ROSE LENORE Her mother was murdered, her father was accused

HER MOTHER WAS MURDERED HER FATHER WAS ACCUSED Rose Lenore, the daughter of actor Robert Blake, reveals for the first time how growing up in the shadow of an infamous crime shaped her life and what she dreams of for her future –

It was one of the first football games of the 2015 season at Campbell Hall school in Los Angeles, and 15-yearold Rose Lenore was excited to put on her blue and gold cheerleading uniform and join her squad on the field. But as the game went on, the student began to get an uneasy feeling. “Some guy in the stands was taking pictures of me,” she remembers. “I had a feeling that it was paparazzi but I just kept going. ” Her fears were confirmed weeks later when she saw the photos splashed across the pages of a tabloid magazine, embarrassing her among her friends. “It was a positive article,” she says, “but it put distance between me and my classmates.”

Yet Lenore, now 19, has come to learn that life in the spotlight isn’t something she can easily escape – whether she likes it or not. The daughter of Emmy-winning actor Robert Blake – the star of the 1970s TV hit Baretta – and his second wife, Bonny Lee Bakley, Lenore’s life changed forever on May 4, 2001, when her mother was fatally shot outside a Los Angeles restaurant. Lenore was just 11 months old when her mother was killed – and just a year older when her father was arrested and charged with the murder. His 2005 trial was broadcast on national television, and while he was ultimately acquitted of Bakley’s murder (he was later found civilly liable), Lenore never lived with her father again. She was raised by her half-sister, Delinah, Blake’s daughter from his first marriage to actress Sondra Kerr, and her husband.

Now preparing to embark on her own career as an actress, Lenore is speaking out for the first time about her “difficult” childhood, the “complicated” feelings she has about her mother’s murder and her father’s innocence (or guilt) and how growing up in the shadow of all of it has shaped the woman she has become.

“It’s hard when everyone talks about you and you’re not talking about yourself,” she tells WHO. “Now I am.”

By 2000, Robert Blake – who had got his start as a child star with bit parts in films and then The Little Rascals series and later won critical acclaim appearing in the 1967 Oscarnominated film In Cold Blood – had largely stepped back from the spotlight. He met Bakley at a jazz club in Los Angeles in 1999. At the time she had been married nine times and had a criminal record (accused of credit card fraud and writing bad cheques) and a history of dating celebrities. She claimed she was involved with actor Marlon Brando’s son Christian when she gave birth to a daughter. The child was initially given Brando as her last name but a later paternity test proved Blake was the girl’s father, and she was renamed Rose Lenore Sophia Blake. Blake and Bakley married on November 19, 2000.

Just six months later, Blake took Bakley out for dinner to Vitello’s restaurant in Studio City and after the couple dined together, Bakley was fatally shot in the head while sitting in Blake’s vehicle, parked on a side street around the corner from the restaurant. During questioning, Blake told police he was not present during the shooting because he had gone back inside the restaurant to retrieve a gun that he had forgotten. Police didn’t believe his story, and the following year charged him with murder, solicitation of murder, conspiracy and special circumstance of lying in wait. By the time Blake was arrested, the case was national news, and baby photos of Lenore – the little girl who was now without both her parents – were everywhere.

“It’s all so public,” Lenore says. “I can literally google any of our names, and it would come up. It was kind of a traumatic childhood at that point.”

Lenore found some refuge growing up with her half-sister,

“I try my best not to have an opinion about Robert’s guilt or innocence”

Delinah, a teacher, and her brother-in-law, Gregg Hurwitz, an author, in the familyfriendly, upscale LA suburb of Sherman Oaks. After they legally adopted her, she began calling them ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad’. Delinah, who had attended the trial in support of Blake, distanced their family from contact with the troubled actor as Lenore grew up. “We chose to live a private life,” Lenore says, “I was busy. I was doing gymnastics, soccer, piano, cheerleading, dance.” But internally, Lenore often had to rely on anti-anxiety medication and therapy to help her cope with the weight of her mother’s murder and the spectre of her father being accused of it.

“I have very severe anxiety and depression,” she says. “I went to therapists throughout the years to discuss all my family issues.” She also leaned on a close circle of friends to help her. “It was easier to talk to friends than family,” she says. “It was such a messy situation with my family, and everyone was part of it in some way. My friends weren’t attached to it, so it was less complicated talking with them.” Still, even Lenore’s closest friends say that the heavy conversations were few and far between.

“She never really wanted to talk about it,” says her best friend, Ally Aronson, 18. “She didn’t even tell me about her real parents until maybe a year and a half into the friendship. She skirted around the topic. It was definitely a burden she carried around.”

When she was 18, Lenore began taking specific steps to lessen that burden. She finally visited her mother’s grave in the Hollywood Hills, and then reached out to her famous father, whom she had not seen nor spoken to for years. Lenore decided she was ready to finally reach out – and she set up a meeting with him. “It was a lot to handle,” Lenore says. “He started talking about [Bakley] and I said, ‘This is too much’. And he was very respectful of that, which was good. I don’t want to know if he did it or not.” For Lenore, knowledge of her father’s guilt or innocence is a load she chooses not to carry. “It feels useless to have an opinion about it,” she says, “Say he did it or he didn’t do it? What’s the point of knowing that other than to just trouble myself ? I think it’s better to just see both sides for what they are and not try to overwhelm myself. It’s complicated.”

Now living in LA with her boyfriend and their two cats, Lenore wants to finally take control of the narrative surrounding her life. “I’ve read everything they write about me,” Lenore says. “‘Rose is living a perfect life. She’s 100 per cent perfect’.” I am far from that. I’m a big mess – but that’s OK. And then there are other people writing, ‘She must be miserable every day’. No, I’m not. I just want to be able to set the story straight.” She takes a breath and looks out at the skyline, the Hollywood sign in the distance. “This is me,” she says quietly. “I’m 19. I’m living my life … And I’m doing the best I freaking can.”