Case Is Built Against Blake Co-Defendant

In the months before Robert Blake’s wife was fatally shot, the actor’s co-defendant searched for information about firearm silencers on the Internet and thumbed through a catalog of weapons books that included a professional’s guide to preparing ambushes, according to prosecution documents filed Monday.

Los Angeles detectives found the evidence while searching Earle Caldwell’s Burbank apartment April 18, the day he and Blake were arrested as suspects in the May 4, 2001, killing of Bonny Lee Bakley near a Studio City restaurant, according to the documents.

Blake is charged with murder, two counts of soliciting Bakley’s murder and conspiring with Caldwell, his bodyguard and handyman. Blake and Caldwell, who was also charged with conspiracy, both pleaded not guilty to the charges in April.

Los Angeles County prosecutors cited the evidence taken from Caldwell’s apartment to support their decision to charge Blake, the star of the 1970s television series “Baretta,” with murder by means of lying in wait, a capital offense.

Last week, Blake’s attorney, Harland W. Braun, asked the court to throw out the lying-in-wait allegation as unconstitutionally vague and set a $1-million bail. Blake has been held without bail at Men’s Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles since his arrest. He faces life in prison without parole if convicted.

Deputy Dist. Attys. Patrick R. Dixon and Gregory A. Dohi said in court papers that evidence shows that Blake, 68, plotted for months to kill Bakley, 44, before he shot her to death. Authorities say Blake despised Bakley, whom he married six months earlier after a paternity test proved he fathered her child.

“If this case does not qualify as intentional murder by means of lying in wait, it is hard to imagine a case that does,” the prosecutors wrote. “Defendant Blake’s age does not entitle him to a discount either in the amount of the bail or the charges filed against him.”

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Lloyd M. Nash is expected to rule on Blake’s bail motion today in Van Nuys.

In the court documents, LAPD Det. Ronald Y. Ito noted that a dogeared page in the catalog found in Caldwell’s apartment advertised a book titled, “Killing Zone: A Professional’s Guide to Preparing or Preventing Ambush” by a former Navy SEAL commander.

The book, which “details the principles and techniques of ambush and counter ambush for soldiers and civilians alike,” is “for academic study only,” according to the catalog description.

In the same search, police seized two computers from Caldwell’s apartment. A police analysis shows that in January 2001 someone used the computers to search the Internet for books and videos on how to make gun silencers, according to court documents.

One of those Web sites offered how-to titles ranging from the “Workbench Silencers: The Art of Improvised Design” to “Whispering Death,” prosecutors said.

Authorities said Caldwell, 46, had planned to kill Bakley during a camping trip a week before her death but “lost his nerve.”

The court documents filed Monday also provide additional details about the slaying. Bakley was shot in the right jaw and shoulder with a vintage 9-millimeter pistol as she sat in the passenger seat of Blake’s car, according to a police statement, and had no defensive wounds.

The car was parked next to a construction site and behind a large trash bin, more than a block from Vitello’s restaurant, where the couple had dined.

Prosecutors believe that Blake left Vitello’s by 9:30 p.m. and that a 911 call from a neighbor was placed at 9:40 p.m., giving Blake “at least 10 minutes to commit the murder.”

Blake told police he went back to Vitello’s to retrieve a .38-caliber handgun he left at his table and returned to find Bakley bleeding. Police found the murder weapon, an untraceable Walther P-38, in the trash bin the day after the slaying.

There were no fingerprints on the gun, according to authorities, and the gunshot residue found on Blake’s hands could have come from another firearm.