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LA-Times - Chronology of the Menendez Case - From the archives.

Chronology of the Menendez Case

1986: The Menendez family moves from New Jersey to California. Jose Menendez, a Cuban immigrant who began working as a dishwasher and rose to become a top executive at Hertz and the RCA Corp., takes over as chief executive at Live Entertainment, a Van Nuys-based video distributor. He moves with his wife, Kitty, and two tennis-playing teen-agers--Lyle and Erik--into a Calabasas home.

1987:Nov. 8: Kitty Menendez is taken to the hospital for a drug overdose.

1988, January: Erik Menendez and a friend at Calabasas High School write a screenplay about a son who murders his parents for $157 million. Prosecutors later lose a bid to use the script at the brothers’ trial.

July: Erik Menendez helps burglarize two houses in Calabasas, getting about $100,000 in property. Lyle joins in the second break-in. To satisfy authorities, Jose Menendez makes restitution and his younger son, Erik, begins seeing Beverly Hills psychologist L. Jerome Oziel.

1989 :July 30-31: NBC-TV airs a movie on the Billionaire Boys Club, a money-happy group of young Southern California men who turn to murder. The club includes the older brother of one of Erik’s friends--and prosecutors later suggest that the film gave the Menendez brothers the idea of killing their parents.

Aug. 15: On this night, according to the brothers, Kitty Menendez rips off Lyle Menendez’s toupee in the family’s new home, a Beverly Hills mansion. As the brothers tell it, Erik Menendez is shocked to learn Lyle wore a wig, but also feels closer to him--and thus confides that he has been molested by their father since age 6.

Aug. 17: Lyle confronts Jose Menendez, telling him to stop the abuse, according to Lyle’s testimony. He says his father responded: “We all make choices in our life. Erik made his. You made yours.”

Aug. 18: According to the brothers’ testimony, they shop for handguns at a Big 5 store in Santa Monica, then wind up instead buying two shotguns in San Diego, using a false ID.

Aug. 20: About 10 p.m., the brothers burst into the TV room of the house and blast away at their parents, hitting Jose Menendez six times and Kitty Menendez 10 times. After dumping weapons and bloody clothing, the brothers drive to a food festival in Santa Monica to establish an alibi. They return home and, at 11:47 p.m., Lyle Menendez dials 911. In seeming hysterics, he reports the discovery of the bodies.

Aug. 21: Lyle Menendez tells Beverly Hills police his father’s business dealings might have provoked the killings.

Aug. 24: Lyle Menendez spends $15,039 on three Rolex watches and money clips.

Aug. 31: Summoned to the mansion by Lyle Menendez, computer expert Howard Witkin searches the family computer to look for new wills, but finds none. Lyle Menendez pays him with a check for $150. It bounces.

Sept. 6: Lyle Menendez buys a $70,484 Porsche. Later, he puts down $300,000 on a chicken-wing restaurant in New Jersey. “I realize, I look back, it sounds awful,” he says in testifying about the spending.

Oct. 31: Erik Menendez confides to Oziel that he and his brother killed their parents. Lyle Menendez, called to the therapist’s office, confirms his brother’s account.

Nov. 2: The brothers meet again with Oziel. Oziel’s lover, Judalon Smyth, is in the waiting room, and later claims she overhears “bits and pieces” of conversation.

Dec. 11: In another session with Oziel, which is taped, the brothers say they killed their mother to put her “out of her misery” and that their father’s infidelity caused her despair.

1990

March 4: Judalon Smyth, who has been living at Oziel’s in Sherman Oaks--under the same roof with his wife and two daughters--leaves, ending their affair.

March 6: Smyth tells police that the brothers confessed to Oziel.

March 8: Oziel’s bank safe deposit box is searched. Police find notes the psychologist dictated after the Oct. 31 and Nov. 2 meetings, and the Dec. 11 tape. Lyle Menendez is arrested.

March 11: Erik flies home from a tennis tournament in Israel and is arrested at Los Angeles International Airport. Both brothers are held without bail.

1992

Aug. 27: In a split decision, the California Supreme Court rules that Oziel’s notes on the Oct. 31 and Nov. 2 sessions can be used as evidence against the brothers because Lyle Menendez allegedly threatened the psychologist. But the court blocks use of the Dec. 11 tape on grounds of patient-therapist confidentiality.

Dec. 7: The Los Angeles County grand jury indicts the brothers on murder and conspiracy charges, with special circumstances that could mean the death penalty.

1993

May 14: Van Nuys Superior Court Judge Stanley M. Weisberg rules that two juries will hear the case because some evidence is admissible against only one brother.

July 11: Defense lawyer Leslie Abramson, representing Erik Menendez, discloses that he will say the brothers killed in self-defense after years of abuse.

July 20: Before opening statements begin, spectators line up for seats in court. Prosecutors allege that Lyle and Erik Menendez were driven by hatred and greed. Abramson says they killed in “pure terror, pure panic.”

