Attorney Attacks Police Search of Blake’s Home

Los Angeles police mishandled evidence and violated Robert Blake’s rights when they brought a book author along as they searched the actor’s home after his wife’s slaying, his defense lawyer alleged Wednesday.

M. Gerald Schwartzbach launched his first broadside against the Los Angeles Police Department as he closely questioned Det. James Gollaz, one of the Blake investigators.

The detective, a member of the department’s Robbery-Homicide Division, acknowledged that he stored Blake’s clothes -- containing gun-residue evidence -- in an open box in the trunk of his police car for two days before booking them as evidence.

Blake told police that he carried a weapon for protection, and the clothing tested positive for exposure to firearms.

Schwartzbach pressed Gollaz, asking him if he knew that book author Miles Corwin’s presence during a search violated Blake’s rights.

Gollaz testified that it was not his decision to allow Corwin to shadow investigators and said the author was “just observing, walking and observing.”

It was the first time since testimony began Dec. 21 that mention was made of Corwin, a former Los Angeles Times reporter who wrote a book about the LAPD. The defense has indicated that his presence -- which was ordered by then-Chief Bernard C. Parks in hopes of publicizing the department’s professionalism -- will be a main point of attack in the case.

The defense has argued that investigators were more likely to make a case against a celebrity in order to provide the author with good material for the book.

Blake, 71, is being tried in Van Nuys on murder charges in the shooting of Bonny Lee Bakley, 44, his wife of six months and mother of his youngest child. She was shot in Blake’s car on May 4, 2001, near Vitello’s in Studio City, the restaurant where they had just dined. Blake has pleaded not guilty to murder and the related charge of trying to hire former stuntmen to kill her.

Gollaz was one of four LAPD officers who testified Wednesday about Blake’s actions at the crime scene.

Officer Samber Issa said that a wailing and vomiting Blake told him that Bakley was “in the illegal porn business.” He said he carried a gun because someone had tried to kill her two years ago.

Earlier, four witnesses testified that Blake acted strangely at the shooting scene, more like someone who had just killed somebody rather than like a victim.

On Wednesday, jurors heard waitress Robyn Robichaux testify that she served Blake and Bakley the night of the slaying and observed nothing out of the ordinary.

But Blake had a far different demeanor when he reappeared in the restaurant about 15 minutes after he and Bakley had left.

“I thought he was having a heart attack. He aged 50 years in ... 15 minutes,” Robichaux said of Blake. “The color left his face. He was white as a sheet. He was out of breath.”