BARETTA BLAKE, 88, HITS HARD TIMES
FORMER TV detective Robert Blake is living out his final days as a sad, delusional recluse in a nursing home nearly two decades after beating the rap for murdering his wife, insiders dish!
The 88-year-old Baretta star — who was cleared of the still-unsolved 2001 murder of his wife Bonny Lee Bakley — is unable to care for himself and has been moved into a treatment facility, sources say.
“Robert had been going downhill for a while and the word in his neighborhood is that he’s been placed into a retirement home for his own benefit,” spills an insider.
“He can’t look after himself anymore and is very frail — not that swaggering, cocky character of old.”
GLOBE previously revealed sources claim Blake was creeping out shoppers at his local supermarket in Sherman
Oaks, Calif. — where he’d spend hours prowling the aisles in dirty, baggy duds hoping to be recognized.
Instead, he was shunned because he looked like a homeless person and stunk to high heaven, said a spy.
“All the managers and employees are quite frankly afraid of him as they know he spent a few years in jail,” the source said at the time.
The Little Rascals child star, who made a splash with ‘60s movie hits Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here and In Cold Blood, fell from grace after cops arrested him on suspicion of gunning down Bakley, 44, while she sat in his car outside a Studio City eatery.
He told cops he’d gone inside to get
his pistol, which he’d forgotten.
In 2005, Blake was acquitted of the murder, but later ordered to pay her three kids $30 million in a wrongful death civil suit. Blake was left broke, and his third wife Pamela Hudak divorced him in 2019.