Blake trial will exhume past

By Linda Deutsch

Associated Press

LOS ANGELES — A Robert Blake murder trial, if it occurs, could turn into a ghostly trial of Blake’s murdered wife, whose bizarre past will become an issue for prosecution and defense.

Jurors are likely to hear about the woman who trolled the bars of North Hollywood looking for a celebrity companion, the divorcee who left a trail of ex-husbands and other men who claimed they had been conned out of large sums of money.

Defense attorney Harland Braun maintains there were scores of people with motives to kill Bakley. The police contend one man had the most potent motive — Robert Blake.

"We believe the motive is Robert Blake had contempt for Bonny Bakley," said police Capt. Jim Tatreau. "He felt he was trapped in a marriage that he wanted no part of and, quite frankly, the situation was not to his liking at all."

If prosecutors approve a complaint, Blake would be arraigned today in a suburban Van Nuys courthouse a few miles from the restaurant where he and his wife dined May 4, the night she was killed.

Another figure will hover over the trial — the little girl known as Rosie.

"The picture of him holding his daughter at the funeral will be the symbol of the defense," said Loyola University law professor Laurie Levenson. "A pretty decent defense is that he loved this kid too much to do something terrible and risk losing her."

In the aftermath of his arrest, Braun said Blake talked about only one thing — the welfare of his two-year-old daughter and his desire to keep Bakley’s family from taking the child away.

"In a way, that’s what this case is about — Rosie," the lawyer said. "The only reason he married Bonny was because of Rosie."

Bakley and Blake met at a bar, and she became pregnant sometime after she and Blake began dating. She said she was unsure if the child was fathered by Blake, who starred in the 1970s television detective show "Baretta," or Christian Brando, the son of actor Marlon Brando.

DNA tests proved the child was Blake’s, and the actor said he felt obligated to marry her.

Levenson doubts that Braun will launch a smear campaign against Bakley at the trial. But she said he will have to prove his point that many people had a reason to kill Bakley.

Stacks of letters, pornographic pictures and meticulously detailed records showed that Bakley, using many aliases, ran a business soliciting money from lonely men who answered her ads in magazines and newspapers.

"Everyone who ever came in contact with her had a motive," Braun told reporters after a Police Department news conference about Thursday’s arrest.

The attorney for Bakley’s family bristled at that remark.

"I think people are going to find out who Bonny was, and maybe they’ll find out a little more about her family," lawyer Cary W. Goldstein said. "But as I’ve said from the very beginning, there’s nothing that Bonny ever did in her lifetime that justifies her having been murdered. Her wrongdoings were picayune, at best."

Braun said Sunday he would move to keep TV cameras out of the courtroom when Blake is arraigned, which he expects to happen today, and will oppose such coverage during trial.

"I know that people are going to argue there’s a First Amendment right to see this case on television," Braun said. "But this is a Hollywood case. It’s not an issue of national security."

District attorney’s spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons said prosecutors will oppose the attempt to restrict media coverage.

Levenson said the trial has celebrity appeal but does not rise to the level of the O.J. Simpson case that mesmerized the public.

"Robert Blake is not a major star or an American hero," she said. "O.J. Simpson came to court with an added presumption of innocence because of who he was."

But she said the trial will certainly have great human interest.

"You’re in for a soap opera," she said, "because that’s the way celebrities do things."