Actor's Bodyguard: Blake Didn't Do It

LOS ANGELES – Police are trying to stick Baretta star Robert Blake with a crime he didn't commit, the actor's bodyguard said.

"They have their minds made up about what happened and I'm sure they think Robert did it. That's all they're looking for," Earle Caldwell said.

Caldwell defended his boss Friday not against bullets but against what he sees as an investigation that is hellbent on pinning Blake with the murder of Blake's wife, Bonny Lee Bakley. He made that announcement after his two-hour interview by police Friday, which he said gave him the impression that authorities have zeroed in on Blake.

Caldwell said he believes a killer gunning for Blake shot the actor's wife, Bonny Lee Bakley, by mistake. He said police dismissed that scenario as "ridiculous."

"They're already cooking his goose," Caldwell said. "He had nothing to do with it."

Lead detectives also do not believe Blake's lawyer's claim that someone Bonny Lee Bakley conned in the past might have pulled the trigger, according to a report in Friday's New York Daily News.

Blake's lawyer Harland Braun and several others have painted an unflattering picture of Bakley as schemer who tapped lonely men for money through a mail-order nude photo business. Braun suggested the killer might be found in Bakley's past.

But cops searched Blake's house in Studio City a second time late Wednesday.

"The investigation is accelerating ... they're picking up more and more evidence and Blake is certainly still in the picture," a source told the paper.

After the murder, Blake told cops that he was carrying a gun to protect Bakley, who claimed she was being stalked. Blake says he accidentally left the weapon in a restaurant and when he returned, his wife had been shot in the head.

Police grew suspicious of the story after learning that he had parked his car a block from the  restaurant behind a dumpster. They've taken soil samples from the car to determine whether Bakley was killed where she was found or shot somewhere else and driven there.

The coroner's report in the case remains sealed.