Witnesses Say Blake Acted Strangely

Robert Blake let a stranger staunch his wife’s wounds and never approached her as she lay dying in his car on a Studio City street, said the first witness in the actor’s murder trial.

Film director Sean Stanek told jurors Tuesday in a Van Nuys courtroom that a visibly distraught Blake, wide-eyed, pale and screaming for help, pounded on his door the night of May 4, 2001.

“You got to help me,” Stanek recalled Blake saying. “My wife, she’s bleeding.... They beat her up.... Somebody mugged us.”

Stanek lived near the spot where Bonny Lee Bakley, Blake’s wife of six months and the mother of his now 4-year-old daughter, Rosie, was killed. Stanek was the first person at the scene, after Blake.

He was one of three witnesses who testified to noticing Blake act strangely the night of his wife’s death.

As Stanek was talking with the 911 operator, he saw Blake suddenly get up to leave.

“I saw him not going toward the car. I asked, ‘Where are you going?’ ” Stanek said.

The neighbor said he was “a little surprised” that Blake would leave him alone to care for his critically wounded wife.

“He says, ‘I’ve got to make a call. I’ve got to make a call. I’ve got to call somebody,’ ” Stanek testified.

As Blake left, Stanek rushed to Bakley’s side with a towel to try to stop the bleeding. He testified that she was alive. She died at a hospital a short time later.

After a day of opening statements from the lawyers, jurors appeared to be paying close attention to the first witnesses. The panel listened to a tape recording of Stanek’s emergency call with obvious interest.

Prosecutors contend that Blake, star of the 1970s television show “Baretta,” killed his wife to gain custody of their daughter.

The defense has attacked the state’s circumstantial case and castigated the credibility of its key witnesses. On Tuesday, it also excoriated the professionalism of the Los Angeles Police Department investigation.

Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Atty. Shellie L. Samuels, in her opening statement Monday, said Blake was “freaked out” after he shot Bakley, exhibiting behavior more consistent with a man who had just shot someone, rather than one whose wife had been seriously injured.

Two women who were dining that night at the same restaurant as Blake and Bakley testified that they went to the victim’s aid when the actor asked for help.

School nurse Teri Lorenzo-Castaneda and her friend, Carole Caputo, were eating at Vitello’s when a waiter called out for a doctor. Lorenzo-Castaneda then followed Blake to his car parked 1 1/2 blocks away.

The nurse said Blake was evasive and would not tell her what was wrong with his wife, despite repeated requests for information. She said he did not tell her that Bakley was bleeding from the head.

All three witnesses testified Tuesday that Blake sat on a curb near a commercial garbage bin and never went near the dying Bakley.

Caputo said Blake’s intensity seemed to increase as the crowd of onlookers and emergency medical personnel swelled. She told jurors that Blake loudly said, “Oh, God,” when people approached him.

In contrast, when no one was near, he appeared calm, showing what she called a “flat affect.”

“It was turned on and off,” Caputo said.

Blake, 71, has pleaded not guilty to fatally shooting his wife and soliciting two aging Hollywood stuntman to kill her. When the stuntmen refused, authorities say, Blake shot her himself.

After testimony today, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Darlene E. Schempp has scheduled a break until Jan. 4.

Blake’s lawyer, M. Gerald Schwartzbach, earlier Tuesday finished a meticulous, five-hour opening statement with sharp criticism of the LAPD investigation of Bakley’s death. Samuels’ opening statement had lasted about 90 minutes.

Sounding a theme used effectively in earlier celebrity trials, Schwartzbach accused investigators of being “negligent” and mishandling evidence.

Police prematurely targeted Blake in part to give author Miles Corwin a celebrity angle to bolster the book he was researching at the time on the department’s elite homicide squad, Schwartzbach said. Corwin, a former Los Angeles Times reporter, had been given unusually free access to the normally secretive detectives, he said. Schwartzbach accused them of seeking celebrity.

“The arrest of Robert Blake was driven by a desire for fame,” he said.

Reiterating Samuels’ opening statement, Stanek said he saw Blake cry but never shed a tear. The Emmy Award-winning actor sat on a curb near his car, vomiting and letting out a “guttural cry,” Stanek said.

Under questioning by Schwartzbach, Lorenzo-Castaneda also testified that she did see Blake shed tears.