'COWBOY' ARRESTED IN BARROOM KILLING.

Byline: Dana Bartholomew Staff Writer

SIMI VALLEY - He was a Hollywood gunslinger who appeared on such TV shows and movie Westerns as ``Gunsmoke,'' ``Bonanza'' and ``Death of a Gunfighter.''

But police say self-professed yogi and ``cowboy'' Robert Sorrells is a real-life killer who shot two men in the back with a semiautomatic last weekend in a Simi Valley saloon, One man died, the other was seriously wounded.

``He was my friend, but he was a wacko, no doubt about it,'' said Marly Harris, 71, who lived near the actor at a low-income senior complex here. ``My intuitive reaction is that he's nuts. ... It's so heartbreaking.''

Simi Valley police on Monday confirmed that Sorrells was the same man who appeared as a character actor in dozens of TV Westerns dating back to 1952.

The 74-year-old Simi Valley resident appeared in such fabled TV dramas as ``Rawhide,'' ``Daniel Boone,'' ``Death Valley Days,'' ``The Fugitive'' and ``Twelve O'Clock High.''

He had appeared more recently in ``Nowhere to Run,'' ``Fletch'' and ``Bad News Bears Go to Japan.''

Friends and neighbors described the silver-haired actor with the Col. Sanders goatee as a mixed-up man, hot and cold by turns - as warm as he could be menacing.

``He never bothered anybody,'' said a woman who lived at Heywood Gardens near Sorrells, a guitar player who arranged concerts and taught music to his neighbors.

``I'm in shock. It's hard to believe he'd do something like this.''

Police say Sorrells walked into The Regency Lounge on Saturday afternoon and opened fire on seven customers and three workers.

A bartender said Sorrells was ``a nice, drunk older guy'' who had closed the bar Friday night and had returned to the bar Saturday looking for his credit card.

The gunslinger then strolled through the bar's front door and fired two shots, hitting a regular customer sitting on a bar stool and then said:

``Does anybody else want to (expletive) with the cowboy?''

From behind the bar, she said, she heard a third gunshot - wounding a second customer.

Police say the shootings may have been part of a continuing argument. Simi Valley police Sgt. Paul Fitzgerald would not comment on a motive for the shootings.

``He'd been in the bar before,'' said Fitzgerald, a spokesman for the department. ``When the shootings occurred, he'd just walked in.''

Arthur De Long, 45, a Simi Valley painting contractor, died at the bar with a fatal gunshot wound to his back. His was the third homicide case this year in what has long been one of America's safest cities.

De Long had just attended his mother-in-law's memorial service and had the service program in his pocket when he died.

``It's a horrible thing,'' Michelle De Long, 16, the victim's only daughter, said of her fun-loving dad who enjoyed personal watercraft, NASCAR races - and anything blue.

The wounded man, Edward Sanchez, 40, was in serious condition at Simi Valley Hospital with gunshot wounds to his face and back.

Police say they caught up with Sorrells in his VW microbus about three blocks from the bar.

Sorrells was arrested on suspicion of murder and attempted murder and booked in the Ventura County jail.

Those who knew him described an aging Hollywood actor who suddenly began to fall apart more than a year ago after his mother and poodle died.

``He started getting weird,'' said a man who for 10 years joined Sorrells in a weekly jam session.

``He started calling me, crying on my shoulder about how he'd pickled his brain through drugs and alcohol and ruined his life.''

Then one day the man who once referred to himself as ``Oklahoma Bob '' - but who later renounced the moniker as ``arrogant'' - suddenly announced that their friendship was over.

``Don't condescend to me,'' the man recalls Sorrells saying. ```I don't like you. I have a gun and will come after you.' He wanted to have a duel.''

The music group banned Sorrells - a self-professed celibate yogi whose e-mail name was ``yogibob'' - after he allegedly made obscene propositions to women in the group.

Former friends said Sorrells was an accomplished guitar player with a limited song list of such standards as ``All of Me'' and ``I'll Be Seeing You.''

Sorrells lived in a low-income apartment at Heywood Gardens, neighbors said, where he kept a small shrine to some Eastern god and tended tomatoes on his immaculate back patio. He was also a vegetarian and professed a belief in nonviolence.

He was sensitive, friends and neighbors said. He proved a good listener. He had insight. He looked dashing in a tux, cutting a figure like a bearded Donald Sutherland. Women were giddy over him.

Proud of his screen accomplishments, Sorrells liked to show off residual checks from the Screen Actors Guild.

But when his mother and dog died, Harris said, Sorrells was heartbroken. He went off the wagon. His health began to wane, she added. Paramedics once showed up at his apartment and described a ``babbling drunk,'' said Harris.

Dana Bartholomew, [phone]

dana.bartholomew(at)dailynews.com

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