Courtroom Packed in Blake Trial

Robert Blake went on trial for murder Monday, with prosecutors saying he despised his wife enough to kill her, while his lawyer countered that the state’s star witnesses were hallucinating habitual drug users.

Blake is charged with fatally shooting his 44-year-old wife, Bonny Lee Bakley, three years ago as she sat alone in his car near an Italian restaurant in Studio City, where they had just dined.

The 71-year-old, dressed in a black suit, looked pale and impassive as he sat next to his lawyer in a crowded Van Nuys courtroom.

Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Atty. Shellie L. Samuels led jurors through an extensive list of witnesses who she said would testify to Blake’s contempt for his wife and his attempts to get rid of her.

Police allege that when Blake couldn’t persuade two aging Hollywood stuntmen to kill Bakley for him, he pulled the trigger himself.

Witnesses will describe the Emmy Award-winning actor’s odd behavior at the crime scene, Samuels said, insisting that it was more consistent with a man who had just shot his wife than a grief-stricken spouse.

Witnesses said Blake never went near the dying Bakley, that he cried, but shed no tears.

“Shooting somebody in real life is a whole lot more traumatic than shooting somebody in the movies,” Samuels said. “What happened is his acting ability failed him that night.”

In contrast, Blake’s lawyer, M. Gerald Schwartzbach, said his client was not a medical doctor and he did his best to get his wife prompt medical attention.

“Actors act, and people live reality,” Schwartzbach said. “He may not have been in love with Bonny Bakley, but seeing that woman slumped over, seeing that blood coming out, he was shocked. He was panicked.”

Schwartzbach also took aim at the lack of physical evidence linking his client to the slaying.

Blake has pleaded not guilty to murder and soliciting murder with a special circumstance of lying in wait. He has also been sued by Bakley’s four children, who claim he caused her death.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Darlene E. Schempp’s eighth-floor courtroom was filled to capacity for the start of the celebrity trial, which could last four months. Media representatives took most of the seats.

Bakley’s adult daughter, Holly Gawron, sat in the rear of the courtroom.

Outside the courthouse, Court TV set up a remote studio to broadcast expert commentary to supplement the proceedings, which the cable channel broadcast live. Dozens of waiting reporters and photographers were restricted to a vacant parking area after a cameraman chasing Blake earlier this month knocked a bystander to the ground.

Blake, best known for the television series “Baretta” is charged with the May 4, 2001, murder of Bakley.

Blake told investigators they had just dined when he realized he had left a gun, which he carried for protection, in the restaurant. He said he had left Bakley in his car.

When he returned, he found her bleeding. The murder weapon was found in a trash bin next to where the car was parked.

Samuels contended that having two guns was part of Blake’s “very clever” scheme to kill Bakley. She told jurors that Blake never went back to Vitello’s because he “was so freaked out by shooting Bonny Bakley he could not go and create his alibi.”

Blake was arrested a year later and remained in jail for 11 months before being released on $1.5-million bail.

According to prosecutors, the motive centers on Blake’s daughter, Rosie, 4.

Samuels described the actor as a man obsessed with retaining custody of the child. She contended Blake was scheming to have Bakley arrested to get her out of his life, even as they were planning their own wedding.

“It began as a plot to physically remove Rosie’s mother from her life by having Bonny arrested and incarcerated or by physically keeping the baby away from her,” Samuels told the seven-man, five-woman jury. She said Blake then resorted to murder.

Samuels, a veteran prosecutor who has won 48 of 49 homicide trials, said when Bakley told Blake she was pregnant, he had urged her to get an abortion.

After the baby was born, DNA tests proved conclusively that Blake was the father. The two then signed a temporary custody agreement and agreed to marry. One portion of that agreement included the stipulation that if either one backed out, the other would get primary custody of Rosie. They were married in a backyard ceremony on Nov. 19, 2000, at Blake’s Studio City home.

Bakley also gave up all rights to Blake’s money and property in a prenuptial agreement.

“She has signed away every nickel,” Samuels said. “This is not about getting his money. This is about being married to a celebrity.”

In his opening remarks, Schwartzbach immediately launched an attack on the two stuntmen -- Gary “Whiz Kid” McLarty and Ronald “Duffy” Hambleton -- whom he characterized as untrustworthy drug users.

“You will hear both of these men, upon whose backs this case has been built, have experienced both auditory and visual hallucinations,” he said. “They’ve heard voices, they’ve seen things and events that never occurred.”

He said Hambleton once believed there were 20 armed men inside his house, while McLarty “has heard voices from aliens from a foreign planet.”

McLarty, 63, testified at the preliminary hearing that Blake had devised four scenarios for “popping” his wife, including one similar to the actual crime. He said he had refused Blake’s offer of $10,000 to kill her.

Hambleton, 69, said he too was asked by Blake to “snuff” Bakley, but that no price tag was discussed.

Schwartzbach scoffed at the fact that it took months for Hambleton to step forward in the case. He said Hambleton changed his story “to get the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department off his back” in connection with illegal drugs.

Schwartzbach has spent 25 years as a criminal defense attorney, practicing mostly in Northern California. Last year he helped free a man who had served 18 years in San Quentin State Prison for a double murder that he did not commit.

In her opening remarks, Samuels said she would call William Welch, a former Los Angeles Police Department detective, who will testify about a conversation they had after Blake first learned that Bakley was pregnant.

“This is what we are going to do,” Welch testified that Blake had said, “we are going to hire a doctor and get her aborted. And if that doesn’t work, we’re going to whack her.”

Samuels also played a tape recorded while Blake was in jail in which he said that Rosie was safe and described Bakley’s family as monsters.

Blake thought that Bakley’s family “were low-life trailer trash that all made their living working for Bonny in her illegal schemes to scam men,” Samuels said. “As he told a number of witnesses, he didn’t want his precious Rosie being in the hands of, as he described them, ‘those convicted felons.’ ”

Blake and Bakley left the restaurant about 9:30 p.m. By 9:40 p.m. she had been shot. Samuels told jurors that she will call many people who were at Vitello’s in order to counter Blake’s claim that he had returned to the restaurant.

“What this trial is ultimately about is what happened in the next 10 minutes,” she said.