Menendez Tells of Hunt for Will, Spending Spree : Trial: He says a search the of family’s computer for a testament was initiated by a cousin, not him. And he maintains he spent heavily even before his parents were killed.

Lyle Menendez tried to explain to jurors Monday his actions after the shooting deaths of his parents--big spending, the search for a will and suggestions that the killing was a “mob hit.”

Lyle Menendez, 25, has admitted that he and his brother Erik, 22, shotgunned their parents to death in their Beverly Hills mansion Aug. 20, 1989, but says they killed in self-defense, believing the parents would kill them out of fear of a sex scandal.

Prosecutors say that the motive for shooting Jose, 45, and Kitty Menendez, 47, was greed, and that the sons couldn’t wait to get their hands on the family fortune. The sons are charged with first-degree murder.

But Lyle Menendez, who has said he was subjected to a lifetime of abuse, testified that he understood he and his brother had been written out of their father’s will.

“We believed we were out of the will. That’s what my dad told me,” he said. “He mentioned it every so often when he would say things about my girlfriends. . . . I didn’t see it as a permanent situation. It was just until I married properly.”

He said his relatives, not he, called an expert to search the family computer for a will. Even if it had been found, he said, he knew from the executor, his uncle, that it would not be valid.

“Whether we found one or not, you needed signatures and witnesses,” he said, adding that his uncle told him: “It was interesting but he wasn’t going to waste any more time on it.”

Nevertheless, he said, a cousin, Carlos Menendez, insisted on hiring a computer expert.

“I thought maybe Carlos was up to something and I was suspicious,” Lyle Menendez said. “I thought he might create something in the computer. I didn’t know if he could create a will and write himself in. “

That, he said, was why he hired his own expert and told him to wipe out everything in the computer’s memory.

“Then if Carlos came back and said he found something, he would have written it and I would know,” Lyle Menendez testified.

Of his spending habits, he said merely that he spent a lot before his parents died and continued to do so afterward--when he bought gold Rolex watches, a Porsche, a condominium and a restaurant.

Defense lawyer Jill Lansing asked why he hired bodyguards and spoke of a possible “mob hit” on his parents. He said he got the idea from tabloid TV shows which reported that his father had mob connections.

“I got nervous,” he said.

“You knew the Mafia hadn’t killed your parents, didn’t you?” asked Lansing.

“Right,” Lyle Menendez said.

“Then why were you concerned?” she asked.

“Because nobody else knew it wasn’t a mob hit,” he said. “ . . . I thought if he had some connections and they were afraid of having it exposed, they might think the sons were giving it all up.”

He added that he asked a friend to introduce him to a reputed Mafioso and told the man: “My brother and I were not interested in finding out who killed my parents.”

He said the man assured him he would get the word out and later “he told me I had nothing to worry about.”