ISLAMABAD: Actor Robert Blake whose long career was overshadowed by accusations that he murdered his wife has died at 89.
He was best known as the titular hero of the 1970s TV detective series Baretta and played the lead in the 1997 film Lost Highway, but his career suffered after his wife was killed in a shooting in 2001. He was accused of her murder and acquitted, but was later found civilly liable for her death. Blake died “peacefully with family and friends,” according to his family. His niece, Noreen Austin, said in a statement on Thursday that he died of heart disease. After his family moved to California, the New Jersey native got his start as a child by appearing in the Our Gang comedy series.
He began his career in the late 1930s, appearing in the classic film The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and as the murderer Perry Smith in a 1967 adjustment of Truman Capote’s novel In Cold Blood. He also appeared on the NBC series Hell Town and received an Emmy nomination for the CBS made-for-TV film Judgement Day: The John List Story. His career, which was once regarded as one of the greatest of his generation, never recovered after his arrest. Blake’s wife, Bonny Lee Bakley, was shot while alone in the actor’s car in Los Angeles’ Studio City neighborhood.
The actor told police that he had left her alone for a while to return to the Italian restaurant where they had just dined to obtain a gun he had left behind, and when he returned, he discovered her dead. Four years after her death, including a year in jail while Blake awaited trial, a jury in Los Angeles found him not guilty of her murder. Many parallels were drawn at the time to the trial of celebrity OJ Simpson, who was acquitted of murdering his ex-wife in Los Angeles ten years before.
He was later ordered by a judge in a civil case to pay $30 million to his ex-children, his wife’s prompting him to declare bankruptcy. He lost his appeal, but he was able to reduce the penalty to $15 million. Blake always pretended to be innocent. He had four children and was married to actress Sondra Kerr for 22 years before their divorce in 1983. He married longtime friend Pamela Hudak in 2017, but the couple divorced two years later.
