Mystery surrounds who really killed woman in 2001 after her husband is acquitted
Mystery surrounds who really killed a woman in 2001 after her husband was acquitted for her murder.
Robert Blake, a prominent Emmy award-winning actor became a prime suspect in Bonny Lee Bakley’s murder case in 2001. The story became one of the most publicised trials of the 00s, after Blakely’s remarkable rise to fame.
Bakley died after she was shot twice after having dinner with Blake in Los Angeles. Authorities could not connect the gun to Blake or anyone else.
Gerry Schwartzbach, Robert Blake’s criminal defense attorney, said: “Bonny wanted to be famous or be married to somebody who was famous.”
Bakley’s daughter, Holly Gawron said: “She was a shrewd businesswoman. I thought she was great. I love her.”
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Failing to find success in showbiz, Bakley realised she could capitalise on a different kind of power, instead, she used her relationships with men.
Blake had shot to fame by the time Bakley met him, having started out as a child actor. He later became a household name starring in the '70s detective TV show "Baretta."
Bonny Lee Bakley married Robert Blake (AP)Bakley was his second wife, but the couple hadn't been married a year when she was killed in 2001. The details of Bakley’s began to fuel questions about whether her murder was an act of revenge.
Bakley had been persuing Christian Brando, the troubled son of Marlon Brando. But while she was seeing him Bakley had also started seeing Robert Blake. The two had met in a jazz club in 1999.
In 1990, Christian Brando fatally shot Dag Drollet, the boyfriend of his half-sister Cheyenne Brando. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter and spent five years in prison.
Margerry Smith said her sister communicated with Brando while he was in jail. Smith said: "What she did was she sent nude photos to him, FedEx'd them to him while he was in jail. And then they met ... when he got out of jail. And that was it. That's all it took.”
DNA tests showed Blake was the father of Bakley's baby daughter (AFP/GETTY IMAGES)In August 2002, while Blake was in jail while awaiting trail, his defense lawyer Harland Braun released a recorded phone call between Brando and Bakley. Brando angrily warned Bakley during the conversation about her lifestyle.
Brando said: “You’re lucky somebody ain’t out there to put a bullet in your head.”
In June 2000, Bakley gave birth to a baby girl she named Christian Shannon Brando, claiming Christian Brando was the father. However, after a paternity test revealed the child was actually Blake's, their daughter's name was legally changed to Rose Lenore Sophia Blake.
Detectives had examined over 900 items of evidence linking Blake and Bakley and interviewed more than 150 people, leading to compelling and conclusive evidence that Blake was responsible. In addition to the murder charge, he faced two counts of solicitation for murder.
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Blake did not take the stand in his trial and maintained his innocence.
He is an Emmy award-winning performer (AP)A criminal jury acquitted Blake of her murder in March 2005. But months later in November 2005, Blake was found liable for her death in a civil case and required to pay Bakley’s children $30 million in wrongful death damages.
A small number of particles of gunshot residue were found on Blake’s hands. However, a defense expert testified Blake would have had nearly 100 particles on his hands if he had fired the gun, not the four or five that the defense and prosecutors claimed.
Blake died from heart disease on March 9 at age 89. He was absent from this year’s Academy Award’s In Memoriam tribute with host Jimmy Kimmel even referencing the obvious snub in one of his jokes.
Larry Hacket, People magazine's former managing editor described Bakley's rise to fame to ABC News: "She decided to put ads in swinger magazines. She would use different names and different professions and come up with a variety of reasons as to why she needed money.”
In one ad, he said that Bakley posed as a woman named Julia. She said she was in nursing school and claimed she needed "money to pay for tuition," he said.
After men responded to ads like these, Bakley would then send them "sexy pictures of herself and they would fall for the bait."
Her sister, Margerry Smith, said Bakley had a challenging childhood growing up in rural New Jersey, where she was raised by her grandmother, according to her sister, Margerry Smith. Their father was an alcoholic.
Smith said Bakley "had a hard time in school. And the kids were mean to her”.
She continued: "I think Bonny, at a very, very early age, as a child, became a lost soul. And she told me that. When she was 10 years old she was already doing stuff with men.”
Smith added that her sister had grown up near a nudist colony and that the colony regularly hosted community clothes-on swim events. However, when the two sisters decided to attend one of these events, Smith said they mistakenly showed up for a "clothes-off" swim.
Smith added: “That’s where Bonny got her start in the taking of nude photos. She was underage [and] people were taking photos of her and selling them.”
At 21, Bakley married her first cousin Paul Gawron and together they had a daughter, Holly, and a son.
In a 2015 interview with Barbara Walters, Holly Gawron said Bakley was “everything to me."
Gawron added: "She was my best friend. She supported me in anything I wanted to do.”
Gawron also acknowledged that her mother “did do things that most people wouldn’t approve of.”
Bakley’s daughter added: “But it wasn’t all she did. She ran the business... she sold pictures of naked women, a little bit of pornography, and she’d spend time on the phone asking for plane tickets, or just whatever she wanted.
Eric Dubin, the attorney representing Bakley’s family in their 2005 wrongful death civil suit against Blake, told ABC News: “Her kids loved her. She was a hell of a mom.”
Smith added: “A lot of other people in her life liked being around her. It wasn't just her out grubbing and trying to hurt them. She wanted to be part of their lives, and they wanted her to be part of their lives.
“She was a good person. She was just very business oriented.”
As she got older Hackett said her cons become more elaborate. To establish different aliases, Hackett said, Bakley would steal credit cards and forge drivers licenses. She was eventually charged with fraud in Arkansas in 1998 and sentenced to three years' probation.
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