Menendezes Are Found Guilty of Killing Parents

In an apparent repudiation of the abuse defense, a jury on Wednesday convicted Erik and Lyle Menendez of first-degree murder for the 1989 slayings of their parents, setting the stage for dramatic weeks of testimony as the brothers fight to escape the death penalty.

On Monday, a penalty phase will begin to decide whether they should spend the rest of their lives in prison or face execution for killing their father, hard-driving entertainment executive Jose Enrique Menendez, 45, and mother, former small-town beauty queen Mary Louise “Kitty” Menendez, 47.

Erik and Lyle were the scions of a Beverly Hills family that outwardly seemed perfect before exploding in violence. Although the defense claimed that sexual abuse and fear were the root cause of the murders, the prosecution relentlessly combated that theory.

The brothers’ first trial had resulted in juror deadlock that sparked nationwide debate over the issues of child abuse and personal responsibility.

The 20-week retrial unfolded almost in a media vacuum when, after the news frenzy at the O.J. Simpson trial, television cameras were banned from the courtroom.

As the verdicts were announced shortly before noon, Erik Menendez, 25, grasped the hand of defense attorney Leslie Abramson, looked toward the courtroom ceiling and then cast his eyes downward. Another defense attorney, Barry Levin, draped his arm across Erik’s shoulders to comfort him.

Older brother Lyle Menendez, 28, rested his chin in his hand, keeping his dark eyes fixed straight ahead.

Later, Erik turned to his paternal grandmother, Maria Carlotta Menendez, 78, and mouthed a message of encouragement.

The grim-faced jury of eight men and four women handed down verdicts after deliberating less than four days. The case originally went to the jury March 1, but deliberations had to start anew when the forewoman and a pregnant juror were replaced with alternates after suffering medical problems.

The jury convicted the brothers of two counts each of first-degree murder, as well as conspiracy to commit murder. Jurors also found two special circumstances that under California law are reserved for particularly heinous murders: Murder by lying in wait, and multiple murders. The special circumstances leave only two sentencing options--life in prison without the possibility of parole and death by execution.

That decision will be up to the jury, which now will hear further evidence on the brothers’ background and character during a mini-trial that could last two months or more.

The penalty phase promises high drama and new, previously undisclosed evidence.

The defense says it will call as many as 40 witnesses to describe the brothers’ allegedly abusive upbringing. It is not yet known whether the brothers will take the stand.

In an attempt to keep jurors from being influenced by media coverage, Superior Court Judge Stanley M. Weisberg ordered everyone connected with the case, including attorneys, potential witnesses and the defendants themselves, not to comment until the penalty phase ends.

News of the verdicts brought throngs of journalists and spectators from the paparazzi-punching trial of Alec Baldwin at the municipal courthouse next door. Deputies and fire marshals were forced to clear a pathway through the hordes to maintain access to Weisberg’s fourth-floor courtroom.

As he left the courtroom, Deputy Dist. Atty. David P. Conn beamed, saying, “I feel great.” Conn and co-prosecutor Carol J. Najera were greeted by colleagues’ cheers and handshakes from their boss, Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti, as they arrived at the Van Nuys district attorney’s office two floors below.

Outside the courthouse, Abramson puffed vigorously on a cigarette and gruffly brushed off reporters, reminding them about the gag order. At the first trial, Abramson had been quick with a quip and often greeted reporters by their first names.

It was her opponent, Conn, who appeared to dominate the retrial by vigorously challenging the defense contention that the brothers killed out of fear fed by a lifetime of abuse.

Claims of Abuse

The brothers admitted killing their parents during their first trial, but claimed they had been sexually and psychologically abused since they were small children. The defense claimed the brothers’ profound fear and rage over the family’s incest secret exploded in gunfire in the den of the family mansion on Aug. 20, 1989.

At the first trial, prosecutors barely contested the abuse defense. But Conn aggressively attacked it, a strategy that legal experts said contributed significantly to the guilty verdicts.

“I think Conn did a much better job than the prosecution in the first trial,” UCLA law professor Peter Arenella said. “But it was a high-risk strategy given the possibility he could have alienated two or three jurors--if they had found Erik’s testimony somewhat credible. Obviously, that risk didn’t materialize.”

