Police: Keep Quiet on Blake Case

May 15, 2001 -- Los Angeles police say it's time for actor Robert Blake's attorney to stop talking and let them do their job, and for the media to act responsibly.

The actor's attorney, Harland Braun, has been criticizing the police and offering information about Blake's wife, Bonny Lee Bakley, ever since she was shot to death as she sat in the couple's car near a Studio City, Calif., restaurant, on May 4.

Garrett Zimmon, the commanding officer of Detective Services in the Los Angeles Police Department, said Monday night that Braun's constant talking to the media and leaks from within the department were interfering with the ability of police to solve the crime.

He also criticized Braun for his assaults on Bakley's character. The lawyer has said he felt he needed to bring out details about Bakley's past to spur police to look beyond Blake for potential suspects in the case.

"We must remember that Bonny Lee Bakley is not the one under investigation. She is the victim," he said. "We need to be sensitive to that."

On Sunday, police sources told ABCNEWS that investigators found the gun they believe was used to kill Blake's wife in a trash bin a block and a half away from where the shooting took place. Today the Los Angeles Times reported that a garbage truck driver told the newspaper that officers told him they found the gun as he moved a trash bin from the murder site.

"They said the gun had just been freshly oiled and there was a lot of dust stuck to it," the truck driver, John Phillip Brice, told the Times. "They didn't know if they would be able to get the prints off."

Zimmon said such leaks make it harder for detectives to do their jobs.

"It is not appropriate to comment on items that have been or have not been taken into evidence or witnesses who have been or have not been interviewed," he said. "To do so takes away our responsibility to fully and completely conduct an investigation and may, in fact, be harmful to the case."

A Smoking Gun?

According to police sources, there was still one bullet in the gun, a Walther handgun described as a collector's item, which matched the two bullets used to kill Blake's wife as she sat in the actor's car waiting for him to return from a restaurant where the couple had just had dinner.

Sources said Bakley, 45, was shot once in the shoulder and once in the head.

Blake, 67, who said he had gone back to the restaurant to get a handgun he forgot when the couple left after dinner, is a gun collector. The Walther, a gun that used to be carried by German army officers, was not registered to him.

Blake, who says he was carrying a gun to protect his wife, said he found her wounded when he returned to the car. Bakley was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital.

ABCNEWS' David Wright reported on Good Morning America that one high-level source close to the investigation said that inside Blake's house police found a box of ammunition of the same brand used in the gun. Three bullets were missing from the box, but the casings on the remaining bullets did not match the casing of the bullet still in the gun found near the scene of the shooting, Wright reported.

The brand of ammunition, Remington Peters, is a popular brand.

Two Sides to a Story

Zimmon said that despite media "rumors," authorities have not identified a prime suspect.

"Contrary to some rumors, there is no pending arrest of a suspect in the case," he said.

Zimmon said he wanted to assure the public and the media that police were thoroughly investigating the case and "looking at all possible evidence and interviewing any and all witnesses."

Last week, the lead detective on the case said Blake had not been ruled out as a suspect and that it was "very likely" he would be questioned again about his wife's slaying.

"We have certainly not ruled out Mr. Blake," said Capt. Jim Tatreau, commander of the Los Angeles Police Department's robbery-homicide division. "We have not been able to develop enough evidence that, as far as eliminating Mr. Blake, that takes us in another direction."

Authorities tell ABCNEWS when they searched Blake's house, it was in disarray and the words, "I'm not going down for this" were scrawled on the wall.

Blake's account that he went back to the restaurant to retrieve his gun was contradicted by a busboy, who told police he cleared the table where the couple ate before the actor returned, and found no gun there, Wright reported.

Blake wrote the words on the wall of his house himself months ago, Braun said Monday, though he said that the reports of what was written were wrong. He said Blake only wrote, "I'm not going down."

Braun also said that the reason the busboy did not find the gun on the restaurant table was because Blake had put it on the floor.

Searching for Celebrity

Bakley's friends and relatives have accused Blake of abusing her. They claim the couple's baby daughter Rose was a source of friction. Blake, they said, wanted to keep Bakley away from the baby and would have killed for the child.

"I just said if I were you I would let him have that baby and let him raise it and get away from him," said Marjorie Lois Carlyon, Bakley's mother.

Tapes that Blake's lawyer said Bakley made of her own telephone conversations seem to support the portrait he has painted of her as a woman on the make who hoped to gain celebrity by marrying a famous person.

"Who would you go for more if you were me — Blake or Christian [Brando]?" Bakley said in one recorded conversation. "I'd probably feel more safe with Blake …"

The tapes echo the text of Bakley's letters to Blake printed last week in the New York Daily News, in which she explained that she felt she needed to victimize men in order to get revenge on people who hurt her earlier in her life.

"I was the kid that everybody hated in school, ’cause I was like poor and couldn't dress good and, you know, everybody always made fun of me because I was like a real loner type," Bakley says on the tapes. "So then you grow up saying, 'Oh, I'll fix them. I'll be a movie star,' you know, and it was too hard, because I was always falling for somebody.

"So I figured, why not fall for a movie star instead of becoming one, you know?"

Blake, born Michael Gubitosi, began his acting career at age 5, appearing in MGM's Our Gang series. He was featured in a number of films, including The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and In Cold Blood, but is best known for the 1970s cop show Baretta.

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