Robert Blake (actor) - Personal Life

Personal Life

He and actress Sondra Kerr were married in 1961 and divorced in 1983. They had two children, actor Noah Blake (born 1965) and Delinah Blake (born 1966).

In 1999, Blake met Bonnie Lee Bakley, formerly of Wharton, New Jersey, who reportedly had a history of exploiting older men for money, especially celebrities. She was dating Christian Brando, son of Marlon Brando, during her relationship with Blake. Bakley became pregnant and told both Brando and Blake that they were the father. Initially, Bakley named the baby "Christian Shannon Brando" and stated that Brando was the father of her child. Bakley wrote letters describing her dubious motives to Blake. Blake insisted that she take a DNA test to prove the paternity. Blake and Bakley married November 19, 2000 after DNA tests proved Blake to be the biological father of her child, renamed Rose. It was his second marriage and her tenth.

Although they were married, Bakley lived in a small guest house behind her husband's house in the Studio City area of the San Fernando Valley.

On May 4, 2001, Blake took Bakley to Vitello's Restaurant on Tujunga Avenue in Studio City. Afterward, Bakley was killed by a gunshot to the head while sitting in the car, which was parked around the corner from the restaurant. Blake told the police he had gone back inside the restaurant to get a gun he left at the table and was there when the shooting occurred. The gun, a .38 caliber pistol, was tested and found not to be the gun that killed Bakley, which was determined to be a 9 mm pistol. Though witnesses in the restaurant testified that Blake indeed returned to the restaurant once, claiming that his wife had been shot, no witnesses claim to have seen him return prior to that, supposedly to retrieve the gun he left at the table where he and Bakley ate.

As of 2012, Blake was living in a modest Sherman Oaks apartment complex and promoting his autobiography Tales of a Rascal on talk shows like CNN's Piers Morgan Tonight and Dr. Phil.