Witnesses Say Kitty Menendez Suicidal, Husband Cold : Trial: Her psychotherapist, his business colleague testify as defense presentation nears end. Dead man’s second in command was on verge of quitting.

Kitty Menendez was suicidal and obsessed with her husband’s love affair, and her husband was cold and intimidating, preaching, “It is far better to be feared than to be loved,” witnesses said Friday.

The intimate portraits of the couple were offered to jurors in their sons’ murder trial by Kitty Menendez’s psychotherapist and her husband’s business colleague.

“She talked of killing herself and the depression and anger she felt,” said therapist Edwin Cox, who treated Kitty Menendez from 1986 to 1987. “She talked about how she would do it and she talked of previous attempts. It was serious.”

Asked if they discussed how her suicide would affect her sons, Cox said, “The impact on the children would have been secondary to her. Her purpose was to punish her husband and she didn’t think much about the children.”

Roger Smith, who was second in command to Jose Menendez at Live Entertainment, said bluntly: “I didn’t like Mr. Menendez. . . . (He was) totally controlling, belittling, instilling fear.”

Smith said he was planning his resignation when the executive and his wife were shotgunned to death in their Beverly Hills mansion on Aug. 20, 1989.

“It was my intention to walk into his office on Sept. 1 and resign and tell him why,” Smith testified. “ . . . It was because of him, his business ethics and his style.”

He recalled a day when Menendez humiliated an employee and later told Smith: “I’ve always believed, Roger, that it is far better to be feared than to be loved.”

Despite his dislike for Menendez, Smith acknowledged on cross-examination that he spoke well of him at his memorial service.

“Did you feel like a hypocrite?” asked Deputy Dist. Atty. Pamela Bozanich.

“A little bit,” said the witness.

The defense testimony came as Erik and Lyle Menendez’s lawyers were close to wrapping up their case, which has portrayed the Menendez family as dysfunctional and Jose Menendez as a sexual molester of his sons.

The brothers admitted to killing their parents, but said they did so because they thought their parents wanted to murder them. Prosecutors said the brothers killed out of greed and wanted to inherit the family fortune.

Cox was able to give jurors details of Kitty Menendez’s therapy sessions because the family waived all privileges of confidentiality on behalf of the slain woman.

Cox said he was asked by a New Jersey therapist to help Menendez when she moved from there to California because she was suicidal and obsessed with the discovery that her husband had been carrying on an eight-year affair with another woman.

In 16 sessions, the therapist said, Menendez refused to discuss much else. She told him she had found out the other woman’s name, gone to New York and lurked outside her home to get a look at her.

Cox said he asked Menendez if she considered divorce.

“She told me that was out of the question,” he said. “ . . . She loved her husband very much although she was angry at him. (She said) why should she divorce. She had nowhere to go. Appearances were important to her and it would appear that the family had failed.”

Once, Cox said, Menendez mentioned that her eldest son was involved with a woman of whom she disapproved.

“She said Lyle had a girlfriend. . . . She was older and she said she was taking him places sexually that he was not prepared to go,” the witness said. “I found that odd.”

But he said her disapproval of the girl seemed to fit her determination to preserve appearances.

“This would not have been a suitable wife,” he said. “This would not have been a trophy for the family, and that’s what they wanted in a daughter-in-law.”

Even when Menendez admitted she had a dependence on alcohol, he said, she stressed appearances.

“She was proud that she drank cognac,” he recalled. “It was important to her that people thought well of her, and she thought cognac was a high-class drink.”