Blake to Talk on TV, Not Stand

Actor Robert Blake says he is eager to tell his side of the story, but he is not expected to take the witness stand at his preliminary hearing, which begins today. Blake decided to declare his innocence to Barbara Walters on ABC’s “20/20,” in an interview to be broadcast tonight. The interview was taped last week at the Men’s Central Jail in Los Angeles, where Blake has been held since he was arrested April 18 on charges that he shot Bonny Lee Bakley, 44, to death two years ago.

The 69-year-old actor is being housed in the same cell that once held other high-profile murder defendants: O.J Simpson, the Menendez brothers and “Night Stalker” Richard Ramirez. Thirty-seven media outlets across the country have reserved seats in the Van Nuys courtroom to hear the prosecution’s 27 witnesses in a proceeding that will be televised across the country gavel-to-gavel. The hearing is expected to last two weeks.

Few expect the judge to dismiss the charges. But Blake’s camp is holding out hope that the star of the film “In Cold Blood” and the TV series “Baretta” will be freed on bail.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Lloyd M. Nash has denied bail because Blake is charged with ambushing Bakley as she sat barefoot in his car.

Blake has had a criminal defense lawyer at his side since May 4, 2001, the night Bakley died. He employs a team of civil lawyers, and is footing the bill for the defense of his former handyman and current co-defendant.

He told celebrity interviewer Walters in a Feb. 17 interview that he picked up Bakley at a jazz club in September 1999 and had sex with her before learning her name. She fulfilled a lifelong obsession with marrying a movie star when she wed Blake a year later, after tests confirmed that he had fathered her child.

Deputy Dist. Attys. Patrick R. Dixon and Gregory A. Dohi will try to show that Blake killed his wife to gain custody of Rosie, their 2-year-old daughter. Blake told a friend that he feared the child would “wind up a porn star” if left in her mother’s care, according to court records.

Bakley was killed five days after moving into the guest house behind Blake’s “Mata Hari Ranch” in Studio City.

Blake denied killing Bakley, and told Walters that he never thought of divorcing her. But he said he did try to “figure out how I could get Rose without having to do all the marriage kind of stuff.”

He predicted he would be acquitted at trial because “God has never, ever deserted me.”

The Emmy Award-winning actor’s need to mend his image in the media has created a challenge for his criminal defense lawyers.

Two of his attorneys quit after he failed to follow their advice to stay quiet. His current attorney, Thomas A. Mesereau Jr., refused to authorize the Walters interview but said he would remain on the case.

“I understand as a human being why Robert wants to speak out,” Mesereau said. “He believes that innocent people should be allowed to speak as they choose.”

Blake was charged with killing Bakley after an 11-month investigation that then-Police Chief Bernard C. Parks called one of the most extensive in the department’s history.

The prosecution’s case is circumstantial. There are no witnesses, and no conclusive evidence -- murder weapon, bullets, blood or gunshot residue -- linking Blake to the killing.

At the preliminary hearing, prosecutors are expected to call as many as 27 witnesses because Mesereau will not stipulate to any of the evidence -- not even the 28-page autopsy report.

He will cross-examine prosecution witnesses to try to discredit their testimony. “I expect to show a lot of the problems with their case that the public is not aware of,” he said, declining to discuss his strategy.

Lawyer Howard Weitzman said the defense should use the preliminary hearing to try to poke holes in the prosecution’s case and undermine the credibility of its witnesses.

“In a case like this, where all roads lead to Mr. Blake, I would want to see if what appear to be the facts are, in fact, reality,” he said.

Witnesses are expected to testify that Blake kidnapped Rosie in September 2000, then tried to have Bakley jailed for violating her probation in Arkansas by leaving the state.

Prosecutors plan to show that Blake tried other means, including asking the FBI to investigate Bakley’s mail-order sex business, to get rid of her before allegedly asking at least five men to kill her.

When no one would do it, prosecutors allege that Blake pulled the trigger himself. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Blake told detectives that after eating dinner at Vitello’s restaurant in Studio City, he and Bakley walked to his car. He said he realized he had left a handgun on his seat at Vitello’s, where a pasta dish is named for him, and returned to retrieve it. When he got back to his car, he said Bakley was slumped over and bleeding from the head.

Prosecutors are expected to focus on the critical 17 minutes between the time Blake’s credit card was swiped to pay for dinner at the restaurant, and when the 911 call was placed from a neighbor’s home. They also will videotape testimony of the aging stuntmen Blake allegedly solicited to kill Bakley, in order to preserve their testimony if they should become ill or die before a trial.

Ronald “Duffy” Hambleton and Gary McLarty offered highly similar accounts of their March 2001 encounters with Blake.

Each man told police he was contacted by stuntman Roy Harrison, who arranged separate meetings for them with Blake at Du-Par’s restaurant in Studio City. Blake drove each man to his house, then offered him thousands of dollars to kill Bakley, according to court documents.

Investigators turned up phone-card records that suggest Blake made 56 phone calls to Hambleton’s home, and three to McLarty’s, between March 12, 2001, and the day after the killing.

But Mesereau challenged the credibility of both witnesses, saying their statements to police were inconsistent, and he hinted that they had unspecified motives -- besides an interest in truth -- for coming forward.

In addition to the murder and solicitation charges, prosecutors also allege Blake conspired with Earle S. Caldwell to kill Bakley. Caldwell was not in Los Angeles the night Bakley was shot, but authorities say he had planned to kill her during a camping trip to Arizona two weeks earlier, until he “lost his nerve,” according to court documents.

Detectives found a list in Caldwell’s Jeep a month after Bakley’s death that apparently consists of items needed to bury a body in the desert -- one scenario the stuntmen said Blake suggested to them. Blake is paying Caldwell’s defense attorney, Arna H. Zlotnik, and posted $1 million in bail for his co-defendant eight days after their arrest.

Blake’s defense is that hundreds of men had motive to kill Bakley, depicted as a grifter who scammed money from older men she met through ads in lonely hearts magazines. She was married more than 100 times, often using those unions for financial gain, Mesereau said.

“I don’t think anybody, including myself, is trying to candy-coat Bonny Lee Bakley’s business or background. But absolutely nothing that she has ever done warranted her being executed sitting helpless in Mr. Blake’s car,” said lawyer Eric J. Dubin, who represents Bakley’s four children in a civil wrongful-death suit against Blake. “ ‘She had it coming’ is not an excuse for cold-blooded murder.”