Episode 313: The Unsolved Murder of Bonny Lee Bakley | Morbid

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Hey weirdos, I'm Elena. I'm Ash. And this is Morbid.

It is. We are here. And you know what, guys?

I could not believe the amount of people who said that they loved the discussion in the last episode that we had in the beginning of the episode.

Honestly, it felt like a good discussion.

I felt lighter after that episode. And a lot of people said they felt that way, too, which just like leads me to believe even more that we were all destined to be friends with each other.

We were. And that's why I know when I kept seeing people be like, that's exactly what I needed to hear.

Yeah. Like I was happy to listen to that discussion because we didn't want to like...

Thank you. you know, shove anything down your throat.

We're a few years into this now. We've learned that like talking for 45 minutes before getting to the actual case is like not really a great use of your time.

Like kind of a bummer. Like we're taking up valuable moments of your life by doing that.

And like, we don't want to do that. You know what, though?

It's a very even split of people that fall fucking hate that.

And people that are like, I want you to do that more.

And I see both sides. And you know what?

That was a good compromise, I felt. Like every once in a while, you get 11 minutes, we'll give you 11 minutes of just talking about what we want to talk about.

And I think that's a great compromise for everybody.

How about once a month we just do 11 minutes?

I think we should do that. We'll just pick a subject.

We'll chat for 11 minutes and then get right into it.

Everybody can just shake it off. Next subject.

Um... Mayonnaise. There you go. Do you love it?

Do you hate it? We'll get into it. Stay tuned.

It's going to be hotly debated, okay? But...

I just, it was nice to see that everybody kind of like needed that this week.

And I guess maybe we all felt it at once.

We just all needed to chat about it because I know I did.

And I think Ash did too. There was like something in the cosmos.

There was like a heaviness in the air that just needed to be cleared out.

It felt really nice. Thank you so much, guys, for telling us that you needed it because it makes us feel good.

And... Yeah, I think the only thing that I wanted to throw in before we get to the case today is Did you guys know I wrote a book?

What? I wrote a book. What? And it's a cool serial killer tale.

It's fictional. By the way, very fictional.

Why haven't you said anything about this?

I know I didn't. You know, I've been very quiet about it, but I don't know.

I'm totally kidding. I'm sorry. I didn't say it last time and I was like, oh, I get to say it this time.

I get to say it whenever the fuck you feel like it.

I didn't want to, like, shove it down your throat, but...

It's a cool fictional serial killer tale set in the Louisiana Bayou.

It's set in New Orleans. It has a cool female medical examiner who I love with all my heart and soul.

Ren. I think you guys will love it because I had you in mind the whole time.

And you can preorder it right now. It's going to come out September 13th of this year.

So only a few more months. It's not that far away.

It's really not. Oh, I didn't even actually think about this.

It is the perfect way to start pre-October.

Did you plan that? And on the 13th. I know, 13.

I didn't plan that. Well, we kind of planned that, but like not...

No, it's not a Friday. It's a Tuesday, but it's going to be the spookiest fucking Tuesday you ever had.

All right, let's go. That's a big old promise, but I know that it's true.

I'm gonna deliver it. But if you want to pre-order it right now, you can pre-order it at tinyurl.com slash thebutcherandtheren. or for my UK lovelies out there, or for some US lovelies, if you're like,

All the lovelies. I was going to say, hello.

There you go. If that didn't drive you away from this.

Stay with me. And there are signed copies. available at Waterstones in the UK.

And you can go to the Waterstones website and you can search Butcher and the Wren.

It will pop up. You can pre-order a signed copy.

I am going to sit and personally sign thousands of copies.

So like get in there. Like half a million, right?

Do it. Do it, do it. Not a half a million.

Holy shit. I just made that up. That would be wild.

But not a half a million. I like it. I would love to tell you that, but I'm not doing that.

My hand will fall off. But there's a good...

Go to Mountain there, but go get yours. Go get them.

You can do that at Waterstones. Just search The Butcher and The Wren.

It's up there. They've been amazing to partner with.

We're very excited about it, and I'm excited to be working with Penguin in the UK, and It's all awesome and I'm very excited about it.

So go ahead and pre-order it because it's going to be fun.

And up until the point of September, there's going to be some fun stuff that we do.

So stay tuned. It's all happening, Sheena Shea.

It's all happening. But that's my only shill I got for you right now.

So thank you for listening, everybody. And here we go.

Here we go. That just makes me want to start cheering and that brings me to a dark place in my mind.

I have no idea how we got there, but we got there.

Here we go. Here we go. You know? Oh, hate it.

Love it. Anyways, this isn't about cheerleading.

This is about Bonnie Lee Bakley. Yes, it is.

I like didn't realize what a crazy story this was and I didn't realize how sad it was.

I mean... I knew it was very sad, but then I peeled back the layers of the onion and it just got sadder and sadder with every layer.

That's very exciting. Yeah. And I'm so excited to sit through all those rotten layers this onion.

I do want to give you a bit of a trigger warning for the beginning of this.

Talk about Bonnie's earlier years, there is some sexual abuse and some of it was like in the family, so If that is not something that you want to listen to today, I will not hold that against you and you could probably just skip to the middle.

And you know what? We love you. And I love you anyway.

So let's get into it. Bonnie Lee Bakley was actually born the day before me. but not the same year.

She was born on June 7th, a Gemini. in 1956 in Morristown, New Jersey.

And because she's a Gemini, you know that this story is about to be chaotic. and provide you with like a lot of different anxieties.

Woo. Yeah, but I mean I do that every time we sign on to this show, so you're welcome.

Thank you. Yeah, so she was born to, I'm going to say two people.

I'm not going to say parents because they were horrible, but their names were Edward and Marjorie Lewis Bakely.

Now, Edward at one point actually worked as a tree surgeon.

Stop it immediately. Guys, we don't do this on purpose. weird because I do feel like it happens at least like every couple weeks with like a really small minute detail.

Oh yeah, it It happens way too often. It's weird and you know what else happens really often? often is like i'll pick a case that has a like a date that's around when we're gonna be releasing it but i don't mean to I think it's just because we are cosmically aligned.

I think so. You and I. Yeah. This Capricorn and this Gemini.

I know. It's like... it's a great partnership i love it so yeah he did work as a tree surgeon but his career didn't really last that long because he was Also an alcoholic and not necessarily in the frame of mind to be operating construction machinery like a chainsaw.

Uh-oh. yeah like nothing happened that he just like stopped it just like wasn't a great idea yeah Like he didn't like cut his leg off or anything.

No, it was just like a preemptive, like something bad could happen.

Yeah, I think someone was like, we should stop sending him into trees with chainsaws.

That's really good to be proactive about it.

Now, he was barely a father to his children because once he did stop working, he would be at the bar from like sunup to sundown.

And when he was left to watch the kids on one particular occasion, he tried to sell one of them for alcohol.

Oh, come on, guys. I hate this kind of shit.

That makes me crazy. And this is a sexual assault trigger warning.

There were other times where Bonnie would be left alone with her father and was molested by him.

Oh, God. What a fucking monster. Disgusting. thing about this too is that she didn't really have anybody in her life that she could go to Because her mom was away.

Her mom worked at an antique business that she owned.

And she would be away from the house all day.

So she didn't really have her mom to go to because then her mom would get home, but she would not want to be bothered at all by the children or Bonnie at all.

She just wanted to be left alone. And when they did try to be like, hey, mom, pay attention to me because you created me. she would just like berate them and scream at them.

Cool. Yeah. Yeah, that's what you do when you have kids.

Yeah, and as a parent, one of the cool things about being a parent is that you get to decide... when you give attention to your kids.

That's like one of the best parts about being a parent is you can just take long periods of time.

Where you just go, you know what, I'm not feeling it.

I'm tired right now. Yeah. And kids understand.

Paid time off even. Yeah, absolutely not.

