Thu Apr 18, 9:03 PM ET
By LINDA DEUTSCH, AP Special Correspondent
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Actor Robert Blake was being arrested Thursday in the killing of his wife nearly a year ago, his attorney said.
"They're arresting him in a couple of minutes," said attorney Harland Braun shortly before 6 p.m. "I've told him to come outside."
Braun said Blake will be taken from his sister's home in Hidden Hills to Parker Center police headquarters downtown. Braun said he was en route to Parker Center.
Bonny Lee Bakley, 44, was shot to death the night of May 4, 2001, a block from a Studio City restaurant where she and Blake had dined.
Blake's story was that they had dinner at his favorite restaurant, Vitello's, and, after walking his wife to the car he remembered that he had left behind a gun he carried to protect her. He went back for it, he said, and when he returned to the car he found his wife shot.
The case thrust Blake back into the limelight after years of semiretirement. A former child star, he had his greatest success in the 1970s TV series, "Baretta," in which he played a tough-talking cop.
He received accolades for his performance as a killer who goes to the gallows in 1967's "In Cold Blood," and he won a 1975 Emmy for "Baretta," but his career had been stalled for years.
As details of the couple's lifestyle emerged, the story became even more bizarre. They met at a nightclub and began seeing each other and having sex.
When Bakley became pregnant, she said she was unsure if the child was fathered by Blake or Christian Brando, son of actor Marlon Brando. But DNA tests eventually showed the little girl was Blake's daughter and his lawyer said the actor felt he had to marry her.
For the wedding, the bride had to get permission from a judge to be released from electronic monitoring in her home state of Arkansas where she was under house arrest for possessing fake identifications. After the marriage, she left the baby in the actor's custody. The pair had signed a temporary custody agreement.
Later, she moved into a cottage behind Blake's home and Blake hired a nanny for the baby.
Blake's lawyer, who was hired shortly after the killing, investigated the woman's past and quickly came up with the theory that there were many men who might have wanted her dead.
Stacks of letters, pornographic pictures and meticulously detailed records showed that Bakley, using many aliases, ran a business soliciting money from lonely men who answered her ads in magazines and newspapers
