Prosecution rests in Menendez trial

November 20, 1995
Web posted at: 9:45 p.m. EST

From Correspondent Anne McDermott

LOS ANGELES (CNN) -- The prosecution has rested its case in the second murder trial of Lyle and Erik Menendez, and the main question to be resolved is the same as it was in their first trials -- were the two brothers acting out of self- defense or greed?

The two brothers were first tried separately -- and both trials ended in hung juries last year. This time, one jury will deliberate on verdicts for both brothers.

Anyone who's seen the autopsy photos of Jose and Kitty Menendez' shotgun-blasted bodies knows these were brutal killings. Anyone who heard the couples' sons testify in their first trials knows the brothers pulled the trigger. They said so.

The question is: did Lyle and Erik Menendez do it because they feared their parents as their attorneys say? The brothers say they feared them because of years of abuse and believed their parents were going to kill them.

Or, is the prosecution's theory the real explanation? The prosecutor says the brothers gunned down their wealthy parents, in their Beverly Hills home in 1989, because they were getting removed from the will.

"They knew they would not be successful in life, they could never be the person that their father expected them to be, the only way they would come into the family fortune was to kill their parents," says Prosecutor David Conn. (123K AIFF sound or 123K WAV sound)

Conn's case included witnesses who testified to Erik and Lyle's shopping spree shortly after the killings, witnesses who said Lyle Menendez asked them to lie for him, and a witness by the name of Roger McCarthy.

McCarthy is an engineer and the head of a firm that re-created the Menendez killings, shot by shot.

Conn said the whole point was to show that this was not a crime born of fear by scared young men but a cold, calculated, premeditated act. "Jose Menendez was taken out early in the shooting, he was killed immediately and most of the shots were fired into their mother and fired at her when she was on the floor in a defenseless position," Conn says. (160K AIFF sound or 160K WAV sound)

The defense case is now under way. Erik's attorney, Leslie Abramson, says her client will take the stand, just as he did before, and he is again expected to detail the psychological and sexual abuse he says he endured at the hands of his parents. It is not clear yet if he will be joined on the stand by his brother.

The case is not expected to get to the jury for a least a couple of months.

Prosecution rests in Menendez trial

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