Psychiatrist in Menendez Case Removed From County Panel

Psychiatrist William Vicary, whose testimony about his altered notes threw the second Menendez brothers murder trial into turmoil, has been removed from the panel of mental health professionals who are appointed by county judges to analyze and testify about defendants in court cases.

In an Aug. 2 letter to Vicary that was obtained Friday by The Times, Superior Court Judge Michael Cowell wrote that after reviewing the transcripts of the second Menendez trial and other material, a 10-judge committee decided that the psychiatrist’s “continued participation on the [60-member] panel was inappropriate.”

“The downside is that it’s a negative and certainly not going to help my reputation,” Vicary said Friday. “The upside is that this work doesn’t pay very much and you kind of run yourself ragged driving to all these juvenile halls and local jails and hospitals.”

At the brothers’ second trial, Vicary testified in April that he deleted 24 statements and rewrote 10 pages of his notes under pressure from Leslie Abramson, Erik Menendez’s chief defense attorney.

Abramson has since said that she never told him to “erase” his notes. She maintains that she told him to redact only information already ruled inadmissible at the brothers’ first trial, which began in 1993, and that he acted on his own when he deleted other sections of his notes.