Testimony in Menendez Trial Ends

With a videotaped tour of the Beverly Hills mansion where Lyle and Erik Menendez killed their parents four years ago, the presentation of evidence and testimony finally came to a close Friday in the brothers’ murder trial.

There were 101 witnesses, 405 exhibits and 85 days of trial stretching across 20 weeks. And as both sides sought to leave no stone unturned, jurors were treated to pictures taken all around the outside of what was once the Menendez estate on North Elm Drive--even shots of the back alley.

The trial, though, is still far from over.

Next week, a prosecutor and Lyle Menendez’s lawyers will argue his case to his jury. The week after, another prosecutor and Erik Menendez’s attorney will make closing arguments in his case to a separate panel.

After court ended Friday, the prosecution and defense indicated that their closing arguments would step back from the small details that dominated weeks of testimony and try to win over jurors with broad, simple strokes.

“For a case with a simple theme, which is why these boys killed their parents, it has a tremendous amount of overly complicated evidence, uselessly complicated evidence in some ways,” defense lawyer Leslie Abramson said.

The time has come, she said, to “get back to the big picture, which is answering that question,” why the brothers killed. “And I’m optimistic that we have presented the answer to that question. Now whether the jury accepts the answer or not, I never, ever know.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Pamela Bozanich said: “We haven’t talked about the crime itself for a long time. . . . I think we might point out that there are two dead bodies involved in this case. That might be part of our argument.”

Not all the jurors who heard the case will hear those arguments: On Friday, Van Nuys Superior Court Judge Stanley M. Weisberg replaced one panelist on Lyle Menendez’s jury because she was about to have a baby.

Lyle Menendez, 25, and Erik Menendez, 23, are charged with first-degree murder in the Aug. 20, 1989, shotgun slayings of their parents, Jose Menendez, 45, a wealthy entertainment executive, and Kitty Menendez, 47.

Prosecutors, who are seeking the death penalty, contend that the brothers killed out of hatred and greed.

When the trial began July 20, they set forth a relatively simple case that focused on the slayings and their aftermath--displaying bloody crime scene photos and calling witnesses who said the brothers bought cars, watches and a restaurant, and hired a $50,000-a-year tennis coach.

The defense offered a more complex motive, alleging that the brothers killed out of fear and self-defense after years of physical, emotional and sexual abuse.

Lyle and Erik Menendez each testified that he had been sexually molested by their father, and that they finally lashed out after a series of confrontations that escalated Aug. 17, 1989, when the older brother threatened to tell outsiders about the family’s dirty secret.

As the brothers told it, they became convinced three days later that their parents were going to kill them, so they burst into the TV room of the Beverly Hills house, and beat their parents to the killings, blasting away with shotguns.

In testimony Friday, the defense called a series of witnesses to corroborate the brothers’ detailed account of the days before the shootings--or to discredit the prosecution rebuttal witnesses who had challenged that account.

The prosecution had called the family maid to testify that she never heard the screaming fights that the brothers insisted they had with their parents that week.

On Friday, the defense produced Mark Slotkin, the businessman who built the house--to say soundproofing made it unlikely that the maid could have heard loud voices from an upstairs bedroom.

Under cross-examination, prosecutor Bozanich probed Slotkin’s business relationship with the Menendez brothers, seeking to bolster the notion the brothers killed for the parents’ millions.

The brothers, Slotkin said, seemed confident that they would get up to $5 million in insurance from the parent company of Live Entertainment, where Jose Menendez was boss.

Slotkin, who befriended the brothers after the killings, recalled: “They just were lost souls and they needed some friend, some help.”

But he also offered business advice, he said, and the brothers discussed what to do with proceeds from a smaller policy. It was decided, he said, that Lyle Menendez would buy a Porsche and Erik Menendez would buy a Jeep.

“They felt there was a certain cash pool available to them,” Slotkin said. “They wanted to make sure it was invested wisely.”

With tensions running high Friday, Abramson complained that the prosecutors were “mugging” for the jury. Weisberg told the lawyers to behave.

The trial wound to a close with the competing counsel fighting to score final points.

When Abramson took back the lectern, Slotkin acknowledged that the brothers’ financial information came from an uncle and a lawyer--that the brothers were not counting their money.

Then it was Bozanich’s turn again. “Mr. Slotkin, did either of the defendants ever tell you they killed their parents?”

“No,” he said.

Later in the day, the defense called Mark Heffernan, who said he was the brothers’ only tennis coach in the summer of 1989. He said he was not at the house on Aug. 19--contradicting a prosecution witness, a pool repairman, who said he saw the brothers playing with a coach on that day.

Testimony finally ended where the case began--with Leslie Zoeller, the Beverly Hills police officer who investigated the murders.

In a last dose of numbing detail, it produced this exchange:

When the pool man was at the courthouse, Abramson asked, “did you see his wife combing his hair before he came back in to testify?”

“No, I didn’t,” Zoeller said.