A SHOT IN THE DARK DID UNKNOWN KILLERS JUST HAPPEN TO ANSWER BLAKE'S PRAYER?

Byline: Phil Perrier

I glanced at the Yahoo! news blurbs, as I always do, before checking my e-mail. There it was, ``Robert Blake Acquitted.'' Nope, that can't be right, I thought. Must still be half asleep. I rubbed my eyes and looked again.

``Robert Blake Acquitted.''

Damn, that is what it says.

The O.J. verdict did not surprise me. To me, O.J. was obviously guilty, but he did have the ``Dream Team'' and he did have a predominantly black jury and jurors did hear lead detective Mark Fuhrman use the n-word roughly 900 times on tape. At least it made sense.

The Scott Peterson verdict was a happy surprise. Personally, I thought there was a good chance Peterson would walk. He, too, was obviously guilty, but there wasn't really that much hard evidence tying him to the crime, just a very strong circumstantial case.

Frankly, Peterson's alibi reeked. He said he was ``fishing'' on Christmas Eve. Fishing! In the San Francisco Bay Area on December 24th. Sure. Cold, wet, rainy, choppy seas, fishing. Great alibi. Then, when the police asked Peterson what kind of fish he was going after, what did he say? ``I don't know.''

Name a fish! How hard is that? Bass, trout, grouper, sushi, fish sticks ... for the love of God - say something!

What really fried Scott Peterson was that his wife's body washed up exactly where he said he was on the day she disappeared. The dumbest jury in the world could put that little puzzle together.

In fact, Scott Peterson makes O.J. look like a criminal genius. At least O.J. had several plausible alibis: ``I was hitting golf balls ... I was taking a nap ... I was taking a shower ... I was killing another woman on the other side of town ...''

Robert Blake acquitted - it just did not make sense. For starters, Blake had asked everyone he knew to kill his wife: Friends, former associates, neighbors, the cable guy, the pizza guy, his pool guy. He sent out bulk e-mails, asking people to kill his wife; he ended his Christmas cards with ``P.S. Wanna whack my wife for five grand?''

Blake even asked stuntmen to kill his wife. Stuntmen! What were they going to do, stab her with a rubber knife? Shoot her with blanks? Prosecutors argued Blake ultimately arrived at the same conclusion so many of us come to: ``If you want something done right, do it yourself.''

Then, they said, Blake gave the worst acting job of his life.

Now, it would be easy to make cynical fun of Blake's acting career and point to ``Baretta'' and quotes like ``You can take dat to da bank,'' and imply that Blake was a bad actor. But that is not true. The truth is, Robert Blake at his best was a damn good actor. His portrayal of a heartless killer in ``In Cold Blood'' was nothing short of gifted.

And honestly, as a kid growing up, I had seen Robert Blake as a guest on ``The Tonight Show,'' and his rapport with Johnny Carson was funny, sweet and often downright charming. Even vulnerable. At his best, Blake's self-deprecating honesty made him impossible not to like. However, on the night of his wife's murder, witnesses say that they simply did not buy his act. It was as if his heart just wasn't in it. They say his tears seemed forced. His shock contrived.

Almost immediately, he became a suspect. Soon he was the only suspect. His story just did not add up. His alibi would have made Scott Peterson blush. At the time of his wife's killing, Blake claimed he was walking back to Vitello's restaurant to retrieve his gun. His gun! Rule No. 1 one in homicide: In any murder alibi, the word ``gun'' should be conspicuously absent. He could have said he was going back to the restaurant to get his jacket or his credit card, but no, he actually said he was going back to get a firearm.

Yet somehow, the jury found him not guilty. In other words, the jurors heard that Blake had conspired to kill his wife and knew that he made no particular secret of wanting her dead. But they came to the conclusion that on the night in question, by sheer coincidence, some stranger had happened along on a quiet residential street and shot the woman for no apparent reason. An impulse killing, as it were. They did not rob her, they did not take her car, her purse, nothing. They just happened along, answered Robert Blake's darkest prayer, then vanished into the night.

Now, you are probably expecting an indictment of our ``system.'' Well, I'm not going to do it. It brings to mind what Winston Churchill once said ``Democracy is the worst form of government except all the others.'' Yes, our justice system is flawed, it is only as good as the weakest juror in many cases, but where is there a better system? China? Russia? Saudi Arabia?

No, our ``system'' is not to blame for why some killers go to Death Row and others walk scot-free.

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Robert Blake and his attorney, M. Gerald Schwartzbach, react to the verdict of not guilty Wednesday.

Nick Ut/Pool