Blake Attempted to Have His Wife Arrested, Witnesses Say at Hearing

Two witnesses testified Tuesday that actor Robert Blake sought to persuade state and federal authorities to arrest his wife, Bonny Lee Bakley, in the months before she was shot and killed near a Studio City restaurant.

Los Angeles Police Det. Brian Tyndall testified that Luis Mendoza said during questioning that Blake asked him to tell federal authorities about alleged illegal activities of Bakley and her brother.

The testimony came in the fifth day of Blake’s preliminary hearing at Los Angeles County Superior Court. Blake has pleaded not guilty to killing his wife, soliciting her murder and conspiring with co-defendant, Earle S. Caldwell, 46, to commit murder.

At their last meeting, Mendoza, identified as a confidential government informant, told Blake he could not help. He said the actor was “very emotional. He cried; he said he couldn’t take it anymore,” Tyndall testified.

Arturo Zorrilla, a retired Los Angeles police detective who specialized in fugitive cases, said private investigator William C. Jordan, a Blake representative, asked him for help before Bakley was fatally shot May 4, 2001. Jordan told him that Bakley was a fugitive from Arkansas, where she was on federal probation, Zorrilla testified.

After the preliminary hearing, Judge Lloyd M. Nash will decide whether prosecutors have enough evidence to hold Blake and Caldwell for trial. He also will decide whether the 69-year-old actor should get bail. Blake has been held in Men’s Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles since his April 18 arrest.

Much of Tuesday’s testimony focused on Caldwell’s role in the alleged conspiracy. Tyndall testified that detectives found a vintage pistol and a crumpled list that appeared related to the killing in Caldwell’s vehicle a month after the slaying, and that Caldwell asked one friend to help him locate a gun and another to hide items from police.

Among items on the note were “two shovels, small sledge, crowbar, .25 auto, ‘get blank gun ready,’ old rugs, duct tape-black, Draino [sic], pool acid, lye, plant,” the detective said.

Witness Noel Manchan told police that Caldwell asked her to find him an unregistered gun about two to three months before Bakley was killed. When she asked why, she told detectives, he said, “to take care of business.”

Lisa Johnson, who received limited immunity from prosecutors, told police that Caldwell, her ex-boyfriend, telephoned in the hours after Bakley’s death and asked her to remove items, including personal papers, a computer and drugs, from his Burbank apartment because he expected police to serve him with a search warrant.

“He said it was his and Robert’s business and don’t ask any questions,” Tyndall testified that Johnson told detectives.

Earlier in the day, retired stuntman Ronald “Duffy” Hambleton, testifying a third day, said he noticed that every scenario Blake suggested for killing his wife involved the actor. When he asked about the risk of him being so near to the crime scene, he said Blake told him, “Don’t worry about that; I am an actor.”

Hambleton also testified that when he suggested alternatives to the killing, such as paying Bakley off, Blake “became very agitated.”

Blake told him he had spoken to a lawyer and “there was no other way to get out from under the situation,” Hambleton testified.