Robert Blake squares off with Piers Morgan in bizarre interview, says he never loved murdered wife
Robert Blake broke his silence for the first time since he was acquitted of his wife Bonnie Lee Bakely’s 2001 murder – and very loudly (and bizarrely). The child actor-turned-“Baretta” actor was on CNN's "Piers Morgan Tonight" program Wednesday evening to promote his new autobiography, Tales of a Rascal: What I Did for Love, during which he became unhinged when the talk show host brought up Bakely’s death and insinuated that perhaps Blake, now 78, hadn’t been entirely truthful when he claimed he had returned to a restaurant they had just eaten at to retrieve a gun he left at the table at the time that his wife had been shot dead in their nearby parked car.
“Tell me where I'm lying?" Blake charged. When Morgan responded that’s not what he meant, Blake shouted, “But you say you don't know if I'm telling the truth, what the hell's the difference? … You just insulted me … nobody tells me I'm a liar," Blake said. "You said I might not be telling the truth. What the hell is the difference? … I've never allowed anybody to ask me the questions that you're asking. I allowed you to do that because I trust you. And I would have assumed that you and that guy in your ear would trust me. And if you don't, then we'd better start talking about ‘The Little Rascals.’”
Blake, who got his start on the children’s show in 1939, calmed down a bit when talking about his marriage to Bakely – but he most certainly didn’t soften his tone. Although he described their relationship as “not bad,” he labeled the woman, who had been married nine times before him, as a “con artist” and admitted he had never loved her. “I think she came to Hollywood to con her way into show business,” said Blake of Bakely, who also had an affair with Marlon Brando’s son Christian just before she married Blake (she also originally thought her daughter Rose was Brando’s). “I felt sorry for her sometimes because God never gave her that little piece of sunshine that he gave me."
During another portion of the interview – which CNN has just announced it will run again on Friday night due to popular demand – Blake turned away from Morgan and began shouting at the camera in a rant against the police officers who worked on the Bakely murder case. "I was supposed to die in that cell, wasn't I?” Blake yelled as he pointed at the camera. “You bastards! But I didn't die. And you didn't get your book deals, you mothers! I wrote a book about you!” Then, without missing a beat, he turned back to Morgan and said, “Sorry, I’m back.”
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