Former actor and former murder suspectRobert Blakecomes out swinging in a new interview that revisits his arrest and subsequent acquittal in the still-unsolved2001 shooting death of his wife.
He equates that mistreatment with the later accusation that landed him behind bars.
“I was his punching bag,” Blake says of his father. “I wish I could talk nicely about him. You know, it’d be like me trying to talk nicely about the cops that put me in that cement box for a year. To this day I hate ’em.”
(An exclusive clip of the20/20interview is shown above.)
Turning his glare to the camera, Blake continues: “I’m still here, you bastards. I’m still here, I didn’t die in that box. You got it? I’m still here.”
He adds, more forcefully: “I’m 85 years old. I’m beat up all to hell and gone, but I’m still here, and you’re still pounding a beat.”
“Smokethat,” he says.
Blake’shigh-profile arrestand 2005 trial after the death of his second wife,Bonny Lee Bakley, fed a headline-churning frenzy and elicited comparisons to the O.J. Simpson proceedings a decade earlier.
Bonny Lee Bakley.Dean Michaels/REX/Shutterstock
Bakley, a 44-year-old mother of four, was fatally shot on May 4, 2001, in Blake’s car, which was parked around the corner from an Italian restaurant where the couple had just dined near their home in Studio City, California. At the time, Blake told authorities he’d left his wife alone while he returned to the restaurant to retrieve a gun he claimed had fallen out of his clothing, which authorities determined was not used in the killing.
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Nearly a year later, police arrested him. At his trial, prosecutors cited the statements of two retired stuntmen who alleged to authorities that Blake had attempted to hire them as hit men — an allegation the defense attacked as unreliable.
No eyewitnesses, blood or DNA evidence linked Blake to the crime.
Jurors deliberated eight days before finding Blake not guilty.
Eighteen years after the killing, Blake continues to maintain his innocence.
The two-hour20/20episode airs Friday (9-11 p.m. ET) on ABC.
source: people.com
