LOS ANGELES — After more than a month of testimony from 62 witnesses, the prosecution's murder case against Robert Blake has come down to the word of three characters of dubious repute who say the actor tried to cast them as real-life hit men.

Two are retired stuntmen who have had problems with drugs and the law. The third is a street thug-turned-minister who projected a persona that evoked comparisons to one of the characters in television's mob drama "The Sopranos."

All three say they refused Blake's overtures.

Blake's trial is expected to conclude by month's end.

The three witnesses portrayed Blake, 71, as a man who had reached his wit's end in 2001 as he tried to extricate himself from a relationship with a con artist and convicted felon who had given birth to his child.

Deputy District Attorney Shellie Samuels is relying on them to convince jurors that Blake killed his wife, Bonny Lee Bakley, when he couldn't get anyone else to do it.

Defense attorney M. Gerald Schwartzbach has attacked all three as liars. He got one to acknowledge on the witness stand that he was a heavy cocaine user afflicted with paranoid delusions and two of them to say that Blake never directly asked them to kill his wife.

There are no fingerprints, no DNA evidence and no murder weapon that can be linked to Blake. There was no blood on his clothing after Bakley was killed and only minimal gunshot residue on his hands, which could have come from a gun he said he carried for protection.

Blake, best known for his lead role in the 1970s TV series "Baretta" and the movie "In Cold Blood," is charged with shooting Bakley, 44, on May 4, 2001, as she sat in a car near his favorite restaurant.

Frank Minucci, a self-described former loan shark and "bad guy" who played a mob boss in a movie, said Blake used filthy language when talking about Bakley and wanted her "annihilated."

"He said, 'She's a pig. I don't know why I got involved with her,' " Minucci testified.

He said that he talked to Blake by phone but that they never met in person. Although Blake promised "a blank check" for him to do "something heavy," Minucci said, he acknowledged Blake never asked him directly to kill his wife.

Gary McLarty, a former "Baretta" stuntman, said Blake offered him $10,000 and showed him Bakley's living quarters, pointing out a place where "someone could go up the stairs at night and pop her."

The defense has suggested Blake was trying to hire McLarty to protect Bakley.

McLarty, 64, admitted heavy cocaine use and paranoid delusions — including one that satellites were being used to track him — and acknowledged being hospitalized for mental problems last year. He said he killed a man in self defense a few years ago.

McLarty said that no money changed hands and that Blake only "insinuated" he wanted Bakley dead.

Ronald "Duffy" Hambleton, a former methamphetamine user who denied knowing anything about a plot to kill Bakley until six months after the crime, gave the most detailed account of Blake allegedly scouting locations for the slaying, including one near where Bakley eventually was killed.

During cross-examination, the 68-year-old retired stuntman admitted to inconsistencies in his accounts and said he read many details of the slaying in newspapers before he talked to police. But Hambleton refused to change his basic story: that Blake wanted him to kill Bakley.

When Hambleton resisted, he said, Blake responded: "If you're not going to do it, I sure as hell am."