Today’s disc comes to you courtesy of my good friend, fellow
Sheena’s Jungle Room DJ and oddball music enthusiast Rich Lindsay, host of the
excellent Cratedigger’s Lung. I knew nothing of its existence until I
opened up my email yesterday morning, but it the story behind it is so
fascinating that I could not wait to share it with you. This is a long read but bear with it… it’s worth it.
Celebrity-obsessed con artist, all-round good time gal and
mother of four Bonny Lee ‘Leebonny’ Bakley was shot twice through the head,
aged just 44, in 2001 near Vitello’s, a restaurant in Studio City, California
as she sat in the passenger seat of her 10
th husband’s car. That
husband, Robert Blake, is not exactly a household name here in the UK, but in
the States he was a major star, having appeared in films and on TV since
childhood, most notably in 40
Our Gang shorts (initially under his real
name, Mickey Gubitosi) for MGM in the 1940s, and numerous hit films in the 50s
and 60s – including
Pork Chop Hill (1959),
Town Without Pity
(1961),
Ensign Pulver (1964),
The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965)
and
In Cold Blood (1967). In the mid-70s he cemented his star status by
taking on the lead role of street-wise, plain clothes police detective Tony
Baretta in the internationally popular television cop series
Baretta.
Born on 7 June 1956 in Morristown, New Jersey, Bakley,
whose sole goal in life was to marry someone rich and famous, was alone in the
car at the time of the shooting, Blake having returned to the restaurant to
retrieve a pistol that had fallen from his waistband. They sure do like their
guns in America, don’t they? In a strange move, on discovering his mortally
wounded but still breathing wife he ran to the nearby house of a friend to
summon help, rather than straight back to the restaurant.
Blake had suffered with both depression and alcoholism.
Bakley had a track record that included stints in jail, fraud charges and a
reputation for running various scams to con money out of gullible older men.
She had attempted to trap Jerry Lee Lewis into a relationship, turning up at
his family home in Memphis and later claiming that the child she gave birth to in
1993 was his (it was not, despite Bakley giving the baby the name Jeri Lee
Lewis). His sister, Frankie Jean Lewis would later claim that Bonny pushed her
way into the living room holding a cassette recorder that was playing striptease
music. ‘She takes off her blouse and peels down her stockings,’ she said. ‘It
was good. She said, “I’d like to meet your brother”. So I got Jerry on the
phone and I said, “Jerry, we got us a real live one here”. And he said, “Send
her up”. That’s what he always said.’
Her pursuit of The Killer kept up even after he and his family
moved to Dublin. Although she seemed intent on causing trouble between Lewis
and his sixth wife, Kerrie (apparently issuing the real Mrs Lewis with death
threats), Bonnie became close friends with Jerry Lee’s sister Linda Gail, herself
a musician who later claimed that she had been in a relationship with Van
Morrison, taking him to a tribunal over ‘sexual misconduct and unfair
dismissal’. After three years she withdrew her claims and apologised to Van,
who had always denied all of the allegations. According to Linda Gail, Bonnie
Lee ‘was a nice person, but she did some unusual things… She also had an affair
with my now ex-husband, who’s an Elvis impersonator.’ Nothing like keeping it
in the family.
Bonny Lee, who also used the names Bonnie and Leebonny, tried
to break into acting – according to IMDB she makes an uncredited appearance in the
1985 film Turk 182 and in Woody Allen’s Radio Days (1987) - and
also fancied herself as a singer. She is known to have recorded at least four
sides. The first coupling, Just a Fan backed with Let’s Not Dream,
although hard to find, definitely does exist, and you could purchase a copy,
complete with a photograph of ‘Miss Leebonny’ by answering an advert in the
personal column of Amazing Science Fiction magazine - ‘Girl singer
wishes correspondence’ – and sending her five bucks. It seems that Bonny had
100 copies pressed on her own Leebonny Records label. I cannot find a release
for the second pairing, Tribute to Elvis Presley and Rock-A-Billy
Love: although they are often mentioned books and articles about her, all
information about them comes from one source.
When these attempts at stardom failed she set up a company, United
Singles, Inc., which sold nude photographs of herself through the mail and
operated a lonely hearts scam, advertising for companions and then, using
various aliases, extracting money from them with hard luck stories. She had
tried to finagle herself into Dean Martin’s affections but managed little more
than a quick snapshot with him before he died. Apparently she also set her
sights on Frankie Valli and Gary Busey. Bakley was arrested in 1989 for drug
possession and again in 1995 for fraud. Three years later she was arrested
again, this time for using a number of fake IDs.