In case you couldn't feel that sarcasm dripping out of my pores.

That's insane to me. I don't give a shit how hard you're working.

You come home, you're a parent. the end right end of story exactly like i'm sorry i'm tired like no you have a kid Well, and it's sad because then it's like you're just... They missed you.

They missed you and you're just creating this... cycle where they don't understand love and they don't like they're going to go into the future and not understand how to receive or give love.

Yeah, and it always just hurts my heart to think of a little kid with Because again, I was fortunate enough to grow up in a place where I felt like loved and cared for and safe.

And I feel like it just kills me now to think about Any little kid having any kind of inkling of not being safe or not being... Yeah. not having a place to go where they can just be like, I'm scared.

I'm sad. I'm upset. I can tell you it's a very shitty feeling.

Oh, it makes me so sad. I know. Well, I was fortunate enough to have Ma and Papa to go to.

Not always, you know? Well, sometimes you just like, you know, you just want your mom or you want your dad.

Well, because when you are in your mom's belly, that's when your bond starts.

And then when you come into the world, and she just wants nothing to do with you, you don't understand that as a child because you're already bonded like yeah naturally of course so it's just that much more traumatizing Because it's really sad.

You just start off life abandoned. And kids are just looking to be safe and loved.

That's literally all they're looking for. want kids are like puppies like yeah they give love receive love like yeah just validate their feelings That's all they want.

Make them feel safe. Make them feel like they can come to you.

Right. They could be your best freaking friend. just give them love them it's tough it's tough but it's like it's a tough job yeah but it's awesome They're also so fucking cute most of the time, like your kids.

And usually when they're like in that little, I just love the little time when they have the chubby cheeks.

And they lisp and stuff. Oh my god. I love them.

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Bye. Now, they weren't only like just like abusing the children and screaming at the children.

They were abusing each other and screaming at each other.

They just fought constantly. What a hellscape.

And then one day the mom just decided, you know what?

Fuck this. We're out of here. She packed up all her stuff and she did end up taking the kids with her.

But at one point or another, Bonnie ended up being sent to live with her grandmother.

Now, I read in the book Blood Cold, which you should 100% read.

It was very good. but I read that the reason Bonnie went to live with her grandmother was because she was collateral on a loan. that her mom failed to pay back to the grandmother.

So then she owed her Bonnie. Ugh. I... I'm speechless.

I have no... I cannot... I cannot and I will not.

I don't know. You know when people say like, I would sell my firstborn for that?

She really went for it. Whoa, whoa. Full send.

Whoa. So grandma was a gentler role in Bonnie's life, but I really would not go as far as saying that she was motherly or nurturing.

She would let- she would not let Bonnie bathe regularly because she didn't want to waste water.

So Bonnie would go to school. Like, remember, she's young when she goes out there to live with her.

It's like middle school, elementary school.

So she's getting bullied by the other kids for smelling bad and having like kind of yucky clothes and all that.

Oh my God, you're killing me. So she also struggled with school itself and things weren't really better outside of school either, because by the time, again, sexual assault trigger warning, by the time Bonnie was about 10 or 11 years old,

She'd been taken advantage of by most of the older men that she came across, not just her father.

Yeah. Her grandmother's house wasn't that far from a nudist colony.

And one day she and her sister caught wind that this colony was throwing what they were calling a clothes-on event.

That included access to like their community pool from the sounds of it.

This wasn't like an actual nudist colony.

It sounds more like it was like a makeshift one.

A DIY. It was not a nudist colony. It was more like perverted people getting together.

Now, the girls decided to go, and when they got there, they found out the event was not as advertised.

It was clothes off. and they were made to strip.

Oh. Yeah. were apparently not any responsible adults around to escort these girls out of the event, so they decided to stay on that particular day.

Now, Bonnie's little sister said that she knew something was off about this whole thing and it felt wrong. and she never ended up going back.

But Bonnie, not really knowing any better would go back from time to time.

Now, she had developed earlier than most of her peers and by all accounts was very confident in her looks.

And they seem to be the one thing that she could kind of rely on the most to get positive attention that she wasn't getting anywhere else.

Absolutely. And it was the one thing that she probably felt like she had control of. felt like authority in that exactly and this nudist colony kind of like you were saying it was the one place where people paid attention to her And she finally felt cared for.

So as adults looking at the situation, we know that's not okay.

But Bonnie was looking at this situation through the eyes of like a preteen and just didn't know any better.

And eventually, some of the horrible people there got a hold of her and took nude photographs that ended up circulating for cash.

My God. How was she like a teenager? She was like about 10 or 11 from the accounts that I've read.

My God. A baby. The amount of monsters in this fucking world, man.

Yeah. I should say I've seen it reported as 10 or 11, and I've also seen it reported as 13, but I haven't seen it reported older than that.

Yeah, and regardless. She's a child. Yeah, even if she was 21.

Exactly. So by the time she was 16, she had had enough of New Jersey.

Oh, yeah? Yeah. I can't imagine why. She had struggled, she'd been abused by perverted monsters, bullied mercilessly, and she was just done.

Now, growing up, she always knew that she wanted to be famous.

She thought, you know, movie star. Maybe I'll be an actress.

Maybe I'll model. But one way or the other, I'm gonna have a That seems to be kind of a trend with a lot of kids who grow up in that kind of environment, because I think it's one of those things like, I'm going to get out of here.

I'm going to be a glitzy star and everything's going to be fixed.

And all this trauma will be gone. She said it herself too.

It's like she's getting bullied at school.

So she was like, I just kept a promise to myself that I was going to show all these kids one day how great I am. am and like what i'm capable of yeah like she said it was basically going to be payback to anybody who had ever taunted her or taken advantage of her yeah So where do people on the East Coast go who most likely don't have enough money to buy them a flight directly to Hollywood?

New York City, baby. Oh, I'm literally like, where?

You just looked at me with the blankest.

You know, it's ridiculous. This is how you can tell that I'm tired.

It's been a long week. You said East Coast and I was like, where in Massachusetts?

Like literally my mind only thought of Massachusetts as the entire East Coast.

You were like... Boston. The Cape. You're talking about Boston?

Falmouth? Are you talking about Chatham?

P-Town? What's going on? The Vineyard? No, I literally forgot that there were other states on the East Coast.

There's a few. There's a handful, one might say, a basket full.

There are. Nope, just Massachusetts over here.

Yes. So she obviously didn't have enough to make it as far as Hollywood.

So she settled on New York. She got herself out there and she found the Barbizon Modeling and Acting School.

Oh my god. Did you go there? I did not, myself did not go there.

But Barbizon is like a very well-known, like... modeling agency slash like, you know, those ones that are like training classes to like modeling and acting classes.

Oh, yeah. They do that whole thing. But it was always like on TV and like in malls.

I was gonna say, did they like stop you at the mall?

Yeah, I think it was one of those. Did you ever fall for one of those?

I did not. I didn't get approached a lot.

One time me and my mom got in the biggest fight because they stopped me at the mall, obviously.

And they said, you're a model kid and my mom was like no you're gonna be big i was pissed As you should be.

I know. Yeah, I think it was like a big thing in like the 80s.

Like early 90s. I think I remember hearing that name a lot and it was like just circulating.

It was like a thing. We'll send it to you, kid.

Look at me. So she decided to enroll under the name Lee Bonnie.

Now, whatever she learned there did seem to kind of pay off in the beginning.

And she did get a few modeling jobs. She was also an extra in a 1985 movie called Turk 182.

And the 1987 movie Radio Days, but neither of them were very good movies.

Apparently. Apparently. Altogether she really didn't get a lot of work from her days at Barbizon.

There you go. Now when she started to realize that she wasn't going to get rich or famous like she thought this way, she kind had to come up with a way to get rich at the very least.

For now, she would put fame on the back burner.

Now, unfortunately already knowing that nude photos of women could make some serious money, Bonnie decided to start her own business doing just that.

