FILE NO. 0177
Content warning: This case file describes the shooting death of Bonny Lee Bakley, a murder prosecution that ended in acquittal, allegations of solicitation to commit murder, drug use by trial witnesses, and a civil wrongful-death verdict. It contains no photographs of the dead or of the crime scene.
Bonny Lee Bakley: the 2001 killing, the Robert Blake acquittal and the civil verdict
Bonny Lee Bakley was shot near a Studio City restaurant in 2001, and no one has been convicted of killing her. Her husband, Robert Blake, was acquitted of her murder, then found civilly liable under a lower standard. This is what the court records show.
Legal status: Robert Blake was acquitted of the murder of Bonny Lee Bakley and of one count of solicitation of murder on March 16, 2005, by a jury in Los Angeles County Superior Court in Van Nuys. The jury deadlocked 11 to 1 in favor of acquittal on the second solicitation count, and Judge Darlene Schempp dismissed that count. A conspiracy count against Blake and the only charge against his handyman and part-time bodyguard, Earle Caldwell, were dismissed by the same judge on October 31, 2003, before trial; Caldwell was never tried and never convicted of anything in this case. In a separate civil wrongful-death suit, a jury in Burbank found on November 18, 2005, by a 10 to 2 vote under the civil standard of a preponderance of the evidence, that Blake “intentionally caused the death” of Bakley, and awarded $30 million. The California Court of Appeal later held that award excessive and reduced it to $15 million, conditioned on the plaintiff’s consent. That is a finding of civil liability, not a criminal conviction. Blake filed for bankruptcy in February 2006 and died on March 9, 2023, at 89. No one has been convicted of killing Bonny Lee Bakley.
On the night of May 4, 2001, Bonny Lee Bakley was shot as she sat in the passenger seat of her husband’s car on a dark street near Vitello’s, an Italian restaurant in Studio City where the couple had just eaten dinner. She was 44, the mother of four children, and had been married to Robert Blake for six months. Blake, the former child actor and star of the 1970s detective series “Baretta,” told police he had walked back to the restaurant to retrieve a handgun he had left in their booth and returned to find her wounded.
The case that followed ran nearly eight years through the courts. The Los Angeles Police Department arrested Blake almost a year after the shooting and announced the case solved. The Los Angeles County District Attorney charged him with murder, with the special circumstance of lying in wait, and with trying to hire two men to do the killing. A criminal jury acquitted him. A civil jury, applying a lower standard of proof, found him liable for her death. An appeals court cut the damages in half. Through all of it, no court ever convicted anyone of the killing.
Who Bonny Lee Bakley was
Bonny Lee Bakley was 44 when she died. The Los Angeles Times identified her as a mother of four, and the wrongful-death suit later filed on behalf of her estate was brought for all four of her children, three from earlier relationships and one, a daughter born in June 2000, with Blake. Her estate was probated in Memphis, Tennessee, where a court appointed an administrator, Blanchard E. Tual, to act for it. Her family included a mother, siblings and a sister, Margerry Bakley, who spoke for the family in Los Angeles in the weeks and months after the killing.
The press coverage of her life was harsh, and much of it came from the people with the strongest reasons to shape it. Weeks after the shooting, CNN reported, Blake’s lawyer was describing her as a woman with a sordid past. The Associated Press, in its verdict story, reported that she “had been married several times, had a record for mail fraud and made a living scamming men out of money with nude pictures of herself and promises of sex.” The Los Angeles Times called her “a small-time scam artist who dreamed of snagging a celebrity husband” and referred to a “mail-order pornography business.” CNN, citing federal court documents, reported that she had been a defendant in a 1997 case in U.S. District Court in Little Rock, Arkansas, charged with possessing false identification documents with intent to use them, and that she was sentenced to three years of probation. When Blake married her in 2000, the Associated Press reported, she was still on probation for fraud, and the Times later reported that prosecution witnesses said Blake had schemed to get her probation revoked on an Arkansas fraud case.
Her family resisted that portrait from the start. When Blake buried her at Forest Lawn Memorial Park on May 25, 2001, her relatives stayed away. A lawyer for her sister, Cary Goldstein, told CNN the family was upset at statements from Blake’s lawyer about her past. “They have attempted to dehumanize LeeBonnie,” Goldstein said, using the name her family called her. “She had siblings, she had children other than her child with Blake. She has a mother, and they’re all grieving at her death. She is not a cartoon character.”
