Woman Says Blake Paid Her to Take Child

A woman said a tabloid paid her $10,000 for information about how she unwittingly helped actor Robert Blake take his daughter from Bonny Lee Bakley eight months before Bakley was killed, a Los Angeles police detective testified Wednesday.

Cody Blackwell of Hollywood sold her story to the Star magazine, which published her account in June 2001, before she gave a statement to police about the September 2000 incident, Det. Brian Tyndall testified on the sixth day of Blake’s preliminary hearing in Los Angeles County Superior Court.

Blake is charged with fatally shooting Bakley on May 4, 2001, while she sat in his car near a Studio City restaurant where they had eaten. He also is charged with soliciting two stuntmen to kill Bakley and conspiring with co-defendant Earle S. Caldwell, 46, to commit murder.

After prosecutors present their case, Judge Lloyd M. Nash will decide if enough evidence exists to hold Blake and Caldwell for trial. He also will determine whether the 69-year-old actor is eligible for bail. Blake, best known for his role on the 1970s television series “Baretta,” has been held without bail in Men’s Central Jail since his April 18 arrest.

Tyndall, who was cross-examined by defense attorneys for much of the day, said Blackwell told detectives that Blake fired her one day after he paid her $300 to remove his now 2-year-old daughter, Rosie, from his Studio City home so that he allegedly could then keep the baby away from her mother.

Blackwell had been Blake’s personal assistant.

She also told them she sold her story to the Star because she had declared bankruptcy and needed the money.

Also Wednesday, Tyndall testified that Bakley’s two oldest children found a tackle box containing up to 20 grams of cocaine on Dec. 16, 2001, in her Mercedes-Benz at her Conway, Ark., home. He said Holly Gawron told him that her brother, Glenn, found the drugs and sold them to a friend for $700.

Caldwell’s ex-girlfriend, Lisa Johnson, told detectives that Caldwell talked about planting drugs on Bakley in an attempt to get her arrested, according to Tyndall.

The hearing, expected to last at least another week, will resume Monday in Van Nuys.

Most of the remaining witnesses are police officers who will testify to what other witnesses have told them in their homicide investigation.