you are found guilty? What are they gonna do to me? What are they gonna do to me that they haven't done already? They took away my entire past. They took away my entire future. What's left for them to take?

You're going to take my testicles and make earrings out of them? When you think of him, you think of this combative guy who was always looking for someone to fight. Next time you see me, you're gonna die. And then in the 21st century, the person he was fighting was the law. At Desjardins Insurance, we know that when you're a building contractor, your company's foundation needs to be strong. That's why our agents go the extra mile to understand your business and provide tailored solutions for all its unique needs.

You put your heart into your company, so we put our heart into making sure it's protected. Get insurance that's really big on care. Find an agent today at DejaDent.com slash business coverage. Hey there, it's Ryan Rilts. And if you're into weird animals and questionable life choices, business coverage. get down in the mud. These guys are the grossest, most unlikely stars in the great movie of life. Underdogs, new series Sunday at 9 on National Geographic. Stream on Disney Plus and Hulu.

97.1, KLSX, the FM Talk Station. Now here's your host, Eric Dubin. What is happening, Southern California? Good morning. Eric Dubin used to do a radio show out of Orange County. I was listening to the show. Welcome to Legally Speaking, your chance to ask questions of a high-powered trial attorney.

That's how Marjorie Bakley found me. She liked my aggressiveness, my tone, the fact that I was fearless. So Eric Dubin becomes the lawyer for the Bakley family. He files a wrongful death suit. Typically in a criminal case, a defendant is simply trying to get a not guilty verdict. But in this case, Robert Blake was also facing a civil case. It puts him in a really tricky spot.

In a civil trial, you could be deposed. You could be called as a witness. The problem is that prosecutors or other lawyers can twist what you say. This was a disaster. Eric Dubin showed up for the deposition. There's nothing stopping Mr. Blake from telling the truth today. They bring this man behind a plexiglass,

and it was Robert Blake. I think my first thought was, oh my god, it's Beretta. As any good attorney would do, Tom Mezzarro was insisting that Blake not say a word. I have previously announced in open court in this proceeding that I am not going to permit Mr. Blake to respond to any questions. I am going to, on behalf of Mr. Blake, assert all of Mr. Blake's constitutional rights and privileges under the United States Constitution and the California Constitution. Blake wanted to testify because he felt he had nothing to hide. It was my general understanding that I was going to talk and that when there was a question

that you didn't like you were going to object to it. No Mr. Blake. Well that's my understanding. I am not going to permit you to respond to any questions in this deposition. You have Blake sort of fighting with his own lawyer which is just legal bizarro world. Mr. Mezra can we just start with a depo for you to make your record? Mr. Blake I'm not going to allow you to respond to any questions in this deposition and a legal bizarro world. and I got in a huge fight. Mr. Duvall, I'm not going to elect you. Mr. Duvall, don't touch me. I'm not going to be lectured by you on the law.

At one point, so many people are talking over each other that the court reporter can't keep up. I'm sorry, I cannot take both of you. You're both speaking at the same time. I'm sorry. Mr. Mazur, you can't keep cutting me off. Mr. Duvall, you're not going to lecture me on the law. I can't. I can't. I'm sorry.

I just, I can't get both of you. I can't get what you're saying, sir. What are you so afraid of, Tom? Uh, I'm not afraid of anything. This is a circus and a clown show that you put on to get publicity. Mr. Blake's lawyers terminated the deposition. Mr. Measurow would not let him say anything. In the end, the civil case is delayed, and now Robert Blake can focus exclusively on the criminal case. Today is the first day that the American public gets to hear about the case in a court of law. The preliminary hearing is the prosecution's effort to demonstrate they have enough evidence to take the case to trial.

Part of the prosecution's evidence will be a tape-recorded phone conversation between Robert Blake and Bonnie Lee Bagan. I know who you are and I know what you are. But you're wrong. Yeah, I'm wrong. tape-recorded phone conversation between Robert Blake and Bonnie Lee Bagan. I didn't think they incriminated Mr. Blake at all. I mean, she became pregnant. She was two-timing him with Christian Brando. It was not evidence that somebody was a murderer or had a motive to kill. It was ridiculous. The heart of the prosecution's case is testimony from two retired stuntmen who say Robert Blake tried to get them to kill his wife. And when they said no, prosecutors say he did it himself. Gary McClarty was a very respected, successful stuntman in Hollywood.