The lawyer who filed the estate’s suit, Barry Novack, told the Times that she had still helped to support her grown children in Tennessee. “She was a warm, caring and loving mother,” he said. Inside the criminal courtroom, the Times reported after the verdict, her past “played a surprisingly small role,” despite early efforts by the defense to point to her mail-order business as a possible reason someone wanted her dead.
Robert Blake before the case
Robert Blake was born Michael James Gubitosi on September 18, 1933, in Nutley, New Jersey. He was on stage as a small child in his family’s vaudeville act and in films by the late 1930s, playing “Mickey” in the “Our Gang” shorts and the sidekick Little Beaver in the Red Ryder westerns. He played a boy in John Huston’s “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.” In 1967 he was cast as Perry Smith, one of the two killers of the Clutter family, in the film of Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood,” a role that brought him the best reviews of his career.
His widest fame came in 1975 with “Baretta,” in which he played a streetwise New York detective who lived with a pet cockatoo. The Los Angeles Times reported that he won an Emmy for the role. He kept working after the series ended in 1978, though less often. His later credits included a 1993 television film in which he played John List, the New Jersey man who murdered his family in 1971, and David Lynch’s “Lost Highway” in 1997. The Times, in 2005, described the John List role as an Emmy nomination; NPR’s 2023 obituary said he won a second Emmy for it. The two sources conflict, and this dossier does not resolve the point.
By 2001 he was 67, living in Studio City in a house the Times later called the “Mata Hari Ranch,” and a regular at Vitello’s, a few blocks away. One of the restaurant’s owners told CNN after the shooting that Blake had eaten there for 20 years, often twice a week, and that a section of the menu was named for him.
The relationship and the marriage
The Los Angeles Times reported that Blake met Bakley in 1998 at a Burbank jazz club that has since closed; NPR’s obituary dates the meeting to 1999. The sources conflict on the year. The relationship that followed was, in the paper’s word, stormy, and it was the backdrop for everything the prosecution later argued.
By late 1999 Bakley was pregnant. At the preliminary hearing in February 2003, prosecutors played an audio recording in which, CNN reported, Blake told her that she “swore on her life” she would never get pregnant and that he would never forget all her “rotten, stinking, filthy” lies. Their daughter was born in June 2000. CNN reported that Bakley at first said the father was either Blake or Christian Brando, the son of the actor Marlon Brando; the Times and NPR reported that a paternity test showed the father was Blake.
What happened in the weeks after the birth comes to the record mainly through testimony. A former employee of Blake’s testified at trial that shortly after the girl was born, Blake refused to return her to her mother after a visit. Bakley filed kidnapping charges, the Times reported, and dropped them after Blake agreed to marry her. Prosecution witnesses also testified, according to the Times, that Blake schemed to have her probation revoked on the Arkansas case and tried to have her arrested over her mail-order business. Those were prosecution witnesses’ accounts in a trial that ended in acquittal.
The couple married in November 2000 at Blake’s home in Studio City. According to the Associated Press, it was a no-frills ceremony at which “the bride wore an electronic monitoring bracelet because she was still on probation for fraud.” The Times reported that Bakley went to Arkansas after the wedding and did not return until March 2001. Five days before she was killed, she moved into a guest house at the rear of Blake’s property, which CNN described as a bungalow behind his four-bedroom house. A former husband told CNN in May 2001 that the couple were not living together.
Prosecutors would later frame all of this as motive. In closing arguments, according to the Associated Press, the prosecutor, Shellie Samuels, told jurors: “He was tricked by Bonny Lee and he hated her for it.” None of the witness accounts of the relationship produced a conviction.
May 4, 2001: the night at Vitello’s
On the evening of Friday, May 4, 2001, Blake and Bakley had dinner at Vitello’s on Tujunga Avenue in Studio City. The Times reported that a joint visit to the restaurant was unusual for a couple who led mostly separate lives. The Times reported that the car was parked about a block from the restaurant; a neighbor told CNN it was less than 100 yards away.
