Witness for Menendez Brothers Attempts to Discredit Therapy Session Tape in Which They Discuss Killings

Attorneys for Lyle and Erik Menendez tried again Wednesday to diminish the impact of the tape recording of a therapy session in which the brothers discussed killing their parents--calling an expert witness who testified that the brothers only told their therapist what he wanted to hear.

Mental health professor Ann Burgess said the brothers’ psychologist, L. Jerome Oziel, was “manipulative” and “controlling” during the Dec. 11, 1989, therapy session.

Analyzing the 61-minute tape and a 47-page transcript word by word, Burgess also asserted that Lyle and Erik Menendez repeatedly misused the word mother.

They meant brother, she said, as when Lyle Menendez said: “My father should be killed. There’s no question . . . he’s impossible to live with for myself . . . based on what he’s doing to my mother.”

“That’s a metaphor for brother,” Burgess said.

Lyle Menendez, 25, and Erik Menendez, 22, shotgunned their parents to death in the TV room of the family’s Beverly Hills mansion.

The brothers, who are charged with first-degree murder, testified earlier that they lashed out in fear after years of physical, emotional and sexual abuse.

In the Dec. 11, 1989, session with Oziel, however, they said they killed their mother, Kitty Menendez, to put her “out of her misery” and that their father, Jose Menendez, deserved to die because his infidelity had driven her to despair. There is no mention of self-defense or abuse on the tape.

The tape, first played Friday for Lyle Menendez’s jury, was played Tuesday for Erik Menendez’s jury. The younger Menendez brother, who can frequently be heard sobbing on the tape, cried in court while listening to it Wednesday.

In a hearing without jurors present, defense attorney Leslie Abramson acknowledged that the tape presents the defense with a challenge. It’s a “difficult piece of evidence,” she said.

With jurors present, Abramson called expert witness Burgess, a professor of psychiatric mental health nursing at the University of Pennsylvania, to dismiss the tape as unreliable.

It has no introduction, no identification of who’s speaking, no indication that the speakers have consented to be taped--the usual “protocol” one would expect, Burgess said.

More importantly, she said, Oziel keeps interrupting and dominates the talk by offering his own ideas.

At one point, Oziel asked, “Well, when, when you ended up, um, killing your mom, did you feel like you were, did you feel like you were sparing her?”

That choice of verb, Burgess said, is evidence that Oziel “is suggesting, he is leading, he is putting his own theory forward.”

“My opinion is this would be unacceptable form for a therapy session,” Burgess said.

Prosecutors are expected to cross-examine Burgess today.