He'd been in a lot of big films. Gary McClarty did the stunt of riding up the stairs in Animal House. What did he say to her? That somebody at night could come in while she was sleeping and somebody could go in there and dispose of her. He said that he wanted to pay $10,000. The other stuntman is Ronald Duffy Hamilton, whose most famous stunt was in a George Lucas movie called THX 1138. He wanted to know basically what it was going to cost him for my services.

I obviously had no intention of giving him a figure. Today Blake's attorney, Thomas Mezzero, continued to try to break the credibility of the witnesses. My strategy was to thoroughly eviscerate them on videotape. We discovered that there was a history of drug abuse with the two stuntmen. You've used cocaine for years, true? Not years, I have used it. When did you last use it? A few months.

Didn't you say this morning you never did any drugs? I experimented with drugs and I have used regular store-bought drugs or those prescribed. Is methadrine a prescription drug? It possibly could be. I don't know. Did you get it with a prescription? No, I didn't. In these situations, typically far more likely than not that it goes to trial. Your motion dismisses denied.

Not surprisingly, the judge decides that the case is going to go to trial. The standard is relatively low, but what is surprising is what happens with bail. In a murder case, you don't typically get bail. I am going to set bail at a million and a half dollars. All you have to do is look at his facial expression when he's given bail to know how miraculous that what this was for him. With those words Robert Blake looks stunned. It took a few seconds to sink in and then his eyes filled with tears. After almost a year in jail it appears he will be out on bail.

Tom Mesurot managed something that was almost like a miracle, which was getting him out of jail on a murder charge, on bail. I'm going to go sleep for three or four days. I never thought I'd make 11 months in a cement box, but I'm here. This preliminary hearing to televised, it made Tom Mezzereau into a star.

Tom Mesereau quits and ends up representing Michael Jackson. Mr. Blake and I had a falling out. He's a few months away from a trial. His lawyers just quit. A lot of the public thinks he did it. This is not where Robert Blake wants to be right now. The 90s and early 2000s were the era of court TV. That's where I got my start. It was one high-profile case after another

and one high-profile lawyer after another. When Tom Mesereau left the case, Robert Blake could hire just about anyone he wanted, and he ended up hiring someone who was not particularly well known. The first 25 years, at least, of my career were representing poor people getting paid next to nothing, but that was meaningful. I never thought I'd be retained to represent Robert Blake in this Los Angeles murder case. Who am I?

I believed in his innocence from the first time I met him. More than three years after his wife was fatally shot, opening statements are set for today. Trial of actor Robert Blake is finally underway. Blake could face life in prison without the possibility of parole if convicted of first-degree murder in this case. The case was almost entirely circumstantial. It was based on two witnesses, highly unreliable. It was based on very little actual hard evidence.

Deputy District Attorney Shelley Samuels told jurors that Blake killed his wife Bonnie Lee Bakley because he wanted their baby Rosie but he didn't want her. The evidence will show that the defendant became obsessed with the child and with keeping the child away from Bonnie. I could have sued her for trial custody. I could have done a lot of things and I would probably have won. I didn have sued her for trial of custody. I could have done a lot of things. And I would probably have won. I didn't have to marry her.

It was the very best thing to do for Rosie. The prosecution says Blake solicited two stuntmen to murder Bakely. Prosecutors introduce evidence that Duffy bought a prepaid phone card so he could talk to Blake and the conversations couldn't be traced. There was a calling card that linked him to two of the men

with like 30 plus calls leading up to the day of the murder. So Blake says, yeah, I reached out to the stunt men, but not to kill Bonnie. He wanted them to chase away a guy that he thought was stalking him and Bonnie. I was getting really worried about what was going on in front of my house. And I was through, I had a gate and it was locked and all like that. But a truck started showing up regularly, sometimes during the day, sometimes during the night.

It was during the day when I walked out there, they drove away and I said, what's going on here? I figured it had to do with Bonnie because she burned a lot of people. Why not let the pros handle it? I hired them a lot of times. Duffy Hamilton worked for me a lot. Gary McClarty doubled me on Breda, so why not?

