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sixate · 05-04-2003, 04:29 PM

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Quote:

O.J. to cover Blake murder trial?
Simpson reportedly considers 2 offers to provide commentary

Posted: May 4, 2003
7:52 p.m. Eastern

© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com

Who better to cover the murder trial of a Hollywood actor than another Hollywood actor acquitted of murder in one of the most controversial trials in U.S. history?

It's apparently not just a joke for late-night television comedians anymore. According to a report in the London Sunday Times, O.J. Simpson is considering at least two offers from television networks to provide commentary, recollections and insights during coverage of the Robert Blake murder trial scheduled for October.

The trial, ironically, is set to be held in the same Los Angeles courtroom in which O.J. was tried. The Times report says two American television networks are prepared to pay Simpson $40,000 a day for the job.

Blake, the star of the television detective series "Baretta," is alleged to have shot his wife outside a restaurant two years ago.

Simpson, 55, who spends his days playing golf and arguing with his family in Florida, said last week that he would like to talk to Blake before making any final decision on broadcasting.

Blake is being held in the same cell occupied by Simpson before his own televised trial in 1995.

"I do not know if Robert Blake is innocent or guilty – very few people can know that for sure – but I do know what it is like to be hounded and treated unfairly," said Simpson, whose pledges to find his former wife's "real" murderer have been mocked by critics.

"I want to remind people that a man is innocent until he is proven guilty, otherwise we are all in trouble. My first reaction was an immediate feeling of compassion because I knew what he was about to go through."

Simpson advised Blake not to take a lie-detector test, watch television or blacken his wife's name in public: "It just makes you look bad."

The former actor said he "loves the world of television" but denied reports he was involved in a prospective 13-hour reality series compiled from film taken of him in public over the past three years. "Who would want to watch 13 hours of me at a golf club?" he said.

The networks are reportedly nervous about public reaction to employing Simpson, who moved to Miami after he was cleared of stabbing Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman to death. He was held liable for their deaths in a subsequent civil case and ordered to pay $50million in damages to the Brown family and a further $15 million to the Goldmans.

Simpson, a former football star who acted in the "Naked Gun" comedy films, has rarely been out of the newspapers since his trial. He was accused of losing his temper and tearing off a motorist's glasses during an alleged road rage incident in 2000. The charges were dismissed. Two months later, FBI agents searched his home for evidence related to a drug-smuggling gang, although no charges followed. Last November, he was fined $218 for speeding in a powerboat through a waterway reserved for manatees.

Police have been called to his house at least four times to investigate reports of violent rows with his girlfriend and his teenage daughter.

Blake earned his highest critical praise in 1967 for playing a killer in the true-crime film "In Cold Blood," before becoming the television detective Tony Baretta. He was largely forgotten in Hollywood until May 2001, when his wife, Bonny Lee Bakley, 44, was murdered outside the Los Angeles restaurant where they had had a meal.

Blake, now 69, said he had walked her to their car and then returned to the restaurant to retrieve a gun he had left behind. When he got back to the car he found Bakley mortally wounded, he told police.

Prosecutors said he had hated his "social climber" wife, having married her the year before only because she was pregnant, and had talked to his handyman about arranging a "hit" on her. The actor denies all charges but a few months before the murder he told an interviewer that he had suffered "dark troubles" dating back to his childhood. "Being locked in closets and beat up and burnt and sexual stuff, but then to come out from all that is lovely. Most people like me end up in prison on death row," he said.

This story pisses me off sooo much I think I'm gonna.....

Oops. Too late. Didn't make it to the toilet.