She started out by putting ads in like saucy magazines.

And she would pretend that she was like heading off to college and she needed help with tuition money or some kind of similar scam like that.

Yeah. And it was basically just a way to get money out of whoever was reading the ad.

She'd send them like a sexy pic and they would send her money.

And she really did have a way of stringing these men along.

And the men she tried to target were usually like lonely older men because they were easy targets.

Of course. Now she'd tell them that she wanted to be with them, but then she'd come up with a reason why she needed more cash to come out and see them.

And sometimes she would go and meet them, but it was like when she felt like she had gotten enough money out of them.

And sometimes she would just ghost them all together.

It was like... I think I remember listening to Karen and Georgia cover this way back when, and they were like, she was catfishing before catfish.

There you go. You know? So when she started making more money and more cash, She pretty much had a full-on business from which men could order nude pictures, get a spicy letter, and sometimes she would hop on the phone for a spicy conversation. conversation.

I love the spicy letter is my favorite. And she was like really good at it.

Yeah. Spicy pen pals for life. There were like multiple people who were like, she could have had a great career in like pornography.

She was a great writer. Now, she'd come up with different aliases, but she was the one behind everything.

She once said that she was trisexual, meaning that she would try anything.

Oh my God. Amazing. And that kind of became like the slogan for her, like her business.

Try sexual, I will try anything. Yeah, she elaborated later and she said that she particularly enjoyed sadomasochism and that she also... identified as bisexual hey get it yeah so she was like really open yeah in the time where most people weren't really I was gonna say yeah Now, most of the letters and phone calls shared the common theme of being incredibly kinky.

And that is where the money was for these fellas.

Oh, of course. Now, the business started doing so well eventually that Bonnie started making like real good money.

Now, according to Mary Murphy, who co-wrote that book I mentioned, Blood Cold, She said that Bonnie was making about $300,000 a year.

Holy shit. When the business was at its highest point.

Wow. Breaking in 300,000. From spicy. Yeah.

So she starts getting all these different PO boxes all over the place and buys a couple properties with the money that she's bringing in.

But to open her PO boxes all around the nation, she had to have these different aliases.

And because of that. she would run into trouble with the law on more than one occasion.

In 1989, she got a fine for drug possession about 17%.

Six years later, in 1995, she wrote two bad checks and got another fine.

Plus, she got sentenced to work on a penal farm on the weekends.

Oh. Yeah. And then 1998 was her most infamous arrest.

She was arrested in Arkansas and when she was apprehended, She had five driver's licenses on her and seven social security cards, all with different names attached to them.

The fraud. The fraudulent behavior in that vehicle.

The most fraudulent. It is. Now that got her a three-year probation stint where she could not leave Arkansas.

Makes sense. Yeah, they were like you need to cool it with the aliases.

You need to chill out. So not only was she arrested a few times, Bonnie was also married a few times.

Do you have any idea how many times she was married?

If you had to give it a guess, your best guess.

Six. Ten. Ten? She was married ten times.

Whoa! Although about half of those marriages were annulled.

All right. So it's like, I mean, you still got married.

Yeah, that's still, it happened. Yeah. Wow.

Ten times. Ten people asked her to marry them.

I know. Isn't that crazy? That's always wild to me.

Yeah, like not to say she wasn't gorge, but like where do you find 10 men?

Yeah, anybody. I'm always like, wow. Yeah, you know, now a good portion of these men were people who she had met through her business.

And the marriages would usually end one of two ways.

Bonnie would take a good portion of their money and run off with it, leaving them to figure out what the fuck just happened.

Or... they would catch on to the scheme that she was running and they would leave her. okay so happily yes super duper happy is how it would usually end well happily when she ran off with the money for her not for them But the first time she was married, it was actually to a man named Evangelos Paulos.

Now, Evangelos was not from America, but he wanted to stay in America. and he knew marrying a citizen would probably be a good start.

Yeah. And he knew Bonnie because they had actually met through modeling.

And he proposed the idea of getting married to her.

And she was like, oh, absolutely. That sounds great.

And he kind of made it sound like he had a chunk of cash.

Ooh. So she was like, that sounds even... great just like you know what that sounds great actually her mind literally just like made that register sound like You didn't go with cha-ching.

It's a little more authentic. It is. It feels right.

Good. So Bonnie agreed and they got married, but literally as soon as everything was signed, she went missing.

With his money. Oh boy. And she didn't come home until it was too late and he had already been deported.

So... They ended up getting that one annulled.

Yeah, I think that's the best course of action on that one.

Yeah. The divorce slash annulment happened the same year that the marriage did, 1971.

And about four years later, in 1975, Bonnie was getting married again. this time to a man named Paul who, uh, happened to be her cousin.

Okay. Her cousin of the first persuasion.

Okay. Keeping the bloodline close. Keeping it pure.

Yeah. Mm-hmm. you know they did end up having two children together named glenn and holly okay and Most of the time, Paul seemed to be the one who was taking care of the kids because Bonnie was busy kind of traveling, taking her business to the next level.

I said before she was not supposed to be traveling, that is going to come back later.

Yeah, I was just going to say, isn't that a problem?

Is that a big no-no? It's huge. Huge no-no.

Huge. but she would put a ton of ads in the swinger magazines now.

And she had a lot of clients to keep up with because by this point in her career, She was friendly with the people who worked for these porn publications and swinger magazines.

And because of that, she was able to get their mailing lists and then she could add those to her client So she was a busy gal at this point.

Yeah. Bustling business. But her kids, Gwen and Holly, said that, yes, she was like super unconventional, but that she was a really good mom to them.

Wow. So I just thought it was important to note that like even though she kind of sounds like maybe she was running all over the place, they still felt like they were getting what they needed.

Wow, and good for her for breaking the cycle.

Yeah, I agree. Good for her. So in 1982, Bonnie and Paul's marriage ended after just five years together.

And five years was her longest marriage.

Whoa. Yeah. Ten. And the longest one is five years.

That's busy. It is. So she had her eyes set on fame again, and she left the kids with Paul to track down one of her favorite singers in the entire world the killer jerry lee lewis oh Now, she knew that he lived in the Memphis area, so she moved out there.

I think she already had a house out there.

And she did her best to make his acquaintance.

And she left the kids. She did leave the kids with Paul to do so.

It's not a great mothering move. Not a great move.

I think she would like go back and forth a lot.

Okay. So, yes, she knew that he lived in Memphis, so she was like, I gotta get out there.

And essentially, she just started stalking him.

Not a good human move. Not a good human move.

She would just like show up front row at all his nearby concerts.

She would find her way into parties that she knew that he was going to be at.

She was determined to beat this man. and her efforts did lead her to him one night that same year.

Now, she somehow charmed him and they actually became friendly, but things got weird very quickly.

She really attached herself to a lot of his inner circle, like his sister, Linda Gale Lewis, and She also became really close friends with his wife's secretary, that woman's name was Judy Howell, and they ended up being friends for the rest of Bonnie's life.

Wow. That's wild. But things ended between her and Jerry's kind of friendship when she started getting too attached.

Because he was married at this point? Yes.

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That's B-E-T-T-E-R-H-E-L-P.com. So Linda alleged that on more than one occasion, Bonnie threatened to kill Jerry's wife, Carrie.

Yeah. And it was also rumored that she made friends against Jerry and Carrie's child.

Oh, come on. Now, like I said, those are alleged, but yeah, that's true.

That's shitty behavior. That's shitty. To say the least.

And the threats toward Carrie are not really rumors.

They're people who were there say they are true.

That's fucked up. So toward 1993, Bonnie found out that she was having her own child. and she insisted that the baby was Jerry Lee Lewis's.

Oh, yes. She even went as far as naming the baby girl Jerry Lee.

Just Jerry with an I. And she told anyone who would listen that Jerry Lee was leaving his wife for her and they were going to raise this baby together.

