Recording of Menendez Call Could Be Heard by Jury

The judge in the Menendez murder case gave prosecutors permission Thursday to play for jurors a taped phone call that Lyle Menendez had with a San Fernando Valley woman who had befriended him.

Van Nuys Superior Court Judge Stanley M. Weisberg ruled that prosecutors could use the tape because Lyle Menendez, the older of the Beverly Hills brothers charged with murdering their parents, freely gave his consent to being recorded by Norma Novelli, 55, a Studio City businesswoman.

Novelli testified this week that she and Lyle Menendez planned to write a book together. In fact, a book is due out next month--an “unauthorized” book based primarily on phone calls with Lyle Menendez that Novelli taped from 1991 through 1994.

Prosecutors intend to use just one of the tapes that Novelli made against Lyle and Erik Menendez in the brothers’ retrial, due to begin Aug. 16.

The tapes--13 in all--remain sealed by court order. All that is known about the sole tape that prosecutors intend to play is that it involves L. Jerome Oziel, the brothers’ therapist, and was made in either late July or early August, 1993, during the brothers’ first trial--which ended in a mistrial.

Lyle and Erik Menendez confessed to Oziel that on Aug. 20, 1989, they had killed their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez. The psychologist was the prosecution’s chief witness at the first trial but endured a withering cross-examination. Because of that, prosecutors do not intend to again build their case around him.

Speaking of the tape, lead prosecutor David Conn said outside court, “It’s something . . . we feel should be admitted to a jury.”

During three days of hearings this week, Novelli testified that she and Lyle Menendez became friends in 1990, a few months after the brothers were arrested. The next year, she said, they hit upon the idea of a book.

Because she could not take notes fast enough while they talked on the phone, he gave her his consent to be taped, she testified.

“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.

But as Novelli testified in cross-examination, Lyle Menendez never gave his consent in writing or on tape. Lyle Menendez “did think [Novelli] was a friend,” defense attorney Terri L. Towery said. “She has now obtained her 30 pieces of silver and 15 minutes of fame.”

Weisberg ruled that Lyle Menendez did consent to be recorded. And at no time, the judge noted, did Lyle Menendez ever tell Novelli to turn off the tape recorder.

Outside court, Erik Menendez’s attorney, Leslie Abramson, vowed to keep fighting. She indicated that she would argue at the next hearing, set for June 19, that the tape was a “tiny nugget” and, under the law, irrelevant.