Affidavits Say Blake Offered ‘Hit’ to 5

Actor Robert Blake asked as many as five people to kill his wife for him before he allegedly shot her to death last year in Studio City, according to Los Angeles police affidavits unsealed Tuesday.

Besides the two former stuntmen Blake is charged with soliciting to kill Bonny Lee Bakley, he asked three others, including Bakley’s brother, Joe, to kill for him, according to the documents.

Joe Bakley told police that Blake, who maintains his innocence, offered him $5,000 to “eliminate” someone at some time before Bakley’s death, but never specified who the victim might be, according to the affidavits.

A private investigator, William Welch, told police last summer that Blake had told him two years earlier that he wanted to hire a doctor to abort the baby Bakley was carrying shortly after it was conceived and that the actor said, “if that doesn’t work we are going to whack her,” the affidavits said.

The lead investigator, LAPD Det. Ronald Y. Ito, contends in the documents that the 68-year-old Blake’s co-defendant, Earle Caldwell, 46, was set to kill Bakley a week before her death but “lost his nerve.”

Prosecutors and police believe that on May 4, 2001, Blake pulled the trigger of a 9-millimeter pistol and fatally shot Bakley, 44, whom he had married six months earlier after a paternity test showed he fathered her child. Bakley was found mortally wounded in Blake’s car near Vitello’s restaurant in Studio City, where the couple had dined earlier.

Blake’s attorney, Harland W. Braun, has said that many men, including Blake, had a motive for killing Bakley, a grifter who promised lonely men sex and nude photos in exchange for money.

But Braun said Tuesday the allegations against Blake are bizarre.

“They’re making it seem like he stood on a street corner and tried to get someone to kill his wife,” Braun said.

Welch said Tuesday that his statements were accurate, but he declined to elaborate. Caldwell, Joe Bakley and the two former stuntmen could not be reached for comment.

Statements made to police by various people who knew Blake are summarized in the affidavit supporting the Los Angeles Police Department’s April 18 request for a warrant to arrest Blake and Caldwell. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler unsealed that warrant and 12 search warrants Tuesday at the request of The Times.

Blake and Caldwell are charged with conspiring to kill Bakley. Blake also is charged with her murder with the special circumstance of lying in wait and soliciting two others to kill her. Each defendant faces life in prison if convicted.

Blake and Caldwell pleaded not guilty in April. Blake is being held without bail at Men’s Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles. Caldwell was released after Blake posted his $1-million bail.

In the documents released Tuesday, authorities say former stuntman Roy “Snuffy” Harrison, 66, of West Hills arranged separate meetings between Blake and the two other stuntmen who worked with Blake on the 1970s television series “Baretta” at Du-Par’s restaurant in Studio City in March 2001.

Gary “Whiz Kid” McLarty, 61, of Lake View Terrace told police that Blake offered to pay him $10,000 to kill Bakley. McLarty said he refused to do it, according to an affidavit.

Ronald “Duffy” Hambleton, 65, of Lucerne Valley also told police that Blake asked him to kill Bakley, according to an affidavit.

About the same time that Blake was meeting with McLarty and Hambleton, the actor also was trying to contact another former stuntman, Bobby Bass, who instructed O.J. Simpson on using a knife for his role in the television pilot “Frogmen.” Bass, who had Parkinson’s disease, told police that he declined to meet with Blake, the affidavit said. Bass committed suicide in November 2001.

Welch, a retired Los Angeles Police Department detective, told investigators that Blake rejected his idea in October 1999 to pay Bakley $100,000 to leave Los Angeles and let Blake take custody of their child. Then, Blake suggested they force her to get an abortion or kill her, the affidavit said.

Welch told police that Blake did not offer to pay him a specific amount, but said that “money was no object,” according to the documents.

Police said in the affidavit that two of Bakley’s friends told investigators about a camping trip that had scared Bakley a week before her death.

According to what Bakley’s friends told police, Bakley told them Caldwell was carrying a gun in front of her and Blake and saying, “I can’t do it.” Then, Blake put his hand on Caldwell’s shoulder and said, “It’s OK. I’ll take care of it,” singer Robert Stefanow told police.

The documents indicate that when investigators searched Caldwell’s property in June 2001, LAPD Det. Brian Tyndall found a World War II-era Mauser pistol in Caldwell’s car.

Bakley was killed with another World War II-vintage German pistol, an unregistered Walther P-38, found in a dumpster about 10 feet from where Blake’s car was parked the night of the Bakley shooting. It had no fingerprints and was covered in fresh motor oil, the affidavits said. The one bullet left in the gun matched two casings found in and near the car, the affidavits said.

Caldwell’s former girlfriend, Lisa Johnson, told police in April that she believed she had seen a Walther pistol at Caldwell’s apartment before the slaying, the affidavits said.

Caldwell was in San Mateo the night Bakley was shot twice while sitting in the passenger seat of Blake’s car.

Blake told authorities that he had walked back to Vitello’s to retrieve a .38-caliber handgun he had forgotten there, and returned to find Bakley shot and bleeding in his car.