Mention of Will Deleted From Menendezes’ Home Computer : Crime: Murders of the Beverly Hills couple last August remain unsolved. Investigators and the two sons of the victims aren’t commenting on the latest twist.

Beverly Hills detectives investigating the slayings last August of entertainment executive Jose Menendez and his wife are trying to determine why a reference to a will was deleted from the family’s home computer after the murders, The Times has learned.

Detectives believe that whatever was in the computer regarding a will--whether it referred to a new will or an old one--was intentionally destroyed, according to several sources familiar with the police investigation.

Investigators declined to comment on this aspect of the complex 3 1/2-month-old probe, which has led detectives to explore a variety of leads, so far without tangible success.

Menendez, 45, and his wife, Kitty, 44, were killed on Sunday night, Aug. 20, as they watched television in a wood-paneled library that looked out onto a pool and tennis court at the rear of their spacious Beverly Hills home.

Menendez, chief executive of LIVE Entertainment Inc. of Van Nuys, a major video and music distributor, was hit by several shotgun blasts at close range as he sat on a sofa. His wife’s body was found nearby on the floor.

The couple’s two sons, Lyle, 21, and Erik, 18, reported discovering their parents’ bodies when they returned from a night out.

The brutality of the slayings, as well as the fact that no apparent clues were left at the scene, led some experts to suggest it was a “message killing,” possibly arranged by organized crime elements.

Police have also questioned the Menendez sons on their whereabouts on the night of the killings.

“At one point I expect that we were suspects, absolutely, for a while,” Lyle Menendez said in a recent interview with The Times.

But as the investigation progresses, he said, police “are starting to cross off names and it is my understanding that ours have been (crossed off).”

Beverly Hills’ chief of detectives, Lt. Russ Olson, made clear, however, that no one has been exempted from the investigation, nor is anyone currently viewed as a prime suspect.

“We haven’t stopped looking at things that we had instincts (about) from the very beginning,” Olson said recently. “And that does not exclude organized crime, does not exclude the boys, does not exclude any other angle.”

Family members said police interest in the sons is natural since they were the closest relatives and were living in the house.

“It would be good police work” but not indicative of anything serious for authorities to research family relationships, said an uncle, Brian Andersen of Darien, Ill.

According to terms of a 1980 will filed on behalf of the Menendez couple in Superior Court, Lyle and Erik Menendez are the sole beneficiaries of an estate worth an estimated $14 million.

About the possibility of a second will, relatives said that Jose Menendez was concerned that his 1980 will was out of date in light of his growing wealth, and that he intended to draw up a new document two years ago.

But relatives said there is no evidence that a second will existed.

What is known, according to several sources, is that there was a reference to a will in the computer, located in an upstairs bedroom of the Menendez home. The reference to the will was contained in a file name on a computer disk. Shortly after the slayings, a member of the Menendez family discovered the reference and attempted to view the file, these sources said.

But the relative was unable to do so and made plans to hire a computer expert.

Before that expert could act, however, the file was deleted from the disk in such a way that it could not be recovered by police experts, according to those sources.

Asked about the possibility of a second will, the Menendezes’ probate attorney, Stephen B. Goldberg of Redondo Beach, said: “I don’t know anything about that and we’ve got a will and I don’t want any problems with it.”

Acting on Goldberg’s advice, the Menendez brothers have so far declined to comment on the computer mystery.

Their parents’ will has been filed in Santa Monica Superior Court and is expected to be settled early next year, according to Goldberg.

It states that Jose and Kitty Menendez bequeathed their estates to each other but, in the event that “we should die in a common disaster,” the entire estate is to be turned over to Lyle and Erik Menendez.

The value of the estate has not been officially determined. But sources for the family and their attorneys estimate it at $14 million.

Principal assets are the family’s two-story Beverly Hills house on Elm Drive, valued at about $5.5 million; their former home in Calabasas, currently being remodeled and valued at about $3.5 million; stock in LIVE Entertainment worth about $5 million; plus artworks and other personal property.

Separately, Lyle and Erik are the beneficiaries of a $400,000 life insurance policy on Jose Menendez.