And the defense had a witness who could help back it up, McClarty's own son, Cole. Cole McClarty gets up on the stand and testifies that Gary McClarty comes to him a few days after talking to Robert Blake and says, Robert Blake's going to pay me $10,000 to rough up this stalker, and I want you to help me. So then Cole goes and tells his mom, and his mom like, what what what why are you no what are you getting involved in this criminal act for? That's important because it backs up Blake's team's defense that yes Robert Blake had contact with McClarty but no it wasn't about killing Bonnie Lee Bakley.

The other stuntman, Duffy Hamilton, admitted to using a little meth, but the defense dug up a lot more evidence. Duffy lived in a house in the desert in San Bernardino County. He had methamphetamine lying all around his house, in a china hutch, in a kitchen cabinet, and in a bowl beside a bowl of jelly beans

in his dining room. Although he denied it, Duffy was using so much meth that he once hallucinated that 20 armed men had invaded his house and he actually called the police for help. So the witnesses are a problem for the prosecution, but the bigger problem is they can't link Blake to the murder weapon. There's a problem for the prosecution, but the bigger problem is they can't link Blake to the murder weapon. There's this gun that was found in the dumpster that is the murder weapon. The murder weapon was found in a dumpster right near the car.

It was a Walther P38. Blake admits he had a gun with him that night, but it was a completely different gun. He had this one for protection. He says he went back into the restaurant to get it, and that's when Bonnie gets shot. Two guns, one scene, lots of confusion. They were fine, and that's what he's going to do. Prosecutors didn't believe he ever went back to the restaurant.

Nobody saw Blake go back into Vitello's, including the cashiers and the host that he would have to walk by. The defense said it was possible for Blake to return to the restaurant without being seen. You can see right here the booth where Robert had dinner. So if there's not somebody at the front counter, he runs into the restaurant, grabs the gun, and is back out of the restaurant within 15 seconds, perhaps less.

within 15 seconds, perhaps less. The testimony that you're going to hear in this case about gunshot residue is going to indicate that Mr. Blake was not the shooter. In this case, the gun residue was a very, very big part. Why? If Robert Blake is firing that gun, you expect him to have a lot of gun residue on him. If he doesn't, then it stands to reason that he didn't fire the gun. We had our lab, forensic analytical, test-fire the murder weapon. When fired twice, there were 737 particles that were definitely gunshot residue on the hands of the person who fired the gun. Bonnie was shot twice.

Robert had no gunshot residue on him. Blake had minutes to go behind an alley and wash his hands. There was no sink near the car at the time she was killed. There was no soap available for him to wash his hands. And the entire area was examined. So there are no gloves in the vicinity anywhere. It would have been physically impossible. Conclusion is he never fired that weapon.

I'm glad to see you. Then there was the Barbara Walters interview. The prosecution brought up the Barbara Walters interview early in the case. And that opened the door for the defense to use it, to really humanize Robert Blake. From the second I touched Rosie, to really humanize Robert Blake. From the second I touched Rosie, it's all about her. What its significance was, was extraordinary, because Robert was able to sound incredibly honest

and emotional. Robert, how are you feeling? Fine, thank you. Robert Blake was confident as he walked in with his legal team. With the cast of characters straight out of central casting, the people have proven what they have promised. If you do justice, you will end this nightmare for Mr. Blake. And you will give him back his life.

As to the verdicts then, would you please hand them to the bailiff? The verdicts then, would you please hand them to the bailiff? The Robert Blake murder trial, a verdict expected any day now. If convicted, he could spend the rest of his life in prison. The most terrifying moment of a trial for me is when the jury comes in to render a verdict. We the jury in the above entitled action find the defendant Robert Blake not guilty of the crime of first-degree murder of Bonnie Lee Bakley. What was like when they said not guilty? Oh, just enormous relief.

Robert Blake found not guilty. A jury acquitted the actor Robert Blake in the murder of his wife. The people who weren't following the case that closely were shocked. But the people who were watching the trial every day were not that surprised. The lack of physical evidence, the problems with the stunt men's credibility was too difficult for the prosecutors to overcome. Why did you decide Robert Fleiss did not kill his wife? They couldn't put the gun in his hand.

