"Baretta" star Robert Blake is getting married for the third time. This marriage comes 12 years after a jury acquitted him for murdering his second wife.
TMZ reported the news on March 10, saying the 83-year-old former actor will marry 55-year-old Pamela Hudak. He was reportedly at the Beverly Hills Courthouse this week filing out a marriage license application. Pamela joined him.
Robert, who has been all-but shunned in Hollywood, has known Pamela for decades. The two even dated in 1991, and she testified in his murder trial. She also later said she lived in his guest house in 1995 and 1997.
Robert's place in pop culture was cemented in 2001. He and Bonnie Lee Bakley, his second wife, had finished dining at a Los Angeles-area restaurant in when she was shot to death in his car.
The details were murky. Robert was with his then-wife in the car, but then got out and returned to the restaurant after saying he left his gun there. When he returned, Bonnie had been shot. It was determined that the gun he retrieved from the restaurant was not the murder weapon.
Prosecutors theorized that Robert hired a hitman for $10,000 and detectives found $10,000 in his dresser drawer. Pamela, his soon-to-be wife, testified on Robert's behalf, saying he routinely kept large sums of cash at home.
On March 16, 2005, he was found not guilty of the murder of his late wife and not guilty of one of the two counts of solicitation of murder. The other count, the solicitation of the supposed hitman, was dropped after it was revealed that the jury was deadlocked — although the jurors were leaning towards acquittal.
A few months later, he was found liable in a California civil court for her wrongful death.