She was a professional con artist. Robbing lonely men of money with the promise of sex. Someone said you should put a bullet through her head. Many people think he is in jail, he is convicted. Im still here, you bastards. A witness in the case thinks he knows who the killer really is. Smoke that let me tell you about hollywood. When something bad has to happen, like a husband or a wife has to be eliminated, or an executive has to be eliminated and believe me, show business, theres a lot of strange things that happen. But the way they happen is like, i would talk to my lawyer, now thats confidential. He talks to somebody else, who talks to somebody else, who talks to somebody else. And then the word comes back to me. Robert, get out of here, with your family. Thats all you have to do. And somehow or other, something happens. And nobody can trace it back to anybody. Thats what hollywood is about. Thats what high end stuff is about. Thats why millionaires never get arrested for anything. Millionaires dont commit crimes. Things happen. So its los angeles, 2001. Theres no twitter. Theres no netflix. Theres no facebook. Theres no real internet for that matter. George w. Bush is the president. Its before 9 11, and its a couple years after the o. J. Trial, so things are going along in the culture rather quietly. And thats when the robert blake murder case happens. The wife of Actor Robert Blake was killed friday as she sat in the couples car. The victim, blakes wife of less than a year, lee Bonnie Bakley, was killed by a gunshot wound to the head last friday night. Actor robert blake, star of the 1970 tv series baretta, finds himself in the middle of a reallife mystery. It was a big, big story in a very slow news month. Here we go, its like o. J. Echoing in every mind were two letters o. J. It was huge. Monumental. This was a true hollywood story. In los angeles today, police have acknowledged that the Actor Robert Blake is considered a possible suspect in the murder of his wife. It sounds like a madefortv murder mystery, but this whodunnit is all too real. Who was robert blake . Robert blake was a star. He had been a child star. He had had a successful series called baretta. This is someone who had been famous for decades. So many generations of people knew him. The public found out almost immediately that blake and his wife did not have an ordinary marriage. And that she was a lifelong con artist. He was a figure that hollywood was familiar with. She was like a figure out of a Raymond Chandler novel. She was a woman with a past. Like someone out of a film noir from the 1930s or 40s. The circumstances surrounding the shooting of his wife were unusual. Mr. Blake and ms. Bakley went to mr. Blakes favorite restaurant for a meal. And they were chatting, laughing, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. They had walked down the re, car. Then blake realized he had forgotten something in the restaurant his gun. So he left his wife in the car and went back to vitellos to pick up his handgun. And he came back and bonnie was dying. She had been shot. Blake had run to a nearby house and asked a man to please call 911. Address and emergency. My name is sean stanek. I heard a loud banging on the door. I open the door, i see him and i go, robert blake . I was stunned. I had no idea what was going on. He was just yelling, you gotta help me he was manic. Is she conscious, robert . No shes not conscious. Is she breathing . Is she breathing . Yeah, theyre coming, theyre coming. Is the gentleman there who reported it . Its Robert Blakes wife. New wife. Movie star, carrying a gun on the same night. Yonastt rso for both, to try to figure out, did he have a motive, was he involved in her death . The police were very suspicious. Who forgets a gun in a restaurant . Blake said bonnie, his wife, was afraid she was being followed. Blake has a concealed weapons permit and was carrying a weapon because his wife feared for her life. But the explanation for his gun just raised more questions. If he was worried for his wifes safety, why did he park a block and half away on a dark street . And that was something that did raise a red flag. Police suspected blake from the very beginning. Whave not r as a suspect in this case. They thought it was likely that he shot his wife himself or hired someone to shoot her. I was worth 40 million. I would hire somebody to shoot my wife in a car while i was out taking a pee or some [ bleep ] thing like that . Ive been in hollywood all my life. This investigation lasted over a year. The police said it was the most extensive investigation in lapd history. It seemed like he must have done it, right . The wife was dead and he had a gun. He must have done it. Well, it wasnt that gun. The murder weapon wasnt the gun blake was carrying on the night of the killing. And they could not trace the gun that was used back to blake. But two retired stuntmen had come forward and they said that blake had tried to hire them to kill his wife. And the police thought that would be enough to nail blake. This is robert blake under arrest. This is the bodyguard of robert blake now being arrested here in the burbank area. Were here today to announce that the Bonnie Lee Bakley case is solved. He was booked on two counts of soliciting murder with special circumstances. In california, if youre charged with a homicide