The actor Robert Blake, in November 2005, while he was tried for the murder of his wife. Michael Tweed (REUTERS)
Actor Robert Blake, star of the Baretta
detective series
and the 1967 film adaptation of Truman Capote's classic,
In Cold Blood,
died Thursday at the age of 89 at his Los Angeles home from a heart condition.
In addition to his career in film and television, the interpreter made headlines for years also due to the trial he faced in 2002, accused of murdering his wife, Bonnie Lee Bakley.
He was declared innocent by criminal proceedings, although the civil suit did succeed and he was ordered to pay compensation of 14 million euros to the family.
The case was also a heavy enough slab to end his career.
Blake, who was born in New Jersey in 1933 as Michael James Vijencio Gubitosi, began acting at a very young age.
His father used to take him dancing in a park to get some coins when he was barely two years old.
Soon after, the family moved to Hollywood, where the patriarch hoped the boy would follow in Shirley Temple's footsteps.
At five, Blake appeared in
Our
Gang
, a classic American comedy
.
He made about 70 shorts for the series.
He also had a small role in
El Tesoro de la Sierra Madre
, a famous Hollywood film played by Humphrey Bogart and where the actor played the Mexican boy who sells the lottery ticket that moves the plot.
The early start led to his career spanning hundreds of credits in movies and television series.
The most remembered role of hers is one of the petty cash.
He was
Baretta
, a 1970s series in which he played a police detective who kept a pet cockatoo.
The role made him an Emmy winner in 1975 and a Golden Globe the following year.
The series was canceled in 1978.
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Robert Blake: protagonist of a true crime?
Bakley's strange death, at the age of 44, marked a before and after in Blake's life.
He had been married to her for only six months when the event occurred.
The two met in 1999 at a nightclub.
They had sex in his car.
She became pregnant months after her and the actor agreed to marry her after a DNA test confirmed that he was the father of the girl, named Rose.
The union under force was not smooth.
Bakley moved into the artist's home, where she occupied a separate room from the main residence.
Bonnie Lee Bakley died in May 2001 after bleeding to death inside a car.
The 44-year-old woman had been shot twice while she was sitting in the vehicle a few meters from Vitello's restaurant in Studio City, Los Angeles.
The crime cast a long shadow over the career of Blake for years, who was put on trial for the murder and who was facing life in prison.
The process took place over three months in 2005. During that period, details of Blake's complex personality, known for his difficult treatment within the industry, came to light.
He consumed a lot of alcohol and drugs and was not afraid to start fights with producers and the actors with whom he shared a cast.
This left him out of work for long periods of time.
He made up for those absences with appearances on nightly
talk shows
, especially Johnny Carson's, where he was widely used for his opinions against the current.
Blake met Lee Bakley at a time when he liked to hang around jazz clubs to meet women, whom he would later invite to have sex in the back of his truck.
Robert Blake appears in one of the scenes of his popular television series 'Baretta'.- (AFP)
That criminal trial also revealed a lot about the unpopular victim.
Lee Bakley was a celebrity hunter.
At the time of meeting Blake, she was also in a relationship with Marlon Brando's eldest son (which is why the paternity test was performed).
She had a criminal record for fraud and she had been married nine times before dating the actor.
A Montana widower sued her because he vanished from her within hours of marrying her.
Witnesses assured that in order to have a little money, she sold nude photographs of herself that she sent by mail to lonely men.
Sondra Kerr, Blake's first wife, to whom she was married for 22 years, testified in court that she once found her ex inside a restaurant, where she congratulated him on his new marriage.
She “she pushed me against the wall and said: 'Marriage is an illusion.
The baby is real, but my marriage is not,'” she assured as she twisted the wrist of the mother of his first two children, Delinah and Noah.
Other witnesses indicated that she had referred to Bakley as "a pig."
Blake made obvious gestures of relief after hearing that he was found not guilty in March 2005. The jury found that the prosecution had failed to prove the charge, even with lurid details.
One of them stated that Blake was not with his wife at the time of her death because he had returned to the restaurant to pick up a gun that he had left on the table where they had just dined.
Forensics declared that it was not the murder weapon.
This one was found in a dumpster near Vitello's.
The gun that killed the victim was from World War II and Blake was a gun collector.
A pair of stuntmen also testified that Blake had expressed interest in hiring them to remove the woman from him.
Months after being acquitted, Blake was found guilty of manslaughter in a civil suit brought by the family of Lee Bakley, which obtained a $30 million award.
The amount was later reduced by half, after an appeal by the actor, because it was shown that Bakley had supported himself for years thanks to income from all kinds of illegal activities.
After his trial, Blake told CNN that he was born "alone," lived alone and would die alone.
His death was confirmed this Thursday by a niece of his.
And his dark personality is perfectly reflected in what was his last role on screen.
He did it for David Lynch's 1997 film
Lost Highway
. Blake plays an ominous character who makes the viewer uncomfortable every time he appears on camera.