And then when word made it back to Jerry Lee himself, he completely denied that the baby was his.

And some sources do claim that a DNA test proved that the baby wasn't his, but I couldn't find anything concrete.

Definitive thing? Yeah, I couldn't find a report or a DNA test myself.

Either way, he was done with this friendship.

And when it became clear that this wasn't how Bonnie was going to achieve fame, She sent little Jerry Lee to live with her other children and Paul, and he took the baby in like as his own.

Yeah, we got to stop collecting children and then just leaving them places.

We do. That's a bad look. We do. It's a bad look.

I'm wondering if the baby was Paul's baby.

Yeah, that's the other thing. I'm like, whose child is this?

We don't really know. Now, Bonnie decided that there wasn't anything left for her in Memphis anymore, And she was going to move out to Hollywood because there were plenty of stars out there to rub elbows with.

Yeah. She is not giving up. Hollywood. I'm like, girl, you're rich.

Like just deal with that. You rich. You got kids.

Just hang out with Paul. Chill out. Yeah.

Just vibe. Yeah. She wouldn't want to just vibe though.

She wanted to VIBE vibe. It's like, but you brought humans into the world.

Yeah, quite a few of them. That you are now responsible for.

So when she made her way out to Hollywood, it was while a pretty big name star was involved in a pretty bigly, bigly, wow, that's embarrassing.

Wow. That's like the most embarrassing thing I've ever said.

And I've said some really embarrassing things.

Wow. wow we'll just marinate in that for a second i just needed to acknowledge that that was horrific i appreciate that In a very big murder trial.

I'm just going to say that sentence again.

She made her way out to Hollywood. and it was when a pretty big-name star was involved in a pretty, I meant to say highly publicized, I get that.

But for some reason, I said bigly publicized.

It happens to all of us. It does. We combine words for no apparent reason at all.

Yes. So this gruel big name celeb was Christian Brando.

Oh, yes. Just him. He had just murdered his sister's boyfriend, Dag Drolet. and was facing up to 10 years in prison.

Because murder. Because murder, kind of.

His sister Cheyenne, she was pregnant at the time, and she confided in him that Dag was beating her.

So Christian said he just wanted to go and talk with him and that his only intentions that night were to scare the guy.

But as he was leaving, Dag reached for his gun, he said, and then it went off and shot Dag, and Dag ended up dying.

Okay. So all in all, he was sentenced to 10 years for not murder, but voluntary manslaughter.

Yeah, that makes sense. Instead of murder.

Yeah. And he was out in around five years.

Yeah? Yeah. So during the time that he was in prison, though, you're like, how is this related to the story at all?

Being the son of an A-list celebrity, he was bound to receive a lot of mail.

And who's good at writing letters? You know what?

I can't think of anyone. Bonnie. Our friend Bonnie.

Our friend Bonnie is. A very talented, seductress letter writer.

Spicy letter writer. Add a little bit of spice.

That's right. Now, she was obviously pretty good at writing these obscene letters at this point.

This is her whole entire career. So she sends one to Christian, and it was a pretty juicy one.

And she also included some photos to go along with the letter, if you get what I'm saying.

Add a little cayenne to the whole thing.

Add a little bit of oops, I just dropped the whole paprika can in there.

Love it. and through their correspondence with each other, a relationship did start to form.

And by the time Christian was out of jail, he and Bonnie were regularly dating.

But Christian... was not the only celebrity that Bonnie was with.

Okay. she was dating Christian, she also met a man by the name of Robert Blake.

I don't know if you've heard of him. I've never heard that name.

You haven't? No. Well, if you really haven't, Robert Blake has had quite an extensive acting career.

He actually got his start back in 1939 when he was only five or six years old.

His first movie was called Bridal Suite, but that same year he started appearing in Our Gang, a.k.a.

Little Rascals. Oh, that one. And over his entire career...

He appeared in more than 120 films and TV series.

Wow. If you look at his IMDb page, it's so long.

I'm gonna do it. Now, he and Bonnie actually had a lot in common.

They both were actually from New Jersey, and they both had incredibly traumatic childhoods.

The book Blood Cold goes actually pretty in depth about Robert's childhood.

So again, I'm going to link that and I really recommend reading that as like a deeper dive.

But I will tell you that Robert's parents were among some of the worst monsters that we've ever talked about.

They would beat him, they would make him eat out of a bowl on the floor like a dog.

Sometimes they even locked him in a closet for long extended periods of time as a child.

And he later said of his childhood, quote, I think many people like me die in infancy.

When you're left to a crib all night long, freezing in your own urine or your own vomit, and no one cares if you live or die, you die.

Oh, isn't that like horrific? That was his view on his childhood.

Oh, so sad. So Bonnie and Robert met at a jazz club in 1999, and the two of them really hit it off, probably kind of relating on a deeper level than most people would understand, you know?

I'm sure they had many horrific tales to share with each other.

Now by 2000, the year 2000, Bonnie was pregnant again.

And this time, she wasn't 100% certain whether the baby's father was Christian Brando, or if Robert Blake was the father.

A common confusion. So she was pretty sure that the baby was Robert's, but when she told him he was fucking Ben's, pissed because she had promised him that she was on the pill. and that she wouldn't become pregnant and she said, even if I do become pregnant, I'll have an abortion.

Now it's a little bit confusing. Robert already had children, so it's unclear why he didn't want any more. but he was adamant that he did not want any more children and that she had lied to him.

Okay. I mean, that happens. It's personal choice.

People get to a certain point with kids and they're like, okay, I'm done.

I mean, he was 66 years old at this point.

I think he was like, I'm cool. Yeah. But it's like... you don't know what really happened here.

Yeah, none of us really know exactly what happened.

Well, we kind of do know some of it. of it because we'll get into it.

So Bonnie did become pregnant and she was not willing to go through with the abortion.

And she told Robert that. And he was not happy.

And I say, we do know what happened because there's a recorded phone call between the two of them.

Oh. And he's just telling her how upset he is that she lied to him.

He's like very condescending and like very... clearly angry in this phone call and he just keeps telling her that it's like it's going to come down on her for lying to him oh like god is going to come down on her and like she'll get basically he's like insinuating that something bad is going to happen to her because you'll get what you deserve.

Yeah. And that's the thing. It's like you can read it like you'll get what you deserve because karma is a thing or.

Yeah. He's. Definitely believed in God.

So he thought like you'll have your judgment day.

But you can also kind of read into it in a context of like, I'll fuck you up.

Yeah, like it's going to come down on you like me.

I'm going to come down on you. Exactly. I mean, the whole thing is just like very, that's a complicated situation on every single level.

Yeah. Because it's like if you're really trapping someone into getting pregnant, that's fucked up.

But on the other end of that, it's like, what if it failed?

Yeah. And it was, like, not her fault. You know what I mean?

Like, there's so many levels to that. There's a lot of levels.

You can't know unless you're actually in that relationship.

That's the thing. I think it's just a very personal quality.

That's why I'm like, I'm reserving judgment of that entire thing because who the hell knows what really happened there. exactly but it was a messy situation to say very much at one point he told her that he had cancer and that's why he didn't want to have any children But then it turned out that he was lying about that.

And that's like dark and stormy right there.

Like, what the fuck? It was a big old mess.

Yeah. So, no worries, though. She wasn't getting anywhere with Robert.

She was like, that's fine. I'll just go for Christian instead.

Okay, so she convinced Christian that the baby was his, which worked.

Until the baby was born and looked literally like a miniature Robert Blake.

Ooh. Now, even still, Bonnie named the baby Christian Shannon Brando.

And at the same time, though, tried to figure out how she was going to get back with Robert.

Okay. So a few months after Christian Shannon was born, Robert finally agreed that he would do a DNA test... and he paid to fly Bonnie and the baby out to California.

Now... Bonnie and the baby were living in Arkansas and technically shouldn't have been traveling across state lines because Bonnie was still on parole. from that 1998 arrest.