Blake’s account, given to police that night and repeated through his lawyers for years, was consistent. An LAPD spokesman, relaying it to CNN the next day, said the couple left the restaurant at 9:40 p.m. and got into the car, and that Blake then realized he had left something inside. Blake’s lawyer said the item was his handgun, which he carried because Bakley believed someone was stalking her and had asked him to carry it. The Times reported that it was a .38 caliber revolver. Blake said he walked back to the restaurant, got the gun, and returned to find his wife shot.
One of the restaurant’s co-owners told CNN that Blake appeared to have retrieved nothing, and that he looked flustered, drank two glasses of water and left. A film director who lived across the street from the restaurant’s parking lot told CNN he heard a knock at about 9:50 p.m. and found Blake at his door saying his wife had been hurt. The director called 911, and the two men ran across the street. He said Bakley was still alive when they reached the car. Paramedics gave her CPR at the scene, and she was declared dead on arrival at a nearby hospital.
Early accounts said she had been shot once in the head. The Times later reported, citing the autopsy, that she had been shot in the right shoulder and the right cheek, and the felony complaint alleged two shots. The LAPD’s own arrest release placed the car “in the 11400 block of Woodbridge Street in North Hollywood,” while the news reports placed it near Vitello’s in Studio City. This dossier uses the news description and notes the LAPD’s.
Police at first treated Blake as a witness. “He was interviewed like any witness would be interviewed, but he wasn’t questioned, he was interviewed as a witness to the crime,” the LAPD spokesman Don Hartwell told CNN on May 5. “There is no weapon that has been recovered at this point, and there are no primary suspects.” In fact a gun was found nearby. The murder weapon, a Walther P-38 pistol, was recovered from a trash bin near where the car was parked. According to the Associated Press, it “could not be traced to Blake.” When police announced the arrest a year later, they said for the first time that Blake had been a suspect from the start.
Blake buried his wife at Forest Lawn Memorial Park on May 25, 2001, three weeks after the shooting, holding their daughter during a short Catholic graveside service. Through his lawyer, he denied any part in the killing, and he would go on denying it for the rest of his life.
The investigation and the arrest
For almost a year the LAPD’s Robbery Homicide Division worked the case without an arrest. Blake hired his own lawyer, Harland Braun, and a private investigator. Braun told reporters his client was innocent and that the investigation should look at Bakley’s past. Police searched Blake’s home more than once. The coroner’s autopsy report was put under a security hold at the LAPD’s request, which a coroner’s spokesman told CNN was routine in high profile cases.
On April 18, 2002, at 5:30 p.m., Robbery Homicide detectives arrested Blake. The LAPD’s release that night said detectives would present the case to the District Attorney’s office the following Monday and anticipated “one count of murder with special circumstances, use of a firearm, and two counts of solicitation for murder.” Detectives also arrested Earle Caldwell, 46, of Burbank, for conspiracy. The release described Caldwell as a man who had met Blake about five years earlier while working at a car stereo and alarm shop, who had been hired about two years earlier as a full time handyman for Blake’s properties, and who “was also a part-time bodyguard for Bonny Lee Bakley.”
The release set out the scale of the work: more than 900 items of evidence examined, more than 150 people interviewed, trips to some 20 states, and more than 150 tips from the public followed. “All other possible suspects were investigated and have been eliminated,” it said. It also said the investigation had “developed compelling and conclusive evidence” against Blake. That was the department’s claim on the night of the arrest. A jury that heard the evidence three years later acquitted him.
At a news conference, Police Chief Bernard C. Parks said: “The Bonny Lee Bakley case is solved.” The Times reported that police said the murder weapon was a World War II era, German made handgun found in a trash bin a few yards from the car, and that the .38 caliber gun Blake said he had been carrying was not the one used. Braun answered that night: “I believe that the real killer is out there.”
Accounts differ on where the arrest happened. The Times on April 19, 2002, said police surrounded the home where Blake lived in the gated community of Hidden Hills; a Times story eleven days later said he was arrested at his daughter’s Hidden Hills home; CBS News said it was his sister’s home. All agree on Hidden Hills, and this dossier goes no further than that.
One part of the investigation later became an issue at trial. The Times reported that the defense accused detectives of courting Miles Corwin, an author and former Los Angeles Times reporter who was writing a book about the LAPD’s elite detectives and was present during a search. Judge Schempp found that Corwin’s presence violated Blake’s rights but declined to throw out the evidence, ruling that he had been merely an observer.
