Blake 'aged 50 years' after wife's murder, says witness

LOS ANGELES - Actor Robert Blake "aged 50 years" in the moments after his wife was murdered outside a Los Angeles restaurant, a waitress who served the couple testified in the Baretta star's murder trial.

Robyn Robichaux, a waitress at Vitello's restaurant in the Studio City section of Los Angeles, told the jury that Blake seemed fine when she served him and wife Bonny Lee Bakley at his favourite booth.

But minutes after Bakley was shot while sitting in Blake's car, the actor reappeared in the restaurant, his appearance so dramatically different that it scared her, Robichaux said.

"He had aged 50 years in 10 to 15 minutes," she said.

"Everything about him looked completely different. He was white as a sheet. He was out of breath. He looked like he was having a heart attack."

Robichaux said she assumed that Blake had returned to the restaurant looking for medical attention for himself and that it wasn't until later that night that she realised that Bakley had been shot in the front seat of her husband's car.

"He never said anything about his wife," she said.

Prosecutors say Blake, 71, star of the 1970s cop show Baretta, murdered Bakley on May 4, 2001 to get sole custody of the couple's baby daughter, Rose, and that committing the murder made him so sick he vomited in the restaurant.

Blake's attorney said his actions were not suspicious.

"Have you ever seen the inside of Mr Blake's driver's-side door?" Blake attorney Gerald Schwartzbach asked Robichaux.

"Do you know he had a habit, prior to May 4, 2001, of spitting up his food?"

- REUTERS