Forgot about that. finally ready to accept the possibility of this child being his, Bonnie decided, fuck parole.

Eek. Yeah. So the day she got out there and they had the paternity test done, it revealed the truth.

The baby was Roberts. Oh, OK. Now, later on down the road, they did obviously change the baby's name from Christian Shannon Brando. to Rose Lenore Blake.

Okay. But before that could happen, Bonnie was arrested in L.A.

Why? Well, technically... You see, once Robert found out that the baby was his, he actually had Bonnie set up.

Oh. Yeah. He knew that she was on parole and that coming out to LA would be a direct violation of said parole.

So he tipped off her parole officer and had her sent back to Arkansas and then gave the little baby to his older daughter to take care of. my god and I think he thought like cool like we don't have that baby with her because I'm kind of worried about he was worried about the baby being raised by her And he was like, well, it's my baby, so I have to take some kind of responsibility for it.

So he gets... Bonnie to come to LA, gets control of the baby, sends her packing and thinks that's going to be the end of it.

But I don't know if he knew Bonnie or not.

That wouldn't be the end of it. No, of course that wasn't going to. be the end that's not gonna be the end of it with anybody but my god what a messy messy like life Everyone is leading here.

It's so messy. It's like Christian Brando.

Like Bonnie, Robert, we're all just a mess that's going on. going on guys.

It's also such a hard story to dissect and figure out how to tell.

There's so many threads here. And I'm really hoping that it's all like laid out and makes sense.

It's making sense to me. I'm glad. Yeah.

So yes, so Bonnie gets arrested. She gets sent packing to Arkansas and she gets placed on house arrest.

Now, she's less than pleased, obviously.

She realizes that she got set up. But now there was that paternity test out there that confirmed what she knew all along. and she realized that she could use that to her advantage. to Robert Blake for a whole lot of money in child support if he didn't agree to marry her.

And he had just kidnapped their child. Yeah.

So she filed a police report stating that Robert Blake had kidnapped her child.

There's that. And she told him he had two choices. marry me, or pay a pretty penny in child support month to month because you are a rich actor.

So Robert decided to do the former, to marry her.

Okay. But first, they had a very extensive prenup written up yeah prenup written up prenup written up according to that book blood cold the prenup was 18 pages long And most of those pages expressed loads of different rules that Bonnie had to adhere to. she was not allowed to have any of her family visit unless she got written permission from robert beforehand what the fuck She was not allowed to conduct any of her quote-unquote business on his property.

And she was not entitled to any of his property whatsoever, nor was he entitled to any of hers.

All their property remained separate. Because remember, she owns a few properties at this point.

Yeah. A real meeting of... A real union.

Yeah. She also like wasn't to live in the same house as him.

She lived in a bungalow attached to the back of his ranch.

Okay. It was a different kind of love, I suppose.

It was an arrangement, if you will. Yeah, this is definitely an arrangement.

So both parties sign that 18 page long prenup and they get married on November 4th, 2002.

And pretty soon after they were married, Robert Blake hired a PI to keep track of Bonnie.

As you do when you get married. And dig a little bit more into her past.

How romantic. Yeah, isn't that part of everybody's vows?

Yeah, I'm actually interviewing different PIs right now just to like dig up a little bit on Drew's past.

I promise to allow your PI to tell me. awesome for all eternity yeah exactly like I do like before I say I do I have to say that part absolutely thank you I'm writing that into my vows also you just said 2002 and I was like wow this was only 10 years ago No.

20 years ago. My heart and soul is still in...

2012 i suppose i guess so well that's the year you got married so it is so i'm just living there nuptials Nuptials, you know?

Now, speaking of marriage, about five months into the marriage, on May 4th, 2001, Bonnie and Robert went out to dinner in Studio City at one of Robert's favorite restaurants, Vitello's.

No, he was a regular at Patello's and the owners loved him.

He even had a dish named after him. How do you say that pasta?

That's like... I liked the beginning of that.

It's like fusilli. I think you're very close if you're not completely correct.

Keep talking for a second. You know what?

I think, isn't it Italian? I think the Italian language is beautiful.

I think it sounds wonderful coming out of people who speak Italian.

And I think it sounds really good coming out of Google.

Who's going to tell us how to pronounce Fusilli.

There you go. Fusilli. Girl. Bitch. Girl.

I mean, I'm here to say that my DNA test told me I was like part, like a little scoop boop. of Italian in there?

Did yours? Okay. That's actually a point of contention in my life because the entire reason why I signed up for 23andMe was because I was hoping, and I don't really have an explanation as to why, but I was just hoping that I was Italian.

Why not? I just wanted to be. Yeah. I don't know what to tell you.

I just wanted to be. I get it. Nilch. I have a very tiny portion.

So I should have said that correctly, but I did not.

I did find out that I have Jewish descent though.

Yeah, that's interesting. I'm like 7% Ashkenazi Jewish.

That's so cool. Which I was like, okay, so I found out something cool.

Yeah, you always do, man. It was a trade-off, you know?

It is. Not Italian, but I'm Jewish. Fusilli.

Fusilli. Fusilli and okay, okay. So this Fusilli was Fusilli a la Robert Blake.

Oh. I want that. Like, I want to... I don't want Robert Blake's.

I mean, I want a dish named Fusilli a la...

Elena. Elena. That's a little complicated because a la Fusilli, a la Elena. a la la lina yeah it doesn't sound right i would love to concede No, I don't think you should.

But I don't want Robert Blake's. Yeah, it has to be silly.

Like who puts pasta and spinach together?

Get out of my face. So after they finished up their dinner, because I don't know if I mentioned, but they were going to dinner.

Yeah, you're silly. Fusilli. Robert and Bonnie decided to walk about a block and a half to Robert's car. because he parked about a block and a half away that night, which was a little bit weird because usually he just parked right out front.

Okay. But, so they get back to the car and Robert says, oh shit, he kind of like does that thing where you check your pockets and you're missing something.

Oh no, I... don't have my wallet yeah why is that coming up a lot in our lives but he was doing that to check for his gun that he had recently been carrying for Bonnie's protection.

According to him, during her final days, Bonnie was actually being stalked And he thought that it was potentially by a man who she'd been scheming and, like, he was stalking her now with plans to get even because he had been schemed.

Yeah. So he's checking for his gun and he doesn't have it.

And he's like, shit, I think it must have fallen out in the booth in the restaurant.

Let me run back and get it. That's always a wild thought process to me.

Oh, my gun must have fallen out while we were eating dinner.

I feel like you notice when a gun slips out of your pants yeah I've never had one in my pants so I don't know but maybe that's what she said maybe you don't Maybe you don't notice.

I don't know. I haven't had that experience either.

It's a weird thought. Like, oh. Shit, I bet it just slipped out into the booth.

Yeah, it's a little weird. Yeah, a little weird.

I'm just saying. I don't know anything, but I'm just saying.

Bonnie, why don't you just hop in the car where the windows are open even though you're being stalked?

Yeah. He was like, I'll be back in a jiffer.

In a jiffer. What does that remind you of?

I love that. Never been kissed. Love it so much.

He slips back into Vitello's and he grabs his gun, though nobody remembers seeing him do so. little weird and he makes his way back to the car but when he gets back there bonnie was not as he had left her Oh my God, most cat litters are just so gross and they're like a pain in the butt.

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O T O N.com. There was blood all over the seats of his 1991 Dodge Stealth, and Bonnie was still sitting in the passenger seat. but she was slumped over the center console.

Ooh. minutes that it took him to walk to Vitello's and back, somebody had shot Bonnie twice. once in the right cheek, and the bullet lodged itself into her temple, and once on the shoulder, and that bullet lodged itself in her upper back.

Now, Robert started panicking, and because he didn't have a cell phone, he just started knocking on nearby doors.

Now, the first door that he knocked on, he didn't get any answer.

But the second door that he knocked on, the guy opened...

