Lyle Menendez Linked Mafia to Slayings, Lawyer Testifies

Less than 24 hours after the shotgun slayings of his wealthy parents, Lyle Menendez told a Beverly Hills lawyer that the Mafia might be behind the killings, the lawyer testified Thursday at the Menendez brothers’ retrial.

“Lyle thought it was a Mafia killing. He relayed that to me,” Randolph Wright told a jury in Van Nuys. A former Los Angeles County prosecutor now in private practice, Wright testified that Lyle Menendez told him his father had “made a great deal” on a chain of East Coast record stores that were mob-controlled. As a result, Lyle Menendez claimed there had been “heat” and his father had received threats.

Wright also testified that he thought it strange when Lyle Menendez said he and brother Erik were willing to quickly retrieve a safe from their Beverly Hills mansion just hours after the gruesome killings of their parents, Jose Menendez, 45, and his wife, Kitty, 47.

“I just felt it was a little bizarre that after relaying the story of what happened that he’d be willing to go back to that house,” Wright said.

The attorney and the brothers believed a will might be inside the safe, but it was empty, Wright said.