Vitello's Restaurant

Author: Jewls Krueger

Vitello's is a long running Italian restaurant in the Studio City neighborhood of Los Angeles. On the night of May 4, 2001, actor Robert Blake and his wife, Bonny Lee Bakley, had dinner here. Shortly after they left, Bakley was shot to death while sitting in Blake's car on a side street around the corner.

Blake was later tried and acquitted of her murder, though a civil jury found him liable for her death. The case became one of the most closely watched Hollywood murder trials since O.J. Simpson, and the killing has never been officially solved.

Bonny Lee Bakley

Bonny Lee Bakley was born on June 7, 1956, in Morristown, New Jersey, and was raised largely by her grandmother in Glen Gardner. She left high school at 15 and moved to New York to pursue modeling and acting.

Bakley never found show business success, but she built an income through a mail-order business and a series of "lonely hearts" schemes, corresponding with men through personal ads and asking them for money. She was arrested several times over the years, including a 1998 arrest in Little Rock, Arkansas, for possessing multiple driver's licenses and Social Security cards under different names.

Friends and relatives described Bakley as fixated on celebrity. She pursued a string of famous men, including singer Jerry Lee Lewis and Christian Brando, the son of Marlon Brando. By the time she met Robert Blake at a jazz club in 1999, she had been married nine times.

Robert Blake

Robert Blake was born Michael James Gubitosi on September 18, 1933, in Nutley, New Jersey. He began performing as a small child and became a familiar face in the Our Gang short films of the late 1930s and 1940s. As an adult he played killer Perry Smith in the 1967 film In Cold Blood and won an Emmy in 1975 for the title role in the television detective series Baretta.

Blake and Bakley married in November 2000, after a paternity test confirmed that Blake, not Christian Brando, was the father of Bakley's youngest daughter, later named Rose. The marriage was troubled from the start. The couple never lived together, and Bakley and the baby stayed in a guest house on Blake's Studio City property.

The Murder

On the evening of May 4, 2001, Blake and Bakley had dinner at Vitello's on Tujunga Avenue, one of Blake's regular spots. Rather than use the valet, Blake had parked his black 1991 Dodge Stealth on a side street around the corner.

After the meal, according to Blake, he walked Bakley to the car and then returned to the restaurant to retrieve a handgun he said he had left behind. When he came back, he said, he found Bakley shot in the passenger seat. She died at the scene. She was 44.

Investigators recovered a handgun from a dumpster near where the car had been parked. It was an older weapon and was determined not to be the pistol Blake said he had left in the restaurant. No witnesses saw the shooting.

The Investigation and Trial

The case became one of the most expensive murder investigations in LAPD history, and detectives spent roughly eleven months building it. Two retired stuntmen, Ronald "Duffy" Hambleton and Gary McLarty, told investigators that Blake had earlier tried to hire them to kill his wife.

On April 18, 2002, Blake was arrested and charged with murder, solicitation of murder, conspiracy, and the special circumstance of lying in wait. His bodyguard, Earle Caldwell, was arrested on a conspiracy charge that was later dismissed.

Blake's criminal trial began in December 2004. The defense attacked the credibility of the two stuntmen and pointed to the lack of physical evidence tying Blake to the shooting, noting that no gunshot residue was found on him. On March 16, 2005, the jury found Blake not guilty of murder and of one solicitation count. The remaining solicitation charge was dropped after jurors reported they were deadlocked in favor of acquittal.

Seven months later, in a civil wrongful death suit brought by Bakley's children, a jury found Blake liable for her death and ordered him to pay $30 million. An appeals court later upheld the verdict but reduced the award to $15 million. Blake filed for bankruptcy in 2006. He died of heart disease in Los Angeles on March 9, 2023, at age 89. Bakley's murder remains officially unsolved.

The Restaurant Today

Vitello's still operates on Tujunga Avenue in Studio City, in the heart of the San Fernando Valley. Founded in 1964 and run for decades by the Restivo family, it remains a neighborhood Italian restaurant known for its old Los Angeles atmosphere, and it now includes a jazz lounge upstairs.

The restaurant is a working business, so anyone drawn by the history should treat it as they would any other. Book a table or stop in during regular hours, and remember that the staff and other guests are simply there for a meal. The side street where Bakley was killed is a quiet block nearby, so please stay on public sidewalks and be respectful of the surrounding neighborhood.