For most of her life,Rose Lenore Blakelived without her mother Bonny Lee Bakley, who was fatally shot in 2001. Rose’s father, actor Robert Blake, stood trial and was acquitted of her death. But it all led to a traumatic childhood for Rose.
Rose, 22, was just weeks shy of her first birthday when her mother was killed. A year later, Blake was charged with her death. While he was acquitted in his wife’s death in 2005, following a nationally televised trial, Rose never lived with her father again.
She spoke with PEOPLE in 2019 about navigating through life without her mother and the unwanted fame that came from her father’s trial.
Bonny Lee Bakley and Rose.Bob Mahoney/Zuma
“It’s all so public,” Rose said at the time. “I can literally Google any of our names, and it would come up. It was kind of a traumatic childhood at that point.”
She was a cheerleader for Campbell Hall school at the age of 15. And a moment that appeared to serve as a sign of normalcy, turned into the opposite when the then-sophomore began to get an uneasy feeling.
“Some guy in the stands was taking pictures of me,” she remembered. “I had a feeling that it was paparazzi, but I just kept going.” Her fears were confirmed weeks later when she saw the photos splashed across the pages of a tabloid magazine, embarrassing her among her friends. “It was a positive article,” she said, “but it put distance between me and my classmates.”
ben trivett, getty
“We chose to live a private life,” she told PEOPLE. “I was busy. I was doing gymnastics, soccer, piano, cheerleading, dance.”
Still, Rose was secretly suffering as she coped with the grief of losing her mother and her father being blamed for it. She took antianxiety medication and often went to therapy.
“I have very severe anxiety and depression,” she said. “I went to therapists throughout the years to discuss all my family issues.”
Rose added that she found a safe haven with her close friends, who weren’t “attached” to the trauma she had experienced.
“It was easier to talk to friends than family,” she said. “It was such a messy situation with my family, and everyone was part of it in some way. My friends weren’t attached to it, so it was less complicated talking with them.”
One friend, Ally Aronson, told PEOPLE that Rose had difficulty opening up about her family’s past.
“She never really wanted to talk about it,” Ally said at the time. “She didn’t even tell me about her real parents until maybe a year and a half into the friendship. She skirted around the topic. It was definitely a burden she carried around.”
Rose had a turning point when she visited her mother’s grave for the first time at 18. She took another step and contacted her father, whom she had been estranged from for years.
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“It was a lot to handle,” she said. “He started talking about [Bakley], and I said, ‘This is too much.’ And he was very respectful of that, which was good. I don’t want to know if he did it or not.”
When it came to her father’s guilt or innocence, Rose said that’s one burden she refuses to take on.
“It feels useless to have an opinion about it,” she said. “Say he did it or he didn’t do it—what’s the point of knowing that, other than to just trouble myself? I think it’s better to just see both sides for what they are and not try to overwhelm myself. It’s complicated.”
In 2019, Rose was happily living in Los Angeles. with her boyfriend and their two cats and ready to take control of the narrative surrounding her life.
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“I’ve read everything they write about me,” she said. “‘Rose is living a perfect life. She’s 100 percent perfect.’ I am far from that. I’m a big mess—but that’s okay. And then there are other people writing, ‘She must be miserable every day.’ No, I’m not. I just want to be able to set the story straight.” She took a breath and looked out at the skyline, the Hollywood sign in the distance. “This is me,” she said quietly. “I’m 19. I’m living my life … and I’m doing the best I freaking can.”
Blake’s career began at the age of 5 and took off after he starred in a handful of television series, his last being 1985’sHell Townwhich lasted one season. Nearly 20 years later, Bakley, a 44-year-old mother of four, was shot and killed in Blake’s car, which was parked around the corner from an Italian restaurant where the couple had just dined near their home in Studio City, California.
He told police that he had left his car to find a gun that fell out of his clothing, which police determined was not used to shoot his wife. Still, Blake was arrested almost a year later, and during his trial, prosecutors cited the statements of two retired stuntmen who alleged to authorities that Blake had attempted to hire them as hitmen — an allegation the defense attacked as unreliable. No eyewitnesses, blood or DNA evidence linked Blake to the crime. Jurors deliberated eight days before finding Blake not guilty.
Years after the killing, Blake continued to maintain his innocence.
source: people.com
