Since I was a child, my mother always knew what trouble I was getting myself into whether she was present or not. I wondered about this. She told me she had eyes, "in the back of my head," and I believed her, too. As I grew older, I came to the conclusion that males were born with a guilt complex, while females were born with radar.

Another familiar quote in my household, from both parents, was the phrase, "Don’t you ever do anything to dishonor the family name," followed by a look that produced a healthy dose of fear within myself and my siblings. In fact, not too long ago, one of my sisters brought back the memory that recalled me saying as a youth, "Someday I’m going to be famous, so I better not get into any serious trouble, else it’ll come back to haunt me in the press."

Since that long forgotten remark now recently reborn, my family often wonders why I haven’t yet been thrown in jail by my adventurous lifestyle. Truth be told, I sometimes wonder about that myself...

Still, as I have said many times on record, if you’re going to make a conscientious decision to become famous at whatever level - local, national or international - then you must accept the consequences that your life will forever be an open book to the public even after you’re dead.

Therefore...be careful, else, as the good Book says, "your sin will find you out."

Which brings us literally, to my neck of the woods - the artistic communities at the base of the Sequoia National Park in Central California - Kaweah Commonwealth and Three Rivers.

Lately, we’ve been getting quite a bit of press coverage as the media circus comes parading into our area, snooping in and out of bushes, rocks, motel rooms, eating establishments, and neighbor’s lives, attempting in vain to uncover any clue they can into the latest tabloid murder of Robert "Baretta" Blake’s wife, Bonnie.

A year ago (May 4, 2001 to be exact), Bonnie was killed in the family car a few moments after Bobby returned to the LA restaurant where they had just had dinner, so he could retrieve his gun he had left behind (he carried a gun to protect her).

What much of the media at the time forgot to mention was that Bonnie, Blake and the bodyguard, Earle Caldwell, were in Three Rivers to vacation-sightsee just a month before the murder. Now that Blake has been arrested and charged with killing his wife, the Los Angeles District Attorney says that Blake and Caldwell (along with the unsuspecting victim) were actually in town (Blake owns river front property here) scouting locations to dispose of the body. Of course, no one is sure why that trench was dug on Blake’s land that could fit a body just nice, but I’m sure that will come up in the trial and thereby place the tiny towns of Three Rivers and Kaweah on the map.

I first met Bobby a few years ago at a function. We’re connected in a way to our mutual friend, Ernest Borgnine, and our love for Ernie’s film, Marty. Bobby can quote that film as well as I can and do some great improv of those classic scenes.

And I can recall my own youth when I first saw Blake in the classic film, In Cold Blood, that was just a masterpiece of movie making. This was before he did the hit TV detective show, Baretta, and I can’t even remember him as a Little Rascal back in the ‘40s.

Could Robert Blake have killed his wife? Yes and no. Anything is possible. Within us, we always want to believe the best in people. We want that shred of hope that the world isn’t as crazy and evil as many of us think it is.

The trial will get underway soon. The evidence will appear. More reporters and morbid seekers passing as tourists will invade our serenity in the hills just north of Los Angeles. Life goes on. Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord. Justice, we hope, will be served. And in the end, whether in this life or the one to come, you can be sure of one thing...

That your sins will find you out.