Lyle Menendez Admits Lies, Insists He Killed in Fear : Trial: Defendant keeps poise under piercing cross-examination. He calls a prison term ‘very likely.’

Conceding that he had lied repeatedly to cover up his role in the shotgun slayings of his parents, Lyle Menendez nonetheless insisted Tuesday that he was telling the truth in court--that he and his brother killed out of raw fear.

Under a piercing cross-examination, Lyle Menendez admitted that he had lied when he called 911 to report that he had stumbled upon the bodies, lied frequently to police, lied to his tennis coach, lied to newspaper reporters and even lied for years to his family.

His father’s motto, he recalled, was, “Lie, cheat, steal but win.” Testifying with his life at stake, however, Menendez said he was now being honest: “The decision was made to say exactly what happened, the bad details as well as the good things. There were times I lied to people. I hope people understand.”

Lyle Menendez, who had spent weeks being prepared by his lawyers for this day, had an answer for every question. He spoke in a calm, steady voice. He never lost his poise. He also acknowledged that jurors may judge his answers as lacking.

“We may go off to prison--very likely,” he said.

Lyle Menendez, 25, and his brother Erik, 22, are charged with first-degree murder in the Aug. 20, 1989, shotgun slayings of their parents, Jose Menendez, 45, a wealthy entertainment executive, and Kitty Menendez, 47. The sons shot the parents in the den of the family’s Beverly Hills mansion.

The defense contends that they killed their parents in self-defense after years of physical, mental and sexual abuse. Prosecutors say they killed out of hatred and greed.

Defense attorneys left the courthouse Tuesday without comment. Deputy Dist. Atty. Pamela Bozanich said, “I think the points that need to be made have been made, and will continue to be made.”

Lyle Menendez is due back on the stand today for further cross-examination.

Under defense questioning the previous five days, he described his father as dominating control freak, his mother as disturbed and his childhood as miserable.

Getting her turn at him at last, Bozanich fired off bursts of short, sharp questions that challenged his version of events.

“You almost got away with it, didn’t you?” the prosecutor asked.

“You characterize it that way,” Lyle Menendez responded. “You think it’s funny. But my brother’s and my life was miserable before we got arrested. It’s obviously not great now. . . . In some ways, being arrested is a relief.”

He admitted, however, that “not every moment” of life in the Menendez household was burdensome.

He said he and his brother enjoyed country clubs, private schools and vacations around the United States and in Europe.

He said he had gone to a speech pathologist and had a hairpiece. As a teen-ager, he said, he never held a job. Always, he said, he was funded by his father with “no concern for money.”

In the summer of 1989, he said, his life was going better than ever. But that Aug. 15, he said, Erik 18, confided to him that he had been abused by their father since the age of 6.

Lyle Menendez testified last week that his father molested him from age 6 to 8 and his mother sexually abused him from age 11 to 13.

Prosecutors contend that the abuse is a fiction. “Is there anything I can ask you or say to you that’s going to get you to say those allegations are untrue?” Bozanich asked at the start of her cross-examination.

“They are true,” Lyle Menendez retorted.

Bozanich quickly reminded jurors the brothers had killed “the two people who could come in and say they’re not true.”

Lyle Menendez said he confronted his father Aug. 17, 1989, threatening to tell outsiders about the abuse. But he left the conversation feeling as if his father would kill the sons rather than endure public humiliation, he testified.

“It seems impossible to believe my dad would choose to get rid of his sons,” Lyle Menendez said. “But that’s what we believed. . . . He was willing to kill me to preserve what he had built for himself.”

“You were your father’s proudest creation?” Bozanich asked.

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“You were his namesake?”

“Yes.”

“You were a Menendez?”

“Yes.”

“You really believed your father was going to destroy you?”

“Yes ma’am.”

On Aug. 18, the brothers went to San Diego and bought shotguns for protection, he said. The night of Aug. 19, they went on a family shark-fishing trip, convinced their parents would kill them at sea.

He said they believed Jose Menendez would arrange the killing so it would be a “silent thing” and explain his sons’ disappearance by saying they had run away.

Lyle Menendez said the options seemed limited. “Nobody in my family would stand up to my father. I didn’t want to go to the police. I didn’t want to run away.”

On the night of Aug. 20, the brothers were again convinced the parents were about to kill them, Lyle Menendez testified.