She married at least 10 times. The longest-lasting of her
marriages was to her first cousin, the father of her first three children – after
the DNA test he was also found to have fathered Jeri Lee. Five of her known marriages
ended in annulment within days of the ceremony; the last would end in death. One
of those annulled marriages was to Baptist minister Glynn Wolfe, the world’s
most married man with 31 marriages and 100 children to his credit. Another was
to a man called Erik Robert Tellefsen (real name Robert Stuhr), a musician who
– according to the book Blood Cold: Fame, Sex, and Murder in Hollywood by
Dennis McDougal and Mary Murphy – issued an album on his own (and, frankly, obscure)
Norway USA record label featuring both Tribute to Elvis Presley and Rock-A-Billy
Love, although I cannot find any such album listed anywhere else on the
internet.
Bonny Lee met Blake in 1999, while she was dating Marlon
Brando’s son Christian. Officially the couple met in a rundown jazz club:
according to Blake’s attorneys he did not even know the name of the woman he
had sex in the back of a truck with. Bakley became pregnant and told both
Brando and Blake that her baby was theirs, initially naming the child Christian
Shannon Brando. After DNA tests proved that Blake was the biological father of the
child the pair married, and their daughter was renamed Rose Lenore Sophia Blake.
But this as not a marriage in the traditional sense. Blake inserted
a clause in their marriage contract, insisting that she stop fraternising with
known felons and demanded that she bring an end to her dodgy business dealings.
The pair never lived together: Bonny Lee and her kids sharing a house on
Blake’s estate instead. Five months after the marriage, Bonny Lee was dead.
In April 2002, almost a full year after her death, Blake was
arrested and charged with Bakley’s murder. Police alleged that he had her
executed because he felt ‘trapped in a marriage he wanted no part of’. Blake’s bodyguard,
Earle Caldwell, was also arrested and charged with conspiracy in connection
with the murder, and retired stuntman, Ronald ‘Duffy’ Hambleton, agreed to
testify against him, alleging that Blake tried to hire him to kill Bakley. A
second retired stuntman, Gary McLarty, came forward claiming that Blake had attempted
to contract him to murder his wife. Blake claimed that it was not he but
Christian Brando who had her murdered.
The trail was broadcast on national television, garnering
comparisons to the O.J. Simpson case. On 16 March 2005, Blake was found not
guilty of murder and not guilty of one of the two counts of solicitation of
murder. The other count, the solicitation of McLarty, was dropped when the jury
could not come to a unanimous decision. Los Angeles District Attorney Stephen
Cooley, commenting on this ruling, called Blake ‘a miserable human being’ and
the jurors ‘incredibly stupid’ to fall for the defence’s claims. On the night
of his acquittal several fans celebrated at Blake’s favourite haunt — and the
scene of the crime — Vitello’s.
Bakley’s three eldest children filed a civil suit against
Blake, asserting that he was responsible for their mother’s death, and in November
2005 a jury found Blake liable for wrongful death and ordered him to pay the
children $30 million. His
legal team appealed, filing evidence that suggested that Christian Brando may
have indeed been responsible for the murder. The following February, Blake filed for bankruptcy.
According to testimony Bakley had continued to claim Brando
was the father of her child. Brando had form: he had already served a five year
prison term for the manslaughter of his sister’s boyfriend. Brando’s friend Dianne
Mattson told the court that she overheard a phone conversation between Brando
and someone named ‘Duffy’ in which there was discussion about putting a bullet
through Bakley’s head. A tape-recorded conversation between Brando and Bakley
was played to the jury; in it Brando stated, ‘You're lucky. You know, I mean,
not on my behalf, but you’re lucky someone ain’t out there to put a bullet in
your head.’ Despite this, the appeals court upheld the civil case verdict, but
cut Blake’s penalty assessment in half, to $15 million.
Blake continues to deny any involvement in the murder of his
wife. Rose, their daughter, was taken into care and raised by Blake’s eldest
daughter, Delinah and her husband, bestselling author Gregg Hurwitz. Christian
Brando died in January 2008, taking any information about his involvement in
the murder of Bonny Lee Bakley to the grave with him. In April 2010, the state
of California filed a tax lien against Blake for more than a million dollars in
unpaid taxes. Seemingly broke, and unable to find work, in 2017 he wed for the
third time, although his marriage to Pamela Hudak – who had testified on his
behalf during his trial - lasted for little over 18 months, the actor filing for
divorce in December 2018. The one bright spot in this whole torrid affair is
that Rose – who was just 11 months old when her mother died - seems to have
grown into a well-adjusted young lady, who did well in school, made lots of
friends and lives quietly with her boyfriend.
And so ends the sad story of Bonnie Lee ‘Leebonny’
Bakley. Luckily, we have her 45 to
comfort us. Here are both sides, Just a Fan which – in the light of the
way her life panned out seems awfully prescient – and Let’s Not Dream.
Enjoy!
The name Alice Armand may not mean much to you, but if you’re
a fan of 1930s cinema the chances are you’ve seen her face.
Leaving any hope of stardom behind her, she and her husband
retired to a small farm in the Adirondacks, to be nearer to family, and the
couple lived a quiet, contented life, Aunt Ricky enchanting her nephews and nieces
with tales of her life in Hollywood. 
