Tatum O’Neal, Back ‘On the Run’ : Television: The former child star portrays convicted murderer ‘Bambi’ Bembenek in a two-part NBC movie. It’s her first major role since marrying tennis pro John McEnroe in 1986.

Through most of the 1980s, Lawrencia Bembenek, a former Milwaukee model and onetime police rookie, was a convicted murderer, guilty of the sensational, execution-style killing of her husband’s first wife.

But the woman often referred to as “Bambi” in the tabloids steadfastly proclaimed her innocence, and while she persuaded many people, Wisconsin authorities remained just as firmly convinced of her guilt. So was a jury: She received a life sentence in 1981.

Today, however, Bembenek is out on parole. And Sunday and Monday, TV viewers will see her story when NBC airs the two-part movie “Woman on the Run: The Lawrencia Bembenek Story.”. (It follows by one year ABC’s “Calendar Girl, Cop, Killer? The Bambi Bembenek Story,” with Lindsay Frost in the title role.)

The script is based on Bembenek’s book, adapted by Sandor Stern, a Bembenek supporter who says he thinks it “outrageous” that her case ever went to trial.

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Bembenek is portrayed by former child star Tatum O’Neal, who chose “Woman on the Run” as her first major role since marrying in 1986. It comes 20 years after she first enchanted audiences in “Paper Moon” at age 9 in an Oscar-winning role as a waif-turned-con-artist.

While she’s met Bembenek only once, and has corresponded with her just a bit since then, O’Neal is certain that the storied Wisconsinite is no murderer. “I would say she’s innocent, 100 million percent,” says O’Neal. “There’s no doubt in my mind.”

Seemingly every other participant on this suburban Toronto set shares O’Neal’s view. It’s a controversial position, for Bembenek’s conviction was never overturned, and some people still believe she committed the crime.

She is free today only because she made a daring jailbreak in 1990, fled to Canada and filed a petition for refugee status, arguing that she was being persecuted in the United States. Some of Canada’s top immigration lawyers took up her case, and in the resulting wave of publicity, she was able to air new exculpatory evidence. In 1992, her American lawyers negotiated an agreement in which she pleaded no contest to second-degree murder and was released from prison.

This extraordinary tale, says O’Neal, provides an excellent way to demonstrate her range as a mature actress. “It’s a great character for a woman,” she says, munching chocolate-chip cookies during a lunch break. “She’s a woman who has goals, and she has her goals taken away by a system that’s somewhat corrupt. She’s a strong person, and she was ultimately screwed over by the system.”

During Bembenek’s incarceration, O’Neal adds, she demonstrated her inner strength again and again, completing a university-level humanities degree--cum laude--by correspondence, and even learning to speak Russian while in solitary confinement.

Despite the widespread attention Bembenek has received, O’Neal says few people know the real woman--a Milwaukee cop’s daughter who took classical flute lessons, donated time and money to women’s causes and at one point tried to take on the entire Milwaukee police department, organizing a class-action lawsuit on behalf of female and minority officers.

“No one knows her, really,” says O’Neal. “I could make her my own (character).”

The role of a tough underdog woman holds a particular appeal for O’Neal, who says the past few years have taught her that in acting, as in many other things, “it’s a man’s world.” When she decided to make her comeback, she discovered that the professional world doesn’t exactly roll out the red carpet for women who’ve taken time off to raise kids.

“Nobody remembered me,” O’Neal recalls. “I would say that my career was dead.”

Although O’Neal’s career got off to a fast start, the daughter of actor Ryan O’Neal and actress Joanna Moore dropped out of entertainment entirely by age 20.

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After a turbulent childhood that left little opportunity for introspection, she felt an intense “need to grow up,” she explains. She didn’t think she would ever be capable of playing well-rounded, adult roles unless she came to terms with her own life.

In 1986, at 21, O’Neal married tennis star John McEnroe, and gave birth to a son, Kevin. A second son, Sean, followed a year later; daughter Emily arrived 3 1/2 years after that. She and McEnroe are now in the process of divorce.

O’Neal clearly enjoys motherhood--her biggest smiles come when she talks about her children--but says she began “itching” to return to acting. She started looking around for suitable parts in 1989. But making the auditioning rounds in New York and Los Angeles, while still “trying to raise children and be a wife,” was discouraging.

“It was really like closed doors, not like an open kind of warm welcome,” she says. “I don’t want to say Hollywood is not a place that takes comebacks well, but you know, you sort of have to prove yourself in a way.”

She enrolled in evening acting classes in New York, hired her own coach and took parts in a short-lived Off Broadway play and small films, including last year’s “Little Noises,” with Crispin Glover.

O’Neal says she’s “thrilled” to be involved in a high-profile project once again, and satisfied that it is in television.

“Unfortunately, with the recession, there aren’t that many features being made anymore,” she says. “If I get offered great TV roles, that’s fine with me. I mean, Candice Bergen has had a wonderful resurgence in television. I’ll go to any medium that has good writing. If something’s written well, and it’s a good character, I’ll take it. I just like to do good work.

“I took eight years off,” she adds. “I’m itchy to work. (Juggling work and motherhood) is tiring, and it isn’t for everybody, but you have to try as a woman to do it all if you can.”