CHAPTER 1
STUDIO CITY, CALIFORNIA, LOCATED ON THE NORTHern foothills of the Santa Monica mountains, was named in part because of the movies and short features that were being made by Mack Sennett during the 1920s silent era. The Central Motion Picture District put up $20 million for a film alliance, that was aptly named Studio City. Sennett then began shooting short two-reel films such as The Keystone Cops. In 1935 Republic Pictures basically took over the area, and attracted such stars as Bette Davis, Ronald Reagan, Tony Curtis, James Stewart, Ray Milland, Jack Webb, John Wayne, Errol Flynn, and Roy Rogers, to name only a few. Even Alfred Hitchcock made his claim to fame at Republic during this time frame. Located some 15 miles from downtown Los Angeles, Studio City provided quick and easy access to Hollywood and Beverly Hills. The city soon had a reputation for being a safe place to live and a great place to raise children. The economy prospered over the years as businesses such as boutiques, banks, and fine restaurants popped up along Ventura Boulevard and elsewhere. By the mid-1980s, CBS and MTM Studios were producing such hits as Newhart, Thirtysomething , and Roseanne there, and even today, in the new millennium, with a population of only about 30,000 people, Studio City is considered one of the most desirable places to live within the City of Los Angeles and is often referred to as the Jewel of the Valley, a name it has kept since its beginnings. However, it has not been without its problems, including violent crime.
It was during the cool early evening hours of Friday, May 4, 2001 that actor Robert Blake, 67, a Hollywood carryover from those earlier years, and Bonny Lee Bakley, 44, his wife, parked their 1991 black Dodge Stealth on the south side of Woodbridge Street. The car faced east and sat beneath a burned-out street lamp and a few feet behind a Dumpster.
They strolled arm-in-arm a block and a half to Vitello’s Italian Restaurant, located at 4349 Tujunga Avenue. It was a nice, clear evening, even if, at 60 degrees, a bit on the chilly side for Southern California. A slight breeze would have hit them on the short walk from the car to the restaurant.
Vitello’s is a large, highly rated family-owned restaurant with a casual Mediterranean ambiance and fresco-painted walls, freshly baked bread, and some of the best Italian food in the San Fernando Valley. Reservations are rarely needed, and it was one of Blake’s favorite restaurants. He was known to eat there frequently, often two or three times a week over the last 20 years, enough for the owners to name a tomato and spinach pasta dish after him, fusilli à la Robert Blake. On that particular evening, Blake and Bonny were there to discuss their future plans and their somewhat troubled relationship. Blake’s grown daughter, Delinah, cared for their 11-month-old daughter, Rose, at her home in Hidden Hills.
After they entered Vitello’s, Joseph Restivo, who co-owns the restaurant with his brother, Steve Restivo, seated the couple, not at Blake’s usual corner booth, number 42, but at a booth near the rear of the restaurant that was still visible to the other dining patrons. Both Blake and his wife dined, Blake having his tomato and spinach pasta dish, and they enjoyed the restaurant pianist as he played Blake’s favorite song, “I Remember You.”
Halfway through dinner, however, while Bonny was drinking her third glass of red wine, Blake excused himself and went to the men’s room where another patron reportedly witnessed him vomiting into a trash can, pulling at his hair, and mumbling to himself. When Blake walked out of the men’s room, he appeared somewhat agitated, shaky and ill, according to the patron who saw him vomit. Blake did not drink any alcohol that evening, and he did not complain to his waiter or to the owners about the food. He simply returned to his booth, paid with a credit card, left their waiter a 25 percent tip, and exited the establishment sometime between 9:30 and 9:40 P.M. Together, he and Bonny walked back to the black Stealth. After letting Bonny into the car, Blake realized that he had left a handgun at the restaurant. (He had begun carrying it recently because of Bonny’s fear for her safety.) He told her that he would be right back and purportedly walked back to Vitello’s to retrieve it.
When he returned to the car minutes later he found Bonny slumped over in the passenger seat, unconscious and bleeding from a wound to her head. Unable to revive her, Blake ran to the home of filmmaker Sean Stanek, located directly behind Vitello’s and just across the street from the car. This marked the beginning of a case that would rock Hollywood like it hadn’t been rocked since O. J. Simpson was accused of killing his wife, Nicole, and her friend, Ronald Goldman.