And the guy inside was Sean Stanek. And he agreed to call 911.

And he also agreed to come out and see if he could help Bonnie at all.

Now, while Stanek waited with a dying Bonnie, Robert said, I'm going to run back to Vitello's and try to see if there's any kind of doctor.

Okay. So he runs back to Vitello's and just like leaves this random man that he doesn't know with his dying wife.

And he runs into the restaurant and screams and asks if there's a doctor or anybody who can help. and also stops to have a few glasses of water before making his way back.

Okay, that's the weird thing to me because I can understand you wait with her.

He's already called 911. I'm going to go scream and yell for a doctor.

I like, I get the panic of that. And like, I'm just running here to do this.

I don't understand stopping for hydration.

No. I don't get that. Like, you can have a liquid IV later.

I don't understand that. Yeah. So 9 1 1 9 1 1 was called at about 9 40 PM.

And the first responders started arriving within five minutes.

Wow. It was clear to them pretty quickly that Bonnie was not going to make it.

But they tried not to let that on right away to Robert.

But a few of the first responders and Sean Stanek himself remembered that Robert Blake did seem to be sobbing, like heavily sobbing.

And Sean was like, I could like I was kind of giving him a hug.

It was like a genuine sobbing. I could feel that it felt like a genuine sob, but what was weird was that no tears were coming out of his eyes.

Okay. And multiple people said that. And it was just kind of something that struck them as odd.

Yeah. And we always say like... It's odd in hindsight.

But you just don't know. You don't know.

It's like one of those things I hate judging, like grief. yeah i don't know and also maybe he has like a tear duct problem yeah you don't know people get blocked tear ducts all the time it's apparently really painful there you go But Bonnie Lee arrived to the hospital and pretty much right as soon as she arrived, she was announced dead.

And she was only 44 years old. Oh, that's really sad.

And what like a very like tragic and chaotic life.

Yeah. And she had a young baby. She had a lot of young kids.

A lot of young kids and like literally just had a baby.

Oh, that's really sad. And had just gotten married, whether it was like a strange marriage or not, we don't know the interim working date.

There's just a lot of life events like that.

It's just sad. That should have been happy.

It's a really sad, sad situation. Yeah. So the block and a half around the corner from Vitello's became a crime scene.

And Robert Blake was immediately brought into the police station so that the cops could figure out what the fuck was going on.

Now, because it was now clear that Bonnie had been murdered, they needed to determine that his gun was not the murder weapon, because...

He's standing on the scene with a gun there.

And they also needed to test his hands for gunshot residue.

So there technically wasn't enough residue on his hands to be considered gunshot residue.

But there were two consistent particles of gunshot residue on the right hand. and three consistent particles on the left hand.

Okay. Now, usually there are about three components that make up gunshot residue.

Lead, antimony, and barium. or antimony, excuse me, and barium.

Now, the tests on Robert Blake's hands only had one out of the three components that make up gunshot residue.

Okay. So there are a couple explanations as to why he could have had minimal particles on his hands.

One of those explanations was that he was telling the truth when he explained to the investigators that Earlier that day, like way earlier, he had done some target practice.

Okay. Because by that point, he had washed his hands, he had done this, that, and the other thing, he had eaten dinner.

Yeah. Only a little bit would be left. Or there's the fact that his hands weren't actually tested until about three hours after Bonnie had been killed.

Oh. He could have washed his hands several times within that period because he had gone to the bathroom a few times.

And Marsha Clark pointed out in her reinvestigation of the crime on the show, Marsha Clark investigated the first 48. investigates the first 48, excuse me, that while he was waiting for Bonnie to be loaded into the ambulance, and there's pictures of this,

He was sitting on a curb and his hands were in grass.

And later on, the first responder said that the grass was wet.

Oh, so he could have washed his hands a bunch of time and also had his hands and rubbed it off on the grass.

And Marsha Clark also pointed out, and again, there's pictures of it, he was running his hands through his hair a lot.

So again, that's going to wipe everything off.

Yeah, for sure. So it could have gotten rid of a good amount of residue.

But for that reason, they weren't really able to determine whether or not he had shot the gun.

Yeah, you can't say for sure. Like it was a complete toss-up.

They were, however, able to determine that his personal Smith & Wesson revolver was not the murder weapon.

Okay. So the gun on him was not the murder weapon.

Now in the following days, the investigators were actually able to find out what the murder weapon was.

It was a German-made gun, a 9mm Walther P38 that still had one bullet inside. and the gun was found inside of a dumpster that Robert's car was parked behind.

Okay, so that meant whoever had killed Bonnie had shot her and then most likely tossed the gun almost immediately afterwards. into the dumpster yeah why would you do which is highly highly weird just very strange very unlikely So the investigators are stoked that they find the murder weapon so quickly, but their excitement is uber short-lived.

Because when they go to find out who the gun is registered to, they see that the serial number has been scratched off.

There it is. They also realized pretty quickly that the gun had been wiped down with some kind of oil. meaning that any chance of fingerprints was basically gone.

Oh, man. Whoever did this planned ahead to use this gun.

Because the other thing was... Like a question was raised when Marsha Clark reinvestigated the crime, which, by the way, I fucking love Marsha Clark.

Oh, yeah. Bad bitch energy. Absolutely. but they were like well was there oil in the dumpster no Ah, so this was done intentionally to obscure that.

Yes. So the day after Bonnie was killed, the LAPD served a search warrant at Roberts Ranch.

Now, like I said, Robert lived in the main part of the house, which had like all the regular stuff, kitchen, living room, three bedrooms.

Yeah. And Bonnie lived in a bungalow that was attached to the back of the house with their daughter Rose.

Okay. Now I think Rose like kind of went back and forth. between the house yeah now while searching through bonnie's things they found hundreds, hundreds of recorded phone conversations, which is how we know about that call with Robert when she found out she was pregnant.

Yeah. They also found thousands of letters from the porn business that she was still running. even though she wasn't supposed to be running it out of the bungalow.

Uh oh. But like, whatever. They also found like tons of nude photos and a bunch of licenses and IDs.

There were also notebooks filled with different information about her clients.

She would write down things that they liked, things that they didn't like, little reminders about certain people, like...

His favorite meal is this. His favorite color is this.

She was so busy. She was busy and she was like organized.

Yeah, very organized person. But also chaotic.

Yes. At the same time. I feel like she was like organized on paper and chaotic in life.

Exactly. Which is like actually exactly how most Geminis are.

Hi. So that's what they found on her side of the house.

On Robert's side of the house, they found $12,000 in cash a very large gun collection and oddly enough, enough, they found a 100 count box of nine millimeter rounds with three bullets missing from the box.

Oh. Now if you remember. I do. Bonnie was killed with two bullets.

And then there was one bullet left inside the murder weapon.

That's two plus one, which equals three bullets.

Three are missing from the hundred count box.

What's Jim's favorite color? Three. Yep.

I don't even know. So all of those bullets, by the way, are 9 millimeter rounds.

OK. So upon first glance, the LAPD is like piss in their pants because they're so excited.

They're like motherfucking jackpot. They're like, we don't even have to do work, fellas.

Let's go. For real. Weirdly enough, they did seem to do a pretty good job on this case.

We love to see it. We do. We love to see it.

Unfortunately, it was later determined that the bullets in Robert's house were hand loaded.

And the ones that Bonnie had been killed with were factory loaded.

Okay. I looked into the difference of those two things and it was mind numbing. so way too complicated you can google that yourself okay cool because i really wanted to explain that to you but as i was reading my mind became physically numb I get that.

You're going to Google it. Thank you. I am.

I'm Googling. You'll probably understand it better than I did.

I don't, I've never shot a gun or anything like that, so I don't know how to work.

But this isn't about me. It's about the investigation.

The police still were not sure that Robert was innocent.

And they started working on their case against him. which took them about a year.

