Menendez Jury Reviews Testimony About Toupee, Fight With Mother

With one of the two juries in the Menendez brothers murder trial listening again to snatches of testimony, another day passed without a verdict.

Lyle Menendez’s jury, in a 10th day of deliberations, requested the rereading of testimony about his hairpiece and about the origins of a tape-recorded session between the brothers and their Beverly Hills psychologist, L. Jerome Oziel, on Dec. 11, 1989.

Both Lyle and Erik Menendez testified that the toupee figured in a fight with their mother that triggered a series of confrontations that led them to kill their parents five nights later, on Aug. 20, 1989.

In the Dec. 11 session, the brothers told Oziel that they killed their mother to put her “out of her misery” and said their father’s infidelities were the cause of her despair.

In hearings held weeks ago outside the presence of jurors, defense attorneys said the tape was made at the urging of one of the brothers’ previous lawyers--with the intention that it would be played in court if the brothers were convicted of first-degree murder, in hopes of gaining juror sympathy.

The only testimony that jurors have heard about the making of the tape, however, came from Oziel’s former lover, Judalon Smyth. She testified that Oziel wanted to make the tape for “protection,” and that is the testimony that was reread Tuesday.

Erik Menendez’s jury deliberated for an eighth day Tuesday on a separate floor of the Van Nuys courthouse.

Lyle Menendez, 25, and Erik Menendez, 23, are charged with first-degree murder. Two juries are hearing the case because some testimony was admissible against only one brother.