As the jury foreman said, they couldn't put the gun in his hand. As the jury foreman said, they couldn't put the gun in his hand. And that was the gunshot residue. LA District Attorney Steve Cooley is calling that jury, quote, incredibly stupid. The district attorney made the mistake of going on camera saying he thought the jury was stupid. You have offended me by even thinking for one second that I am stupid. Coming on the heels of the OJ verdict, they just couldn't accept it that they had lost. Barbara Walters, God bless you, darling. I'd have never got out of the joint with you. I promised her in jail, you get the first interview afterward. And so I was acquitted, they put me on a plane, and I did Barbara's show.

Buckle up, folks. Good morning, America. Robert Roberts back with a very special guest host this morning. Have you changed as a result of all of this? People right now either love me or hate me. The other day I went to the farmer's market and everybody was hugging me and stuff, but there were people on the outside saying murder murder, but It's hard to go from being

Saddam Hussein to Seabiscuit and try to catch up. You do have a way with words. I've never been a tough guy in my life My bark was out there to keep people away from me because I was scared. And what I was really scared of is somebody hugging me. And now? Now it's just the opposite. I hug people that don't even like me. When you heard the verdict and you've said, I am blessed, if you could have one blessing now just for you. I want the same thing you want.

I want a date for New Year's Eve. And she said, happy new year, Robert. And I said, happy new year, Barbara. And we went out and had breakfast. That great mood didn't last for long because the civil trial then begins within a few months. The 71 year old actor arrived for the beginning of jury selection in his wrongful death lawsuit. I think you've got enough entertainment around here without me.

Driving a ping pong tournament, isn't a pool game nothing for you guys to cover on the planet. Attorney Eric Dubin, who represents Bakley's Heirs, turned down an offer from Blake to settle the case before trial for about $250,000. I'm only thinking a couple days to pick a jury. It shouldn't be that difficult. The defense lawyer was a guy named Peter Azell, who I believe at the time was in the Super Lawyer magazine. And someone told me he hadn't lost a case since 1970. I have confidence in the judge and the system. It should be no problem. For a criminal case, the standard

is beyond a reasonable doubt. For a civil case, it's preponderance of the evidence, a much lower standard. In the criminal trial, he didn't have to testify. In the civil trial, he did have to testify. And you could see this from his deposition. This is a guy who could fly off the handle. Don't get cute with me. And I'm not going from his deposition. This is a guy who could fly off the handle. Don't get cute with me.

I'm not gonna tell you again. I never instructed anybody to harm Bonnie in any way. Okay, we'll get to that. We got to it right now. I never instructed anybody to harm Bonnie in any way. I was gonna say you hated Bonnie at the time of her murder? That's a lie. I'm asking you, did you hate Bonnie?

I said that's a lie. When Robert Blake testifies in the civil trial, he goes off. Colorful and combative exchanges as Robert Blake told his side of what happened the night his wife was shot and killed. He was Beretta on the stand, essentially. The fiery actor frequently raised his own objections to questions and even attempted to take over for the judge by sustaining his own objections. He just dug himself deeper in a hole. Blake was yelling at everybody and threatening everybody and the jury got to see who Robert

Blake was. Jury deliberations are expected to begin who Robert Blake was. Jury deliberations are expected to begin in Robert Blake's civil case. The jury deliberated for eight days and returned a verdict which stunned everyone. This is Robert Blake as he walked into court this morning before the verdict. The first question was, did Robert Blake kill Monalee Bailey?

And they said yes. Blake looked stunned as the juror said his liability is $30 million. Hopefully I'll take a check, cashier's check or cash, I'll leave it at whatever he wants to do. The numbers were good and the jury got that right. The appellate court cut the damages in half. Eventually we settled for a confidential amount. I think what was interesting about this jury is they didn't seem to have unanimous agreement

on what actually happened involving Robert Blake. Did you, as a jury, believe that he pulled the trigger or do you just think that he caused her death? To this point, who knows? I mean... We're not sure. There was outrageous jury misconduct in the civil case. One of them was relying on the Bible. There was a juror misconduct in the civil case. One of them was relying on the Bible.

