Blake’s Acting Skills Failed Him, Prosecutor Says

The prosecutor in the Robert Blake murder trial urged jurors Wednesday to ignore his celebrity, then derided his acting abilities, saying that he overplayed his role as a grieving spouse.

Blake, a two-time Emmy-winner, “overestimated his acting abilities,” said Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Atty. Shellie L. Samuels during her three-hour closing argument.

She told jurors that “reality crashed into fantasy” the moment Blake pulled the trigger, killing Bonny Lee Bakley on May 4, 2001. And she said that explained why Blake became physically ill at the sight of his fatally injured wife.

“He shot people on TV. He shot people in the movies. But he never really shot a person in real life,” Samuels said. “It freaked him out.”

Defense lawyer M. Gerald Schwartzbach countered that the evidence did not support the theory that Blake shot the 44-year-old Bakley.

“There is no direct evidence -- none, zero, zippo -- that Mr. Blake killed Bonny Bakley,” he told jurors in a Van Nuys courtroom.

Schwartzbach used a familiar courtroom tactic: He accused the Los Angeles Police Department of incompetence and rushing to judgment against the celebrity.

And he branded the key prosecution witnesses, Gary “Whiz Kid” McLarty and Ronald “Duffy” Hambleton, both aging Hollywood stuntmen, as “liars” and delusional drug addicts. Both testified that Blake had tried to hire them to kill Bakley.

The cornerstone of the circumstantial case was Blake’s hatred for Bakley. She had been convicted of fraud, ran a mail-order pornography business and, over his objections, bore his now 4-year-old daughter, Rosie.

Although Blake first tried to have Bakley undergo an abortion, his love for the child grew after her birth, as did his hatred for the woman whom he felt he had been forced to marry, the prosecution contends.

“He was tricked by Bonny Lee, and he hated her for it,” Samuels said. “He got taken by a small-time grifter.”

No one witnessed the shooting, and no fingerprints were found on the murder weapon, a Walther P-38 handgun, which was found in a trash bin near the scene a day after the shooting, according to testimony.

And a tiny amount of gunshot residue on Blake’s hands could have come from handling a Smith & Wesson revolver that he was carrying the night of the shooting, according to testimony.

Blake, 71, is accused of shooting Bakley after he and Bakley had dined at a Studio City restaurant. If convicted on murder charges, the Emmy-winning star of the ‘70s show “Baretta” could face life in prison.

Blake said someone else shot his wife, who was sitting in his parked car while he returned to the restaurant to retrieve the Smith & Wesson revolver. He said he had accidentally left it at their table. He told police he carried the gun because his wife feared she was being stalked.

But Samuels said no one saw Blake return to the restaurant.

“The alibi would have worked better if he truly had the acting abilities,” she said, accusing him of acting more like a killer than a grieving spouse.

Samuels cited testimony that Blake tried to have Bakley arrested and her pregnancy terminated so that he would not have to marry her.

After their marriage in November 2000, Blake solicited two Hollywood stuntmen to kill her, prosecutors contend. When he couldn’t get anyone else to go along with his murder-for-hire scheme, Samuels said, the actor pulled the trigger himself.

Schwartzbach focused on the stuntmen. They admitted lying under oath about their drug use and offered inconsistent versions of events, he said. They also waited until Bakley was dead to tell police about Blake’s murder schemes.

It was their troubled backgrounds, said Samuels, that made the stuntmen attractive to Blake.

“You are not going to go to your minister. You are not going to go to your banker,” she said. “You are not going to go to anyone upstanding.”

She said despite their questionable lifestyles, their accounts were corroborated by prepaid telephone card records documenting 56 calls from Blake’s house to Hambleton and three to McLarty.

She warned jurors to beware of “red herrings” put up by the defense, including McLarty’s mental breakdown three years after Bakley’s killing, Hambleton’s earlier legal woes, the dearth of forensic evidence and a book author who shadowed homicide detectives during the investigation of Bakley’s murder.

As early as the night of Bakley’s shooting, Blake “did some suspicious things” that led detectives at the scene to focus on him as a possible suspect, Samuels said.

She said a husband fearing for his wife’s safety would not have left her sitting alone on a dark street.

And she also underscored the testimony of witnesses who said the actor did not appear sincere when he cried over his wife’s death, including one witness who described Blake as turning his emotions “on and off.”

Witnesses said Blake did not attempt to help his dying wife and later made disparaging remarks about her and her family to authorities, Samuels said.

“The defendant is sitting there because of the evidence,” Samuels said, “not because he is Robert Blake.”

Closing arguments continue today.