LOS ANGELES (AP) – Robert Blake starred in such films as “In Cold Blood” and in TV shows like “Baretta,” but he couldn’t pull off the role of a distraught husband, a prosecutor told jurors during closing arguments Wednesday in the actor’s murder trial.

“The defendant overestimated his acting abilities,” Shellie Samuels said, citing witness testimony that Blake didn’t appear to be sincere when he cried the night his wife was shot to death. One witness said the actor appeared to be “turning it on and off.”

The prosecutor said Blake hated Bonny Lee Bakley because she was a con artist who tricked him into marrying her by getting pregnant and giving birth to a daughter he quickly became obsessed with.

Samuels said Blake, who was used to manipulating other people through his celebrity, “got taken by a small-time grifter.”

Blake killed Bakley, the prosecutor said, when he couldn’t find a way to avoid marrying her or to take custody of their baby.

“He said he would do anything to protect that child,” Samuels said. She concluded her argument by playing a snippet of an interview Blake gave ABC’s Barbara Walters in which he said no matter what happens to him, his daughter will be kept away from Bakley’s family.

“Those monsters will never get her,” Blake said.

The actor, who is free on $1.5 million bail, is charged with one count of murder, two counts of solicitation of murder and a special circumstance of lying in wait. If convicted, he could be sentenced to life in prison.

Arriving in court before closing arguments, Blake was greeted with a hug by his adult daughter, Delinah. Blake did not make eye contact with a daughter of Bakley’s who also was in court.

As Samuels’ closing argument continued into the afternoon, Blake at times rested his right elbow on the defense table, often rubbing his hand through his gray hair as he gazed impassively from the prosecutor to the jury.

Samuels laid out a timeline for jurors in which she said Blake went to elaborate lengths to try to have Bakley arrested before their Nov. 19, 2000, wedding so he wouldn’t have to marry her. When that failed, the prosecutor said, he tried to abduct their daughter. And when that failed, Samuels said, Blake tried repeatedly to solicit others to kill Bakley.

“When the solicitations were unsuccessful, he did it himself,” Samuels said.

Bakley, 44, was shot to death May 4, 2001, outside Blake’s favorite neighborhood Italian restaurant in Studio City.

Samuels had only a circumstantial case to present. No eyewitnesses, blood or DNA evidence linked Blake to the crime scene and the murder weapon could not be traced to him.

Blake, 71, maintains someone else killed Bakley when he left her briefly in the car to retrieve a gun he accidentally left behind during dinner. He told detectives he was armed because his wife feared someone was stalking her.

But Samuels told jurors that if Blake really wanted to protect his wife he would never have left her alone in a car parked on a dark street.

Blake became physically ill at the sight of his wounded wife because years of portraying violent people hadn’t prepared him to actually kill someone, Samuels said.

“He shot people on TV, he shot people in the movies, but he never really shot in real life,” she said. “It freaked him out.”

In his closing argument, defense lawyer M. Gerald Schwartzbach is expected to continue the line he took during trial, attacking the credibility of the prosecution’s two key witnesses:

– Gary McLarty, a former “Baretta” stuntman and admitted cocaine user, who said Blake offered him $10,000 and “insinuated” that he wanted Bakley dead.

– Ronald “Duffy” Hambleton, a former methamphetamine user, who said Blake solicited him to kill his wife. Until six months after the crime, however, he denied knowing anything about such a plot.

Samuels told jurors that although the prosecution’s witnesses were colorful, they offered a convincing case.

“With a cast of characters right out of Central Casting, the people have proven what they promised,” she said.

Both sides agree that Blake married Bakley because of their baby, Rosie, and then was determined to keep the child away from a mother who sold promises of sex by mail and whom Blake suspected of using another of her children for pornography.

Samuels cautioned the jury not to judge Blake based on Bakley’s past.

“It doesn’t matter what you think of Bonny,” Samuels said.

AP-ES-03-02-05 1950EST

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