[ Home | Contents | Search | Next | Previous | Up ]
From: Kari
Date: 5/8/01
Time: 1:43:01 PM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Local News Pick OneFrontMetroSportsLivingBusinessWeekendTechOpinion
(Published: Tuesday, May 8, 2001 at 6:54: AM)
Investigation continues into death of Bonny Lee Bakley By Paul Chavez Associated Press Writer
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A few weeks before Robert Blake's wife was murdered, a stranger began showing up in front of the actor's Studio City home, according to his lawyer and a private investigator.
The man was described in his early 20s with a crew cut and would watch the property from a black four-door pickup, said Scott Ross, a private investigator hired by Blake's lawyers.
Police refused to comment as homicide detectives continued their investigation of the killing of Bonny Lee Bakley, 45, who was gunned down Friday night while sitting in a car near a restaurant where she and her husband had just dined.
They searched a construction site Monday near the shooting scene and an investigator was seen dusting for fingerprints on a blue recycling can. A bag was reportedly removed from the site.
"We are making no comments on any developments," said Officer Ed Funes, a police spokesman.
Meanwhile, Bakley's half brother told a reporter in Bartlett, Tenn., that his sister said the actor had threatened her recently, telling her during a dispute that he "had a bullet with her name on it."
"It really started about a month ago, first with the little things. ... ‘I'll have you taken care of,' then it got to be a lot stronger and the threats were more intense," Peter Carlyon said in an interview broadcast on KNBC-TV in Los Angeles.
"She was really down recently and said something like, 'Geez, I think I'd be better off dead' or something along those lines, and he told her not to worry, that he had a bullet with her name on it," Carlyon added.
Police said the 1970s star of the television series "Baretta" is not a suspect in the slaying.
Blake's attorney, Harold Braun acknowledged that the couple's relationship was troubled but said the two had been getting along better lately and had recently vacationed in Las Vegas and Sequoia National Park.
"It was not a loving relationship. It was acrimonious," Braun said. "She was someone who got herself pregnant as a way of manipulating Christian Brando and Robert and becoming a celebrity wife."
Bakley and Blake married after DNA tests confirmed that her 11-month-old daughter, Rose Lenore Sophia, was fathered by Blake. She had originally named the girl Christian Shannon Brando, thinking the father was actually Christian Brando, the son of actor Marlon Brando.
Blake, 67, said the shooting occurred while he was returning to the restaurant alone to retrieve a handgun that he left behind. The actor was carrying the gun, Braun said, because his wife had said she feared for her life.
Ross added that police checked and found no gunpowder residue on Blake's body shortly after the shooting.
Results of Bakley's autopsy were sealed at the request of homicide detectives, coroner's spokesman Scott Carrier said Monday. Toxicology tests and microscopic tissue studies were pending.
Details on Bakley's past and her brushes, both with celebrities and the law, continued to emerge.
Bakley also has a 7-year-old daughter named Jeri Lee Lewis whom she said was fathered by rock 'n' roll legend Jerry Lee Lewis.
A lawyer who represented her after she was arrested in Arkansas in 1996 for allegedly possessing false identification and stolen credit cards said he clearly recalled Bakley bringing up her connection to Lewis.
"At first I thought she was maybe a little crazy or something because she was saying my child is Jerry Lee Lewis' child, but it turned out to be so," said Jerome Kearney, an assistant federal defender for U.S. District Court in Little Rock, Ark.
Court records also showed Bakley was charged in Tennessee in 1995 with a type of fraud involving the misrepresentation of the value of property.
Braun said Bakley signed a prenuptial agreement before marrying Blake last October in which she agreed not to break any laws.