In recent interviews, Lyle and Erik Menendez said they plan to sell the family’s Calabasas home and rent the Beverly Hills residence, which had been leased at different times in the past by entertainers Michael Jackson, Elton John and Prince.

Sons of a hard-working, ambitious Cuban immigrant who rose rapidly from modest circumstances to become a top executive in the entertainment business, the Menendez brothers said they are not content to simply live on their parents’ money.

“It would be revolting to just take a large sum of money and just either blow it or live just comfortably,” said Lyle Menendez. “I would want this generation to do so much more than the last one,” he said.

But in the aftermath of their parents’ deaths, they are struggling to pick up the pieces of their lives.

Erik, who graduated from high school last June, shelved plans to enter UCLA this fall and has hired a personal coach to help him break into professional tennis.

Lyle, who would have been a sophomore at Princeton University this fall, has been vacillating between playing professional tennis and returning for his second year at Princeton in January.

Tennis was an important part of the family’s life. Both sons were talented amateur players who qualified for the prestigious Easter Bowl tournament held each year in Miami. Lyle was ranked 36th in the nation at the time of his retirement from the junior circuit; Erik was unranked.

Seena Hamilton, founder of the Easter Bowl tournament, said she was close to the Menendez family. She characterized both Menendez youths as outstanding tennis players. But, she added, they were only average competitors in a national sense.

“There is no question in my mind that this is an emotional escape,” she said of any plans the brothers have to turn pro.

After his parents’ murder, Lyle said he was arranging to buy a condominium and a house in Princeton, N.J., where the family lived before moving west in 1986.

But in his most recent interview, Lyle said he had backed out of the real estate deals, explaining that he had been “using up finances” in an attempt to “keep busy” and avoid dealing with what happened. Lyle also said he had recently bought a Porsche sports car.

Lyle’s uncle, Brian Andersen, said that “a little of what we’re seeing in him trying to move too fast is sort of a way for him to reach out because he is angry” over the murders and has a difficult time showing emotion.

Although his family had once been influential and wealthy in their native Cuba, Jose Menendez had virtually nothing when his parents sent him out of the country 30 years ago after Fidel Castro seized power. Continuing his education in the United States, Menendez worked his way through Queens College in New York and obtained an accounting degree.

He married Mary Louise Andersen, an athletic, outgoing woman who had been crowned queen of the Oak Lawn (Ill.) Round-Up in her hometown.

Jose Menendez’s rise in business began when he audited a Chicago company and so impressed the firm’s officials that they eventually hired him and made him president of the company.

From there, he held executive positions at Hertz and RCA before coming to California in 1986.

“I don’t think you will ever find a person that will ever say anything about Jose that wasn’t to the effect that he was just extraordinary,” son Lyle said.

Lyle and Erik characterized him as a devoted father who never missed a soccer game in which his sons played. But he also was a perfectionist, never satisfied with his own success. “He really couldn’t do something well enough,” Lyle said.

The father’s drive to succeed rubbed off on the sons. “You become very demanding,” Lyle said, though he added that “it was sometimes difficult for Erik and I.”

The sons said they discovered the bodies of their parents shortly before midnight after returning from an outing that included a trip to the movies in Century City to see “Batman” and a stop afterward at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium to attend the annual “Taste of L.A.” festival featuring foods from some of the city’s best restaurants.

Beverly Hills detectives asked for their movie ticket stubs, but the brothers said they had discarded them as they normally do.

Police also obtained a court order to examine telephone company records to check the sons’ statement that they had gone to the Santa Monica Civic after the movie.

“The sons stated that prior to the discovery (of the bodies), they had been at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium and had made a telephone call from one of the pay phones” to a friend, according to a search warrant request approved by a Beverly Hills municipal judge on Oct. 20. What, if anything, the phone company records reveal has not been disclosed.

A $25,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the killers has been posted by friends of the family and by Jose Menendez’s company. And police say they would welcome any information about the case from the public.

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Correction

Mary Louise (Kitty) Menendez was 47 when she died, not 44.

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