THE ROBERT BLAKE MURDER TRIAL

On May 4, 2001 the wife of actor Robert Blake, Ms. Bonny Lee Bakley, was mysteriously shot and killed while waiting for him in their car. The two had dinner together at Vitello's Italian Restaurant (near their home in Studio City, California) and while walking to their car afterwards (which was parked on an adjacent street), Blake left his wife momentarily, suupposedly returning to the restaurant to retrieve a gun that had slipped from his waistband during their meal together. Blake said he was carrying the weapon because his wife had "feared for her safety" and his statements insisted that it was when he returned to the car the second time that he found his 44-year-old wife slumped over in the passenger seat with a bullet in her head.

Paramedics administered CPR at the scene, but Bakley was declared dead on arrival at a nearby hospital. The report on the autopsy won't be available to the public for a couple of months. Police have asked the Coroner's office to keep the information secret as the murder investigation continues. No arrests were immediately made and there were no eye witnesses to the shooting.

The couple had met at a night club and married in November of 2000, after having learned that Blake was the father of Bakley's 11-month-old daughter. Bakley originally had thought and hoped that Marlon Brando's son, Christian Brando was the father and when DNA tests revealed otherwise, Blake had married her, but at the same time hired a private investigator to look into her background. "The problem is that she had sort of a checkered background," police admitted, saying she milked money out of lonely men by selling nude photographs of herself and others across the country. Bakley had also earned money by investing in real estate and by running a dating service. At the time of the murder, Blake was living in his four bedroom house and his wife was living in a sepearate building located on Blake's property. Blake living in his four bedroom house and his wife living in the bungalow located on Blake's property. This has led to speculation about the nature of their relationship and leads to much of the speculation about Blake's role in her killing. Unanswered questions about the nature of their relationship have lead to much of the speculation about Blake's role in her killing.

Blake, 67, a native of Nutley, New Jersey, was born Michael Gubitosi. He began his career as a child actor in MGM's Our Gang series and the Red Ryder series of Westerns. As an adult, he played one of the killers in the movie "In Cold Blood" to great acclaim, but after the "Baretta" television series was canceled after three seasons, his career, already hampered by problems with drugs and alcohol, ran out of gas. His two most recent movies were "Money Train" in 1995 and David Lynch's "Lost Highway" in 1997.

He was also "Mickey" in the Little Rascals "Our Gang" series.In fact, his birthname was Mickey Gubitosi

Amazingly, O.J. Simpson went on TV immediately after the Bakley murder, insisting that he had advice for Robert Blake to "not watch the news and other media sources". As if this was his field of expertise. Well... maybe it is. He got away with the killing of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman.

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