Therapist’s Love Poem Read to Jurors at Menendez Trial

With the focus on topics seemingly more suited for a soap opera, the murder trial of Lyle and Erik Menendez turned Tuesday to lurid love letters and a discussion of the etiquette of AIDS tests before sex.

Neither the letters nor the tests involved the brothers, however. For the fifth straight day, Beverly Hills psychologist L. Jerome Oziel took the stand, and for the third straight day, he was asked mostly to relate the intimate details of his affair with Judalon Smyth.

Even Oziel laughed Tuesday when a poem he wrote to Smyth was read aloud: “For like a nymph, she strides from the forest at daybreak dressed in white where no other man has known her--Judalon.”

The affair has taken center stage at the trial because defense attorneys are seeking to undermine the character of Oziel, the key prosecution witness. Prosecutors are trying to show that despite his mistakes Oziel is a believable witness. He testified last week that the brothers confessed to him on Oct. 31 and Nov. 2, 1989, that they had killed their parents two months before.

Lyle Menendez, 25, and Erik Menendez, 22, are charged with first-degree murder in the Aug. 20, 1989, shotgun slayings of Jose Menendez, 45, and Kitty Menendez, 47.

In a September, 1989, letter, Smyth wrote: “The seed of our love was there long before we met. It was part of life’s plan--destiny.”

Oziel characterized the poem--which he wrote for her in January, 1990--as a lark. Without jurors present, defense attorney Leslie Abramson told Van Nuys Superior Court Judge Stanley Weisberg: “They have their pile of sleazy letters. We have ours.”

Though the letters were read to jurors, the result of Smyth’s July, 1989, AIDS test--it came back negative--was not.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Lester Kuriyama argued to the judge that Oziel had asked Smyth to be tested and said that could reassure female jurors who might be concerned about a married man having an affair without “taking measures to protect his wife.”

Abramson objected to it being used as evidence, saying sarcastically, “Oh, sure! Let the sleaze fly! What the heck!” Weisberg sided with her, saying, “There has to be some limit to the (testimony) here.”