The charges: what the complaint alleged
On April 22, 2002, District Attorney Steve Cooley filed a felony complaint in Los Angeles County Superior Court at Van Nuys, People v. Robert Blake and Earle S. Caldwell, case number LA040377. The investigating agency was listed as LAPD Robbery Homicide. The complaint charged four counts.
- Count 1, against Blake: murder, under Penal Code section 187(a), with a special circumstance allegation of lying in wait under section 190.2(a)(15) and an allegation that he personally and intentionally discharged a firearm causing death, under section 12022.53(d).
- Counts 2 and 3, against Blake: solicitation of murder, under section 653f(b), each alleged to have occurred in March 2001 and each involving a different man.
- Count 4, against Blake and Caldwell: conspiracy to commit murder, under section 182(a)(1), alleged to have begun on or about January 2, 2001.
The conspiracy count listed overt acts, the specific steps prosecutors said the two men took. These were allegations, and the conspiracy count built on them did not survive to trial. As summarized by CNN and as stated in the complaint, they included a list prosecutors said Caldwell wrote in early 2001 of items for use in a killing, among them two shovels, a small sledge, a crowbar, a .25 caliber gun, old rugs, duct tape, drain cleaner, pool acid and lye. The complaint alleged that in March 2001 Blake asked one man to hide in his van in a desert area and kill Bakley, and asked a second to kill her in a parked car near Bullhead City, Arizona, and that he showed both men a small gun in a zippered case. It alleged that Blake suggested Vitello’s as a backup location and that Caldwell planned an attempt during an April 2001 trip to Parker, Arizona, and Three Rivers, California. It alleged that on May 4, 2001, Blake shot Bakley with an “unregistered vintage Walther P-38” and threw it in a trash container.
Blake pleaded not guilty to all four counts that day. Caldwell pleaded not guilty to conspiracy. Braun told CNN he read the complaint’s side plots as a sign of weakness. “You wouldn’t be throwing in subplots, other people who claim they talked to him. I read it as a weakness in their case,” he said.
Because lying in wait is a special circumstance, the murder count made Blake eligible for the death penalty. On April 25, 2002, prosecutors announced that they would seek life in prison without the possibility of parole instead. On May 1, Superior Court Judge Lloyd Nash denied bail. At that hearing Blake spoke for himself. “For the past year, I’ve been silent … but this is where I have to make my fight,” he said, according to CNN. Caldwell was released on $1 million bond; Braun said Blake’s private investigator posted it with a cashier’s check. Braun said an employer had a legal duty to pay for a defense arising from employment. “That’s stupid,” he said of suggestions the money was meant to keep Caldwell from cooperating.
The preliminary hearing and the end of the conspiracy charge
The preliminary hearing, at which a judge decides whether there is enough evidence to hold a defendant for trial, opened in Van Nuys in late February 2003. One of the first witnesses was William Welch, a retired homicide detective who had worked as a private investigator for Blake. Welch testified that Blake approached him in October 1999, when Bakley was pregnant, with a plan to kidnap her and force an abortion. “He said, ‘We’re going to hire a doctor, we’re going to abort her, and if that doesn’t work we’re going to whack her,'” Welch testified, according to CNN. Welch said he disagreed and suggested paying Bakley $20,000 to $100,000 so “she would go away.”
That night, in a recorded interview broadcast by ABC’s “20/20,” Blake told Barbara Walters he was innocent. “Of course, I’m innocent,” he said, according to CNN. His lawyer at the time, Thomas Mesereau Jr., said outside court that the prosecution’s witnesses had credibility problems.
In March 2003, after 11 months in a private cell at Men’s Central Jail, Blake was released on $1.5 million bail. The hearing then moved toward a ruling. In September 2003 Mesereau filed a 67-page motion asking the court to dismiss the murder and conspiracy charges, arguing there was “absolutely no evidence” tying Blake to the gun.
