Will a jury convict him of murder?
My feeling is, not a chance in hell.
This is the going to become the trial of Bonnie Bakely, not Robert Blake.
Your thoughts?
I heard joke about the CA legal system: My buddy was pulled over for speeding in LA. Since he had a lot of points, he shot the cop. He figured would be easier to beat the murder charge than the ticket.
I agree that there will be a huge ugly circus. But if the chauffer is a hired shooter, and they have testimony of witnesses, maybe reality will penetrate to Hollywood.
Nahhh! Blake too will be hunting for “the real killers”, probably in pool and VFW halls.
Just curious… how wealthy is the guy?
I’d like to think justice would have been served even in the OJ case if he hadn’t had millions to spend on the very best defense.
Then again, I’ve got just way too much faith in my fellow man.
I doubt Blake has as much money as OJ–his last hit was almost 30 years ago and he’s worked only sporadically since then.
I wonder if the “real killer” is the same “some Puerto Rican guy” who killed Chandra Levy, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Jon Benet Ramsey (and almost got Butters)?
all i can say is “its about damn time this story made it back into the news!”
if he gets off, i will be a)disgusted, b)not very surprised
“Tell us what you know, you murdering murderer!”
Is there a brief rundown of the facts on this case anywhere? I only know the vaguest details.
Can’t say that it’s brief, but there’s an overview at http://www.crimelibrary.com/classics5/bakley/
It’s a multipage article, but the first page of it is a description of the crime itself.
I just gotta say gobear, I love your Butters comment… LOL
So, almost three years later, do you think he’ll be found guilty?
Personally I think he had it done. I also think it will be impossible to prove “beyond a reasonable doubt”, especially since Mrs. Blake was such a horror and had proven enemies before her marriage to Blake. Either way I’m only moderately interested, but there’s just such an allure about “Norma Desmond” yesteryear celebrities.
PS- The story so far for those who have lost interest or not really paid attention.
If ever there was an exemplary case of “Some people just need killin’,” this would be it. I suspect that the extreme distaste that the jurors are likely to feel for the victim will color their judgment. If I were on the jury, I’d have a hard time punishing someone for shooting this woman.
That’s true; not to have committed a violent crime she’s as deserving of a good shooting as anybody I can think of (extortion, child abuse, child neglect, child abandonment, welfare fraud, social security fraud, theft, credit card fraud, etc etc). Even the prosecutor referred to her as a “small time grifter”.
Of course I’ve never read a likeable thing about Blake. His ex-wife seems mortally terrified of him, he admits he stalked and tried to kill the father of a girlfriend when he was a teenager, blames everything on abusive parents, etc… Only his kids seem to regard him with even a sliver of affection, and even that may be a unified front for the trial. (I do think the prosecutor was being really sh!tty when she suggested that Blake had the baby with Bakley because his daughter Delinah wanted one- that’s just damned near tinfoil hat quality).
Sounds like we have a Have Gun, Will Travel fan here.
Regarding Blake, I think he’ll get off and that, technically, he should. I don’t believe he killed her but I do think he had her killed. The prosecution however, has charged him with doing it himself. It’s the wrong charge and they don’t have the evidence to support it.
I’ve been thinking of starting a thread on this but I’ll just jump in on this one. Can anyone explain to me what the heck happened with this case? This was a major crime with an identified suspect that happened almost four years ago - why has it taken so long to reach trial?
Well, it’s just my WAG, but I’d guess it’s because it took them this long to find enough witnesses and put together enough “evidence” to bring the case to trial. They had no murder weapon and Blake didn’t have enough gunpowder residue on his hands to indicate he had fired a gun. There really isn’t much concrete evidence (so far as I know), and if it weren’t for the fact that Blake tried to hire so many people to off her they probably wouldn’t have a case at all.
And Blake’s lawyers drug it out as much as they could also, with investigations and so forth to try to refute the state’s evidence.
Wanna hear something stupid? This case bums me out, and it’s because Robert Blake played Baretta.
I was 15 when *Baretta *first aired. Man, there was no one cooler on TV. I didn’t know a guy my age who didn’t want to *be *Tony Baretta. He was a tough bastard who brooked no shit, but he’d always be there to lend a hand when you were down. Loyal to his friends, fierce to his enemies. He had a code of honor. It sounds ridiculous now, 30 years later, but Blake as Baretta was a role model for us.
I know Blake is kind of a dirtbag. I know Bakely was no good; pinkfreud’s comment wasn’t far off base. But when I first heard on the news that Blake had been arrested in connection with her killing, the 15-year-old deep inside me that had looked up to him felt sucker punched.
I know what you mean. Blakes public personna at the time was so much in tune with what Baretta was like that they seemed to be one and the same. I felt that way. I was pretty sorry to see what had become of him.
Where is this reference to “some Puerto Rican guy” coming from? Of which murder?
South Park.
Butters’s parents try to kill him, and they blame his disappearance on ‘Some Puerto Rican Guy’. The suspects in the referenced cases also blamed SPRG as the ‘real killer’.
Hilarious episode! I’d like to see that one again. 
It’s odd to remember that Blake has been an actor for well over 60 years (the “Our Gang” spots). And several places describe the late Mrs. Blake as being a “celebrephiliac”- a psychosis marked by obsession with celebrity. This thing has all the makings of the world’s sleaziest opera.