Robert Blake Dies at Age 89 — 18 Years After He Was Acquitted of His Wife’s Murder
By Dan ClarendonMar. Nine 2023, Updated 8:06 p.m. ET
Baretta actor Robert Blake went from TV big name to tabloid fixation overnight in 2001 when his 2nd wife, Bonny Lee Bakley, was murdered.
Blake resurfaced in 2019, telling police officers in a TV interviewer that he’s “beat up to hell” however “still right here.” On March 9, 2023, Blake passed on to the great beyond on the age of 89 from heart illness at house surrounded by loved ones, according to TMZ.
Here’s what to know about Blake’s career, his criminal trial, and his life before his death.
Robert Blake had a six-decade movie and TV profession.
Blake were given his start in Hollywood as a kid actor in the late Thirties, starring as Mickey within the Our Gang quick film collection, prior to enjoying Little Beaver in the Red Ryder movie collection the next decade.
Robert Blake at the premiere of 'In Cold Blood' in 1968
As an grownup, his breakout function used to be his portrayal of real-life murderer Perry Smith within the 1967 film In Cold Blood, a screen adaptation of the Truman Capote novel of the same name. And from 1975 to 1978, he starred within the ABC detective sequence Baretta, taking part in the titular plainclothes cop, a job that received him the Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series Emmy Award in 1975.
His most recent display screen roles came in the Nineties: He played a transit captain in the 1995 action movie Money Train and a “thriller man” within the 1997 neo-noir Lost Highway.
He was acquitted in his wife’s homicide but found civilly liable for her wrongful death.
Blake married 2d spouse Bonny Lee Bakley in 2000, a couple of months after welcoming a daughter named Rosie together with her. But Bakley was shot to death outdoor a restaurant in Studio City, Calif., and Blake was once later charged together with her murder.
At Blake’s criminal trial, the prosecution argued that Blake killed Bakley after he couldn’t find anyone to kill her for him. However, the government couldn’t hyperlink the homicide weapon to the actor or to somebody else, in step with ABC News.
The criminal trial jury ultimately acquitted Blake of murder and one depend of solicitation to dedicate homicide, and a judge dismissed every other solicitation count.
Months later, alternatively, Bakley’s kids filed a wrongful death swimsuit against Blake, and the civil trial jury found the actor liable for her death, ordering him to pay Bakley’s youngsters $30 million in wrongful death damages. An appellate courtroom lower the ones damages in part, and in the end, the two parties reached a confidential settlement.
Before his death in March 2023, Blake stated he was “beat up to all hell."
In 2019, Robert gave an update on his life to ABC News. “I’m 85 years old, I'm beat up all to hell and gone, but I'm still here,” Blake told the outlet in an exclusive interview.
He also had a message for the cops that put him in a “cement box” for a year: “I hate ‘em. I’m still here, you bastards. I’m still here. I didn’t die in that box. You got it? I’m still here.”
He remarried, but his third marriage eventually ended.
"I’m no longer giving up," he told the news outlet. "I ain’t stick a gun in my mouth. I’m no longer juicing. I ain’t taking dope. … I stay looking forward to God to leap in. But he doesn’t owe me anything else, as a result of I’ve been paid in complete one thousand times over. If you are living to be 1,000, you’ll never be any one with more miracles in their life than me."
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