Prosecution: Blake A Bad Actor

Robert Blake starred in such films as "In Cold Blood" and in TV shows like "Baretta," but he couldn't pull off the role of a distraught husband, a prosecutor told jurors during closing arguments Wednesday in the actor's murder trial.

"The defendant overestimated his acting abilities," Shellie Samuels said, citing witness testimony that Blake didn't appear to be sincere when he cried the night his wife was shot to death. One witness said the actor appeared to be "turning it on and off."

But Blake's lawyer, pointing out that no blood, DNA or other evidence directly links Blake to the 2001 slaying of former Arkansas resident Bonny Lee Bakley, said prosecutors were relying on a drug-using liar as a key witness and a bungled police investigation,

"They convicted Mr. Blake on the night of the murder and then they conducted an incompetent investigation," defense attorney M. Gerald Schwartzbach said.

Court was adjourned for the day shortly after Schwartzbach began his remarks. His arguments, expected to conclude Thursday, will be followed by Samuels' prosecution rebuttal.

Blake, who is free on $1.5 million bail, is charged with one count of murder, two counts of solicitation of murder and a special circumstance of lying in wait. If convicted, he could be sentenced to life in prison.

Arriving in court before closing arguments, Blake was greeted with a hug by his adult daughter, Delinah. Blake did not make eye contact with a daughter of Bakley's, who also was in court.

Blake sat impassively as the lawyers argued their cases, sometimes resting his right elbow on the defense table and running his hand through his gray hair.

Samuels said Blake hated Bakley because she was a con artist who tricked him into marrying her by getting pregnant and giving birth to a daughter he quickly became obsessed with.

Samuels said Blake, who was used to manipulating other people through his celebrity, "got taken by a small-time grifter."

Blake killed Bakley, the prosecutor said, when he couldn't find a way to avoid marrying her or to take custody of their baby.

"He said he would do anything to protect that child," Samuels said. She concluded her argument by playing a snippet of an interview Blake gave ABC's Barbara Walters - against the advice of his lawyer at the time - in which he said no matter what happens to him, his daughter will be kept away from Bakley's family.

"Those monsters will never get her," Blake said.

Samuels laid out a timeline for jurors in which she said Blake went to elaborate lengths to try to have Bakley arrested before their Nov. 19, 2000, wedding so he wouldn't have to marry her. When that failed, the prosecutor said, he tried to abduct their daughter. And when that failed, Samuels said, Blake tried repeatedly to solicit others to kill Bakley.

"When the solicitations were unsuccessful, he did it himself," Samuels said.

Bakley, 44, was shot to death May 4, 2001, outside Blake's favorite neighborhood Italian restaurant in Studio City.

Blake, 71, maintains someone else killed Bakley when he left her briefly in the car to retrieve a gun he accidentally left behind during dinner - not the gun used in the shooting. He told detectives he was armed because his wife feared someone was stalking her.

But Samuels told jurors that if Blake really wanted to protect his wife he never would have left her alone in a car parked on a dark street. In his argument, Schwartzbach responded that Blake parked the car under a street light.

Blake became physically ill at the sight of his wounded wife because years of portraying violent people hadn't prepared him to actually kill someone, Samuels said.

"He shot people on TV, he shot people in the movies, but he never really shot in real life," she said. "It freaked him out."

Schwartzbach, meanwhile, attacked the credibility of one of the witnesses who implicated Blake.

Ronald "Duffy" Hambleton, a former methamphetamine user who testified that Blake solicited him to kill Bakley, had maintained until six months after the crime that he knew of no such murder plot.

"Duffy Hambleton was a meth user, a meth manufacturer and a liar," Schwartzbach said.

He said another key prosecution witness, former "Baretta" stuntman and admitted cocaine user Gary McLarty, testified that Blake never asked him to kill anybody, adding that he had "assumed" that was what the actor wanted.

Samuels acknowledged during her closing statement that the witnesses had shady pasts but added that that shouldn't necessarily discredit them.

"He was looking for somebody who would be willing to do an assassination," she said. "I mean you're going to need a pretty big lowlife."

Both sides agree that Blake married Bakley because of their baby, Rosie, and then was determined to keep the child away from a mother who sold promises of sex by mail and whom Blake suspected of using another of her children for pornography.

Samuels cautioned the jury not to judge Blake based on Bakley's past.

"It doesn't matter what you think of Bonny," Samuels said.

By Robert Jablon