July 29: With Oziel scheduled to testify, Abramson vows to “attack his credibility in every way known to man and God.”

Aug. 4: Oziel testifies that the brothers considered the killings the “perfect crime.”

Aug. 10: Under cross-examination, he is made to recount his affair with Smyth. Even he laughs at a poem he wrote her: “For like a nymph, she strides from the forest at daybreak dressed in white where no other man has known her—Judalon.”

Aug. 16: The prosecution rests after calling 26 witnesses.

Aug. 17: The defense begins a parade of teachers, coaches, relatives, neighbors and friends to depict Jose Menendez as a power freak and Kitty Menendez as a suicidal enigma. Weisberg warns the lawyers to keep to relevant evidence: “Every time someone picked their nose and the father slapped his hand, that’s not going to be before the jury,” he says.

Sept. 10: Lyle Menendez takes the stand, saying that he was molested by his father from age 6 to 8. Sobbing, he says he, in turn, sexually abused his younger brother.

Sept. 17: Recounting the slayings, Lyle says he just “freaked out,” and now mostly recalls a dark room, glass breaking, booming guns and lots of smoke.

Sept. 20: Lyle Menendez admits offering his onetime girlfriend, Jamie Pisarcik, a bribe to testify falsely that Jose Menendez made an unwanted pass at her.

Sept. 21: On cross-examination, Deputy Dist. Atty. Pamela Bozanich asks Lyle Menendez: “You almost got away with it, didn’t you?”

Sept. 23: Lyle Menendez says his mother appeared to be “sneaking” away, so he reloaded and shot her one final time.

Sept. 27: Erik Menendez, pale and trembling, takes the stand and testifies that his father molested him from age 6 to 18, sometimes sticking pins in him during sex.

Oct. 1: Prosecutors spring a trap. They allow Erik Menendez to testify about shopping for handguns at a Big 5 store--then reveal that the Big 5 chain had stopped selling handguns three years earlier.

Oct. 13: A new phase of the defense opens with five expert witnesses on the mind-set of the brothers. Ann H. Tyler, a Salt Lake City-based psychologist, tells jurors that Erik Menendez endured “psychological maltreatment.”

Oct. 15: Ann Burgess, a nursing professor at the University of Pennsylvania, says the crime scene was “disorganized,” suggesting there was no plan to kill. She later cites research on snails to bolster the notion that prolonged fear can “rewire” the brain.

Nov. 3: Weisberg rules that the Dec. 11, 1989, tape of the counseling session with Oziel now is admissible as evidence because the defense made the brothers’ mental state a central issue.

Nov. 12: Defense attorneys play the tape for jurors, saying they did not want it to seem they were hiding evidence. There are gasps when Lyle says of his mother and father: “You miss just having these people around. I miss not having my dog around. If I can make such a gross analogy.”

Nov. 15: Smyth, whose tip led to the brothers’ arrests, is called by the defense to discredit Oziel. She says he wanted the brothers to confess on tape so he could control them.

Nov. 18: After three months of testimony and 56 witnesses, the defense rests.

Nov. 23: The prosecution, in its rebuttal, calls Brian Andersen, Kitty Menendez’s brother. He says the Menendez parents were loving and caring, but their sons were brats.

Dec. 6: Weisberg rules that the evidence does not justify a legal instruction giving jurors the option of outright acquittal.

Dec. 9: As closing arguments begin, Lyle Menendez’s lead lawyer, Jill Lansing, implores jurors to convict him of manslaughter, not murder. She asks jurors to consider: “What in the world could have caused these two boys to kill their parents?”

Dec. 10: With Bozanich calling the brothers cold-blooded killers who put on the “best defense daddy’s money could buy,” Lyle Menendez’s case goes to the jury.

Dec. 13: Deputy. Dist. Atty. Lester Kuriyama kicks off his closing argument for the Erik Menendez jury by posting pictures of the killing scene. Abramson calls that a “cheap prosecution trick,” then puts up her own pictures, of the brothers as naked young boys.

Dec. 15: Relating her “fantasy” of seeing Erik Menendez a free man, Abramson urges jurors to acquit him. Closing arguments wrap up with Kuriyama suggesting that Erik Menendez was gay and that his sexual orientation--not abuse by his parents--fed the family friction that led to the slayings.

1994

Jan. 10: The Erik Menendez jury announces that it seems hopelessly deadlocked. Weisberg urges the panel to keep trying.

Jan. 13: A hung jury is declared in the case against Erik Menendez.

Jan. 17: The earthquake damages the courthouse--and the neighborhoods of many jurors--causing a postponement of deliberations for the Lyle Menendez panel.

Jan. 24: The jury finally resumes deliberations, in a trailer.

Jan. 25: The jury reports: “We are unable to come to a unanimous decision.” The judge asks the panel to keep trying.

Jan. 29: With the Lyle Menendez jury still hung, Weisberg declares a mistrial. Prosecutors vow to retry the brothers.

X (First part of the article).

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