Social workers and clinical therapists agreed that the jury’s rejection of the brothers’ allegations of abuse should be viewed in its unique context and not as a setback for victims of family violence.

“Certainly I hope the main thing to read into the verdict is even if you’re pretty seriously abused it’s not a good idea to murder your parents,” said Riley K. Smith, a licensed family therapist in West Los Angeles.

The verdict should not scare off others thinking of reporting domestic abuse problems to authorities, said Betty Fisher, executive director of Haven Hills, a Canoga Park shelter for abused women and their families.

“Does this mean everybody gets a free bite of the apple? I don’t think so. This was an isolated case that was hopefully judged on its own merits. I’d be very disappointed if I thought differently,” Fisher said.

In the court of public opinion as reflected by talk radio, reactions were mixed, but the majority of callers seemed pleased with the outcome.

“If anyone in the sound of my voice believes the Menendez brothers were railroaded, please call in,” said Tom Leykis, an afternoon host on KMPC-AM (710).

“I think they have suffered enough,” said one woman, but when Leykis began to question her, she said she didn’t know enough about the case.

More typical of the callers was one named Susan, who told Leykis, “I hope they get the death penalty.”

Lyle and Erik were 22 and 19 when they began their odyssey six years ago through the courts of Los Angeles.

They entered the judicial system sporting confident grins and tennis tans, the heirs to an estimated $14-million fortune. For a time, they became pop culture icons--known to a nationwide television audience simply as “The Boys,” the sweater-clad stars of a serialized courtroom drama.

Now they are gaunt young men, pallid and penniless, their lives on the line and their birthrights tarnished by their own violent acts, their profligate $1-million spending spree, and the tales they wove of sexual and psychological torture at the hands of their parents.

At the first trial, both brothers claimed they were molested by their father. They portrayed their mother as a drunken, pill-popping basket case. At the second trial, Erik, who as a boy called himself “Hurt Man,” told a childhood horror tale of incestuous sex that he confused with love and approval until, as he grew older, it became painful and punishing.

A few months after the killings, the brothers first admitted them to Beverly Hills therapist L. Jerome Oziel. Their public admissions came nearly four years later, when both brothers took the witness stand during their first trial.

As the brothers this month marked their sixth anniversary behind bars, the retrial jury was left to ponder not only why the brothers killed--but how.

This time, jurors had the prosecution’s elaborate, computer-generated reconstruction of the crime to consider. They had been told much less about the Menendez family’s allegedly troubled history than earlier jurors had. And the retrial jurors also had fewer options for compromise after Judge Weisberg eliminated many of the possible manslaughter verdicts and the defense’s legal theory behind them.

Tape of Their Admission

The first trials ended in January 1994 with two jury panels--one for each brother--split between murder and manslaughter convictions after defense attorneys surprised prosecutors with the abuse defense that chronicled the minute details of the brothers’ lives from the cradle to their parents’ Princeton, N. J., gravesides.

The retrial began Oct. 11, 1995, this time before a single jury. Only Erik’s lead defense attorney, Abramson, and Judge Weisberg returned for the encore. While the first trial was a media event, the profile of the second Menendez trial fell once Weisberg granted a request by Lyle’s public defenders to keep television cameras out of the courtroom.

Conn contended that the brothers ambushed their parents, methodically blasting hundreds of pellets into their mother and father with two pump-action Mossberg shotguns purchased two days earlier in San Diego.

Their elaborate cover-up of their crime, prosecutors contended, began on the night of the slayings as the seemingly overwrought brothers shrieked and pounded their fists on the front lawn, then gave tearful statements to police.

Therapist Oziel, his credibility tattered by the defense in the first trial, did not testify at the retrial. But during the trial’s opening moments, prosecutors played a Dec. 11, 1989, tape of the brothers’ confession to Oziel.

The tape included shocking statements from Lyle--that he would not kill their mother “without Erik’s consent” so he “let him sleep on it” for a couple of days. Later Lyle observed, “You just miss not having those people around. I miss not having my dog around, if I can make such a gross analogy.”

