- Robert Blake died at the age of 89.
- Blake gained notoriety as a US TV investigator in the 1970s series.
- His career was overshadowed by his wife’s murder.
Robert Blake, an actor who portrayed a serial killer in the movie adaptation of Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood” and was exonerated of murdering his own wife in real life, passed away in Los Angeles on Thursday, according to US media. He was 89.
According to the entertainment news source, Blake passed away from heart problems, and his niece Noreen Austin confirmed the report.
Blake gained notoriety as a US TV investigator in the 1970s series “Baretta,” earning him a reputation as a hell-raiser who engaged in brawls with coworkers.
Yet the murder of his wife, for which he was prosecuted and found not guilty, overshadowed his career, which had been underway since he was a little boy.
When Bonny Lee Bakley first encountered Blake in a Los Angeles nightclub in 1999, she was already dating Christian Brando, the son of Marlon Brando.
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When she gave birth to a kid a few months later, paternity testing indicated that Blake, not Brando, was the child’s father and that the pair were married.
Bakley was discovered shot to death in a car outside of the restaurant she and Blake had just left in 2001.
Blake said at his trial that his wife was shot when he went back to the restaurant to retrieve a gun he had inadvertently left behind.
As the actor went back to the car, he allegedly discovered his wife bleeding heavily from gunshot wounds to her head and shoulder.
Blake’s attorney suggested Christian Brando, Bakley’s seven other husbands, the hundreds of men she defrauded, and other people as potential offenders to the jury.
In early 2005, the jury found Blake not guilty after hearing evidence that he attempted to hire stuntmen to kill his wife.
Later that year, a civil jury found him responsible for Bakley’s passing and mandated that he pay her family $30 million.
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