Erik Menendez Suffering From Stress Disorder, Expert Testifies

Supporting the defense theory that Erik Menendez shot his parents to death in a blind panic, a specialist in post-traumatic stress disorder testified Thursday that Menendez suffers from the disorder as a result of a lifetime of physical, psychological and sexual abuse.

John P. Wilson, a Cleveland State University psychology professor, has studied the disorder for 22 years--among Vietnam veterans and, most recently, among civilians and rescue workers in Bosnia. He testified that Menendez continues to display symptoms of chronic post-traumatic stress disorder, as he did on Aug. 20, 1989, when he and older brother Lyle shotgunned their parents to death at the family’s Beverly Hills home.

Wilson also testified that Erik Menendez, now 25, suffers from a subclass of the disorder known as battered person syndrome.

The defense, seeking lesser manslaughter convictions for the brothers, maintains that a lifetime of parental abuse instilled a fear so profound that they killed Jose and Kitty Menendez in the mistaken belief that the parents were about to kill them to hush up a family sex scandal.

Prosecutors say the brothers plotted the killings, and plan to call their own experts.

Van Nuys Superior Court Judge Stanley M. Weisberg ordered Erik Menendez to submit Sunday and Monday to an examination by Newport Beach forensic psychiatrist Park Dietz, known nationally for helping prosecutors obtain convictions in cases in which defendants put their mental state at issue.

Wilson did not testify at the brothers’ first trial, which ended in a deadlock two years ago. It was the first time jurors have heard a specific diagnosis of Erik Menendez.