Blake Pleads Not Guilty to Killing

While plotting to kill his wife, actor Robert Blake directed his bodyguard to prepare a list of supplies, including two shovels, a crowbar, old rugs, duct tape and swimming pool acid, Los Angeles County prosecutors allege in a criminal complaint filed Monday.

Blake, who pleaded not guilty to murder, soliciting murder and conspiracy charges during his arraignment Monday, fatally shot Bonny Lee Bakley in the head outside a Studio City restaurant May 4, only after he failed to recruit other people to kill her for him, according to the complaint filed at Van Nuys Superior Court.

Blake offered two prospective killers a small-caliber gun in a zippered case and told one of them the gun was untraceable, the complaint said. He also told one of them that his bodyguard, Earle Caldwell, would have “dug holes for burial.”

According to prosecutors, Blake also directed Caldwell, who Monday pleaded not guilty to a murder conspiracy charge, to make a list of supplies needed to kill Bakley--”two shovels, small sledge, crowbar, .25 auto, ‘get blank gun ready,’ old rugs, duct tape, Drano, pool acid, lye, plant.”

Thursday, Los Angeles police arrested Blake at his daughter’s home in Hidden Hills, a gated community in the San Fernando Valley, and took Caldwell into custody near his Burbank home.

Police said Blake’s motive was “contempt for Bonny Bakley and the marriage he felt was forced upon him.” Blake married Bakley after a paternity test confirmed he was her baby girl’s father.

Blake, best known for his role as the streetwise New York detective Tony Baretta in the 1970s television series “Baretta,” could face the death penalty if convicted.

He is being held without bail in Men’s Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles. Bail for Caldwell is set at $1 million.

On Monday, Blake, 68, was dressed in a light gray suit and tie with his attorney, Harland W. Braun, standing behind him. Caldwell, 46, sat next to Blake, wearing a white dress shirt and slacks, as his lawyer, Arna H. Zlotnik, stood behind him.

The defendants spoke only to enter their not guilty pleas before Commissioner Michael Duffey. A preliminary hearing is expected to be scheduled May 1.

According to the complaint, Blake asked one prospective killer, whose identity was not revealed, to hide in his van in a remote desert area and kill Bakley in March 2001.

The same month, Blake asked the second unidentified person to kill Bakley as she sat in a parked car near Bullhead City, Ariz., the complaint alleges.

Blake told both people that Vitello’s restaurant in Studio City, which is near where Bakley was killed, might provide an alternative spot, according to Deputy Dist. Attys. Patrick R. Dixon and Gregory A. Dohi.

The actor used an AT&T; prepaid phone card he bought March 11, 2001, at a 7-Eleven store to call both of the people he asked to kill his wife, prosecutors allege, so he would not leave “any record of the calls on his personal phone bill.”

In April 2001, Bakley, Blake and Caldwell traveled together to Parker, Ariz., and Three Rivers, Calif., the complaint says.

“Caldwell, armed with a handgun, hid in the bushes on the banks of a river and jumped out while defendant Blake and Bonny Lee Bakley were together,” the complaint says. Prosecutors did not elaborate.

Bakley family attorney Cary W. Goldstein said the incident was “either an attempt to murder Bakley or an attempt to make her fear for her life.

“I don’t know why that was aborted,” said Goldstein, who plans to file a civil lawsuit on behalf of the Bakley family. “I think Earle just couldn’t go through with it.”

On May 4, 2001, Bakley, 44, was shot and killed while waiting in Blake’s 1991 Dodge Stealth near Vitello’s, where the couple had dined.

Blake told police he returned to the restaurant to retrieve a handgun and returned to find his wife slumped over in the passenger seat of his car.

But prosectors said he drove Bakley to the restaurant, parked his car behind a dumpster, lowered the passenger window, got out of the car and kept the keys.

Then, he shot her twice with “an unregistered vintage Walther P38 military 9mm handgun,” according to the complaint.

The gun was found in a trash dumpster nearby shortly after the slaying.

Braun said he is suspicious about the basis for the complaint, saying he believed most of the information came from Bakley’s sister, Margerry. Braun said her testimony would be hearsay in a trial.

He added that Blake wants Caldwell to testify. The list of items that prosecutors said Caldwell wrote in preparation for the slaying was actually a list of pool supplies, he said.

Braun said he expects in the next few days to learn the names of the two people Blake allegedly solicited to murder Bakley. Prosecutors handed over 12 boxes of materials to Braun on Monday.

Bakley married Blake in November 2000, after a paternity test proved he was the father of 5-month-old Rose. The couple lived in separate houses on Blake’s property in Studio City. Family and friends said Bakley ran a mail-order business in which she solicited money by promising sex and nude photos.

Blake and his daughter, now almost 2, moved to Hidden Hills to live with Blake’s adult daughter, Delinah.

Margerry Bakley, who attended the court hearing Monday, said it was awful seeing Blake and Caldwell. She said she came to the hearing “to see for myself that he was really being charged, to know that it was really being done.”

“I can’t believe they planned this,” Bakley said as she started crying. “They preyed on her. They dug holes.”

Times staff writer Andrew Blankstein contributed to this report.