Blake Team Is Focusing on Inmates

Three months before her death, actor Robert Blake’s wife was ordered by federal authorities to stop sending sexually explicit material to a convicted bank robber in a Pennsylvania prison, according to documents.

The letter from a prison official was among the thousands of pages of personal documents seized by Los Angeles police after Bonny Lee Bakley was shot to death on May 4, 2001, near a Studio City restaurant.

The materials were later turned over to Blake’s criminal defense attorney as part of the discovery process.

Blake has been charged with Bakley’s murder. But attorney Harland W. Braun argues that many of the men whom Bakley allegedly scammed out of money through her mail-order business also may have had motive and opportunity to kill her.

“We always thought [the killer] could be a disgruntled client,” Braun said Thursday. “We didn’t know so many of them were criminals.”

He criticized police for focusing their murder investigation on Blake and for not thoroughly examining other potential suspects, such as these prisoners.

Jane Robison of the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office said the police investigation had been “extensive and thorough.”

“They traveled around the country and ruled out possible suspects,” Robison said. “It all came down to one person who was at the [crime] scene. We believe the evidence will show that person was Robert Blake.”

Blake has pleaded not guilty to murder, two counts of soliciting Bakley’s murder and conspiracy. He also denied the special circumstance of lying in wait.

On Thursday, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Lloyd M. Nash set a Monday hearing “to address the [California] Supreme Court ruling” on whether Blake is entitled to a bail hearing, according to a Superior Court spokesman, Kyle Christopherson.

The high court ordered authorities on Wednesday to show why Blake is not entitled to a bail hearing and set a Monday deadline for action.

The 69-year-old actor has been held without bail in Men’s Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles since his April 18 arrest.

Nash has said he wanted to delay a bail hearing until evidence was presented at the preliminary hearing, now set for Nov. 13.

After Bakley was killed, Blake turned over to police trunkloads of documents and dozens of cassette tapes that belonged to Bakley.

Among her personal materials were letters from more than 140 inmates--including serial child molesters and murderers--incarcerated across the nation, asking Bakley to write them letters.

Many requested photographs of their new pen pal.

While searching through her personal papers, Blake’s private investigators Scott Ross and Doyle Stepp say, they have documented more than 130 aliases and addresses in at least 13 states and Canada used by Bakley to correspond with men.

Braun said she probably wrote to many more prisoners over the years but kept only the most recent letters.

Her death certificate describes Bakley, 44, as having been in the “mail-order” business for 29 years.

The letter-writers say they saw Bakley’s photograph in lonely-hearts magazines when they sought companionship or got her address through other prison inmates.

A typical letter, this one from a 26-year-old burglar in Wisconsin, reads: “My reason for writing you is to answer this need and impulse for companionship. I found your ad while paging thru [sic] a singles magazine. I was captivated by your photo.”

Prison officials in Pennsylvania, however, were not thrilled with Bakley’s mail to Eduardo Madera, who is serving 78 months for bank robbery and gun possession.

Christopher M. Angelini, inmate systems manager at the Federal Correctional Institution in Loretto, Pa., returned the package to Bakley and, in a Feb. 16, 2001, form letter, said such items are banned in federal prison.

“The enclosed material(s) contain(s) sexually explicit information or material or features nudity and is being returned to you,” the letter says.

Spokesman John Owen confirmed that prison officials had sent the letter but declined to disclose immediately what specifically Bakley had sent to Madera. “It could be either sexually explicit material or nude pictures or both,” he said.

After Bakley’s death, authorities confiscated hundreds of nude photos of Bakley and others that she apparently had sent to customers as part of her business.

Besides these men, Braun said, his team also is investigating the son of actor Marlon Brando, Christian Brando, who dated Bakley while she was with Blake, as well as an armed robber who worked in the area around where Bakley was killed.

“We are doing the investigation that the police should have done,” he said.

Bakley initially told Brando that he had impregnated her, but a paternity test showed that Blake was the real father of Rose Lenore Sophia Blake, now 2.

Blake married Bakley in late 2000, after the child’s birth.