Menendez Denies Lying About Guns, Tells of Confusion : Trial: Prosecution and defense lawyers fire questions at younger brother about disputed trip to shop for pistols at a store that had stopped selling them.

Seeking to repair damage from more than a week of cross-examination, Erik Menendez told jurors Friday that he was merely confused, and not fabricating testimony, when he described in detail how he and his brother went shopping for handguns at store that did not sell them.

“I didn’t lie,” he said.

Prosecutors have sought to make the handgun testimony a test of the Menendez brothers’ credibility. After Erik Menendez told last week of shopping for the weapons at a Big 5 sporting goods store Aug. 18. 1989, Deputy Dist. Atty. Lester Kuriyama confronted him with the fact that the Big 5 chain had stopped selling handguns three years earlier.

Almost as soon as Kuriyama completed his main cross-examination Friday morning, Erik Menendez’s lawyer gave him a chance to explain away what the prosecution had portrayed as a big lie.

Erik Menendez gave two possible explanations: He may have mistaken pellet and BB guns for real handguns at the Big 5 in Santa Monica; or he could have been at another store.

“I’m not sure I know anything anymore,” he told defense attorney Leslie Abramson.

In a give and take that led jurors, like spectators at a tennis match, to pivot their heads back and forth to catch every word, Kuriyama and Abramson wound up firing questions at the younger Menendez brother.

He admitted to Kuriyama: “You shocked me when you said there were no handguns there.”

He also told the prosecutor: “I’m saying now I was obviously wrong about something.”

Erik Menendez, 22, and Lyle Menendez, 25, are charged with first-degree murder in the slayings of their parents, Jose Menendez, 45, a wealthy entertainment executive, and Kitty Menendez, 47, two days after the contested trip to the Big 5. They used shotguns bought at a Big 5 in San Diego.

If convicted, the brothers could be sentenced to death.

Prosecutors contend that they killed their parents out of hatred and greed. The defense says they lashed out in fear after years of physical, mental and sexual abuse.

Before the lively back and forth over the gun store Friday, Kuriyama pressed Erik Menendez over that fear. The 22-year-old said he genuinely felt that his life was in danger, even though that emotion may seem unreasonable now.

Referring to the evening of Aug. 20, 1989, Kuriyama asked: “Now you’ve testified, sir, that your mother was going to kill you that night?”

“Yes,” Erik Menendez said.

“That’s still your belief, is that correct?”

“Well, if I knew they did not have weapons in that room when they walked in that room, I would not have walked in the room,” Erik Menendez said, referring to the TV room of the family’s Beverly Hills mansion. “I don’t know what my belief to this day is. I can’t be sure that’s my belief to this day.”

Police say the parents did not have weapons in the TV room.

Looking at a picture of the coffee table in the room, Erik Menendez identified various enrollment and parking documents from UCLA, which he was to enter that fall. His mother, he said, always filled out such forms.

“Now if your mother was planning to kill you,” Kuriyama asked, “would she have been filling out your applications for UCLA?”

Abramson objected, saying that the question was argumentative. Van Nuys Superior Court Stanley M. Weisberg agreed.

With that, and after six days of cross-examination before the two juries hearing the case, Kuriyama sat down.

Abramson stood up. Trying to show that Erik Menendez was frequently confused, she asked him a variety of questions about geography. He placed Louisville, Ky., in Tennessee and, for a second time in the trial, Quito, Ecuador, in Peru.

With that foundation, Abramson launched into the issue of the purported Aug. 18, 1989, trip to the Big 5.

Showing him eight photos of the gun display at the Big 5 store on Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica--taken by the defense during the last week--Erik Menendez said the scene looked familiar.

Even now, he said, the pellet guns in the display cases looked like real handguns to him.

Left unclear was why a store clerk would have told the brothers about a 15-day waiting period for buying handguns, as Erik Menendez again testified Friday, if they were only looking at pellet and BB guns.

Erik Menendez said he might have been confused about which store it was. He said his memory has always been that the episode took place within a block or two of the San Diego Freeway, but that he now knows that the Big 5 on Wilshire Boulevard is a mile west of the freeway.

Abramson asked: “At this point do you know where you were when you had this discussion with the man about buying a handgun?”

“No,” he said.

When Abramson was done with her redirect examination, it was Kuriyama’s turn again.

“Now that you know the Big 5 didn’t have real handguns, you’re coming up with a different story, aren’t you?” the prosecutor asked.

“Sir, I described exactly where the Big 5 was to you,” Erik Menendez said. “I described exactly where it was. I knew you could easily go and check it out. I mean, I wasn’t lying to you.”

Moments later, Kuriyama asked: “You’ve had a week to think about what you were going to tell these juries, to explain how to get out of this?”

“I didn’t lie,” Erik Menendez said.

“Have you been discussing this with your brother?

“Certainly I did.”

“About, ‘How are we going to get out of this one?’ ”

“No, I’ll tell you what I’ve been thinking over the last week if you’d like me to.”

Kuriyama said that was not necessary, and again sat down.

Abramson moved to the lectern and asked: “Mr. Menendez, you were anxious to tell us what you were thinking. What were you thinking?”

“When?” he said, drawing laughs from jurors.

The last week, Abramson said. “I was thinking about how I could be wrong when I was quite sure I was right,” Erik Menendez said.

After court, Kuriyama declined to comment. But Deputy Dist. Atty. Pamela Bozanich told reporters that the defense had employed the old rule, “If you can’t fix it, confuse it.” She added: “That was, if not successfully done, artfully done.”

Nevertheless, Bozanich said Erik Menendez’s “credibility has been attacked. And that’s what we sought to do.”

“All we were trying to do is show he is confused,” Abramson said after court. “I don’t think there’s any doubt this kid is very confused.” Then she added: “I don’t believe you lose any points if you’re confused.”