Famous Acquittals: Robert Blake
Wikimedia Commons
Actor Robert Blake’s marriage to Bonnie Bakley had never been a happy one.
To start, Bonnie Bakley’s track record with husbands wasn’t great. She had been married ten times and had a reputation for using her partners — and any other celebrities she could connect with — for money.
Things weren’t ideal at the altar either; it was a DNA test revealing that Bakley’s newborn daughter was Blake’s that prompted Blake down the aisle. But bad as things were, no one could have predicted that on May 4, 2001, it would end in murder.
According to Blake, his wife was sitting in their car outside a restaurant in Studio City, Calif., while Blake went into the restaurant to retrieve a gun he’d left there. While Bakley was alone in the car, she was shot by an assailant whose identity remains a mystery.
ABC Television/Wikimedia CommonsPhoto of Robert Blake as Baretta and his cockatoo, Fred, from the television program Baretta. 1976.
What does seem to be clear is that the assailant was not Blake himself: the gun he retrieved was not the murder weapon, and an analysis of his hands came back negative for gunshot residue.
What’s suspicious, however, is that two different men admitted to having been hired by Blake to kill Bakley. The prosecution’s case seemed strong, but the defense emphasized the men’s drug use and was ultimately successful in discrediting their accounts.
On Mar. 16, 2005, the jury found Blake not guilty.
In keeping with what we’ve seen of famous acquittals, subsequent litigation reached a different conclusion. Later that same year, the jury in the civil suit filed by Bakley’s children found Blake liable for wrongful death, and the court ordered him to pay $30 million.
The liability was upheld in a 2008 appeal (although the penalty was reduced to $15 million). Blake has since filed for bankruptcy.
