Blake Held Responsible for Slaying
Punctuating a saga that wove stock elements of Hollywood movies into a deeper tale of loss and outrage, a civil court jury ruled Friday that actor Robert Blake “intentionally caused†the death of his wife, Bonny Lee Bakley, and awarded her children $30 million in damages.
The verdict by the Burbank jury was a rebuff to a Van Nuys criminal jury, which acquitted Blake in March of murder charges.
But the civil case had a lower burden of proof, and Blake, who declined to testify during the criminal trial, could not by law refuse the children’s demand that he take the witness stand. In eight days of grueling testimony, the tough-guy actor demonstrated both anger and callousness toward his wife, jurors said.
Coming upon Bakley, dying of a gunshot wound in his car near the Studio City restaurant Vitello’s where they had just dined, Blake testified he told her, “Wake up, Toots.â€
“As a group, we believe that Mr. Blake was probably his own worst enemy on the stand,†said jury foreman Bob Horn.
He “should have been more mellow,†said juror Luis Albana.
After the verdict, Blake, 72, left by a back exit without making comment.
“Mr. Blake is disappointed by the verdict,†his attorney, Peter Q. Ezzell, said. “The jury appears to have ignored instructions from the court not to punish the defendant, as there is no other explanation for the size of the verdict.â€
“It’s a good day for justice,†responded Eric J. Dubin, lawyer for the Bakley children. “These kids lost their mom. This was a real family. This was a real person.â€
The damages will go to Bakley’s daughter by Blake, Rosie, now 5, and Bakley’s three other children: Glen Gawron, 25; Holly Gawron, 24; and Jerri Lee Lewis, 12.
“I waited and I cried,†said Holly Gawron, who watched the verdict on television from her Tennessee home. “For him to be held liable was such a relief because I had lost faith in the justice system. My mother was a beautiful woman and a good mother, but Robert Blake told lies about her that have devastated our family.â€
The result echoes a similar case in 1997, in which family members of Ronald Lyle Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson sued former football star O.J. Simpson in civil court after he was acquitted of their murders, and won.
In this case, as in Simpson’s, some observers expressed doubt that the plaintiffs would ever collect.
Blake, who hasn’t had an acting job in years, testified that though his financial advisors had made him a wealthy man, he was now broke. Dubin believes he has the money to pay.
“He was ordered to pay, and I have every reason to think he will pay,†Dubin said.
The nine-man, three-woman Los Angeles County Superior Court jury heard from more than 40 witnesses during two months of testimony and deliberated for eight days.
Bakley’s slaying on May 4, 2001, initially captivated the media and public.
Blake, a New Jersey native with a hard-knocks background, had played the vaudeville circuit as a child, then got an early break as a child actor in the “Our Gang†movies.
As an adult, he won acclaim for his elegant, hard-boiled portrayals of rough characters, such as killer Perry Smith in the 1967 film “In Cold Blood.â€
But he was best known for his role as a mournful, scrappy, big-city detective in the 1970s television series “Baretta.†His fame, combined with a later slide into alcoholism and ignominy, made Blake the kind of fading star that the tabloids exult in caricaturing.
Bakley, too, was colorful. Abused as a child, she had wandered the country and made her living selling naked pictures of herself to lonely hearts.
She had boldly pursued more than one male celebrity, including Christian Brando, son of the legendary actor Marlon Brando. And she and Blake had a turbulent liaison.
They met in the now-defunct Chadney’s jazz bar in Burbank, and he had married her only after a paternity test proved he was the father of her baby.
The circumstances of the slaying further whetted the media’s appetite.
Blake and Bakley had eaten dinner together at Vitello’s restaurant, then gone out to the car. Blake later told police that he returned to the restaurant to retrieve a gun, and when he got back to Bakley, she was slumped in the passenger seat, mortally wounded. The couple’s daughter was not even a year old.
In many ways, no case could have encapsulated the dark imagery of Hollywood folklore more completely. And the strange interplay of Hollywood cliche and real-life tragedy only deepened as the trials progressed.
Examples abound: Blake, upon being acquitted, emerged with a cigarette dangling from his lip and theatrically sliced off his electronic monitoring bracelet. Then he delivered a rambling, noirish monologue right out of one of his films.
“I used to be a rich man,†he intoned in a New Jersey street patois. “Right now I couldn’t buy spats for a hummingbird.â€
The movieland slang continued during the civil trial, which Blake described as “a bad location job.†Christian Brando testified that he told Bakley somebody “might put a bullet in her head.†On his way out of the courtroom, Brando motioned to Blake and mouthed the word “guilty,†jurors said.
Jurors said they were turned off by the Blake legal team’s decision to denigrate Bakley. Blake’s attorney, Ezzell, portrayed her as not just a scam artist but a neglectful mother who once offered the actor her teenage daughter for sex and wrote anti-Semitic letters.
Jurors said they found it particularly offensive when Ezzell, in closing arguments, scribbled half a dozen “0s†next to categories of damages Bakley’s children might have suffered.
“How do you put a price on the life of somebody?†said juror David Lopez. “When you lose a parent, how do you replace that? It did anger us, as a group. You can’t put a zero on someone.â€
One juror questioned why Blake did not try to use Bakley’s cellphone to summon help, while others were dubious of his testimony that three restaurant employees, who he couldn’t produce, had seen him return to Vitello’s to retrieve his gun just as someone was shooting Bakley two blocks way.
The jury, however, rejected the Bakley family’s claim that Blake’s handyman, Earle S. Caldwell, conspired with the actor in the slaying. Jurors couldn’t decide whether Blake shot Bakley himself or hired somebody else as the triggerman, they said.
“To this point, who knows, we’re not sure,†juror Lonnie Lucero said.
Los Angeles Police Department Det. Ron Ito, the lead investigator in the Bakley criminal investigation, said the civil jury got to see a different side of Blake, who sat in virtual silence during the criminal trial.
“In the civil case, the jury didn’t have to make a decision to put him in prison for the rest of his life,†Ito said. “But Blake had to take the stand this time around.â€
“Everything came down to the question: Is Robert Blake believable?†said Duke Law School professor Erwin Chemerinsky.
Times staff writer Amanda Covarrubias contributed to this report.
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