A Night Out at Vitello’s: Robert Blake and the Murder of Bonnie Lee Bakley

Murder Sheet

MurderSheet

True Crime, Murder, Unsolved Case, Killing, Murderer, Cold Case

3.8 • 2.8K Ratings

🗓️ 1 March 2022

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On the evening of May 4, 2001, actor Robert Blake took his new bride Bonnie Lee Bakley out to dine at Vitello's, a restaurant in Los Angeles' Studio City. On the surface, it looked like the pair shared a romantic evening. But by the end of the night, Bakley would be dead.

The scandalous, chilling details that would come out about the marriage between the star-chaser and the washed-up celebrity would prove to be tabloid fodder. But no one could guess the outcome of two trials that sought to hold Blake accountable for Bakley's murder — that proved to be a twist ending worthy of a Hollywood thriller.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Content warning. This episode contains discussion of murder, violence, and child abuse.
0:10.3	From the outside, it looked like a lovely romantic evening. It was Friday, May 4, 2001.
0:18.3	Robert Blake, a 67-year-old actor and a newlywed, took Bonnie Lee Bakley, his 44-year-old
0:25.3	wife, out to dinner if it tellos, which was one of his favorite restaurants. The staff
0:32.1	knew Blake well. One of his favorite quirks was to add sauteed spinach and tomato sauce
0:37.8	to a dish. They took the calling that request, Robert Blakeing, an entree. They also enjoyed
0:45.1	kidding around with him. When he came in that night, one of the owners of the place, Steve
0:50.1	Restivo, joked with Blake about the actor's preference for liking his chicken broth plain,
0:56.2	with no vegetables. Restivo remembered too that the couple seemed to be in a good mood.
1:02.8	But, as well as he knew Blake, Restivo didn't know that the woman he was with was his wife.
1:10.1	Or even, that Blake was married at all. That's because sometimes appearances can be deceiving.
1:17.6	Blake wasn't happy being married to Bakley. He didn't even have her live in his house.
1:23.5	And, in just a few hours, she would be dead.
1:29.6	My name is Anya Cain. And I'm Kevin Greenley.
1:33.5	And this is the murder sheet, a weekly true crime podcast.
1:37.8	Anya Knight connected over the Bergerchev murders, a 1978 unsolved case involving the killings
1:44.3	of four young restaurant employees.
1:46.8	Now we're looking to track restaurant homicides. To help us understand the patterns of these crimes,
1:52.8	we created a spreadsheet of nearly 1,000 eatery related killings, the murder sheet.
1:58.6	We'll be drawing on that data throughout season one to give you a deep dive into undercover crimes.
2:05.8	We're the murder sheet. And this is a night out of vatelos.
2:11.4	Robert Blake and the murder of Bonnie Lee Bakley.
	...

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