Menendez Case Fascinates Court-Watchers Nationwide : Trial: On cable TV and computer networks, they register reactions. The verdicts range from skepticism to sympathy.

With Lyle and Erik Menendez testifying for their lives, let’s go to the phones over at Court TV.

You’re on, Jane in Georgia: “Lyle is a phony, cold-blooded killer. I hope there’s zero chance for acquittal.” Debbie from Mississippi, a counterpoint, please: “I believe that Lyle is telling the truth.” And Dorothy from Texas: “When Lyle purchased three Rolexes, who was the third one for?”

OK, let’s move on, and sneak a peek at the computer geeks on the Prodigy electronic bulletin board: “This topic is tooooo popular,” says one of the hundreds of notes on the Menendez brothers. Oh, here’s one for defense lawyer Leslie Abramson: “Hopefully you have something in your ‘back pocket’ to save Erik’s butt, ‘cause things aren’t going so well right now.”

Now let’s swing out to the scene, where Regena Woods has camped out overnight on the front steps of the Van Nuys Superior Court to catch Erik Menendez testifying. “I just think they’re both so cute,” the 24-year-old says, adding that she hopes they won’t be convicted of murder. But if they go to prison, she says, she wants to visit, “to be a friend.”

It’s Menendez mania! “A collaboration of Sidney Sheldon, Judith Krantz, Jackie Collins and Truman Capote would not have concocted a soap opera to rival this saga,” A.R. offers on the Prodigy board.

Of course, it’s not a fictional soap opera. It’s a deadly serious criminal trial, with Erik and Lyle Menendez facing first-degree murder charges in the shotgun slayings of their parents. The brothers’ testimony, 19 days of it, left prosecutors seemingly confident they will get conviction on some count, but defense lawyers are also optimistic in their hopes that they have at least saved their clients from the gas chamber.

Although jurors won’t have their say for at least another month, several sources provide loud evidence of what other spectators are thinking.

From the call-in lines, computer bulletin boards and even that most unscientific of barometers, the “Tonight Show” monologue, it’s clear that most of the public is not buying the brothers’ claim that they had to kill because their parents were about to murder them. But their teary tales of horrifying sexual abuse seem to have generated sympathy from a healthy minority, especially women.

“What if . . . they are telling the truth?” asked Lorna E. from Colorado on the Prodigy computer system. “How could anybody totally fabricate such stories and emotions. . . ? This was a sick family at best!”

From the start, it was a case that had it all, the saga of two brothers who went from the gates of Beverly Hills to the cells of Los Angeles County Jail, all broadcast live nationwide on cable’s Court TV, with the high points splashed again on the evening news.

Witnesses have talked of sex, incest, violence, big money, pills, booze, fancy cars, a domineering father, a suicidal mother, vulgar language, rage, passion, fear and disappearing wills. And the fact that the killers very nearly got away with it.

One thing the trial is not is a whodunit. Both brothers admit that they killed their parents on Aug. 20, 1989, with shotgun blasts in the TV room of the family’s Beverly Hills mansion.

That has left one fundamental issue: What led Lyle, 25, and Erik, 22, to blast away at their father, Jose Menendez, 45, a wealthy entertainment executive, and mother, Kitty Menendez, 47?

Prosecutors contend that the motive was hatred and greed, alleging that the brothers were impatient for the $14-million family estate. The defense contends that the brothers lashed out in fear after years of physical, mental and sexual abuse.

This has all been Page 1 fodder locally for weeks. Then, in the past month, as first Lyle and then Erik Menendez took the stand, it grabbed a nationwide audience.

On the “Tonight Show,” Jay Leno made jokes about the case for several nights running.

One last week went: “Yesterday, Erik said his parents made fun of him because he never had a girlfriend. You know, I don’t know how to break it to him, but shooting your mom and dad isn’t really going to help your chances.”

Over the weekend, it was “Saturday Night Live.” During the “Weekend Update” segment, mock news anchor Kevin Nealon noted that basketball player Larry Johnson had just signed a 12-year, $84-million contract.

That set up his punch line: “To give you an idea of how much $84 million is, the Menendez brothers would have had to kill six sets of parents for that kind of money.”

Interest is so high that it’s down to even the smallest detail.

“I’m even interested in what sweaters they choose to wear,” said Jonathan Alter, a columnist for Newsweek magazine, who catches the trial on Court TV in his Manhattan home.

The brothers routinely wear sweaters to court, in part because the courtroom is chilly and in part because it’s an oft-practiced defense strategy to make a defendant appear younger--the suits and ties they wore during pretrial hearings made them look like men, not boys. Now Erik often dons a white cable-knit; Lyle seems to prefer a peach crew neck.

“Listen,” said Alter, who like many has formed strong opinions. “The sweater didn’t work for Jimmy Carter. It didn’t work for Dan Rather. I don’t think it’s going to work for the Menendez brothers.”

