Robert Blake, an actor who was tried for the murder of his wife, has died aged 89, multiple sources have reported.
The Emmy-winning actor had gotten his start in acting during the 1940s with Metro Goldwyn Mayer's Our Gang comedy shorts.
Throughout the next few decades, he took on larger roles, such as killer Perry Smith in Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, as well as the popular TV cop Tony Baretta from 1975-1978.
However, it was his involvement in a shocking Hollywood murder trial that destroyed his career and left him broke.
The second-generation Italian-American was tried and subsequently acquitted by a jury for the 2001 shooting of Bonny Lee Bakley, his wife and mother of his daughter, outside an Italian restaurant in Studio City. She had been in the car while Blake claimed to have gone back into the restaurant to retrieve a revolver he'd left there, The Guardian detailed.
Though, a civil jury later found him liable for Bakley's death, making him liable to pay her family and four children $30 million. This ended up leaving him completely bankrupt. During the trial, it eventually came out that Bakley was a con artist who had been married 10 times, swindling thousands of men with over a dozen aliases over the years.
Following the verdict, Blake told reporters (via The Hollywood Reporter): "If you want to know how to go through $10 million in five years, ask me how. I was a rich man. I'm broke now."
In 2003, Blake spoke to CBS about the trial and how it had shattered his career, saying: "Everybody said, 'Well, hang him. Skin him first. Drive him through town and then hang him.' God just kind of said, 'Robert, sit quiet. Be patient, be patient. Let this mob mentality wear itself out. Because it just isn't true. And if you sit still and be quiet and wait long enough, the truth does come out.'"
Sadly, Blake never acted again and was declared bankrupt in 2006. The last movie he appeared in was 1997's Lost Highway, directed by David Lynch.
During the 80s, Blake had written and owned the pilot to an NBC show called Hell Town, only appearing in a few episodes before having to quit. In 1992, he told The Los Angeles Times: "I was living on sleeping pills and junk food. I was overweight. My face was puffy and I had old, sad eyes. I would get in the limo to go to the Hell Town location every morning, and I'd be so uptight I could hardly breathe.
"My heart hurt, my soul hurt," he continued, "I've always been a fierce competitor and a perfectionist, but during Hell Town, I only remember being terrified. One morning I realized I was only days - maybe hours - away from sticking a gun in my mouth and pulling the trigger."
Blake's niece Noreen Austin said in a statement obtained by TMZ that he passed away from heart disease at his home surrounded by loved ones.
