Dennis McDougal - Blood Cold: Fame, Sex, and Murder in Hollywood

Blood Cold

Fame, Sex, and Murder in Hollywood

Dennis McDougal and Mary Murphy

For our own children, Jen, Amy, Kate, Fitz, and Andrea, and also for Megan and Nicholas and for every child who deserves our love, attention and protection, no matter what

Overture

The calendar said spring, but winter still loomed.

On the overcast morning of the day when the police finally came for actor Robert Blake, Southern Californias familiar desert winds, the trademark palm trees and the steady sunshine that lit up the L.A. basin like klieg lights were all absent.

News helicopters were already hovering overhead. They had an unobstructed view of the street where Blake lived. His lavish home, which he owned jointly with his grown daughter, Delinah, was tucked away inside the gated community of Hidden Hills, and it was there that he was raising his twenty-two-month-old toddler, Rose Lenore Sophia. The copters stayed in place because all morning long, rumors of the sixty-eight-year-old actors impending arrest for the murder of Roses mother, Bonny Lee Bakley, had been leaking out of Parker Center police headquarters.

One news copter captured an aerial shot of the actor climbing into his beige Chevy Suburban for what appeared to be a routine trip to the store. Blake drove to a security gate checkpoint that kept the publicand the mediaat arms length. Only when the former star of TVs Baretta spotted the small convoy of news vans lying in wait just on the other side of the fence did he abandon his trip. He immediately made a U-turn and headed back home.

As the afternoon wore on, the number of copters, vans and reporters multiplied. From the sky, Blake could be seen out on his front lawn at one point, almost in defiance of the stalking camera crews. Since moving into the home the previous summer, hed put up two swing sets and a playhouse in the yard for Rosie and a patio and porch swing, where he could relax while he watched her play. But as the whirlybird buzz matched the televised buzz spreading across the country, and as channel after channel sprouted talking heads who speculated on Blakes fate, the dark, diminutive actor retreated inside the sprawling ranch-style house and shut the door. As close pal Mark Canavi once noted, Blake behaved much like a bear when under attack, withdrawing to his cave until the worst blew over.

But for Robert Blake, there was nowhere to hide on April 18, 2002. Police were already on their way.

I am really surprised, Harland Braun, Blakes attorney, told CNN. I got a call from the police just before they got to his house to have me call Robert and alert him that they were coming. He was shocked, but I just said, Remain calm. Come on out and cooperate.

As the cold spring sun dropped toward the nearby Pacific Ocean, a convoy of police cars led by an unmarked white sedan rolled to a stop in front of the Blake home. Four LAPD officers climbed out, advancing en masse toward his front door. All four car doors remained wide open while the plainclothesmen entered the Blake residence, as though each officer knew that he would be returning momentarily, quarry in hand. Instead, the quartet remained inside for the better part of an hour. Blake stalled them long enough to call Delinah home from work early to watch the baby.

The car doors gaped. The copters hummed. To fill the dead air, TV commentators recounted what they could of the events leading to this moment. L.A. radio reporter Brad Pomerancewho grew up with both of Blakes adult children, Delinah and Noah Blakedescribed the scene as surreal. A lot of the homes have horses out there, and the whole place is pretty serene with lots of trees. Its almost like a beautiful part of Texas, he said. Dr. Laura [Schlesinger] lives there, and so does one of the Jackson Five. Its not a thoroughfare to anywhere, and a lot of people live there for that very reason. And then to all of a sudden have both gates shut so youre closed off from the world and then to have helicopters circling, its pretty unnerving.

By now the sky overhead was thick with news copters capturing every move down on the ground and broadcasting the scene across the nation. It was already prime time on the East Coast, where sitcoms were interrupted with news bulletins, but California was still coming up on its evening newscasts. News directors at every station in Southern California understood that the arrest of Robert Blake for allegedly killing his wife after nearly a yearlong LAPD investigation was a guaranteed showstopper.

TV experts began weighing invideo attorneys of every stripe, whose analysis of all things criminal became a running counterpoint to the play-by-play from Rather, Jennings and Brokaw. Comparisons to a similar LAPD celebrity arrest from eight years earlier were rife. The reprise of the O.J. Simpson case ricocheted from CNN to MSNBC to FOX and back again even before police hauled Blake out in handcuffs.

Simpson himself had offered up ironic advice to Blake months earlier via the syndicated TV show Extra!: Dont take a polygraph test and dont smear your dead wife, but above all, dont turn on the television set. I know that watching TV is only going to frustrate him, Simpson explained, adding, As far as Im concerned, this man is innocent until a jury comes back and calls him guilty.

Against the eerie aerial shot of the open-doored white sedan yawning in front of the Blakes manicured $1.4 million home, the linking of Blake to O.J. became irresistible to commentators, tele-attorneys, and news anchors alike.

Now some of you, perhaps even most of you, are whispering to yourselves, O.J., said CNNs Aaron Brown. Yes, I hear that too. How this plays out over time, how media crazy we all go on this, what lessons we learned or didnt are for another day. This is a well-known person and a case with lots of little twists and turns.

Though acquitted in a sensational televised eight-month trial in 1995, Simpson had been subsequently found responsible for the death of his wife, Nicole, and her young friend Ron Goldman during a nontelevised civil trial, and while Simpson remained officially not guilty, the prevailing belief from coast to coast was that the ex-NFL running back, comic co-star of the Naked Gun film trilogy and airport broad jumper from countless Hertz Rent-a-Car TV commercials had literally gotten away with murder.

And now pundits wondered out loud: Was history about to repeat itself?

ABC News interrupted its broadcast just before six oclock, Pacific Daylight Time, with a sky video of a handcuffed Blake in a green ball cap, dark trousers and clean white sweatshirt that declared I SURVIVED MALIBU CANYON across its back. He was passiveeven friendly. As Harland Braun later explained, his client had spoken frequently over the months with detectives investigating Bonnys death, and was fully prepared if this day ever came.

After Blake climbed into the rear of the waiting white sedan, all four doors finally slammed shut and the car drove off slowly through the pleasant suburban streets of Hidden Hillshidden, appropriately enough, at the westernmost end of the sprawling San Fernando Valley. The car picked up speed as it ducked out a side gate, far away from the security checkpoint, where the news crew encampment was quickly dismantling. Few were fast enough to catch up to the unmarked police vehicle as it neared the Ventura Freeway and headed into rush-hour traffic, but copters never lost sight of the white sedan, prompting TVs talking heads to comment again on the similarity to another media chase back in June 1994. O.J. Simpson had made a freeway run for the Mexican border, riding in a white Bronco that was also trailed by news copters, as well as more than a dozen police cars. Simpson finally made a U-turn and headed home to Brentwood, where he was taken into custody without further incident.