Police again search Robert Blake's home

Police gather outside Robert Blake's Los Angeles home

LOS ANGELES, California -- Detectives from the Los Angeles Police Department went back to actor Robert Blake's house Wednesday night with a new search warrant. LAPD spokesman Lt. Horace Frank said the search warrant was issued "to seek specific items of evidence."

Blake's wife, Bonny Lee Bakley, 44, was found shot to death in her husband's car last Friday as she sat in a car outside Vitello's, an Italian restaurant where she and Blake had just eaten.

Police have not named any suspects in the case, and have not say if Blake was under consideration.

	MESSAGE BOARD
Murder in Hollywood

Blake's attorney, Harland Braun, told the media outside Blake's home last night that he and Blake were pleased with the renewed search.

"We want the LAPD to investigate Robert Blake," Braun said. "The more they investigate, the more they'll find out he didn't do it."

Braun said Blake was not home at the time of the search.

Blake starred in the 1970s TV drama "Baretta"

Meanwhile, the attorney who represented Bakley in her paternity suit and pre-nuptial agreement with Blake expressed dismay about the "trashing" of his former client's reputation.

"What I want to emphasize is that this is a victim of a homicide. This is a woman with children, with family members, who was sitting in a car and had a gun put to her head and her brains blown out," attorney Cary Goldstein said Wednesday.

"What we're seeing is the trashing of her nationwide," Goldstein said. "She was a good woman and ... my information is that Mr. Blake shouldn't be the first one to cast stones."

Differing views of victim

Blake, who portrayed a tough-talking detective on the 1970s television series "Baretta," has hired a private investigator to help find his wife's killer, according to his lawyer.

Goldstein's comments followed remarks from Braun, who shortly after the killing said Bakley's past seemed to have "caught up with her."

Braun also described the couple's relationship as unusual and sometimes "acrimonious."

"It wasn't an easy relationship, they didn't even live in the same house, (and) she wasn't in Los Angeles a good part of the time, but they were getting along better."

Braun also questioned Bakley's past, saying she was involved in a "shady kind of lonely hearts business."

Bakley

Goldstein countered those claims, saying his client was "extremely honorable, she was extremely honest."

"Her dealings with me were very forthright, candid," he said. "She honored her commitments to me. I found her to be a very personable individual ... she was sweet. I could tell this was not an evil person."

Goldstein said Bakley was devoted to her children, but that her relationship with Blake was "dysfunctional." He said things had gotten worse recently.

"When I last spoke with her it was several weeks ago, and she seemed to have some of the craziness going on in her life ... based on her relationship with Mr. Blake," he said. "She was upbeat, but she had issues she was dealing with, with Mr. Blake ... I really can't go into it beyond that."

Gun and glasses of water

Saturday, Blake told police he left his wife in the car and returned to the restaurant when he realized he had left his gun inside. Braun said Bakley believed someone had been stalking her and had asked the actor to carry the weapon.

Vitello's co-owner Joe Restivo said Blake appeared to have retrieved nothing. He said Blake looked flustered, drank two glasses of water and left.

Braun says Blake discovered Bakley's body when he returned to the car.

"We never said he's not a suspect or that he is a suspect. All we said is, he was interviewed as a witness," said Lt. Frank.

Over the weekend, police searched both Blake's home and Bakley's residence on the same property.

On Monday, police searched the site of a house being remodeled near Vitello's, not far from where the couple's car was parked.