LOS ANGELES — The wife of actor Robert Blake was shot to death in her car while she waited for the former “Baretta” TV star near a restaurant, police said Saturday.
There were no immediate arrests.
The woman was shot once in the head Friday evening and was pronounced dead at a hospital, police spokesman Guillermo Campos said.
Campos did not have the victim’s name. But in October, Blake confirmed his engagement to Leebonny Bakley, 44, the mother of his 11-month-old daughter, Rose Lenore Sophia Blake.
Blake, 67, told officers that as the couple returned to their car from a restaurant he realized he had forgotten something and went back inside to retrieve it. When he returned, Blake said, he found his wife shot and went to a nearby home to call police, Campos said.
Blake was questioned early Saturday as a witness, Campos said.
Blake played tough TV detective Tony Baretta in the 1970s show of the same name. He has had dozens of movie roles, including real-life killer Perry Smith in the 1967 film “In Cold Blood.”
In October, Blake said the couple planned to marry Nov. 15, after Bakley completed probation. She was convicted in her home state of Arkansas of carrying a fake ID.