And according to the press release that they put out on the day Robert was arrested, April 18, 2002, the LAPD had to travel to 20 different states and interview more than 150 people to be confident enough that their suspect was the right guy. whoa now robert's bodyguard earl caldwell was also arrested because they believed he was in on a conspiracy to commit murder.

Now, Robert Blake was arrested and charged with one count of murder with special circumstances of lying in wait. two counts of solicitation of murder, and one count of murder conspiracy.

And then Earl was charged with one count of conspiracy to commit murder.

Okay. Now, when he was arrested, Earl, the police found not only a strange list in his possession that's Oh, two shovels.

25 Auto, Get Blank Gun Ready, Old Rugs, Duct Tape, Drano, Pool acid lie.

Yeah, I was going to try to find a way to make that like a household to-do list, but...

That's a no. Earl did. That's a murder list right there.

It's a murder list. It also struck them as like a little bit weird when they found a rare German made gun in his apartment.

Where have I heard that? Yeah, it's weird because that murder weapon was also a pretty rare German made gun.

Was it rare, though? Rare. Or was it common?

Rare. Like how my steak is preferred. Ooh, how mine is not.

Yeah, like the complete opposite. The fighting continues.

So it definitely seemed like a lot of their evidence against Robert and Earl was purely circumstantial.

But they did have two pretty good witnesses or so they thought.

Oh, yeah. Now, during their investigation into one of Robert Blake's former co-stars, Roy Snuffy Harrison came forward.

Yeah, he did. They were in the movie Beretta together.

Oh, okay. Did you see Beretta? I know Beretta.

It's like very famous. Yeah. I haven't seen it.

But so Roy Snuffy Harrison comes forward and tells the investigators that... that shortly before Bonnie was killed, Robert had called him, and this was in November of 2000, and he asked for the names of two stuntmen that they both knew that I believe also worked on Beretta.

Now, these men were Ronald Duffy Hamilton and Gary Wizkid McLarty.

Yeah, they were. It sounds fake. It sounds like we have Snuffy, Duffy, and Wizkid.

No, they all exist. Yeah, they're for reals.

Yeah. I'm sorry, Ms. Jackson. They are for real.

They are. for real. So Snuffy believed that the reason Robert wanted to get in touch with these two guys was to take a hit out on Bonnie.

Although he said, Robert never told me that.

He was like, I just... He's like, you know what?

I felt it in my bones. I just felt it. But later at trial, both men would testify that Robert Blake met up with them on multiple occasions and discussed violence. various ways in which they could take Bonnie out.

Holy shit. He explained to both men that he felt like she had trapped him into a marriage that he wanted a way out of, and that he didn't want her to be the one to raise little Rose Lenore. because he was worried that she'd be brought up in a life of sin, quote unquote, if she was raised by her mother or her mother's family.

Okay. Yeah. Duffy later testified that during one of their meetups, he said to Robert...

We should really be using like a calling card for these phone discussions.

Yeah. Or they're going to be traced. For sure.

You should use this card and call me from a pay phone so that these calls are untraceable later on.

And Robert was like, oh shit, like that's a great idea.

So he got a calling card. a receipt for that card was actually one of the items taken from his home during the search warrant execution.

That kind of defeats the purpose. It was also later determined via phone records that he used the calling card only when he spoke with the two stunt slash hitmen.

And he hadn't listened to Duffy's advice about using a payphone and instead used his own personal home phone to make these calls.

Oh, that's different. yeah that's different yeah that's gonna be a problem it was yeah So Earl Caldwell's charges of conspiracy actually ended up being dropped, and so did Robert Blake's conspiracy charge.

And you'll be happy to know that Earl Caldwell did have a list that had an explanation for that list.

Oh, he does? Yes. So he was doing some handiwork for Robert.

Those shovels were for like breaking up concrete.

Yeah. Around the pool area because they were going to, I don't know, like plant a fucking garden together.

Okay. And the pool acid and the lye were to clear up Robert's newly green-tinged pool.

Yeah. Yeah. Yep. And that like 25 auto.

That's the one that threw me off. That was that he had had his oil changed at 25,000 miles.

He told Marsha, Clark thought. Yeah. Yeah, Marsha probably bought that, right?

Yeah, she was like, okie dokie. Marsha was like, yeah.

She was like, you know what, I don't really have time to argue with you because I'm trying to solve a murder here, but that's not true.

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Jordan Harbinger, we love ya. That whole thing about the blank guns, that was because Robert wanted to do a photo shoot with some guns, but he wanted blanks put in them, because I guess you can see if it's loaded or not.

Okay. So it would make the gun look loaded, which would make him look so bad. badass of course and then the old rugs he said i think we were getting rid of some old rugs Sometimes you're just getting rid of old drugs.

I mean, I can't lie. Sometimes you are getting rid of old drugs.

It happens. It's not beyond the realm of possibility.

That 25 auto thing is... What do you mean?

He just changed his will. Yeah. Yep. What are you talking about?

No. You know what? You cleared it up. That was just a honey to-do list.

He just changed his oil. Yeah. Speaking of honey-do lists.

That made me want honeydew donuts. Oh, you made me want donut.

Oh, donut's so good. but it was determined later on that Earl was actually in Washington when Bonnie was killed.

But during my research, which is like speaking of honey-do lists, His girlfriend actually testified at Robert Blake's trial, I found out. that Earl had her go to his apartment the day after Bonnie was killed to remove a bunch of stuff, including his computer. some phone numbers that he had pinned to a random bulletin board, multiple receipts, and also told her to throw away an Altoid can, that had a bunch of like brownish rocks inside.

Okay. police were like, yeah, those were probably drugs, and we think that Robert Blake wanted to plant those on Bonnie to get her arrested, but then instead ended up having her killed. oh yeah yeah whenever somebody calls you and is like hey Can you clear some stuff out of my place really quick, like real fast?

The answer is... Like lickety split? no you say nope the answer is can't do it call a junk removal service that ain't me not me So the prosecution, they had Snuffy.

They had Duffy. They had Wizkid. The trifecta.

They were all going to testify along with a few others who testified that Robert Blake definitely wanted his wife Bonnie dead.

Now, they had compelling evidence, but the defense did a much better job. they immediately went after Snuffy Duffy and Wizkid.

The Holy Trinity. They proved that they had long histories of drug abuse.

They were like, using meth and stuff like that.

So they just went for credibility. They went for credibility.

And it was proven somehow that they had also had hallucinations at one point in time, which just made them look like completely unreliable witnesses.

Of course. the jury. And they were also able to argue the gunshot evidence away, the gunshot residue. evidence away because they brought in a specialist that testified that the murder weapon that was used, that weird German gun, usually produces about 2,000 particles of gunshot residue.

So the fact that Robert only had five particles of a substance consistent with gunshot residue on his hands.

Really didn't have any standing in court.

Okay. Which I get that one. Yeah. Now they also argued, and I do also understand this argument. that Bonnie could have been killed by a number of other people potentially. by someone that she had schemed out of money through her business, which they had plenty of evidence of by that point.

Or they argued, and I bet you didn't think that this was going to come back, that Christian Brando might have had something to do with her murder.

Yeah, I could see these being possibilities.

Of course, because they made the point that Christian might have been agitated over this whole paternity saga.

Yeah. Because I don't know if you guys know this, but the Brando family is like a pretty public family.

Yeah. So that didn't really look good for them.

Of course. Especially following the fact that he had just gotten out of jail for manslaughter.

I was just going to say, and then there was that whole thing.

He was like, I really didn't need this right now.

Thanks. and they had all those recorded phone calls that they seized from Bonnie's place. there was a phone call where she was on the phone with Christian, and he said to her, Not on my behalf, but you're lucky somebody ain't out there to put a bullet in your head.

Ooh. Yeah. And coming from that whole like manslaughter thing too, it's like...

You have a history of violence. That carries a little more weight.

You have a history of violence. Anyone saying that, you'd be like, excuse me?

