Kids File Suit Against Blake

The four children of actor Robert Blake's slain wife Bonny Lee Bakley Monday filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the "Baretta" star and his bodyguard, who already face murder charges.

The Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit, filed by Blanchard Tual, who is administrating her estate, seeks unspecified damages.

The children are listed as Glenn Paul Gawron and Holly Lee Gawron from a previous marriage, daughter Jeri Lee Lewis, and Rose Lenore Sophia Blake, her daughter with Blake.

Blake's civil attorney, Barry Felsen, could not immediately be reached for comment on the lawsuit.

The 68-year-old actor, who is being held in the Los Angeles Men's Central Jail without bail, pleaded innocent last week to charges of murder, conspiracy and solicitation of murder. He faces a sentence of life in prison if he is convicted.

Blake's 46-year-old bodyguard and handyman, Earle Caldwell, 46, pleaded not guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit murder. He was freed on Friday after Blake posted his $1 million bail.

Bakley was shot to death as she sat in Blake's black Dodge Stealth sports car near Vitello's restaurant in the Los Angeles suburb of Studio City on May 4, 2001.

Prosecutors charge that Blake, bound to the woman he hated by marriage and a child and unable to find a hit man to do the job, took matters into his own hands and shot her to death outside Vitello's with a World War Two era German pistol.

Caldwell is accused of helping Blake plot the murder, although police say he was out of town on the night she died.

Blake told police he left Bakley, sitting in the passenger seat of his car while he returned to Vitello's to retrieve a gun he had mistakenly left behind, returning to find her shot dead by an unknown assailant who then fled into the night.