On October 31, 2003, Judge Darlene Schempp ruled. She held Blake for trial on the murder charge. “It appears there was probable cause to hold defendant Blake to answer,” Schempp said, according to CBS News, rejecting Mesereau’s argument that nothing linked Blake to the gun and that the lying in wait allegation had no support. But she threw out the conspiracy count against both Blake and Caldwell. “I cannot find a strong suspicion,” she said of the case against Caldwell. “I think the evidence here is so speculative it carries very little weight. I simply don’t find there is probable cause.” CBS reported that his $1 million bail was lifted and returned. Caldwell’s lawyer, Dana Cole, had argued that there was nothing suspicious about Caldwell’s actions before the killing.
Outside court, Caldwell said: “A great weight has been lifted … As far as what they wanted me to say, I wasn’t going to lie.” His lawyer, Dana Cole, told CNN the ruling showed “the D.A.’s office sometimes makes mistakes in its charging decisions, and this one was definitely a mistake.” Prosecutors had 15 days to refile the conspiracy charge. The sources do not record a refiling, and when the case went to trial the counts were murder and the two solicitation counts. Caldwell was never tried. In the civil case two years later, a jury found that he had not taken part in the killing.
Between the preliminary hearing and the trial, Blake went through several lawyers. CNN reported that Braun and Jennifer Keller quit over his insistence on giving television interviews, and that Mesereau was dismissed after citing “irreconcilable differences.” M. Gerald Schwartzbach tried the case and remained Blake’s lawyer through the civil appeal.
The criminal trial: the stuntmen on the stand
The trial in People v. Blake ran about 12 weeks before Judge Darlene E. Schempp in Van Nuys. By then the case had been narrowed to three counts: murder with the special circumstance of lying in wait, and two counts of solicitation of murder. Deputy District Attorney Shellie Samuels, who the Los Angeles Times reported had won 48 of her 49 previous murder cases, prosecuted. M. Gerald Schwartzbach defended. The jury of seven men and five women heard 110 witnesses, 74 called by the prosecution and 36 by the defense. Blake did not testify.
The prosecution had no eyewitness to the shooting. Jurors later said prosecutors were never able to link Blake to the murder weapon or put him at the car at the moment of the shooting. In place of direct evidence, the case rested on motive, on Blake’s movements that night, on gunshot residue, and above all on two men who had worked as stuntmen in Hollywood and who said Blake had asked them to kill his wife about two months before she died.
Gary McLarty, a semiretired stunt coordinator, testified that Blake offered him $10,000 to “pop” his wife, while acknowledging, the Times reported, that Blake never used the word “kill.” On cross examination McLarty admitted he had been hospitalized the previous year for a drug induced breakdown during which he believed police were tunneling under his home and satellites were monitoring him.
Ronald Hambleton testified that Blake proposed several ways to kill Bakley and suggested that one location could be near Vitello’s. He told jurors that when he said he wanted no part of it, Blake responded: “Well, if you’re not going to do it, then I sure as hell am.” Hambleton testified that in most of the plots Blake described, Blake wanted to be present, and that Blake told him: “Don’t worry about it. I’m an actor, you know, I’ll take care of it.” The Associated Press reported that one of the stuntmen testified that Blake talked about having Bakley “snuffed” and mentioned possible locations including the Grand Canyon.
Prosecutors backed the stuntmen with telephone records. The Times reported that a prepaid phone card documented 56 calls from Blake’s house to Hambleton and three to McLarty between March 2001 and the killing. The defense attacked their credibility. Schwartzbach presented evidence that both men’s admitted use of cocaine and methamphetamine could have made them delusional, and CNN reported that the defense team attacked them as habitual liars and drug addicts.
The prosecution also called witnesses about Blake’s conduct after the shooting. The Associated Press reported that some witnesses testified Blake did not appear sincere as he wept that night; one said he seemed to be “turning it on and off.” The jury also heard prosecution witness testimony about Blake’s plans before the marriage, including the testimony of the private investigator who said Blake had spoken in 1999 of a plan that ended with “whack her.” The defense answered that police had decided early and never looked elsewhere. The police “convicted Mr. Blake on the night of the murder, and then they conducted an incompetent investigation,” Schwartzbach said, according to the AP.
The forensic evidence was thin and contested. Police had found a few lead particles of gunshot residue on Blake in the 2 1/2 hours after the shooting. A defense expert testified that whoever shot Bakley would have had significantly more residue on his hands, and the Associated Press reported testimony that the small amounts found could have come from the gun Blake said he carried for protection. The murder weapon could not be traced to him. Instead of putting Blake on the stand, Schwartzbach showed jurors a videotaped jailhouse interview in which Blake denied killing his wife and said his life revolved around their daughter.