Exactly. Who says that? That's very specific.

So for that reason, Christian Brando was subpoenaed to testify in the Robert Blake case.

He pled the fifth and wouldn't talk. Wow.

Yeah. He ended up actually getting confined for contempt of court.

So it's interesting. It's your right. but you'll be in contempt of court if you get subpoenaed.

It's like, hmm, doesn't really make a lot of sense.

And Robert Blake actually never took the stand to testify. during his trial.

Now, all in all, Robert Blake's trial lasted three months and they went over all that information that I just gave you.

And while that was happening, he spent about a year in jail and actually did like an amazing interview with Barbara Walters.

Oh, really? And he like later thanked her.

Wow. When he got out of jail, because on March 16th, 2005. he was acquitted by the jury.

Wow. He was later... I do remember this now.

I do too, actually, which is funny because I remember being like a little kid and seeing this on like the Today Show.

His face, you just remember. You do. He has a very memorable face.

He also kind of looks like one of my stepdads.

Yeah, he does. Yeah, he sure does. As I was going through this, I was like...

Sir. You're like unsettling. Oh, okay. Yeah.

I was like, I don't want this to sway my opinion, so I'm just not going to make one.

Now, he was found not guilty during his criminal trial, But he was later sued by Bonnie's older children about eight months after that criminal trial.

So this is a civil suit. Yeah. and he was found guilty of her wrongful death.

That's always very interesting to me. It never really makes sense to me, because I'm like, how can you be guilty of her wrongful death, but not guilty of her... death it feels it makes everything feel incomplete it does well this whole fucking thing feels incomplete But because he was found guilty, he was ordered to pay $30 million.

Wow. But the amount was actually cut in half a few years after.

Okay. So Robert Blake's attorney from his criminal suit, Jerry Schwartzbach... claimed that there was a ton of juror misconduct and that Robert's lawyers for his civil case were underqualified to represent him.

But in reality, most of the jury was convinced that Robert had something to do with Bonnie's death because of his own behavior on the stand.

Because in this trial, he did have to testify.

And the jury found him both combative and threatening.

So now you know why he didn't testify in the first one?

Yeah. Schwarzbach did agree. that Robert's performance on the stand was not his best.

He said that Robert, quote, self-destructed up there.

All right. That's not the best time or place to self-destruct.

It's not. But you know. Yeah, you know, so technically Bonnie's murder still remains unsolved.

Oh, that's sad. And people have all kinds of theories about what happened because there really are kind of like in my mind I think there's three possibilities I think Actually maybe four.

I think there is a world in which Robert could have done it.

Absolutely. There's a world in which he could have hired somebody to do it.

Absolutely. There's a world in which maybe Christian Brando did. minute.

Absolutely. And there's a world in which maybe it was one of the Lonely Hearts guys that she had schemed out of money.

He was stalking her and he killed her. 100%.

So there's four possibilities and we just don't know.

And no matter what, it's just sad. It is really sad. ending to a very chaotic existence.

It is. I just feel really bad for her kids.

I do too. Like, that sucks. And it's like, this whole story sucks.

Yeah, this whole story is just... incredibly messy and just so sad.

I hope they're like thriving. Well. So Christian Brando died in 2008 due to complications from pneumonia.

But Robert Blake is still around. He's 88 years old.

He apparently has like... like a few years ago, started uploading to YouTube, kind of like talking about his life story.

And he kind of started saying like strange, macabre things that people were like, what is going on?

So if you're interested, you can go watch his YouTube channel, I guess.

Just subscribe and like. I did not see this being the update.

I'm going to be honest with you. He's just like 80 and on YouTube.

That was a curveball. I didn't see that.

Yeah. No. But he and Bonnie's older daughter, just to kind of like end this on a note about how her kids are doing.

I hope it's happy. Yeah. Robert and Bonnie's only daughter, Rose, did tell Good Morning America in a 2019 interview. that she does her best not to talk about Bonnie's death with her dad.

She said quote, I just kind of told him that I'm not really there yet.

I don't wanna know the answers yet. I think what happened was horrible and so sad.

I don't choose a side because I don't know any better than anyone else.

Yeah. And it's her parents. It's her parents.

And that's like her father who's still alive.

And she's like, I don't think I'm ready to know yet if my father had anything to do with it or who did have anything to do with it.

No matter what, like she said, it's just sad.

No matter what the outcome is or what the answer is here, it's so sad.

And I agree with her. I can't choose a side either because I don't know any better than anybody else.

Exactly. There's possibilities. Right. And they all make sense, to be honest, which is even sadder.

That's the thing. in that position in life that this is confusing.

And it's like, I feel that just sucks. Because there was no good start. to life, you know?

That's the thing. It's like it started so tragic, like her childhood was so incredibly tragic.

And then most of her life was chaotic and tragic.

And I do think that she was just kind of somebody looking to be loved, and that nobody really gave her the time of day.

Yeah. And she was just looking in the wrong places because she wasn't set up with the proper tools.

To look in the right places. Exactly. You know?

And then her life just ended so tragically because of really how it all started.

Yeah. It's like, no matter what you think, because I honestly have no idea.

I'm not even going to sit here and point fingers because I don't know.

And I'm not going to sit here and be like, are you did it or he did it or he did it.

Right. Those are possibilities, all of them.

And we have no idea. And each of them is a strong case.

That's the thing, they all make sense. They're all a pretty strong case because we did have two men testify that he did try to solicit them to commit the murder and we do have that weird calling card for sure we do We do have Christian Brando's history of violence and the fact that he said somebody might put a bullet in her head and then somebody put a bullet in her head.

The calling card is what really threw me.

The calling card is weird. And if that is, here's the thing.

If Robert Blake had nothing to do with this, then that's a whole other set of tragedy.

Yeah. A whole other level to this tragedy.

It is. If he had something to do with it, that's a whole other set of tragedy.

It's like there's just no... There's no happy outcome.

It's all bad. So it's just like, wow. And it's like a bunch of children lost their mother.

Yeah. It's awful. That sucks. So that is the incredibly tragic story of Bonnie Lee Bakley.

Very bleak. the bleakest very bleak but very sad yeah so um we did decide that we're gonna do a spooky episode for the second episode of the week because i told elena i was like i just want to prepare you that this is like an incredibly tragic story it's just very They're all tragic stories, but this one really has like a way about it.

Some of them just have like a different kind of heaviness.

And this is just like, ugh. It's one of those.

So we're going to do something spooky for the next episode.

I think we're going to do some spooky lighthouses.

Yeah, you guys really dug the lighthouse episode, which was awesome.

We love hearing that. Yeah. Because when we get excited about something like that, we're like, I hope everybody loves it.

I hope our friends approve. And I think you guys dug it.

And so we got a ton of emails. So many suggesting lighthouses with pictures of lighthouses with stories.

Keep them coming. Because we want to continue doing this series for sure.

And you're going to get one this week. Yay.

So with that being said, we hope you keep listening.

And we hope you keep it going. Weird. I don't need to tell you not to keep it this weird.

But don't. But yeah, but I do. So don't.

Definitely don't. Bye. Thank you. If you like Morbid, you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.

Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music.

Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.

The town of Agde in France is famous for sun, sand, sea and sex.

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The town's mayor, a respected pillar of the community, has been arrested for corruption.

His wife claims he's been bewitched by a beautiful clairvoyant.

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I am the Archangel Michael. The whole town has been thrown into chaos.

As the mayor is unable to carry out his duties, I would like to address you all.

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[The Tragic and Chaotic Life of Bonnie Lee Bakley]-[Episode 313: The Unsolved Murder of Bonny Lee Bakley]

📋 Summary

The Tragic and Chaotic Life of Bonnie Lee Bakley

The Path to Infamy

A History of Marriages and Obsessions

The Relationship with Robert Blake

The Murder and the Investigation

An Incomplete Ending

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript