LOS ANGELES, Oct. 19 -- Wealthy entertainment executive Jose Menendez wanted to take his two sons out of his will months before he and his wife were shot to death, the executor of his estate testified Thursday at the sons' murder trial. Carlos Baralt, who was Jose's brother-in-law, told the jury that Jose was frustrated with his sons, Erik and Lyle, and expressed an interest in removing them as beneficiaries of his will in early 1989. 'He indicated that he was very disappointed and frustrated with his kids,' Baralt said. 'He expressed to me that he'd already talked to Lyle and Erik about it (disinheriting them).' Outside court, lead prosecutor David Conn told reporters that Jose met with his brother-in-law just two months before the killings to discuss having his sons cut out of the will. Baralt's testimony could bolster the prosecution's theory that Lyle and Erik killed their parents out of hatred and greed for the family's $14 million fortune. Erik, 24, and Lyle, 27, are charged with first-degree murder for the Aug. 20, 1989, shotgun killings of Jose, 45, and Kitty Menendez, 47, in the TV room of their Beverly Hills mansion. They could face either the death penalty or life in prison if convicted. Erik and Lyle claim they killed in self-defense out of fear that their parents were about to kill them to keep them from revealing allegations of years of incest and psychological abuse. Two juries who separately considered the cases against Erik and Lyle deadlocked in January 1994 between murder and manslaughter charges.
One jury of five women and seven men is considering the charges against the brothers during the retrial, which began last week. Baralt, called as the prosecution's ninth witness, said he never saw anything to support the defense's claims that Jose sexually abused his sons or had any homosexual leanings. Jose seemed particularly frustrated that his eldest son, Lyle, was 'spending quite a lot of money' while enrolled at Princeton University, Baralt said. 'He mentioned that he couldn't understand why Lyle couldn't just go to college and pass his subjects,' Jose's brother-in-law said. Baralt said the brothers only stood to inherit 'somewhere in the area of $2 million' from their father's estate after taxes and mortgage fees. While the estate was once estimated at $14 million, it has since dwindled to about $2 million -- of which defense lawyers claim $1.5 million in legal fees for the first trial and the Internal Revenue Service claims the remaining $500,000, Baralt said. Another prosecution witness, Randy Wright, said the brothers thought their father had changed his will or was in the process of changing it when he and his wife were slain. Wright said, however, that he did not think the brothers seemed worried about being cut out of the will. Wright's wife, Klara, had testified Wednesday that Erik and Lyle seemed worried there might be a new will in the family's home computer.
