Actor Robert Blake, a toddler star from the “Our Gang” comedies who gained grownup fame as a street-wise undercover cop on the favored Nineteen Seventies tv sequence “Baretta” earlier than being charged within the 2001 killing of his spouse, has died at age 89.
Blake, who additionally gained approval for his position as a psychopathic killer within the 1967 movie adaptation of Truman Capote’s “In Chilly Blood” died at his residence in Los Angeles, surrounded by relations, in accordance with an announcement launched to information retailers by his niece, Noreen Austin.
Blake was charged in 2002 with fatally capturing his partner, Bonnie Lee Bakley, to realize custody of their younger daughter.
He was acquitted on the finish of a sensational three-month trial through which Bakley was portrayed as a star-struck profession swindler who ran a mail-order lonely hearts enterprise and entrapped the actor into marriage by getting pregnant.
A wrongful loss of life lawsuit subsequently filed in opposition to Blake by her property led to a civil court docket judgment that the actor was answerable for her slaying.
Blake contended his spouse was a sufferer of her personal checkered previous, gunned down by an unknown assailant.