with special circumstances, potentially youre not going to get bail. I think the l. A. D. A. s office would prefer that a high profile client would be in custody than be out arguing, pleading his case in public. We return to the top story, the arrest of Actor Robert Blake. Hell be put in isolation, and Authorities Say thats Standard Operating Procedure for high profile arrests. When we had celebrities in jail, we had to keep them out of the general population for their safety and the safety of other inmates. Everybody wants to be a star, and all it would take is, is one inmate to think, hey, if i beat that celebrity up, ill be in the National Enquirer or some other publication. And we couldnt take that chance. Months went by. Blake is behind bars. And he really wants to talk to the press. Hes an actor. He figures he can sway public opinion. But his lawyers wouldnt let him do it. Roberts too volatile. He might have said something could have hurt him or maybe misinterpreted. For some reason that i dont understand, he feels that he wants to talk to america. Blake kept trying to set up an interview while he was in jail awaiting trial. I ended my relationship when he made a deal behind my back to go on a television interview. I thought that was just a breach of trust. So i said, you better get yourself another lawyer. And he got a very good lawyer. He got tom mesereau. I was against mr. Blake giving any public interviews. This was the interview to get. Everyone wanted it. Barbara walters landed the interview with robert blake, of course. What did he have to say and what would happen when a highly skilled interviewer would confront him, as so many people wanted him to be confronted on what this relationship was and where he was at the time of the killing. Im glad to see you. Hi. Im okay. Good. What had you been doing today until i came . I used to do this for a living. I know you used to do this for a living. Im going to sit here, and youre going to sit there. And were going to have to put a microphone on you. Lets start, gentlemen. Boy, youre a boss. No question youre the boss. Well, theyre used to me by now. Robert, youve been in jail now for almost a year, how are you doing . Im a prisoner. 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Tery because energizer ultimate lithium is the longest lasting aa battery in the world. [confetti cannon popping] energizer. Backed by science. Matched by no one. When we asked robert blake for an interview, he said no, but he invited us over to his home and said that we could interview his friend. And this is what happened. The way that robert blake came into this world is very unusual. He came into the world despite the odds against him. His parents wanted to abort him. They didnt want him to be born because he was the result of an affair that the mother was having with his uncle. Am i getting this right . Hes going to tell you. Hes there. I know hes going to tell you. This is getting too [ bleep ] difficult. Okay. Just keep everything rolling. Okay. Im just going to jump in here. I didnt know that you were going to start getting this heavy. This is the bottom line truth. Lets fix your earplug. The wires sticking out. I thought that was a part of my brain. Because theres about three quarters of my brain that i would be happy to get rid of. Okay, are we good . Okay, nutley, new jersey. My grandmother and grandfather had a bunch of kids. Tony was one of the brothers and jimmy was one of the brothers. And my mother married jimmy, although she was in love with tony. And started sneaking over to see tony and she eventually got pregnant by him and he left. She hated what was in her stomach because it belonged to tony and tony had deserted her. And jimmy hated what was in here because he knew it was tonys. And i knew both of them hated me. So you have this incredibly dysfunctional family. And what do they do . They go to hollywood to try and make it in the movies. Hollywood, california, became the movie capital of the world. Huge movie studios sprang up and began to turn out millions of feet of entertainment a year. I was 4 1 2 years old, and my lunatic father packed up the family with all the possessions and all that junk and we drove for eight days and eight nights across the country. And they start working as extras in the studios. Most notably, at mgm. And thats how blake got discovered. He is really cute. He is really adorable and hes good at what he does because he does lots of little things, and you just sense that he is doing exactly what they want him to do. Blake may have been unwanted in his own family, but the camera loved him and he loved the camera. So very quickly, blake starts getting speaking parts. But first, were going to make some dynamite. If you talked, everybody on the set paid attention to you, which i interpreted as love. At the studio, he was supporting his entire family at home. He says his father was beating him badly. I was his punching bag. I wish i could talk nicely about him. It would be like me trying to talk nicely about the cops that put me in that cement box for a year. To this day i hate them. Im still here, you bastards. Im still here. I didnt die in that box. You got it . Im still here. Im 85 years old, im beat up all to hell and gone, but im still here and youre still pounding a beat. Smoke that. So anyway, they were going to make me a star. Hello, everybody. Mgm saw him as a new star. And proof of that is they change his name from Mickey Gubitosi to bobby blake. We honestly believe that bobby blake is as great a boy actor as Jackie Coogan in the kid. They cast him in his first feature film in the title role as mokey. Good night, son. Now i got my own mother. When donna reed hugged me, that was the first time that i felt loved. In mokey, he showed a range of emotions that impressed the studio. Young bobby is on the brink of stardom, and then his father completely blows it by picking a fight with the head of the studio. And louie b. Mayer had him physically thrown off the lot, and thats the end of the story. So blake leaves mgm and ends up going to make kind of low budget westerns. He gets loaned out though to other studios where he does get to meet hollywood legends. He worked with Humphrey Bogart in the treasure of the sierra madre. Beat it. I aint buying no lottery tickets. Beat it. 1,000 pesos is a good price. Get away from me, you little beggar. And his mentor was John Garfield. When i played John Garfield as a boy in a picture called humoresque, i had this scene where i had to start crying. Well, i was dry as the mojave desert. There was nothing. I just couldnt get going. But garfield came around and he started talking about himself, and while hes talking, he starts crying, and i start crying. And then he said the best line that i ever heard in my life about acting or art or music or anything. He said, life is a rehearsal. Your performance is real. He played cowboys. He played neurotic thugs in b movies like the purple gang. Get out of here, you hear me . Just leave me alone in 1960, robert and i played drug addicts in a play called the connection. And robert played a guy called ernie who was angry about his life and what was going on. His monologue was so real you felt he was going to crack any moment. He married actress sandra kerr and they had two children, noah and delinah. His big break is in 1967 when he plays perry smith in the film version of in cold blood. Blake reached down into himself, into his own experiences to create this character who was vulnerable and also murderous but who you, as a viewer, ended up having mixed feelings about. I guess the only thing im going to miss in this world is a poor old man and his hopeless dreams. His performance was acclaimed, and he was offered everything after that. You would have thought that on the basis of this hed be a star because this is a star making performance. But it doesnt seem to happen that way. He turned down the wild bunch. He turned down midnight cowboy. The same role ate ar out of dustin hoffman. Ngere whats amazin he followed a big success with a string of failures. Sometimes spending years before the next important project. Some of the movies that ive made have been what i consider just fun, a lark. Elliott gould was a big star, he was a giant star. And i didnt have a job and Elliott Gould was going to make this movie called busting about two cops. And robert blake i felt had a lot more experience than me and i thought, he would be a great partner for me. He was funny and he loved to improvise. There was a scene where we both get beat up. I understand that vitamin e will clear this up almost overnight. Thank you. Youre welcome. Thats funny. So by 1975, hes off hollywoods radar. Hes not being thought of for any kind of big roles. Then he was offered the role that fixed him forever in the publics imagination as a tough guy. 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Back, join us for a new favorite today. Thneomfotoon u buy one take one for a limited time. Only at olive garden. Itits crepe dayday for a family traditionys. We started about 22 minutes ago and now we can continue that tradition at home with free dennys delivery. See you at dennys. Com has been excellent. They really appreciate the military family and it really shows. With all that usaa offers why go with anybody else . We know their rates are good, we know that theyre always going to take care of us. It was an instant savings and i should have changed a long time ago. It was funny because when we would call another insurance company, hewod say it was funny because oh we cant beat usaa were the webber family. Were the tenneys were the hayles, and were usaa members for life. Get your usaa Auto Insurance quote today. In the 1970s, the cop show was king and every network had to have its own cop show or shows. You had mannix. Starsky and hutch. The streets of san francisco. Kojak. And of course, there was baretta. Everybody my age, if you say the word baretta, they break into song. Youd watch those promos. So baretta was one of those police shows where the cop breaks the rules to make sure that the bad guys are caught. Ill cut you a little. It was very much in time and in feel with the 1970s, right . This is the new kind of cop. It was a hit. And the winner is robert blake, baretta. The show earned robert blake an emmy award in 1975. Ah, let the good times roll. I saw him in baretta. I watched baretta as a kid. What i liked about it, i liked his style. And he was a fighter. Baretta had a lot of quirks. The man lived with a cockatoo. What was the deal with the cockatoo . I love you. He was brilliant. He was called lala. There were five or six birds, and all of them did something else. But lala w