With the brothers on the witness stand--Erik Menendez is scheduled to step down after a brief appearance today--the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office has been getting 50 calls a day from people offering tips that they hope will lead to conviction, said one of the prosecutors on the case, Deputy Dist. Atty. Pamela Bozanich. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” she said.

Lyle Menendez has been receiving 20 to 40 letters a day, many from sympathetic victims of child abuse wanting to relate their own painful histories, said his lawyer, Jill Lansing.

Court TV, which usually averages about 200 calls a week on its recorded comment line, has zoomed up to about 1,000 with the brothers were the stand, said Merrill Brown, senior vice president for corporate and program development.

The 2-year-old cable network, which reaches 13.5 million homes nationwide, got into the Los Angeles market for the first time--serving 200,000 Westside homes through Century Cable--because of the Menendez case, Brown said.

At Prodigy--the White Plains, N.Y.-based computer network that provides subscribers with news and travel information along with “bulletin boards” on which users share views on numerous topics--there has been an “overwhelming response,” said spokeswoman Carol Wallace.

A Sept. 23 electronic notefrom Matt D. asked: “It seems that only women are interested in this subject. Can anyone explain this?”

He got 84 responses. Most were from women, including Chris W., who explained: “Women comprise the largest audience for true crime.” She added, “We little dears often have more on our minds than a red-tag sale at the mall.”

A few days later, Betty C. weighed in: “The way I’ve seen it,” the brothers “are very undereducated and stupidly coached.” And Patricia H. said: “These two are in deep doo-doo if their juries have two brain neurons to rub together.”

The high-pitched nature of the debate--with participants sometimes seeming like professional wrestlers yelling insults at each other--stems in part from the bold defense, disclosed only weeks before the trial began and nearly four years after the slayings.

To some, it goes beyond audacious: that the brothers could muster agonized screams as they called 911 to report that they had found their parents dead, spend $15,039 on Rolex watches and money clips days later and then--only after they were exposed as the killers--plead that they were the real victims in the Menendez household.

“I’m a Catholic priest who shudders every time a mention is made of the sexual bizarreness that allegedly took place in the Menendez household,” said an unidentified caller to Court TV. “Pretty gruesome stuff. In any event, they’re lying.”

But to others, the brothers’ tales of abuse have been more than convincing. Kaye from California called Court TV to say that Erik and Lyle Menendez “had more than a justifiable reason to fear for their lives.”

Mindful that there is abundant passion out there, the prosecution and defense seemed to tailor their tactics accordingly.

Under questioning by Abramson, Erik Menendez described in graphic detail how his father molested him for 12 years, even though such testimony does not directly address the only grounds for self-defense allowed under California law--that the brothers faced an imminent threat to their lives.

But legal experts say that, when it comes time to deliberate, jurors may simply ignore such fine points and vote with their hearts.

Prosecutors, on the other hand, have relished holding the brothers to the legal standard, suggesting to jurors that the supposedly menacing parents were, in fact, watching television from a sofa while they snacked on berries and ice cream and filled out their youngest son’s UCLA enrollment forms.

At the same time, Deputy Dist. Atty. Lester Kuriyama asked only a handful of questions about the alleged abuse, plainly not wanting to let that delicate issue define the trial. Instead, he challenged Erik Menendez’s credibility through hundreds of questions about his account of the five days leading up to the killings.

The tactic produced the most dramatic moment of the trial. Erik Menendez testified that he and his brother visited a Big 5 store in Santa Monica on Aug. 18, 1989, to buy handguns. But Kuriyama pointed out that the chain had stopped selling handguns three years before.

Last Friday, under questioning by Abramson, Erik Menendez said he may have been confused but said, “I didn’t lie.”

After court, both sides said they were satisfied.

Prosecutor Bozanich said “I’m sleeping better than I have in the last four years.”

But Abramson said she was delighted that Erik Menendez had the “ability to tell what he had to tell and not fall apart emotionally or freeze up in terror.”

Lansing, Lyle Menendez’s lawyer, said the tears her client shed humanized him, dispelling the notion that he is “cold, unfeeling, arrogant.”

This week, the defense will call experts to explain why years of abuse led the brothers to think they had no choice but to kill on the night of Aug. 20, 1989, even though outsiders might perceive that there was no threat.

After that, prosecutors will have about a week of rebuttal evidence. Then the case goes to the two juries, one for each brother.

Among legal experts, the consensus is that there will be some conviction, but that could range from first degree murder to manslaughter.

“To the extent you talk about winning, it depends on how you define winning,” said Cynthia McClain-Hill, a Los Angeles lawyer and investment banker who has been a Court TV commentator.

“If your definition is whether or not these gentlemen end up on Death Row, I would think that at this juncture the defense is in good shape,” she said. “If winning is defined as something less than murder, I would not be so optimistic.”

In the meantime, this just in on the Court TV lines, from Suzanne in Oklahoma: “Please give us Menendez all day long until it’s finished.”