So declared Robert Blake on Thursday in his first at-length interview with a print reporter since his arrest last April 18 for the shooting death of wife Bonny Lee Bakley.

Defying legal advice to remain silent (because he was "sick of keeping [his] mouth shut"), the now white-haired Baretta star spilled to the Associated Press, speaking over the phone from behind a glass panel in the downtown Los Angeles Men's Central Jail.

In the interview, Blake, who turns 69 on September 18, denies killing his wife and speaks of a movie-style happy ending in which he'll be acquitted and "walk into the sunset" with his and Bakley's young daughter, Rose, now two.

A November 13 preliminary hearing has been set to determine if Blake should stand trial for Bakley's slaying. He and his bodyguard, Earle Caldwell, charged with conspiracy, have pleaded innocent to all counts facing them.

To the Associated Press, Blake says loneliness drew him to Bakley, that he wasn't hostile toward her and that Rose's birth gave him "something to live for."

"There was no downside to [the marriage]," Blake tells A.P. "What's the worst thing that could happen? The marriage might not work out and we would divorce and I would get Rosie. Or we would become friends, she would enjoy Hollywood and I would raise Rosie."

Still, he says he was really only "getting to know" Bakley when she died. Rather than a soul mate, Bakley was a woman, according to the actor, whom he met and had sex with when he was emotionally down.

"Here I was 67 or 68 years old. My life was on hold. My career is settled out. I've been alone for a long time," Blake says in the interview. "My life had always been an adventure. I've been the bull rider, not the guy sitting in the stands selling popcorn."

The former Little Rascal reveals he would go to music clubs and sometimes feel "too lonely to go home...then I'd meet somebody and we'd have sex." He met Bakley in a club one night, he tells A.P., "so Bonny and I went out to the car and had sex."

He says he and Bakley continued to hook up. He said she said she was using birth control--another "story," according to her future husband.

"Bonny talked all the time. All you had to do was say, 'Hello,' and she told stories. She said her brother was a hit man," Blake says in the interview. "Sometimes the less people live the more they invent."

Prior to DNA tests confirming otherwise, Blake thought Rose's father might be Marlon Brando's troubled son, Christian. But he married Bakley after the child was born in June 2000, and he now acknowledges Rose as his daughter.

Rose, Blake says, gives him "something to live for, to go back to work for, to lose weight for."

Also in the interview, Blake acknowledges having carried a gun for years for protection.

It is a gun, prosecutors allege, with which Blake killed Bakley.

To the wire service, Blake restated his side of the events of May 4, 2001: That he brought his protection gun with him while he and Bakley dined at Vitello's restaurant in Studio City, California; that he mistakenly left the gun behind in the restaurant; that while he went to retrieve the weapon, Bakley, waiting in his car outside, was shot.

Blake's defense has implied that many people might have wanted to get rid of the 44-year-old Bakley, a reputed grifter who was said to have preyed on older lonely men.

Prosecutors allege that Blake had long contemplated bumping Bakley off, had unsuccessfully tried to hire stuntmen to do the deed, only to kill her himself.

If convicted, Blake faces life in prison without parole.

Blake is currently being held without bail. The California Supreme Court is considering a defense request that would eliminate a lying-in-wait charge against the actor, making him eligible for release on $1 million bail.

The court has said it will rule October 1.