There was a juror who had a hearing impairment. He was being told by other jurors what the evidence was. There were some jurors who talked about deciding the case beforehand. A lot of jurors didn't like Blake to begin with. Who was, I don't like Blake. He left his wife in the car just constantly before the testimony even began. It was just the way he was acting. I mean, you know, he could have been a lot better, a lot nicer to people. They hear about Robert Blake and they think about O.J. Simpson because there's the public perception that O.J. got away with murder.

They all agreed that this is sending a message out. This is sending a message out to the world. Just because you're famous, you can't get away with it. I received a telephone call from a lawyer who said he had a client. He gave me significant information that suggested that someone completely unrelated to Robert had been involved in the murder. There's a witness in this case who thinks he knows who the killer really is.

There had always been two theories of this case. For the prosecution, it's that Robert Blake ambushed his wife and killed her. For the defense, it was that somebody from Bonnie's dark past killed her. Bonnie had been scamming men for literally decades. So there were a lot of guys out there who might be pretty angry about the way that they'd been treated. So one of the guys who was angry with Bonnie

was Marlon Brando's son Christian. And he was angry because Bonnie had told him that he had fathered her daughter Rosie. But he hadn't. While the defense was preparing for the criminal trial, a woman who knew Christian Brando came forward, Diane Mattson. The so-called bombshell witness set to testify at Blake's murder trial about a conversation she overheard between Duffy Hamilton and Christian Brando, one where Brando allegedly said to Bonnie Bacley, someone ought to put a bullet through that bitch's head. Diane Matson worked for Christian Brando. She was his assistant and she overheard a lot of his

calls because he always used a speakerphone. She was president when Christian Brando was having a phone conversation on speakerphone. They talked about the fact that Ms. Bakley had played Mr. Brando, and at one point, Mr. Brando said, somebody ought to put a bullet through her head, and everyone agreed. He's on this phone call with a couple different guys, including a guy named Duffy, the same Duffy who accused Robert Blake of soliciting him to kill his wife.

When the police asked Christian if he knew Duffy, he denied it Why was Christian Brando denying that he knew a retired stuntman by the name of Duffy? Why would he deny it unless he thought it was going to incriminate him in the murder? So Blake's lawyers are very intrigued by this connection between Christian Brando and Duffy But they don't know exactly what the significance is until someone named Brian Allen comes forward and starts to connect the dots. In my neighborhood of Willow Glen, in Lower Canyon is a cast of characters from wealthy behind-the-scenes movie people to some celebrities, as well as some people that

would be considered undesirable. They did drugs, they did meth, they did whatever. I realized that I had some information that I felt was very relevant to the murder. I knew a man named Mark Jones, who was one of these individuals, that there was no question he had a drug abuse problem. Mark Jones was a transient who lived on the same street that Brian Allen lived in. He was a meth addict.

He was a very handy guy and Brian used to have him do handy work around his house. In early 2001, I saw Mark Jones carrying a gun that I later learned was a Walter P38 and fit the exact description of the murder weapon used against Bonnie Lee Bakley. In the weeks before Bonnie's death, Brian Allen says that he had seen that gun in Mark Jones's hand several times. And he also realized that he had seen Duffy Hamilton

on his block looking for Mark Jones. Well, once I realized I could identify that Mark Jones had possession of a weapon that looked to me the same as the picture, I could identify Duffy Hamilton as being part of these cast of characters that visited Willow Glen. I then realized that there was more to give to the police.

So months went by, and I was a little surprised to not hear further from the police department. But then I got a call from a private investigator from the defense team. I was excited because I thought Brian had credibility. But I thought, my goodness, how are we going to prove this? So the defense starts digging and they find that other people have seen a gun that looks like the murder weapon in the possession of Duffy Hamilton. And Duffy's son had seen some of his father's guns.

And one of them looked exactly like the murder weapon. Duffy Hamilton was known to have a gun that looked just like the murder weapon. Mark Jones was seen with a gun that looked just like the murder weapon. And Duffy and Mark knew Christian Brando. So when you combine all that, it's hard not to see how this evidence creates reasonable doubt. It was pieces of a puzzle that fit together.

What at first seemed bizarre to me ended up being a very, very credible story that strongly suggested that either Christian Brando or someone associated with Christian Brando had been involved in Bonnie's murder. The defense put all this stuff in a motion and brought it before the judge, trying to get it into the criminal trial.

