Closing Statements in Blake Trial

First Robert Blake tried to have Bonny Lee Bakley arrested. When that didn't work, he tried to kidnap the couple's baby daughter. When that failed, he tried to arrange to have Bakley "snuffed." When no one would take the job, he did the dirty work of killing his wife himself.

Such was the case laid out by the prosecution during closing arguments in the former Baretta star's murder trial Wednesday.

While Blake sat in court, running his hands through his white hair and passively staring at the jury, prosecutor Shellie Samuels did her utmost to prove that the actor was a "wannabe tough guy" who "hated" Bakley, wanted her dead and was "willing to go to any length to get done what he wanted done."

She said that Blake resented the fact that he had been conned into marrying Bakley after she became pregnant with his child, Rosie.

"He was tricked by Bonny Lee and he hated her for it," Samuels said. "He got taken by a small-time grifter."

Samuels used a PowerPoint presentation to lay out a detailed timeline of Blake's actions leading up to Bakley's May 2001 murder while she sat in a car outside the restaurant where the couple had just dined.

She said that Blake had desperately tried to have Bakley arrested before their November 2000 wedding so that he would not have to marry her. In October 2000, he attempted to abduct the couple's child, with the help of an unwitting assistant.

According to Samuels, Blake began meeting with former stuntmen he knew from his Baretta days in 2001. When they turned down his solicitations to "whack," "pop" or "snuff" his wife, he shot Bakely himself.

Per Samuels, Blake did not want Bakley, a scam artist who specialized in selling nude photos of herself and promises of sex through the mail and whom he suspected of using one of her other children for pornography, to have a hand in raising the child.

The prosecutor reminded jurors that Bakley's allegedly shady past did not justify her murder and not to judge Blake based on their opinion of his late wife.

"It doesn't matter what you think of Bonny," Samuels said.

She said that Emmy-winning Blake "overestimated his acting abilities" and was unable to come across as a genuinely bereaved man at Bakley's murder scene.

"Obviously, the defendant is not a hit man," she said. "Reality crashed into fantasy for the defendant. He shot people on TV, he shot people in movies. But he never shot anyone in real life. It freaked him out."

Numerous prosecution witnesses testified to Blake's "forced" grief over the course of the trial and said the actor never approached his dying wife.

"He doesn't even look at her,'' Samuels said. "And this is the woman he's wailing, 'My wife! My wife!'''

The case against Blake is purely circumstantial--no DNA evidence, eyewitnesses or blood linked him to the murder scene. The murder weapon could not be traced to him and gunshot residue found on his hands could be attributed to another gun he claimed he carried for protection.

Blake's defense lawyer, M. Gerald Schwartzbach, is expected to attack the credibility of the prosecution's star witnesses in his closing statement, much as he did over the course of the trial.

Former stuntman Gary "Whiz Kid" McLarty, an admitted cocaine user, said Blake offered him $10,000 and "insinuated" that he wanted Bakley killed.

Another former stuntman, Ronald "Duffy" Hambleton, also testified that Blake tried to hire him to kill his wife. However, Hambleton, a recovering meth user, denied knowing anything about such a plot for six months after the crime.

In a preemptive strike against Schwartzbach's attack on her drug-abusing stuntmen witnesses, Samuels acknowledged that her star witnesses were colorful, but remained adamant that they had served their purpose.

"With a cast of characters right out of Central Casting, the people have proven what they promised," she said.

If Blake is convicted on murder, two counts of soliciting murder and a special circumstance of lying in wait, he could face life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The case is expected to be turned over to the jury on Friday.