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Blake lawyer: Actor never asked stuntmen to kill wife

Blake pleaded not guilty to murder, solicitation and conspiracy charges.

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- Robert Blake never tried to hire two stuntmen to kill his wife, contrary to what the men have told prosecutors, Blake's attorney said Wednesday.

The two stuntmen are seeking publicity and should not be believed, said Harland Braun, Blake's lawyer.

"These are typical kinds of witnesses that come forward in high-publicity cases. They don't have anything to corroborate what they have to say, and they have a story that puts them right in the center of the case," Braun said Wednesday on CNN's "Larry King Live." "[Blake] told me that never occurred."

Blake and his bodyguard have been charged in the shooting death of Bonny Lee Bakley, 44, outside a Studio City restaurant on May 4, 2001.

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Braun said prosecutors would likely use stuntmen Gary McLarty and Ronald "Duffy" Hambleton as key witnesses against his client.

In an earlier interview, Braun said Blake knew the two stuntmen casually but denied he solicited them to murder his wife.

"A lot of this is just people he'd hang around with, he'd tell them about how this woman is ruining his life and what a difficult situation it is, and he said some of these guys would make comments to him like, 'Why don't you kill the bitch' or something like that," Braun said.

Blake, according to Braun, never took those comments seriously and dismissed those conversations as "bravado."

Braun added: "Maybe somebody's taking some of those casual comments and massaged them into the role of a lifetime. The question is: Why didn't they call the police if this happened? Wouldn't you call the police if somebody seriously asked you to kill someone? Wouldn't you at a minimum call the victim and say, 'Watch out, you got a problem'?"

Braun said he learned about the statements through search warrants and more than 35,000 pages of evidence.

Blake, 68, pleaded not guilty on Monday to four counts against him, including a first-degree murder charge with a special circumstance of "lying in wait" that would allow prosecutors to seek the death penalty if they choose to do so.

Braun told King that Blake was "a little shaken up" by a judge's decision Tuesday not to grant temporary guardianship of Rosie, his toddler daughter with Bakley, to Delinah Blake, his adult daughter from a previous marriage. She has been taking care of the girl since his arrest.

"He's very frustrated because Rosie is the most important thing in his life," Braun said.

On the night of the killing, Blake told police he had left his wife of six months in the car to return to Vitello's restaurant to retrieve his gun, which he had accidentally left inside. When he got back to the car, he discovered his wife had been shot, he told investigators.

Commissioner Michael Duffy set a May 1 date to discuss bail and set a preliminary hearing date.

The district attorney's office drew up a criminal complaint Monday that accused Blake of pulling the trigger himself after giving up on several plots to hire a killer.

In addition to murder, Blake is charged with two counts of solicitation of murder and one of conspiring with his bodyguard, Earle Caldwell, 46. Caldwell also pleaded not guilty at the arraignment.

Blake has been held without bail and isolated from other prisoners since his arrest Thursday. Caldwell has been held under $1 million bail.

Braun said that Los Angeles police executed three search warrants on Friday -- one at Blake's home, one at Caldwell's, and one at an undisclosed Southern California location. He said that McLarty's name was on one of the warrants but did not elaborate.

-- Correspondent Charles Feldman contributed to this report.