The retrial featured a heavier emphasis on the bloody crime scene and the parents’ gruesome shotgun wounds. Prosecutors said the shootings were executions, since 11 of the 12 shots found their marks.

And prosecutors argued that the brothers tried to deflect suspicion from themselves by firing at the parents’ legs to give the shootings overtones of organized crime. In the days that followed, Lyle in particular suggested a Mafia theory to police, friends and relatives.

At the retrial, jurors viewed dozens of larger-than-life images of the parents as they were found in death. Jose Menendez sat like a mannequin on the blood-soaked sofa, his head tilted at a disconcerting angle, his hands in his lap and a TV remote control at his side. Kitty Menendez lay crumpled at his feet on the rich Persian rug, half her face obliterated by the shotgun blasts.

The defense, led by Abramson, attacked the reconstruction, calling some of the leading criminalists in the state, as well as nationally known Pittsburgh pathologist Cyril Wecht, to dispute the findings. A veteran sheriff’s firearms examiner called the prosecution’s reconstruction “junk science.”

Erik Menendez Takes the Stand

Abramson returned to her original strategy at the retrial, portraying the brothers as incest victims who fired their shotguns in “mind-numbing, adrenaline-pumping fear” fueled by a lifetime of family violence. The fear, she argued, eliminated malice--a key mental element of murder.

“Parricide doesn’t happen for money,” Abramson told the jury. “It happens because abuse is happening.”

Erik Menendez spent 15 days on the witness stand, nine of them under a scathing cross-examination.

Lyle’s lawyers, Deputy Public Defenders Charles A. Gessler and Terri Towery, kept a low profile. Lyle, arguably the star defense witness during the first trial, stayed off the witness stand, in part because prosecutors had developed damaging evidence against him since the first trial.

Instead, Lyle relied on the testimony of Erik, who portrayed his older brother as his protector and blamed himself on the stand for destroying Lyle’s life.

The public defenders’ strategy became clear when they announced, midway through the retrial, that they would argue that Lyle, angered by his father’s continued molestation of Erik, killed in the heat of passion.

Meanwhile, Erik’s defense found itself hamstrung on the issue of abuse. More than 30 witnesses who testified at the first trial were cut from the retrial after Weisberg found their testimony irrelevant and confusing.

John Wilson, a Cleveland State University psychologist and nationally recognized expert on post-traumatic stress syndrome, diagnosed Erik Menendez with the malady, the product of a lifetime of sex abuse, Wilson said.

In a departure from the first trial, prosecutors called their own nationally known psychiatric expert to contradict Wilson. The expert, Newport Beach forensic psychiatrist Park Dietz, testified that Erik suffered from a lifelong anxiety disorder but was rational at the time of the slayings.

In his closing argument, Conn belittled the defense’s mental-state testimony.

“Where’s the defense in this case?” he asked. “Battered person’s syndrome. PTSD. Fight or flight. Panic state. Panic mode. Survival mode. Automatic pilot. Learned helplessness. Ordinary fear. Hypervigilance. Hyper-arousal. Dissociate state. . . . Which one is it? Take your pick, that’s what the defense wants you to do.”

By then, Weisberg had dealt the defense its most crippling blow.

The judge ruled that the defense team had not presented sufficient evidence to support its cornerstone legal theory--the “imperfect self-defense.” That theory, often invoked in cases involving battered spouses, allows jurors to consider lesser manslaughter convictions if they find a defendant killed under an honest but unreasonable fear his or her own life was in immediate danger.

Citing Erik Menendez’s testimony, Weisberg found that the younger brother did not fear danger in the immediate future.

Erik Menendez, by his own testimony, seemed oddly calm an hour after the paroxysm of violence that destroyed his family. He kept a vigil by the bodies of his parents that bloody night in August, waiting for the police to come.

“I just remember staring at my father in particular and just being in shock that my dad could die, and he was sitting in front of me, dead,” he said.

As for his mother, “I just wondered if she knew it was me, if she was scared. Did she understand? Was she hurting? . . . I just wanted to know what she thought when I entered the room.”

Times staff writers Bettina Boxall, Lee Harris and Bob Pool contributed to this story.