Actor Robert Blake held in connection with wife's murder

Hollywood actor Robert Blake and his bodyguard have been arrested in connection with the murder of the actor’s wife who was shot dead nearly a year ago, police in Los Angeles said today.

Officers took Blake into custody at his sister’s home west of Los Angeles. His lawyer, Harland Braun, said he had advised the actor ‘‘to come outside’’.

Sandi Gibbons, spokeswoman for the district attorney, said prosecutors will review the case submitted by police and announce on Monday whether they intend to file charges in connection with the killing of Bonny Lee Bakley in May last year.

Blake’s bodyguard, Earle Caldwell, was taken into custody in suburban Burbank, said police spokesman Officer Don Cox.

Ms Bakley, 44, was killed on May 4, last year not far from a Los Angeles restaurant where she and Blake had dined.

Blake has said that after dinner, he walked his wife to the car and then remembered that he left behind a gun he carried to protect her.

He went back for it, he said, and when he returned to the car he found his wife shot.

‘‘I think that after thousands and thousands of hours of investigation by the LAPD they have concluded that Robert Blake and Earl Caldwell are responsible for the death of Bonny Bakley,’’ Bakley attorney Cary Goldstein told CNN.

The case thrust Blake back into the limelight after years of semi-retirement. A former child star, he had his greatest success in the 1970s TV series Baretta, in which he played a tough-talking cop.

He received accolades for his performance as a killer who goes to the gallows in 1967’s In Cold Blood and he won a 1975 Emmy for Baretta but his career had been stalled for years.

As details of the couple’s lifestyle emerged, the story became even more bizarre.

Theirs was hardly a traditional marriage. They met at a nightclub and began seeing each other and having sex.

When Ms Bakley became pregnant, she said she was unsure if the child was fathered by Blake or Christian Brando, son of actor Marlon Brando.

But DNA tests eventually showed the little girl was Blake’s daughter and his lawyer said the actor felt he had to marry her.

For the wedding, the bride had to get permission from a judge to be released from electronic monitoring in her home state of Arkansas where she was under house arrest for possessing fake identifications.

After the marriage, she left the baby in the actor’s custody. The pair had signed a temporary custody agreement.

Later, she moved into a cottage behind Blake’s home and Blake hired a nanny for the baby.

Blake’s lawyer, who was hired shortly after the killing, investigated the woman’s past and quickly came up with the theory that there were many men who might have wanted her dead.

Stacks of letters, pornographic pictures and meticulously detailed records showed that Ms Bakley, using many aliases, ran a business soliciting money from lonely men who answered her ads in magazines and newspapers.

The men sought companionship, marriage, and, in many cases, nude photos and pornography. She told them she needed money and they sent it.