Los Angeles
A California jury last week acquitted actor Robert Blake of murdering his wife, Bonny Lee Bakley, who was shot in the head as she sat in Blake’s car outside a restaurant four years ago. Prosecutors said Blake, 71, hated his 44-year-old wife and wanted her dead so he could raise their young daughter on his own. But jurors said there was no evidence that he personally pulled the trigger, and they were unimpressed by the testimony of two drug-addled stuntmen who claimed Blake had tried to hire them to “whack” Bakley. Blake, best known for playing the streetwise cop Baretta on TV, said he had spent $10 million on his defense and now needed work. In this country, he said, “you’re innocent until proven broke.”
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