Lyle Menendez Admits Lack of Imminent Threat : Trial: He testifies under cross-examination that parents were unarmed and had not said they would harm the brothers.

Pressed about inconsistencies in his testimony, Lyle Menendez acknowledged Wednesday that there was no imminent threat to his life when he and his brother shotgunned their parents to death.

His parents held no guns or other weapons and had uttered no direct threats, he admitted during a second day of cross-examination as a skeptical prosecutor challenged his account of events before, during and after the killings--from the brothers’ purchase of shotguns with a phony ID to the spending spree in which they bought Rolex watches and new cars with their dead parents’ insurance money.

With his credibility at issue, Lyle Menendez told jurors he knows that much of what he did “sounds awful.” But he again stuck to his basic defense that he and Erik Menendez genuinely feared for their lives.

“A lot of decisions,” he said, “don’t make sense.”

He and his brother were convinced they only had seconds to spare before their parents would have killed them on the night of Aug. 20, 1989, so they frantically shot first, Lyle Menendez said.

Although the elder Menendez brother had related details of the killings last week under the gentle guidance of his own attorney, he was made to repeat the account Wednesday punctuated by the questioning of Deputy Dist. Atty. Pamela Bozanich.

After Lyle Menendez again said he burst into the TV room of the family’s Beverly Hills mansion from doors on the left, for instance, she noted that the angle of firing would have made it impossible for his father to be hit on the inside of the left thigh--where an autopsy found a prominent wound.

And while the shootings left him “numb and exhausted and very, very in shock,” he acknowledged that they had the presence of mind to pick up all the shotgun shells, which bore the brothers’ fingerprints.

Lyle Menendez, 25, and Erik Menendez, 22, are charged with first-degree murder in the shotgun slayings of their parents, Jose Menendez, 45, a wealthy entertainment executive, and Kitty Menendez, 47.

Prosecutors, who are seeking the death penalty, contend that the brothers killed out of hatred and greed. The defense says they killed in self-defense after years of physical, mental and sexual abuse.

In response to the prosecutor’s challenges Wednesday, Lyle Menendez elaborated on the reasons that he and his brother believed they were doomed after they threatened to expose years of sexual abuse by their father.

For instance, he said, on Aug. 19, 1989, the Menendez parents waited an hour for the sons to come home so the family could go on a long-planned shark-fishing trip. The brothers considered the fact that their parents waited as evidence that they were plotting to kill the brothers at sea, he said.

“You found it nerve-racking that your family waited for you for a family outing? You found that peculiar?” Bozanich asked.

“It was to me a big deal,” Lyle Menendez said.

He cited as another ominous incident a friend’s calling the house that Sunday and being told by Jose Menendez that Lyle was out--which was not true.

He said that when Erik Menendez came home about 9:45 p.m., the parents and sons got into an argument--about the brothers’ going to the movies--and the parents went into the TV room and closed the doors.

“Closing the doors to me was the last thing that caused me to totally freeze and panic and realize it was happening,” Lyle Menendez said.

“I thought they were armed,” he added. “I thought they were in the process of killing us. I thought they planned this in advance.”

“This is what really happened, Mr. Menendez?” Bozanich asked.

“This is what really happened,” Menendez said.

He did, however, say that he never searched the Beverly Hills home for the weapons his parents allegedly were intending to use. He said he believed his mother might kill them with a silencer-equipped handgun.

Although silencers are illegal, Lyle Menendez said he had no doubt that his parents could obtain them through underworld connections.

Bozanich later pressed him about other weapons--the shotguns the brothers bought at a Big 5 sporting goods store in San Diego two days before the shootings. But Lyle Menendez said there was no plan to buy them out of town as part of a murder plot.

In buying the weapons, Erik Menendez used a driver’s license belonging to Donovan Goodreau, a former roommate of Lyle. Erik gave the address “63 August St.” in San Diego, although there is no such address. And he used an accurate San Diego ZIP code.

“He just sort of panicked,” Lyle Menendez said of his brother. “He used the month” for the street name. “He wrote in the address. And he happened to pick the ZIP code out.”

As he did last Friday, when he testified about the killings under questioning from his own lawyer, Lyle Menendez said he recalled little about the scene.

“I remember glass shattering, huge noises that seemed all around me,” he said. “I was just firing as fast as I could.”

Bozanich seemed skeptical, as well, about his explanation of what happened right after the killings. He said they drove to a Century City movie theater and bought tickets, up to Mulholland Drive and hid the guns, back down to a gas station in Beverly Hills and dropped their bloody clothes in a trash bin, and then out to Santa Monica, where Lyle Menendez called a friend at 11:07 p.m. to establish an alibi.

The killings occurred about 10 p.m.

“How did you do all that in 67 minutes?” Bozanich said.

“I haven’t added it all up, but it would be under 67 minutes,” Lyle Menendez said.

The prosecutor--who is to continue her cross-examination today--reserved particular indignation Wednesday for questions about Lyle’s extravagant spending after the slayings.

“What you did was you killed your parents and began to spend their money, right?” she asked.

“Well, that’s something that happened,” he replied. “But I don’t think characterizing it that way is putting it in the right context.”

He acknowledged buying three Rolex watches and a money clip for $15,039, a Porsche for $70,484 and many new clothes. A few months later, he made a $300,000 down payment on a $550,000 restaurant in Princeton, N.J.

Erik Menendez, who is scheduled to follow his brother to the witness stand, also bought a new car and hired a $50,000-a-year tennis coach.

“Why did you need to buy a Rolex watch four days after your parents were killed?” Bozanich asked Lyle Menendez.

“I didn’t need to,” he said. Finding himself in a jewelry store, he said he “just purchased the Rolexes.”

“I realize, I look back, it sounds awful, and I wish I hadn’t bought them,” he said. “It is, you know, a bad thing. But it wasn’t for any specific reason. I was just wandering in a store. And I was feeling down. And I bought them.”

“So you thought that a $9,000, 18-karat-gold Rolex would go nicely with your funeral suit, is that right?” Bozanich asked.

“No. I didn’t. Again, I really didn’t think much about money in my life. I just bought things spur of the moment all the time. This was just another thing.”