Investigator Says Blake Made Threat

Robert Blake, angry that his lover was pregnant, said he intended to force her to have an abortion and failing that, “whack her,� the actor’s longtime private investigator testified Wednesday in the first day of Blake’s preliminary hearing on murder charges.

Bonny Lee Bakley, who gave birth to a daughter in June 2000, was fatally shot in Studio City five days after moving into a guest house on Blake’s nearby property in 2001. Blake had married Bakley six months earlier after DNA tests proved he was the father of her daughter.

At the hearing in the Van Nuys courthouse, prosecutors highlighted a relationship and marriage troubled from the start. They played an audiotape of a spat between the couple secretly recorded by Bakley, and also called to the stand William Welch, a former Los Angeles Police Department officer who worked on and off for more than a decade as a private detective for the Emmy-winning actor.

The hearing, which is expected to last more than two weeks, will determine whether Blake and his co-defendant and bodyguard, Earle Caldwell, 46, should be held over for trial. Blake is charged with murder, two counts of soliciting murder and conspiring with Caldwell to commit murder.

As requested by the defense, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Lloyd Nash will also consider setting bail for Blake, 69, who has been in isolation at Men’s Central Jail since his arrest 10 months ago.

Welch testified that when Blake told him a woman he had slept with was pregnant, he advised his client and friend to find out how much money she wanted to leave him alone.

Welch said Wednesday that Blake -- with whom he was taking a walk in October 1999 -- rejected the idea.

“He said, ‘I’ve thought about this and I figured it out. This is what we’re going to do. We’re going to hire a doctor and we’re going to abort her, and if that doesn’t work, we’re going to whack her,’ � Welch said.

Welch told prosecutors he had asked Blake to clarify what he meant and Blake reiterated his plan, saying as a last resort he would kill Bakley.

Welch said Blake called him the next day to say he was abandoning the plan. Welch also testified that Blake’s attitude toward the baby took a “180-degree� turn after he saw her. Instead, he turned his focus to getting Bakley out of his life, but keeping custody of daughter Rose, Welch said.

Prosecutors attempted to portray Blake as a man enraged by the behavior of Bakley, 44, who had a mail-order sex business and a criminal history of fraud.

The day also provided a closer look at the largely circumstantial case prosecutors hope to build against Blake and Caldwell. Blake, who is footing the defense bill for Caldwell, got his start in Hollywood as a child in the Our Gang films and is best known for his work playing a detective on the television show “Baretta.�

The hearing also provided a look at the strategy of the defense, which challenged facts of evidence usually stipulated to in such hearings.

Before Welsh took the stand, the prosecution played the recording taped by Bakley shortly after she had informed Blake of her pregnancy.

In the undated tape, Blake, without raising his voice, accuses Bakley of telling “vicious� lies, begs her to get an abortion and vows to “never forget� that she had deliberately gotten pregnant, the very thing he said she knew “terrified� him.

Bakley, in turn, tells Blake, “All I wanted is to be with you.�

“I won’t bring it around you, I promise,� she says of their unborn child.

“You’ve got it all figured out in your head,� says Blake, his voice furious but controlled. “Getting pregnant deliberately and lying about abortions and all of it. That’s who you are. And that’s what you do. And that’s the name of that tune. I see everything. Nothing gets by me.�

Bakley, her voice cracking, responds: “I figured you might change your mind someday and want to be with me.�

“You double-crossed me. You double-dealt me and that’s who you are,� Blake says. “You have to live with yourself and I don’t know how you do it.�

Blake, his hair now gray and closely cropped, stared straight ahead as Deputy Dist. Atty. Gregory A. Dohi placed a silver boom box on the witness stand and began playing the tape.

As the voices on the tape echoed through the hushed courtroom, Bakley’s sister, Margerry, and daughter, Holly Gawron, sitting a row behind the prosecution, wiped away tears.

“You swore to me on your life that no matter what, I didn’t have to worry, and that was a rotten, stinking, filthy lie and you deliberately got pregnant,� Blake said. “For the rest of your life, you’ll have to live with that and for the rest of my life I’ll never forget it.�

The tape recording was played over the objections of defense attorney Thomas Mesereau Jr., who argued it should be inadmissible because Bakley allegedly made the recording without Blake’s consent, in violation of California law. Mesereau also raised objections about the authenticity of the tape and the chain of evidence because of the manner in which LAPD officials acquired the recording. The tape, initially recorded at an inaudibly high speed, was first given to a National Enquirer reporter by one of Bakley’s ex-husbands and was later turned over by the tabloid to police.

Judge Nash permitted prosecutors to play the tape, but warned that if he rules it inadmissible, he will not take it into account in his decision on whether Blake should stand trial. Nash said after it was played that he planned to study case law before making a ruling on its fate.

“The conversation is angry and threatening,� Dohi told the judge. “It shows motive.�

After the hearing, Eric J. Dubin, an attorney representing Bakley’s children in a civil wrongful-death case against Blake, said the recording was disturbing.

For its part, the defense also attacked the county’s autopsy of Bakley as unprofessional and inconclusive during cross-examination of the day’s first witness, Deputy Medical Examiner Jeffrey Gustadt.

Mesereau said he hoped to discount the police theory that the shooter “lied in wait� for Bakley, firing from a crouched position near the car. If the court dismisses the lying-in-wait charge, a capital crime, Blake would be eligible for bail.

“Let’s just say there were some problems with it,� Mesereau said after the hearing. “We showed there were a lot of problems with the autopsy. That it wasn’t professionally done.�

In cross-examining Welch, Mesereau portrayed the former LAPD homicide detective as friends with police investigators of Blake, saying he plays golf once a year with the lead detective.

“Are you trying to help any of your friends at robbery-homicide?� Mesereau asked.

“I don’t believe I’m actually going out of the way to help them,� Welch testified. “I’ve been subpoenaed to be here.�

Outside court, Mesereau said of the relationship between Welch and police: “He admits they are his friends on the police force. He plays golf with them and then says under oath, ‘Oh, I’m not trying to help my friends.’ You draw your own conclusions.�

Bakley was shot twice, in the right cheek and right shoulder, on the evening of May 4, 2001, while seated in the passenger seat of her husband’s black Dodge Stealth. The car was parked about a block and half from Vitello’s restaurant in Studio City, where the couple had just eaten dinner.

Blake told police at the scene that he had left Bakley alone to return to the restaurant to retrieve a gun he had left behind. When he returned to the car, he told police, he found his wife of six months near death and frantically began seeking help.

It took LAPD detectives nearly a year to build their case against Blake. When he was arrested April 18, 2002, in Hidden Hills, then-LAPD Chief Bernard C. Parks said the investigation was the most extensive his department had conducted, with investigators traveling to more than 20 states, interviewing more than 150 witnesses and collecting about 900 items of evidence.

On the prosecution’s witness list are two stuntmen allegedly contacted by Blake. Prosecutors say they were offered money to kill his wife.

Still, the weapon used in the killing, a World War II-era pistol found in a trash bin near the crime scene, had no fingerprints and there were no eyewitnesses to the shooting. Bakley’s relationship with Blake began as a one-night stand after a chance meeting at a Burbank jazz club in September 2000.

The couple’s engagement announcement might have led one of Bakley’s jilted former lovers to track her down, Blake speculated in a television interview on ABC that aired Wednesday.

When Blake’s publicist announced they would marry in October 2000, he told reporters that their daughter was first named Christian Brando, because Bakley initially believed the son of Marlon Brando was the father. The announcement also noted that Blake and Bakley would wait to marry until she completed probation in Arkansas.

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Times staff writers Andrew Blankstein and Errin Haines contributed to this report.