LOS ANGELES – Long before he was accused of killing second wife Bonny Lee Bakley, “Baretta” star Robert Blake set up a “contract” hit on his ex-wife and the actor she was dating, according to her shocking new testimony.
Sondra Kerr-Blake said friends later told her of Blake’s foiled plan to have her and Steve Railsback, best known for his role as Charles Manson in the TV flick “Helter Skelter,” whacked in the late ’70s, according to her deposition obtained by the Daily News.
“I found out from several different people … that he had put a ‘contract’ out on me and the other man I was seeing at that time,” Kerr-Blake, an actress, testified at a recent fact-finding session in the Bakley family’s wrongful-death suit against the 71-year-old actor.
Last March, a jury found Blake not guilty of charges he murdered Bakley, 44, and tried to hire aging movie stuntmen to kill her so he could have custody of their daughter, Rosie.
In the civil trial scheduled to begin Aug. 29, attorney Eric Dubin, who represents Bakley’s kids, said he’ll turn the tables when he gets Blake on the witness stand.
“It will be a showdown. If the detectives and the DA had the same opportunity I have, Robert Blake would be in prison today,” Dubin said.
Blake did not testify at his criminal trial, but in the civil case, he has no choice.
Blake’s lawyer, Peter Ezzell, could not be reached for comment.
Dubin said he also will call powerful new witnesses, like Blake’s ex-wife, to expose the “In Cold Blood” star’s alleged history of violence and murderous plots.
In a story stranger than a Hollywood screenplay, Kerr-Blake, who played a prison inmate in “Helter Skelter,” alleged that Blake planned to have her and Railsback killed at a card game in the same house where Manson’s followers had murdered actress Sharon Tate.
The slaying was supposed to look like “retribution” for their participation in the 1976 film, she testified, but the couple skipped the card game and inadvertently foiled the plot.
Blake even asked a famous movie-star pal to hurt Railsback, Kerr-Blake testified.
She said actor Burt Young, who played Sylvester Stallone’s grouchy brother-in-law Paulie in the blockbuster “Rocky” films, told her that Blake had asked him to “beat up” or “do in” Railsback around the same time as the failed hit.
Young “said he refused and told Robert to get somebody else or why didn’t he just go have a talk with Steve,” Kerr-Blake testified.
Ironically, Railsback is set to portray Blake in an upcoming movie about Bakley’s life.
Kerr-Blake, who was married to Blake for about 20 years and is the mother of his two adult kids, Noah and Delinah, also alleged she was verbally and physically abused by him.
According to the deposition, she also said Blake, who reportedly suffered an abusive childhood, once told her, “I always thought it was my father who I was like, but it turns out it was my mother … she’s a killer. She’s a killer just like me.”