Murder as therapy: in a Van Nuys courtroom, two pairs of people are on trial: Lyle and Erik Menendez for murdering their parents; and Jose and Kitty Menendez for child abuse. Can they all be guilty? - California trial

National Review, Nov 29, 1993 by Stuart Goldman

In a Van Nuys courtroom, two pairs of people are on trial: Lyle and Erik Menendez for murdering their parents; and Jose and Kitty Menendez for child abuse. Can they all be guilty?

"I prosecute child abuse. Only the parents are dead when I do it."

--Attorney Paul Mones

IT MAY seem callous to refer to a murder trial as entertainment, but the fact is that the case of the Menendez brothers, on trial for the shotgun slaying of their wealthy Beverly Hills parents in August of 1989, has become the media event of the year. Recently Jay Leno spent an entire week reeling off Menendez jokes. Not to be topped, Saturday Night Live's mock news anchor Kevin Nealon noted that basketball player Larry Johnson had recently signed an $84-million contract. "To give you an idea of how much $84 million is," he went on, "the Menendez brothers would have had to kill six sets of parents for that kind of money."

Each day, the tiny Van Nuys courtroom, where the trial has been going on since July 20, is besieged by scores of reporters, screenwriters, true-crime chroniclers, voyeurs, and Menendez groupies, who often begin camping out at 2 A.M. in hopes of getting one of the few available seats.

It's no secret that the public loves murder trials; but when I find myself wrestling with some strange Menendez minutia at 3 A.M. rather than peacefully snoozing, I'm forced to stop and wonder why this case has grabbed us by our collective libido.

In Fear of Their Lives?

JOSE and Kitty Menendez were ambushed while eating berries and cream in front of their family-room TV set. Mrs. Menendez was filling out the application for her younger son, Erik, to attend UCLA. At approximately 10 P.M. the brothers burst into the room and emptied their shotguns into their parents-more than 15 shots in all. After blowing off the back of his father's skull, Lyle Menendez reloaded his gun and issued the coup de grace to his mothers left cheek.

Following the killings, the brothers went on a spending spree, dropping nearly $1 million (the Menendez estate was estimated at $14 million) on Rolex watches, Porsches, condominiums, and a restaurant, while the Beverly Hills police ran around chasing sundry leads (some of which were provided by the brothers) that purported to link the killings to the mob. It would be seven months before the brothers were arrested. Throughout three years of legal wrangling over the admissibility of tapes made by their therapist, Dr. Jerome Oziel (in which the brothers allegedly confessed to the crimes), they maintained their innocence. It was only ten days before the trial commenced that they admitted to the murders, claiming that they shot their parents in self-defense. After years of sexual and other abuse, they said, they now believed that their own lives were in jeopardy.

Part of the seductiveness of a capital trial is the juxtaposition of the maddeningly civilized court procedure and the life-and-death struggle going on just beneath the surface. A trial is warfare-nothing more, nothing less. Often in death-penalty cases a curious role reversal takes place, wherein the defendant becomes the victim and the prosecutors are transformed into bloodthirsty assassins. In this case, the stalkers are Pamela Bozanich, a strikingly attractive young attorney who, with her habit of wearing oversized bows affixed to her braided ponytail, resembles a schoolgirl; and a small, pleasant-looking Japanese-American man, Lester 'Kuriyama. Their prey are two baby-faced boys in their early twenties.

The defense has done a marvelous job of assisting the brothers in playing up their victim roles. Dressed each day in fuzzy crew-neck sweaters and neat Fifties haircuts, they look like something straight out of Ozzie and Harriet. The outfits are carefully chosen down to the colors of the boys' shirts, most often soft pinks and blues. Both Leslie Abramson (Erik's attorney) and Jill Lansing (Lyle's attorney)--the brothers have separate juries and counsel--play classic mother figures. Miss Abramson is the quintessential Yiddishe mamma, alternately strict and dotingly maternal. Sitting next to her client at the defense table, Miss Abramson often picks a stray piece of lint off Erik's sweater or smooths his hair. Miss Lansing plays the gentle decent, sort of a combination hospital nurse and schoolmarm. There is a lot of touching between the women and the brothers; the attorneys often sit with their shoulders rubbing up against the boys or with their arms draped around them. Much of this is obviously for the juries' sake; nonetheless, one gets the sense that the women--particularly Miss Abramson (who calls the brothers "adorable")--truly care for their clients.

The prosecution has been openly derisive of the defense posture. Miss Bozanich referred to the trial as "a cheap version of divorce court," and compared Lyle Menendez's tearful recollections of child abuse to a "performance by Laurence Olivier which rapidly degenerated into Sylvester Stallone." The prosecution has chosen not to attempt to refute the abuse claims, instead focusing on the murders themselves, as well as the elaborate coverup constructed by the brothers. Miss Bozanich characterizes the case as "an ordinary domestic murder with a bit of extra glitz." The motives, she says, are simple: hatred and greed.