In closing, Samuels argued motive. “He was tricked by Bonny Lee and he hated her for it,” she told the jury, according to the AP. “He got taken by a small-time grifter.” The defense, in the AP’s summary, called it a weak case.
The verdict: March 16, 2005
The jury deliberated for nine days. On Wednesday, March 16, 2005, the clerk read the verdicts. Blake was found not guilty of murder. He was found not guilty of soliciting McLarty to commit murder. On the count of soliciting Hambleton, the jury told the judge it could not agree; the vote was 11 to 1 for acquittal. Judge Schempp dismissed that count. The Times reported that she dismissed it “in the interest of justice”; CNN reported that she said a retrial on it “would not result in anything different.” Both accounts describe the same ruling, and neither leaves any charge pending. Blake, 71, sobbed at the defense table.
The jurors explained themselves on the courthouse steps. “We just didn’t have enough evidence to say whether he did or if he didn’t,” juror Lorie Moore said, according to CNN. The foreman, Thomas Nicholson, said prosecutors “couldn’t put the gun in his hand” and that “They could never connect all the links in the chain.” He told the Times: “I felt the primary thing from what I saw was that the circumstantial evidence was flimsy.” Of the two stuntmen, he dismissed Hambleton as a “prolific liar” and said McLarty’s testimony “had no bearing at all in terms of the case.” Several jurors cited the defense expert’s testimony on gunshot residue as important.
Samuels told the Times she was “blown away.” “I can’t believe a jury would not convict on this,” she said. Sandi Gibbons, a spokeswoman for the District Attorney, said prosecutors and police believed they had a “solid circumstantial case.” “We believe the evidence was compelling,” she said, according to CNN. This dossier did not locate a District Attorney’s news release on the verdict; the office’s statement here comes through CNN.
Bakley’s daughter Holly Gawron wept as the verdict was read, the Times reported. “It was not what I wanted to hear, but I will accept it and move on,” she said.
Blake held a news conference outside. “I never lost hope,” he told reporters. He said the case had left him broke. “If you want to know how to go through $10 million in five years, ask me,” he said, as CNN reported it. He asked for scissors to cut off the electronic monitor he had worn since his release on bail two years earlier.
Legally, the verdict was final. An acquittal in a California criminal case cannot be appealed by the prosecution, and Blake could not be tried again for Bakley’s murder. Nothing in the later civil case changed that.
The civil case: Tual v. Blake
On April 29, 2002, eleven days after the arrest, Blanchard E. Tual, the court appointed administrator of Bakley’s estate, filed a wrongful-death suit in Los Angeles County Superior Court against Blake and Caldwell on behalf of her four children. California law required the suit to be filed within a year of her death. The complaint alleged the two men were “engaged in a joint venture and common enterprise,” and argued that Blake, as her husband, should be “precluded from any recovery because he may not profit from his own intentional, willful … wrongdoing.”
The case was tried after the criminal acquittal, in the Burbank courthouse, before Judge David M. Schacter. The difference in the rules mattered. In the criminal trial, all 12 jurors had to agree that guilt was proved beyond a reasonable doubt. In the civil trial, CBS News reported, only nine of 12 had to find by a “preponderance” of the evidence, meaning more likely than not, that Blake was responsible. The plaintiffs’ lawyer, Eric Dubin, argued that Blake either killed Bakley himself or hired someone to do it. Blake’s civil lawyer, Peter Ezzell, argued that many people had reasons to want her dead. Dubin called one of the stuntmen as a live witness and read in the other’s criminal trial testimony.
This time Blake testified, for eight days. He denied the allegations and repeated his account of going back for the gun. Jurors said afterward that his testimony hurt him. “We believe that Mr. Blake was probably his worst enemy on the stand,” the foreman, Bob Horn, said.
On November 18, 2005, after eight days of deliberation, the jury voted 10 to 2 that Blake “intentionally caused the death” of Bakley and awarded $30 million. The jury was not asked to decide whether he had fired the gun or hired someone. It found that Caldwell did not take part in the killing. “These kids lost their mom, and that got overlooked over the years,” Dubin said. “This was a real family. This was a real person.”
