Ex-Girlfriend Counters Menendezes’ Testimony

Lyle Menendez’s onetime girlfriend testified Monday that his younger brother knew he wore a toupee, contradicting the brothers on a key detail in their murder trial.

Ex-girlfriend Jamie Pisarcik said Erik Menendez told her he knew of the toupee during a conversation in early 1989 in the Menendez mansion in Beverly Hills.

“He was kind of joking because he was amazed that Lyle all this time had the hairpiece,” Pisarcik said, adding, “He was amazed because Lyle’s hair always looked so perfect.”

But Pisarcik, who was testifying for the prosecution as a rebuttal witness, found her credibility under attack during cross-examination. She conceded she could not remember what month it was that she and Erik Menendez discussed the hairpiece.

The toupee is an important link in the brothers’ descriptions of the chain of events leading up to the Aug. 20, 1989, shotgun slayings of their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez.

Lyle and Erik Menendez are charged with first-degree murder. If convicted, they could be sentenced to death.

Each testified that the younger brother learned for the first time of the hairpiece on Aug. 15, 1989, when their mother ripped it off Lyle Menendez in a fight.

Discovering that his older brother had been keeping a secret, Erik Menendez disclosed his own secret--that Jose Menendez had been sexually abusing him for 12 years, according to the brothers. They said that triggered a series of confrontations that led them to kill their parents five nights later.

The only other witness to take the stand Monday, family maid Flor de Maria Suria, who lived in the house on weekdays, said she heard no cross words between the sons and parents that last week.

But even if she had, she admitted under cross-examination, she would not have understood them because she speaks Spanish, not English.

Pisarcik followed her to the stand and said she distinctly recalled Erik Menendez laughing about the toupee. Answering questions from Deputy Dist. Atty. Pamela Bozanich, Pisarcik said she believed that conversation took place in the spring of 1989, perhaps in April.

But under cross-examination, she was shown records stating that she worked in New Jersey for most of April. She said it might have been March--or possibly even February or January.

The defense tried to rule out one possible time for a visit by waving tennis tournament records showing that Erik Menendez was entered in a competition that ran in Miami from March 17 to 25. “I have not stated I had the conversation with Erik that weekend,” Pisarcik said.

She finally told defense lawyer Jill Lansing in a soft voice: “I remember the conversation is what I stated.”

Lansing closed the day by asking about Pisarcik’s telephone habits.

Pisarcik admitted that she and her sisters used a long-distance phone card, given to her by Lyle Menendez, to make calls around the nation, sometimes as many as 11 a day--even after they had broken up.

“Who do you think paid for those bills?” Lansing asked.

“I don’t know,” Pisarcik said.

Pisarcik said that after she and Lyle Menendez broke up, they remained friendly and became a couple again after the killings. She said they broke up for good in December, 1990, after he told her he and his brother were killers.

Just before the final split, Lyle Menendez told her from jail that he had been abused by his mother and Erik Menendez had been molested by their father, Pisarcik testified. “I said, ‘I don’t believe you,’ ” she said Monday under questioning by prosecutors.

Pisarcik, 30, who now lives in Los Angeles, confirmed testimony from Lyle Menendez that he asked her from jail to lie and claim that Jose Menendez “made a pass” at her--and that if she did so, cash would be put in her bank account.

Defense attorneys did not get the chance Monday to ask about those jailhouse conversations. Cross-examination is scheduled to resume today, and Lansing said in a hearing outside the presence of jurors that she has three fat notebooks filled with questions for Pisarcik.