Conflicting Views of Slain Wife Emerge in Blake’s Testimony

Actor Robert Blake offered contradictory portraits of his slain wife Thursday, testifying that she once offered her teenage daughter to him for sex but also that he planned to make a go of their marriage and had no reason to kill her.

“Did you at any time hire anyone to kill your wife?” asked lawyer Peter Q. Ezzell, who is defending Blake against a civil lawsuit by Bonny Lee Bakley’s family.

“No,” Blake responded emphatically.

“Did you shoot your wife?”

“No.”

“Did you have any financial reason to shoot or kill your wife?”

“No.”

Blake was acquitted of murder charges earlier this year in connection with Bakley’s May 2001 death. Bakley’s four children are hoping for a repeat of the O.J. Simpson case, in which the former NFL star was held liable for murder despite being cleared of criminal charges. The jury must find that Blake more likely than not caused Bakley’s death to order the actor to pay the children financial damages.

Bakley, 44, was shot near a Studio City restaurant where the couple had just dined. Blake said he went back to the restaurant to retrieve a gun he had left behind and returned to find Bakley wounded and dying in the car. Blake did not testify in the criminal case.

Thursday marked Blake’s fourth day on the witness stand in the civil trial. After several days of heavy questioning by Bakley family attorney Eric Dubin, which provoked sharp exchanges, Blake appeared more self-contained Thursday.

The Bakley children contend that Blake killed his wife to save their infant daughter from her corrupting influence. Bakley was convicted of federal mail fraud and ran a mail-order lonely hearts club scam before marrying Blake, authorities said.

Ezzell attacked Bakley’s character, showing jurors pictures of her nude that she sent men and getting Blake to describe her mail-order pornography.

The actor described himself as a lonely man who was tricked by Bakley into impregnating her and said their relationship centered around sex. “I didn’t have much of a life,” Blake said. “My kids were grown and gone. I was very, very single ... a loner.”

During one visit to her room at the Beverly Garland Holiday Inn in North Hollywood, Blake said, Bakley was “teasing around” with him that he found her teenage daughter more attractive than her mother, he testified. “You could have sex with her,” Blake recalled Bakley saying. Blake said he told her that he wasn’t interested.

He said he agreed to marry Bakley after she gave birth to his daughter, Rosie, in 2000. Rosie, however, gave him a new lease on life, and he said he decided marriage could help reform Bakley.

“I thought all that baggage would fall off,” he testified.

Blake said Bakley “could charm the eyes off a rattlesnake.” He also described her as smart and cunning.

Blake’s testimony was expected to resume Oct. 17.