Lyle Menendez Agreed to Taping of Phone Calls, Woman Testifies

A San Fernando Valley woman, who befriended Lyle Menendez and for 2 1/2 years taped phone calls she had with him, testified Monday that he freely gave his consent to being recorded because they planned to write a book together.

Norma Novelli, 55, of Studio City, said that she and Lyle Menendez, the older of the Beverly Hills brothers charged with murdering their parents, came up with the idea of a book in 1991, a few months after she began visiting him regularly at the Los Angeles County Jail.

In fact, a book is due out next month from Dove Books, which last year published Faye Resnick’s “diary” about Nicole Brown Simpson. And the forthcoming book is no joint project. Instead, it is based primarily on phone calls with Lyle Menendez that Novelli taped from 1991 through early 1994.

Prosecutors hope to use the tapes against Lyle and Erik Menendez in the brothers’ retrial, due to begin Aug. 16. The defense is seeking to have the tapes ruled inadmissible, contending they were illegally recorded. Van Nuys Superior Court Judge Stanley M. Weisberg did not rule Monday on the issue. Testimony is to resume Wednesday.

Novelli testified that she and Lyle Menendez became friends in 1990, within months of the brothers’ arrest for the Aug. 20, 1989, shotgun slayings of their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez.

Sometime in 1991, Novelli testified, Lyle Menendez broached the idea of a book. The original plan was to detail his experiences in jail and “the other side of Lyle,” Novelli testified, meaning “his personality, things like that.”

She testified that he told her: “When I do my book, or he might have said, ‘When we do our book,’ I’d like to go on tour with it.”

Sometime after that--Novelli said repeatedly Monday that she does not have exact dates--he said she could take notes. But Novelli found she could not take them fast enough and asked his permission to tape the calls.

“That’ll be fine, but we’ll have to make it low key,” she testified that he said. She explained that he apparently did not want the defense lawyers then representing him to know about a book.

Lyle Menendez never gave his consent in writing or on tape, Novelli said.

At some point after the first trial, Novelli said, she realized the tapes themselves could be a book. She sold them to Dove, she said, for $12,500.

Outside court, Erik Menendez’s attorney, Leslie Abramson, said it was “pretty obvious there’s a serious credibility problem with this witness.”

But lead prosecutor David Conn said “there are [taped] statements we feel the jury should listen to.”

Pierce O’Donnell, a lawyer for Dove, said outside court that the book is due out June 12. It features “explosive evidence” that will “directly contradict testimony from the first trial,” he said.

Abramson countered: “If this was really explosive, do you think they’d have only paid $12,500 for it?”