The civil verdict did not convict Blake of anything, and it did not disturb the acquittal. It was a finding of civil liability for money damages under a lower standard of proof, the same distinction the courts drew in the O.J. Simpson cases a decade earlier.
Bankruptcy and the appeal
On Friday, February 3, 2006, Blake filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The Times reported that his largest listed liabilities were the $30 million judgment, a $1,274,783 federal tax bill and a $334,337 state tax assessment, and that he put his assets at $100,001 to $500,000. At a debtors’ hearing in March, he told the trustee he had contracted to pay each of his three criminal defense lawyers $450,000. “When I realized my assets were less than what I owed, it became clear to me that in my best interest I should file Chapter 11,” he said. Asked how he would satisfy creditors, he answered: “Earn money.”
Blake appealed the judgment. On April 25, 2008, the Court of Appeal, Second Appellate District, Division Three, decided Tual v. Blake, case B191050, in an opinion not certified for publication, which means it cannot be cited as precedent. The court rejected his claims of evidentiary error, instructional error and juror misconduct. The Associated Press reported that the misconduct claim centered on jurors’ references to the O.J. Simpson and Michael Jackson acquittals. On damages the court sided with him: “$30 million is excessive and compels the conclusion that the jury was influenced by passion or prejudice.” It modified the judgment to $15 million, affirmed as modified “on the condition that the plaintiff timely consents in writing to such a reduction,” and ordered a new trial on damages only, “liability having been established,” if no consent was filed.
Dubin told the AP he saw “every reason to accept it.” He estimated the award with interest at about $24 million. Schwartzbach said he knew of no assets to pay it. “If Robert had money he would be paying me,” he said. The sources confirm the reduction but not the filing of the plaintiff’s consent, the final judgment amount, or any collection or settlement, and this dossier does not state them.
After the verdicts
The sources reviewed for this dossier record no charge against anyone else in the killing of Bonny Lee Bakley. The LAPD’s 2002 release said all other possible suspects had been investigated and eliminated; the jury that heard the case rejected the case against the one man the department charged. Under the law, the killing has no conviction attached to it.
Robert Blake died on March 9, 2023, at home in Los Angeles, at 89. A statement released on behalf of his niece said the cause was heart disease. He had never stopped saying he was innocent. “It hurt because America is the only family I had,” he told the AP from jail in 2002.
Myth versus record
Myth: Blake was convicted in the end, in civil court. Record: He was never convicted of any crime in this case. The criminal jury acquitted him of murder and of one solicitation count, and the remaining count was dismissed. The civil jury found him liable for money damages under the preponderance standard.
Myth: Police proved the case. Record: The LAPD said on the night of the arrest that it had “compelling and conclusive evidence.” The jury that heard that evidence acquitted him, and the foreman said prosecutors “couldn’t put the gun in his hand.”
Myth: Caldwell was convicted as an accomplice. Record: His only charge, conspiracy, was dismissed for lack of probable cause on October 31, 2003. He was never tried, and the civil jury found he did not take part in the killing.
People
- Bonny Lee Bakley (died May 4, 2001, at 44): the victim; mother of four.
- Robert Blake (1933 to 2023): actor; acquitted of her murder and of one solicitation count in 2005; second solicitation count dismissed after a deadlock; found civilly liable in 2005.
- Earle Caldwell: Blake’s handyman and part-time bodyguard; charged with conspiracy in 2002; charge dismissed in 2003; never tried; found not liable in the civil case.
- Gary McLarty and Ronald Hambleton: former stuntmen and prosecution witnesses on the solicitation counts.
- William Welch: retired homicide detective and former investigator for Blake; testified at the preliminary hearing.
- Darlene E. Schempp: Superior Court judge, preliminary hearing rulings and trial.
- Shellie Samuels: Deputy District Attorney who tried the case.
- Harland Braun, Thomas Mesereau Jr., M. Gerald Schwartzbach: Blake’s successive criminal defense lawyers.
- Eric Dubin and Peter Ezzell: plaintiffs’ and defense lawyers in the civil trial.
- Blanchard E. Tual: administrator of Bakley’s estate and plaintiff in Tual v. Blake.
Timeline
- November 2000: Blake and Bakley marry in Studio City.
- March 2001: the two solicitations alleged in the complaint.
