From the Archives: Claims of Hatred, Abuse Traded in Menendez Case

Lyle and Erik Menendez killed their parents, then confessed to a therapist that they were driven by hatred and the desire to be free from their father’s “domination and impossible standards,” prosecutors said as the Beverly Hills brothers went on trial Tuesday for murder.

In their opening statements, defense attorneys countered that what the brothers wanted to be free from was physical, emotional and sexual abuse. After the brothers threatened to expose the abuse, they killed their parents in the living room of the family’s $4-million mansion, fearing that their parents were about to kill them, defense lawyers said.

“This case will take you behind the facade of rich houses, fancy cars, wealthy friends and impressive social engagements” of Beverly Hills, said Jill Lansing, Lyle Menendez’s lead attorney. The Menendez house, she claimed, was a “war zone.”

Prosecutors took a different view. “But for a few mistakes they made, this was almost the perfect murder,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Pamela Bozanich said.Lyle Menendez, 25, wearing a white sweater and pink shirt, showed no emotion as Lansing alleged that his father had sodomized him and that his mother had chased him around the house with a knife. But later, outside the courtroom, Lansing said Lyle Menendez had cried softly. Erik Menendez, 22, in a blue shirt and matching tie, repeatedly wiped tears from his eyes and stared at the floor.

Both are charged with first-degree murder in the Aug. 20, 1989, slayings of their parents: Jose Menendez, 45, chief executive of a Van Nuys video distribution firm, and Kitty Menendez, 47. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

The case, which has generated intense publicity, attracted dozens of reporters and an overflow crowd Tuesday at the Van Nuys Superior Court. A Hollywood screenwriter showed up at 6:30 a.m., an hour before the courthouse opened and 2 1/2 hours before the case began, just to make sure he got a seat. He did--he was first in line.

Seats in the fourth-floor courtroom were at a premium in large part because the trial has two juries, one for each brother. Judge Stanley Weisberg impaneled two juries because some evidence will be admissible against only one brother.

While the lawyers delivered opening statements to one jury, the other jury waited outside the courtroom.

Testimony began late Tuesday with the first prosecution witness, 911 dispatcher Christine Nye, who took the emotional call from Lyle Menendez reporting that his parents had been shot. The prosecution case promises to be straightforward, both Bozanich and Deputy Dist. Atty. Lester Kuriyama said in separate opening statements. Both also made it clear that their case relies heavily on the testimony of the brothers’ therapist, L. Jerome Oziel. Weisberg has ordered Oziel to testify.

For the first time, defense lawyers said Tuesday that both Lyle and Erik Menendez will testify in their own defense.

In a session with Oziel about two months after the killings, Erik Menendez said he was “having vivid dreams of his parents being murdered,” Kuriyama said. “He told Dr. Oziel, ‘We did it.’ “The brothers told Oziel that they “did it” because Jose Menendez had “controlled them and made them feel inferior,” Bozanich said.

They also wanted their parents’ millions, the prosecutors said, so they decided to kill them.According to Kuriyama, the brothers told Oziel that they included Kitty Menendez in the plan because they believed that she “would have been a witness and would have been miserable and suicidal without Jose.”

On the Friday before the killings, the brothers drove to San Diego, where they bought two 12-gauge shotguns, Bozanich said.

About 10 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 20, the brothers walked into the family living room, wielding shotguns. In a session with Oziel, Kuriyama said, the brothers described what happened:

“The father cried out, ‘No! No! No!’ The brothers then began to blast away.”

Oziel will testify that the brothers told him that Kitty Menendez was “moaning on the floor” and “tried to crawl away,” Kuriyama said. Oziel will also testify that the brothers told him that they got more ammunition and Lyle Menendez shot his still-twitching mother to death, Kuriyama said.

An autopsy showed that Jose Menendez was hit five times, including once in the back of the head, and Kitty Menendez was hit 10 times. One of those 10, Kuriyama said, was a “contact wound” to the left cheek, meaning the gun was fired as it rested there against her skin.

The brothers buried the guns in an embankment off Mulholland Drive, and Erik Menendez threw bloody clothes in a trash bin, Kuriyama said.

Relying on an alibi--that they had gone to the movies in Century City and a food festival in Santa Monica--the brothers then lied to police about their whereabouts that night, both prosecutors said. They “nearly got away with their crimes,” Kuriyama said.

Seven months later, and only after police learned of Oziel, were Lyle and Erik Menendez arrested, prosecutors said. Never, Bozanich said, did either brother tell Oziel about allegations of abuse.

That, responded Lansing, Lyle Menendez’s attorney, is because the brothers “made the decision they were not going to reveal the family secrets.”

Lansing and Leslie Abramson, Erik Menendez’s lead attorney, both said they plan to challenge Oziel’s credibility.

The darkest family secret, the defense lawyers said, is that Jose Menendez molested Lyle Menendez from age 6 to 8 and Erik Menendez from age 6 to 18.

The molestation continued until the week before the killings, Abramson said.

For both sons, the sexual abuse began with inappropriate “massages,” then escalated to sex and violence, the lawyers said.

Kitty Menendez, meanwhile, would periodically “make her son submit to her physical inspection of his genitals, which she called ‘checking you out,’ ” Abramson said. This went on, Abramson said, until Erik Menendez was 15.

Abramson said relatives will testify that Kitty Menendez was “cold and distant, some say hostile” to her sons. Lansing called her “violent, unstable, drug-addicted, alcohol-dependent and obsessive.”

As punishment, Kitty Menendez would order her older son under a bed, where he had no choice but to roll in droppings left there by the family’s pet ferret, Lansing said.

Once, Lansing said, Lyle Menendez called to his mother while she was in the kitchen slicing vegetables. Distracted, she cut herself. She smeared her blood on his face and made him sit that way through dinner, Lansing said.Five days before the killings, Kitty and Lyle Menendez had a fight. She ripped off his toupee, and Erik Menendez learned for the first time that his brother’s hair had fallen out when he was a teen-ager, Abramson said.

With Lyle’s secret revealed, Erik Menendez confided to his brother the secret of the molestation, Abramson said. That night, Lyle Menendez confronted his father and told him to stop. He was undeterred, Abramson said.

That same night, Kitty Menendez told her younger son she had known “all along” about the sexual abuse, Abramson said.

For the next three days, Lyle and Erik Menendez lived in “increasing terror” that their parents would kill them rather than allow the secret of the molestation to be revealed publicly, Abramson said.

Intending to purchase handguns for protection, the brothers drove to San Diego and bought shotguns after learning that a handgun purchase requires a two-week waiting period, both defense lawyers said.

On that Sunday night, the brothers believed that their parents were about to kill them, Abramson said. Rather than be killed, the brothers walked into the living room and shot “in pure terror, pure panic.”

The brothers sat and waited for neighbors to call police. After a few minutes, when no officers arrived, they invented an alibi, Abramson said.

Seven months later, after his brother was arrested, Erik Menendez, who was playing in a tennis tournament overseas, opted to return home to surrender, Abramson said. Erik Menendez flew from Israel to London to Florida to Los Angeles, “knowing that by doing so, he was facing the gas chamber.”