Frantic, he said, they shot first. Jose Menendez was shot six times, once in the back of the head. Kitty Menendez was shot 10 times, once in the cheek.

“I loved my mother,” Lyle Menendez testified Tuesday.

“When you put the shotgun up to her left cheek and pulled the trigger, did you love your mother?” Bozanich asked him.

“Yes,” he said.

“Was that an act of love, Mr. Menendez?”

“It was confusion. Fear.”

Bozanich asked if he was afraid of his mother when he reloaded and fired the final shot to her face. “Something I saw or something that I heard freaked me out even more,” he said. “I was afraid.”

“You were afraid she was going to live, weren’t you?” Bozanich asked.

“It was a kind of caving in kind of fear,” he said. “I was not really in control.”

Lyle Menendez said he desperately wanted to be a part of his father’s life, but did not know how to stand up to him: “I didn’t confront my father at all.”

“When you had a gun, you confronted him just fine,” Bozanich said.

“We were afraid,” Lyle Menendez said. “We didn’t know what was going on. We thought they were going to kill us.”

Immediately after the killings, Lyle Menendez testified last week, the brothers collected the shotgun shells, ditched the guns off Mulholland Drive and threw their bloody clothes into a gas station dumpster.

He said they fabricated an alibi--going to buy tickets at a Century City movie theater and driving to a Santa Monica food fair.

Then they came back to the Beverly Hills home, and Lyle Menendez called 911 to report that his parents were dead. Bozanich played for jurors the tape of a sobbing, screaming Lyle Menendez on the line to a 911 dispatcher: “Someone killed my parents!”

“Mr. Menendez, in that tape you’re crying quite a bit,” Bozanich noted.

“Yes,” Lyle Menendez said.

“At the same time you’re crying, you’re lying, aren’t you?”

“Um, yes,” he said.

Menendez said he also lied to Beverly Hills police Aug. 21, when he suggested that the killings were linked to his father’s business dealings. “I wanted them to not think it was us,” he testified.

He said he stuck to that story in another interview with Beverly Hills police because, “I didn’t want to go to jail. I didn’t want my brother to go to jail, either.”

Menendez said he also lied to his father’s business associates and to reporters, portraying himself and his brother as grieving victims. The reporters, he said, “were nasty.”

For some time, he said, he hid the truth about the killings--and the allegations of abuse--from relatives, not wanting to hurt them.

He said did not tell police of the abuse because “I they’d understand. We had just shot my parents and regardless of the reason, we were going to go to jail and our life would be ruined.”

From the Courtroom

Excerpts from Tuesday’s cross-examination of Lyle Menendez:

Deputy Dist. Atty. Pamela Bozanich: Mr. Menendez . . . isn’t it true that you killed your parents because you couldn’t stand your father’s control anymore and you couldn’t figure out any other way to kill him except to kill your mother, too?

Lyle Menendez: No, that’s not true.

Bozanich: All right. Now you’ve indicated in your direct examination that you were sexually abused by your father and your mother. Is that correct?

Menendez: Um, with my father. With my mother, I just said what happened and I think it was mutual.

Bozanich: Now is there anything I can ask you or say to you that’s going to get you to say those allegations are untrue?

Menendez: They are true. . . .

Bozanich: And the two people who could come in and say they’re not true, you killed, right?

Menendez: Well, they wouldn’t say they weren’t true. But then again, I don’t really know what they would say.

Bozanich: Well, because they’re not here to deny them, are they?

Menendez: No.

Bozanich: Did you kill your father to get back at him for what you say he did to you when you were a child, sexually?

Menendez: No. I killed him because we were afraid and because of what was going on that weekend. . . .

Bozanich: When you were testifying about . . . molesting your little brother, do you remember your testimony about that?

Menendez: Yes.

Bozanich: Used a toothbrush on him?

Menendez: Yes.

Bozanich: You apologized to him here in court?

Menendez: It was the first time I’ve apologized.

Bozanich: But was that your first opportunity to apologize to him?

Menendez: No.

Bozanich: You want the jury . . .

Menendez: I was also apologizing to my dad.

Bozanich: But because of your actions, your father’s not here.

Menendez: Right.

Bozanich: You want this jury to acquit you, don’t you?

Menendez: I would like to be able to go home and start my life over.