Jury Told Erik Menendez Confessed
Erik Menendez confessed to the shotgun slayings of his parents, saying his brother had told him, “Let’s do it,” with the instruction, “Shoot Mom,” his onetime best friend testified Monday.
Craig Cignarelli, 23, testifying as a prosecution witness, said Erik Menendez also told him he had shot his mother in the TV room of the family’s $4-million Beverly Hills mansion “as she was standing up and yelling.”
Conceding on cross-examination that his recall was fuzzy, Cignarelli said Erik Menendez confessed just a few days after the killings. But he admitted that prosecutors helped him remember a key detail of his story and said he was reluctant to turn in his friend. “I wasn’t sure if I believed it,” he said.
Lyle Menendez, 25, and Erik Menendez, 22, are charged with first-degree murder in the Aug. 20, 1989, shotgun slayings of their parents, Jose Menendez, 47, a wealthy entertainment executive, and Kitty Menendez, 45.
Erik Menendez watched Cignarelli intently Monday, even following him with his eyes as he left the courtroom. But Cignarelli, who admitted Monday that he once wore a secret tape recorder at the request of police to try to catch his friend in another confession, avoided eye contact.
Prosecutors allege that hatred and greed drove the brothers to kill, and are seeking the death penalty. The defense contends that Lyle and Erik Menendez killed in self-defense after years of physical, mental and sexual abuse.
With testimony Monday, the trial entered its second week, and public fascination with it remains extraordinary. KTTV-TV Channel 11 has set aside five to seven minutes on its 10 p.m. newscast for expanded trial coverage. CNN’s “Sonya Live” show Monday was devoted in part to the Menendez trial.
Two to three dozen people are still lining up at every session, hoping to gain admission to the tiny courtroom. The crowd even lined up last Friday, when there was no testimony, only legal arguments about a screenplay co-written in early 1988 by Erik Menendez and Cignarelli.
The script, titled “Friends,” is about a son who murders his parents for a $157-million inheritance. Prosecutors said the play is proof of Erik Menendez’s murderous intent. Defense lawyer Leslie Abramson said it is merely amateurish fiction.
Van Nuys Superior Court Judge Stanley Weisberg, who had put off a decision over the weekend, ruled Monday that the play was not admissible. He said it had been written too long before the killings to be relevant.
Two juries are hearing the case, one for each brother, because some evidence is admissible against only one of them. The two juries heard some separate testimony Monday.
Donovan Goodreau, 26, testified before both juries that his wallet and driver’s license turned up missing after he was kicked out of the college dorm room that he and Lyle Menendez shared. Prosecutors contend that Erik Menendez used that license to buy the shotguns the brothers used to kill their parents.
Goodreau later testified before the Lyle Menendez jury that he once told Lyle he had been molested. But Lyle Menendez did not ever say he had been molested, Goodreau testified.
Yet in March, 1992, Goodreau gave a different account to author Robert Rand, who is writing a book about the Menendez case. In that taped interview, which aired Monday night on KCAL-TV Channel 9, Goodreau said Lyle Menendez told him that Jose Menendez had abused both his sons.
The father “would take baths with them and stuff like that. . . . Oh man . . . it’s weird,” Goodreau told Rand.
Goodreau is scheduled to return to the stand today.
Cignarelli’s testimony was before the Erik Menendez jury only.
Cignarelli testified that Erik Menendez confessed to him on Sept. 1, 1989, a week and a half after the killings, as they were walking around the Beverly Hills mansion.
On cross-examination, Cignarelli said he had initially told police on Nov. 17, 1989, that he remembered the confession occurring the month before, in October. He also said he believed there had been a visitor that day to the house, a computer expert who was working on a family computer.
Only after police and prosecutors told him that the computer expert had visited the house Sept. 1 did he realize that had to have been the day Erik Menendez made the confession, Cignarelli said.
Cignarelli also conceded that during the Nov. 17, 1989, meeting with police, he told detectives a different version of the confession.
That day, Cignarelli said, he told them Erik Menendez had said the plan was for Lyle Menendez to kill the father and Erik the mother, but Lyle actually fired first at both. Erik Menendez fired twice at his mother only after it appeared she was dead, Cignarelli said in his initial meeting with detectives.
He had purposely held those details back under questioning earlier Monday, Cignarelli told defense lawyer Abramson. He added, “I wasn’t sure if he was telling the truth and I didn’t want to be the one who turned him in.”
Yet on Nov. 29, 1989, Cignarelli said, he agreed to wear the tape recorder to a two-hour dinner with Erik Menendez. Police had hoped there would be another confession but there was not.