Shaking and vomiting, Blake pounded repeatedly on Stanek’s front door and rang his doorbell until the filmmaker opened it. He recognized Robert Blake, dressed completely in black and wearing a black cap, having seen him frequently in cafés and restaurants in the neighborhood, including Vitello’s. At first Stanek thought that someone was playing a prank on him, but when he saw the anguish and terror in Blake’s face he knew something was terribly wrong.
“She’s hurt! I need help!” yelled Blake in a highly agitated state. “Dear God, someone please help me!” As Stanek tried to calm him down, the actor, crying and shaking, told Stanek that his wife had been hurt and asked him to call 911, which Stanek did. Afterward, they ran across the street to Blake’s car. By then it was 9:50 P.M.
When they got to the car, Stanek took over while Blake claimed that he ran back to Vitello’s to try and seek medical help, to see if there was a doctor or a nurse inside the restaurant. A nurse reportedly got up from her table and accompanied Blake outside to see if there was anything she could do to help, but Blake did not return to the car to check on his wife’s condition.
While Blake was away, Stanek noted that the car’s passenger window was rolled down, and there was no sign of shattered glass. The inside of the car was covered with blood. Bonny, however, was still alive. She was making gurgling sounds and was gasping for air, and her eyes were rolling backward. Stanek listened intently on his cellular phone as he received first-aid instructions from a 911 operator who told him to try and stop the bleeding by pressing a towel against the wound on her head. Cradling her head in his arms, covering the wound with a towel that was fast becoming blood-soaked, Stanek could see that she was still breathing. But his efforts to save her appeared hopeless. He began speaking to her in an attempt to elicit a response from the gravely injured woman.
“Can you hear my voice?” Stanek asked. “If you can hear me, please squeeze my hand.” However, there was no response.
Paramedics arrived at the scene seven minutes after receiving the 911 call from Stanek. They took over and performed CPR in an attempt to revive her, to no avail. Blake did not go near his wife while the paramedics were treating her, possibly because he did not want to interfere with their work. After treating her as best they could at the scene, the paramedics loaded her onto an ambulance and sped to a nearby hospital ten minutes later. However, despite everyone’s best efforts to save her, Bonny Lee Bakley was declared dead on arrival at St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Burbank.
When the police arrived, Blake was sitting on the street curb, crying and vomiting. A policeman sat down and put his arm around him in an attempt to console him. When Blake was composed enough to provide a statement, he told the police officers that he and his wife, whom he identified as Leebonny Bakely, had dined at Vitello’s. When they had gotten back to the car, he said, he realized that he had forgotten something, a handgun licensed to him and that he carried because Bonny feared that she was being stalked. He said that the weapon had apparently slipped out of his waistband and onto the seat of the booth that they had occupied. He had gone back to the restaurant to retrieve it. When he returned to the car, he found that his wife had been shot once behind the right ear and once in the shoulder. That was when he ran to Stanek’s home to call the police, according to LAPD spokesman Guillermo Campos.
Blake declined to take a polygraph test that evening, contending that he was much too distraught. Blake also purportedly said that he feared that he would fail the test because, as in the O. J. Simpson case, he had dreams of killing her and that alone might cause him to fail the test. He also reportedly said that he blamed himself for her death for leaving her alone in the car.
“He was falling apart,” Stanek said. “He was incoherently in shock, guttural agony cries … he was sick. He was throwing up. He was shaken up. He was crying … he was really messed up.”
The shooting that had occurred on Woodbridge Street that night was totally out of character for this San Fernando Valley neighborhood comprised of mostly modest older homes, some of which have been remodeled or are in the process of being remodeled. It had always been a quiet neighborhood.
“This is the most peaceful, beautiful neighborhood,” said a resident of Woodbridge Street who came out to see what all of the police and paramedic activities were about. “This is not the type of neighborhood where things like this happen.”
When police detectives arrived on the scene they interviewed Blake about the evening’s events in an interview that took some five hours to complete. The police released few details afterward, and stressed that t...
