LOS ANGELES, Oct. 13 -- The jury in the Menendez brothers' murder retrial heard an audiotape Friday of a session in which Lyle Menendez told his psychologist he would not have decided to kill his mother without the consent of his younger brother, Erik. On the tape, Lyle tells psychologist Dr. L. Jerome Oziel, 'There was no way I was going to make a decision to kill my mother without Erik's consent. I didn't even want to influence him in that issue.' Lyle also complained that his mother was 'always very, very cold,' and that 'she would tell us all the things she could have been.' In a later portion of the session, Erik is heard telling the psychologist, 'I hate myself for doing this.' Lyle, 27, and Erik, 24, are charged with first-degree murder for the Aug. 20, 1989 shotgun slayings of their wealthy parents, Jose, 45, and Kitty, 47, in the TV room of their Beverly Hills mansion. The two could face the death penalty or life in prison if convicted. Oziel was the prosecution's key witness in the brothers' first trial, when separate juries considering the cases against Erik and Lyle declared they could not reach unanimous verdicts between first-degree murder, second-degree murder or manslaughter. This time around, one jury is considering the case against both brothers, and the tapes were played during the testimony of lead Beverly Hills police investigator Leslie Zoeller. Lead prosecutor David Conn said he had not yet determined whether he would call Oziel to the stand in the retrial.
During the first trial, Oziel testified that Lyle and Erik recounted their poor relationship with their parents and confided they had killed them. The two were not arrested until March 1990 when a former girlfriend of Oziel's heard about the confessions and notified police. The state's lawyers contend Lyle and Erik killed their parents out of greed for the family's $14 million fortune and hatred for their domineering, Cuban-born entertainment executive father, who was an exective with Live Entertainment, a division of Carolco that distributes home videos. The Menendez family estate has since virtually vanished because of attorneys' fees and taxes, and Lyle is being represented by a deputy public defender furnished at the taxpayers' expense. Defense lawyers claim the brothers killed their parents after years of mental, sexual and emotional abuse, fearing their parents were on the verge of killing them to prevent them from going public with their allegations of abuse. Also Friday, jurors heard tapes of Lyle and Erik Menendez talking with Zoeller and another police investigator nearly a month after the murders. The jury of five women and seven men considering the case against the brothers were given transcripts of the tapes during the second day of testimony. The courtroom audience could hear only few snippets from those tapes. Defense lawyers complained that some portions of the brothers' accounts were missing from the tapes. Outside the jury's presence, Superior Court Judge Stanley Weisberg said the omissions appeared to be inadvertent. In another development Friday, defense lawyer Leslie Abramson reiterated her call for a gag order on the attorneys, noting that one of the five alternate jurors said he thought he saw Conn on television talking about the case. The alternate said he quickly switched the channel. Abramson had accused Conn on Thursday of holding too many televised press conferences that may affect jurors' perspectives in the sensational trial. Conn retorted that it was his responsibility to respond to the public's questions. The judge said Thursday he saw no compelling reason for the order, but would think about reconsidering her request if the defense lawyer submitted a written proposal. The Menendez brothers' first trial had drawn nationwide attention after being featured daily on Court TV. The second trial has drawn considerably less attention because the judge barred TV cameras from the retrial to try to keep the jury and alternates from being tainted by media coverage.
