Police, Private Eye Report Blake Evidence

ByABC News
May 8, 2001, 9:32 PM

May 8 -- Four days after the shooting death of his wife, actor Robert Blake is still too distraught to take a lie detector test, according to his lawyer, and the dead woman's half-brother disputes the Baretta star's story that he carried a gun at his wife's request.

While police found new evidence in a construction site near the crime scene, The Associated Press reports that the private detective Blake hired to help solve the killing said that someone has been watching the actor's home for several weeks.

Police at the construction site were seen dusting a blue recycling bag for fingerprints.

The private detective, Scott Ross, said the man was in his early 20s, had a crewcut, and would watch Blake's Studio City home from a black four-door pickup.

Police have questioned Blake twice and searched his house, but said the star of the 1970s show Baretta, who became famous as the tough cop with a soft side and a pet cockatoo named Fred, is not considered a suspect in the homicide of his wife, Leebonny "Bonnie" Bakley, 45.

"They view him as a witness and say someone from her past was involved in this and hopefully they can figure out who it is," said Blake's attorney, Harland Braun.

Bakley was shot in the head Friday night as she sat in a car outside a restaurant, waiting for Blake, who said he had gone back to the restaurant to get a gun he had forgotten in the eatery.

Bakley's half-brother, Peter Carlyon, told the syndicated program Extra that his sister had asked Blake not to carry a gun, disputing the actor's statement that he carried the weapon because she was afraid of people out of her checkered past.

"I've heard all the things on the news about he was carrying a gun because his wife feared for her life," Carlyon said. "She didn't want him carrying the gun."

Carlyon also said that Bakley told him that Blake had recently threatened her, saying he "had a bullet with her name on it."

But Carlyon admitted that his half-sister was no angel. She sold nude photographs of herself over the Internet, solicited money from lonely hearts and went by at least 14 different aliases, he said.