- May 4, 2001: Bakley is shot near Vitello’s and dies.
- April 18, 2002: LAPD arrests Blake and Caldwell.
- April 22, 2002: felony complaint filed, case LA040377; both plead not guilty.
- April 29, 2002: wrongful-death suit filed.
- February 2003: preliminary hearing opens.
- March 2003: Blake released on $1.5 million bail.
- October 31, 2003: conspiracy count dismissed as to both men; Blake held for trial on murder.
- March 16, 2005: Blake acquitted of murder and one solicitation count; the other count dismissed.
- November 18, 2005: civil jury finds him liable; $30 million.
- February 3, 2006: Blake files Chapter 11.
- April 25, 2008: Court of Appeal reduces the award to $15 million on condition of consent.
- March 9, 2023: Blake dies at 89.
Frequently asked questions
Was Robert Blake convicted of killing Bonny Lee Bakley?
No. A jury acquitted him of her murder on March 16, 2005. He was never convicted of any crime in the case.
Why was he found liable in civil court after the acquittal?
The civil case used a lower standard. Nine of 12 jurors had to find by a preponderance of the evidence that he was responsible; ten did. A civil finding is not a conviction.
What happened to Earle Caldwell?
His conspiracy charge was dismissed in 2003 for lack of probable cause. He was never tried, and the civil jury found he did not take part in the killing.
How much did Blake owe?
The jury awarded $30 million. The Court of Appeal cut it to $15 million if the plaintiff consented. Blake had filed for bankruptcy in 2006, and the sources reviewed here do not show what was ever paid.
Has anyone else been charged?
No other charge appears in the sources reviewed for this dossier.
Citations & Sources
Sources
- Los Angeles Police Department: Robert Blake Arrested For Murder Of Bonny Lee Bakley
- Los Angeles County Superior Court, felony complaint, People v. Robert Blake and Earle S. Caldwell, case LA040377, April 22, 2002 (FindLaw copy via Internet Archive): Felony complaint: People v. Blake
- California Court of Appeal, Second District, Division Three: Tual v. Blake, B191050 (April 25, 2008), not to be published (Casetext copy, now offline; not linked)
- Horvitz & Levy: Tual v. Blake: California Court of Appeal Reduces Civil Judgment Against Actor Robert Blake From $30 Million to $15 Million
- CNN: Search warrant obtained for actor Blake’s home after wife’s death
- CNN: Police seek clues in death of Robert Blake’s wife
- CNN: Blake buries slain wife, thanks her for baby
- Los Angeles Times: Robert Blake Arrested as Triggerman in Wife’s Killing
- CBS News: Robert Blake Arrested In Wife’s Murder
- CNN: The charges against Robert Blake
- CNN: Blake pays $1 million bail for release of bodyguard
- CNN: Bakley estate sues Blake, bodyguard
- Los Angeles Times: Bakley Heirs File Suit Against Blake
- CNN: Blake denied bail in wife’s killing
- CNN: Former cop says Blake wanted him to ‘whack’ wife
- Los Angeles Times: Blake’s Lawyer Seeks Dismissal of Charges
- CNN: Judge tosses out conspiracy charges against Robert Blake
- CBS News: Robert Blake Faces Murder Trial
- CNN: Blake found not guilty in wife’s killing
- Los Angeles Times: Actor Robert Blake Acquitted in Shooting Death of His Wife
- CBS News (Associated Press): ‘Not Guilty’ Verdict For Blake
- CBS News (Associated Press): Jury: Blake Behind Wife’s Killing
- Los Angeles Times: Robert Blake Seeks Bankruptcy Protection
- The Press Democrat (Associated Press): Actor tells trustee he can’t pay taxes, creditors after paying lawyers
- TODAY (Associated Press): $30 million wrongful-death judgment against Robert Blake cut
- ABA Journal: Appeals Court Halves $30M Verdict Against Robert Blake
- NPR (Associated Press): Robert Blake, the actor acquitted in wife’s killing, dies at 89
Image credits
- Photo: Bouillant Achille, via Wikimedia Commons. CC0 1.0 (public domain dedication).
- Photo: Cbl62, via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0.
- Photo: Alexis Doine, via Wikimedia Commons. CC0 1.0 (public domain dedication).
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