Erik Menendez Says He Believed His Father Was a Mafia Killer

After 15 days on the witness stand, Erik Menendez completed his testimony Tuesday at his murder trial with a dramatic flourish: He said he believed his wealthy, domineering father, entertainment executive Jose Menendez, was a killer with Mafia connections.

As he has many times, Menendez ended his testimony with a final denial that he intended to kill his parents when he fired his Mossberg shotgun at them at the family’s Beverly Hills mansion in August 1989.

“I shot them as many times as there were shells in my gun,” the younger Menendez brother acknowledged under questioning by defense attorney Barry Levin. But, he insisted, “There was no way a thought could enter my mind at that time. I was freaking out.”

Erik Menendez, 25, and his brother, Lyle, who turns 28 today, have been on trial since October. The brothers’ first trials, before separate juries, ended two years ago in deadlock when jurors could not decide whether to convict them of murder or manslaughter.

As in his first trial, Menendez testified that his father sexually molested him for a dozen years--a key element of the defense theory that the brothers killed out of the fear that their parents would kill them first to prevent exposure of a family sex scandal.

Erik Menendez spent nine days on the witness stand during the first trial. He spent nearly as long under cross-examination alone at the retrial, as Deputy Dist. Atty. David Conn mounted a scathing attack on his story.