Controversial actor Robert Blake, known for his roles in Baretta and In Cold Blood, is dead at 89. Deadline reports that blake died in Los Angeles from heart disease, according to his niece, Noreen Austin. Blake started acting at age five, playing Mickey Gubitosi in several Our Gang shorts. He went on to star in several films, including The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) and perhaps his most famous movie role as real-life killer Perry Smith in In Cold Blood (1967), where he starred alongside the late Scott Wilson. He played undercover detective Tony Baretta in Baretta, which aired for four seasons from 1975 to 1978. The role earned Blake an Emmy Award For Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series in 1977.
However, Robert Blake is far less remembered for his work as an actor than he is for his own true crime story.
‘In Cold Blood’ and ‘Baretta’ Actor Robert Blake’s Own True Crime Story
In 2001, Blake’s second wife, Bonny Lee Bakley, was found dead outside of a restaurant. The following year, Blake was charged with his wife’s murder along with solicitation of murder, conspiracy, and special circumstances of lying in wait. However, Blake was found not guilty in 2005. Bakley’s parents brought a civil wrongful-death suit against the actor soon after. Blake lost that civil suit in a 10-2 jury vote, but Bakley’s murder remains unsolved.
Credit: ABC via Durham Herald Sun
A piece from A&E’s true crime blog discusses the details of the murder and the trial, which was a media circus given Blake’s celebrity status. The piece says that in high-profile cases, the public is usually ready to pronounce guilt in the accused, as we saw with Johnny Depp’s defamation case against Amber Heard. Whether the public was right or not, the death of Blake’s wife followed him the way Nicole Brown Simpson’s murder still follows O.J. Simpson.
All of these events occurred after Robert Blake’s career as an actor ended with 1997’s Lost Highway. He mostly stayed out of the spotlight after the trial. He told Piers Morgan in 2012 that Bakley was a con artist and he didn’t know her well enough before marrying her. Blake released a series of YouTube videos from 2019 to 2020, recalling details of his life. Among the notable things he said in the series included, “I should have never got married” and “I’m really a very emotionally disturbed person, and we’re not going to get morbid about it.”