So you've gotta bring a motion asking for permission from the court to introduce this evidence. The evidence has to be strong enough to create reasonable doubt for the court to admit it. But the judge denied our motion. Brian Allen did testify in the civil case, but it didn't impact the verdict. We know that Christian Brando used meth.

We knew Duffy Hamilton used meth amphetamine. It's certainly possible that the plan to kill Ms. Bakley, it had so many holes in it and was so flawed that it could have been contrived by people who were tweaking on methamphetamine. I've come to believe that Duffy hired somebody to kill her. He either did it at the instruction of Christian or to gain favor with Christian. I'm curious about who you think killed Bonnie and Baikley. I do believe that Mark Jones was the shooter.

Mark Jones became a different person shortly after Bonnie Lee Baikley's murder. He said he was very depressed about some things. Mark ends up committing suicide after Bonnie's killed. The suicide happened only four weeks after the murder. Now looking back, I can see it was somebody who had tremendous remorse, and the fact that he committed suicide seemed to further validate that.

In 2009, Christian Brando died of pneumonia. A few years after that, Duffy Hamilton died of natural causes. So the people who might know what happened are now dead. And in the end, we may never know what really happened on that night. The other unanswered question is, what happened to that little girl Robert Blake loved so much, Rosie? Her life now may surprise some people. He did it. He was angry and he did it.

I think some people, if you ask them, where's Robert Blake, they'd say, in jail, because they thought he was convicted. Gonna take a sentimental journey to relieve old memories. After the civil trial, he ended up living in a simple two-bedroom apartment in the valley. This I stole from Universal. I built that over there. All this **** I built. That doesn't mean it's anything fancy.

It cost him all of his money. He went into bankruptcy. I believe he lives off of his pension. His life is a far cry from his glory days. Rosie was adopted by his older daughter, Delina, and her husband. She's 18 now and has been brought up out of the public eye. Amazingly, he still makes news.

Congratulations on the recent news of your marriage. TMZ tried to interview him when he married an old girlfriend last year. They divorced after a year of marriage. Counting every mile of railroad track that takes me back Never thought my heart could be so yearning Why did I decide to roam? He hasn't worked as an actor in over two decades. I'm compulsively creative.

You can see this crazy house that I live in because I can't stand for two pieces of furniture to match or a fork and a spoon to match. I can't think for anything to match. I have to invent stuff. That's what I do. That's the only thing I'm good at. I could have gone on the road.

Everybody out there still knows me and still loves me. Good morning, Mr. Coyke. How you doing? How you been? They might be in wheelchairs, but they're still my people. And I could go out there. I could go out there tomorrow. I get offers to go out and do plays.

I can go out and do Captain Queeg anytime I want. But it hurts. It hurts what happened to me. He was innocent, and it is a tragedy that his remarkable career and reputation have been ruined. Even though he was acquitted, for many people a cloud of guilt still hangs over him. over him. Sometimes people's exteriors belie who they really are. Who they really, really underlayer, layer, layer, layer are. That little boy that went through all that stuff, that insidious father, and all the

experiences he had at MGM and how he is today. I'm not giving up. I didn't stick a gun he is today. I'm not giving up. I didn't stick a gun in my mouth. I'm not juicing. I ain't taking dope. You say, well, why don't you work? Because I'm half dead. It's a real tragedy he hasn't acted all these years.

It's hard to tell if that's because of the way the world is or because of the way Robert Blake is. I keep waiting for God to jump in, but he doesn't owe me anything, because I've been paid in full a thousand times over. If you live to be a thousand, you'll never beat anybody with more miracles in their life than me.

Gonna take a sentimental journey, sentimental journey home. You've been listening to the 2020 True Crime Vault. You can find all new broadcast episodes of 2020, Friday nights at 9 on ABC. Hello, it's Robin Roberts here. Hey, guys, it's George Stephanopoulos here. Hey, everybody, it's Michael Strahan here. Wake up with good morning America. Robin, George, Michael, GMA,

America's favorite number one morning show. The morning's first breaking news, exclusive interviews, what everyone will be talking about that day. Put some good in your morning and start your day with GMA. Good morning America! Put the good in your morning. GMA 7A on ABC.